"Surface" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... followed immediately at his heels. In an instant he had reached the extremity of the niche, and finding his progress arrested by the rock, stood stupidly bewildered. A moment more and I had fettered him to the granite. In its surface were two iron staples, distant from each other about two feet, horizontally. From one of these depended a short chain, from the other a padlock. Throwing the links about his waist, it was but the work of a few seconds to secure it. He was too much astounded to resist. ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. X (of X) - America - II, Index • Various
... blue night of clear moonlight, quickened by a rowdy wind that rioted down the valley from the north. The roughened surface of the lake was dark save where the moon had blazed its trail of shimmering golden scales. There was no boat visible, and for the first time Amber's heart misgave him and he doubted whether it were not best to seek a mount from the stables of the Residency ...
— The Bronze Bell • Louis Joseph Vance
... nothing to have brought me happiness?" she asked; but his deep-toned reproach, unrehearsed, unstudied and faltering, had broken through her surface emotions and shattered her self-absorption. "Eric, I'm not ...
— The Education of Eric Lane • Stephen McKenna
... rock crystal, thinking he had found a prize, only to be disappointed a moment later when a more experienced miner assured him it was worthless. Both soon learned, however, to recognize at sight the precious gems, and, although few came their way, they saw many brought to the surface by luckier neighbors. One day sounds of great rejoicing was heard in their tent. They had worked hard for over a month without finding anything, and were feeling greatly discouraged and dejected, when all at once something happened. Handsome had been rocking the cradle ...
— The Mask - A Story of Love and Adventure • Arthur Hornblow
... face, and also the vision of a poor devil falling at Hemerlingue's feet, imploring him, threatening him, leaping at his throat in an outburst of desperate frenzy. All this agitation passed across his face like a gust of wind which wrinkles the surface of a lake, hollowing out shifting caverns of all shapes therein; but he stood mute on the same spot, and at a hint from his employer that he might withdraw, went unsteadily down to resume his task in ...
— The Nabob, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... She was always the same—grave, gentle, laconic, self-possessed. But who that looked into her eyes could fail to see underneath her Spanish pride and more than Oriental reserve that fund of passion lying hidden like the waters of an artesian well, waiting only to be brought to the surface? He had not yet brought that hidden treasure into the light of the sun and of love, and he wondered if ever he should. And if he should, would it be for happiness? Leam was the kind of girl to love madly under the orange trees and myrtles, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. XVII, No. 99, March, 1876 • Various
... was able to keep secret from the rest of the world. It is probable that even their number was greater than the intelligence departments of foreign navies suspected. The best type had a speed on the surface of 18 knots and could travel at 12 knots when submerged. The type known as E-21, of the design of 1914, measured 213 feet 8 inches in length and had a beam of ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume II (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... throw obvious thoughts in a new light, and make up the whole with a large quantity of purity, correctness, and elegance of style. Take it for granted, that by far the greatest part of mankind do neither analyze nor search to the bottom; they are incapable of penetrating deeper than the surface. All have senses to be gratified, very few have reason to be applied to. Graceful utterance and action please their eyes, elegant diction tickles their ears; but strong reason would be thrown away upon them. I am not only persuaded by theory, but convinced by my experience, ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... last night in which this was decided upon. Your brilliant record in this seminary and other qualifications which have been mentioned to us by high authorities, were the reasons for this action which appeared upon the surface, but I want you to know the inner workings—I asked your cousin to bring me here that I might have the pleasure of ...
— A Good Samaritan • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews
... Indeed if the weight of the atmosphere be entirely removed by means of a good air-pump, and if water be placed in the exhausted receiver, it will evaporate so fast, however cold it maybe, as to give it the appearance of boiling from the surface. But without the assistance of the air-pump, I can show you a very pretty experiment, which proves the effect of the pressure of the atmosphere in ...
— Conversations on Chemistry, V. 1-2 • Jane Marcet
... had by this time brought to the surface the generals who later led us to successful victories. Their distance from the central controlling power resulted in their being let alone to work out their own salvation. Opposed to them had been some excellent but not the best of the Confederate leaders; while Virginia boasted the elite ...
— The Campaign of Chancellorsville • Theodore A. Dodge
... into the hole; Ethan followed her, and pulled the mass of hay over so that it fell upon them. They were four or five feet below the surface ...
— Hope and Have - or, Fanny Grant Among the Indians, A Story for Young People • Oliver Optic
... to length and diameter. Air bladder small; very common. Swarm in deepish pools under limestone rocks, takes bait, i.e. offal and worms with great avidity. Like many other species, it is asserted to be the English trout: it rises to the surface. ...
— Journals of Travels in Assam, Burma, Bhootan, Afghanistan and The - Neighbouring Countries • William Griffith
... rushing at once "in medias res" is, of all the ways of beginning a story, or a separate branch of a story, the least objectionable. The reader is made to think that the gold lies so near the surface that he will be required to take very little trouble in digging for it. And the writer is enabled,—at any rate for a time, and till his neck has become, as it were, warm to the collar,—to throw off from him the difficulties and dangers, the tedium and prolixity, of description. ...
— The Duke's Children • Anthony Trollope
... of darkness in which she seemed to have wandered ceaselessly and comfortlessly for many days, Muriel Roscoe came haltingly back to the surface of things. She was very weak, so weak that to open her eyes was an exertion requiring all her resolution, and to keep them open during those first hours of returning life a physical impossibility. She knew that she was not alone, for gentle hands ministered to her, and she was constantly ...
— The Way of an Eagle • Ethel M. Dell
... days; real business, when one's orbit was confined to a few hundred yards of cratered surface, claimed the nights. A peculiar degree of darkness characterised these closing days of November, and with rain and mud put an end to active operations. Wiring, the chief labour of which was carrying the coils up to the front and afterwards settling the report to Brigade, occupied the energies of ...
— The Story of the 2/4th Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry • G. K. Rose
... virtues, and thy worth proclaim. So mists and exhalations that arise From "hills or steamy lake, dusky or gray," Prevail, till Phoebus sheds Titanian rays, And paints their fleecy skirts with shining gold; Unable to resist, the foggy damps, That vail'd the surface of the verdant fields, At the god's penetrating beams disperse! The earth again in former beauty smiles, In gaudiest livery drest, ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... patriotic labor willingly expended, and of sacrifices made and sufferings endured in a good and noble cause. The mental cultivation and moral training of the American citizen constitute a shield, from whose solid and polished surface the missiles of temptation, which easily penetrate other defences, usually glance or rebound with harmless effect. The carnage of the battle field, the bombardment and capture of cities, and the ravages of ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3 No 2, February 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... we were," Harold agreed. "It is too hard being useless out here when such a splendid fight is going on. Ah! they have their eyes on us!" he exclaimed as a puff of smoke burst out from some bushes near the shore and a ball came skipping along on the surface of the water, sinking, ...
— True to the Old Flag - A Tale of the American War of Independence • G. A. Henty
... vena accede', and my active imagination fancied that all the rest was in harmony with those beautiful specimens, for the graceful folds of the muslin, leaving the outline all its perfection, hid from me only the living satin of the surface; there was no doubt that everything was lovely, but I wanted to see, in the expression of her eyes, that all that my imagination created had life and was endowed with feeling. The Oriental costume is a beautiful varnish placed upon a porcelain vase to protect from ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... be noted that the skin disease occurred simultaneously with a marked improvement in health. This shows that Nature was adopting her usual plan of forcing the impurities outwards to the surface and that the change of diet made this possible. With her body less encumbered with waste a ...
— The Healthy Life, Vol. V, Nos. 24-28 - The Independent Health Magazine • Various
... interchanged our young ideas across a small and extremely massive table, which, in fact, had once done duty as a block for the chopping up of meat. To this hour I can see the hundreds of lines running criss-cross upon its surface, especially those opposite to where I ...
— Marie - An Episode in The Life of the late Allan Quatermain • H. Rider Haggard
... vengeance upon the Greeks. He spent two years in making preparations for the enterprise; called to his aid warriors from the most distant tribes of the empire, and purchased the alliance of the Petchenegues. With an immense array of barges, which for leagues covered the surface of the Dnieper, and with an immense squadron of cavalry following along the banks, he commenced the descent of the river. The emperor was informed that the whole river was filled with barges, descending for the siege and sack of Constantinople. In ...
— The Empire of Russia • John S. C. Abbott
... that we are capable of conceiving as belonging to the nature of man. Not only the portrait of our external being, but an assemblage of the minutest particles of which our nature is composed: a mirror whose surface reflects only the forms of purity and brightness: a soul within our own soul that describes a circle around its proper Paradise, which pain and sorrow and evil dare not overleap. To this we eagerly refer all sensations, thirsting that they should resemble and correspond with ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 344 (Supplementary Issue) • Various
... posses a soul, he seemed to keep it elsewhere than where it ought to have been; so that, buried beneath mountains (as it were) or enclosed within a massive shell, its movements produced no sort of agitation on the surface. ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... Vivia gazed into the silent mirror, the salient points of her life started up as if memory held a torch to them in their dark recesses, and another picture printed its frosty spiculae upon the gray surface of the glass before her. No ardent arch of Southern noontide now, no wealth of flower and leaf, no pomp of regnant summer, but winter has darkened down over sad Northern countries, and white Arctic splendor hedges a lake about with the beauty ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 75, January, 1864 • Various
... obligations, they both rose. She laid her hand on his arm, and for a moment his fingers pressed hers. He smiled down into her upturned eyes with love, but without passion. He never for a second risked the "gentleman" and showed the "man." He was suggestive of a forest pool with a smiling rippled surface. There might be depth, but ...
— With Edged Tools • Henry Seton Merriman
... was destined to occupy, deliberately cut a piece away from each side. This is proved by a copy of the picture made by Lundens before the mutilation, now in the National Gallery. When M. Hopman undertook the restoration of The Night Watch he discovered, when he had removed the surface of dirt, that the sortie is taking place by daylight, and that the work contained something that Rembrandt evidently intended should represent a ray of sunlight. But the popular name of the picture ...
— Rembrandt • Mortimer Menpes
... are designed for Pomp and Magnificence. The Reason I take to be, because in these Figures we generally see more of the Body, than in those of other Kinds. There are, indeed, Figures of Bodies, where the Eye may take in two Thirds of the Surface; but as in such Bodies the Sight must split upon several Angles, it does not take in one uniform Idea, but several Ideas of the same kind. Look upon the Outside of a Dome, your Eye half surrounds it; look up into the Inside, and at ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... survey of the whole kingdom was also ordered, under the direction of Dr. William Petty, the fortunate economist, who founded the house of Lansdowne. By him the surface of the kingdom was estimated at ten millions and a half plantation acres, three of which were deducted for waste and water. Of the remainder, above 5,000,000 were in Catholic hands in 1641; 300,000 ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee
... morning he woke with the same feeling of depression; he looked round his dormitory. There were seven of them, all perfectly happy and contented. And why? Merely because they looked at the surface, because they did not take the trouble to find out what was true and what was false. They were happy in their ignorance, and he, too, could be happy if he just took things as they were. His last few weeks had been so full of joy, because he had ...
— The Loom of Youth • Alec Waugh
... beforehand in decking the Town Hall of the neighbourhood with evergreens and bunting. Jerry's assistance in this matter was, of course, invaluable, and when the important day arrived, he and Nan spent the whole afternoon in sliding about the floor to improve the surface. ...
— The Odds - And Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... I have written are sufferers, they at least exist upon the surface of the earth. But what shall we say of those who pass their lives in the cellars of the ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... us also, and the things of the night came out securely at our feet. For a moment, a sport of habit had betrayed us to the old Eden habits, had taken us a step into a forgotten harmony. But below the surface the old fought secretly with the new, that old that seems so much the newest of the new, that new that really is so old and stale. The new must have won, and in me first, for I rose suddenly, brusquely, as if somehow I felt I had unawares been ...
— A Tramp's Sketches • Stephen Graham
... into the bottom the timber seemed to be even larger than it was on the slope. The forest floor was soft and springy. Their feet sank into it as into a soft, thick rug. The top of this leafy covering was dry enough; but a few inches under the surface, the forest mold was as moist as though a shower had just fallen. Yet there had been almost no rain for months. Not only did the leaves hold the moisture, but the very shade itself ...
— The Young Wireless Operator—As a Fire Patrol - The Story of a Young Wireless Amateur Who Made Good as a Fire Patrol • Lewis E. Theiss
... buoyant cork refuse to bob into the depths of the muddy and torpid Cuyahoga. I was like some fond parent, hoping against hope to see his child out-live the flippant period and dive beneath the surface of things, into touch with the great living realities. And when the cork finally marked a historic epoch by vanishing, and a small, inert, and intensely bored sucker was pulled in hand over hand, ...
— The Joyful Heart • Robert Haven Schauffler
... ready to spring, but not quite. God, but Jeff Whitworth is a skilled thief! I know what he is up to but I can't quite get it on the surface. Keep the French robber busy, boy, for a little longer, and I'll land him. Here we are at the office! Now you get busy keeping them busy—and I'll land 'em. If not, I'll go and show France what ...
— The Daredevil • Maria Thompson Daviess
... cooling to courage or reckless enthusiasm as cold water-if one cannot swim. The boy plunged and floundered, and weighty with his boots and his clothing, soon sank from sight. As he came spluttering to the surface again, "Help, help, Arvid," he called despairingly; "I ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... also fancy how animated conversation would become if it chanced to take a patriotic turn. For people speak their thoughts in Alsace,—nowhere more freely. In season and out of season, the same sentiment comes to the surface. "Nous sommes plus Francais que les Francais." This is the universal expression of feeling that greeted our ears throughout our wanderings. Such, at least, was formerly the case. The men, women and children, rich and poor, learned and simple, gave utterance ...
— In the Heart of the Vosges - And Other Sketches by a "Devious Traveller" • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... an observatory was built. Large numbers of students thronged the city, learned Greeks and Jews taught in the schools, and a number of advances on the scientific work done by the Greeks were made. A degree of the earth's surface [3] was measured on the shores of the Red Sea; the obliquity of the ecliptic was determined (c. 830); astronomical tables were calculated; algebra and trigonometry were perfected; discoveries in chemistry not known in Europe until toward the end of the eighteenth century, and ...
— THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION • ELLWOOD P. CUBBERLEY
... 1896, the Spray, being refitted and well provisioned in every way, sailed from Buenos Aires. There was little wind at the start; the surface of the great river was like a silver disk, and I was glad of a tow from a harbor tug to clear the port entrance. But a gale came up soon after, and caused an ugly sea, and instead of being all silver, as before, ...
— Sailing Alone Around The World • Joshua Slocum
... very beautiful, but rather overdone portion of earth's surface, that the adventures occurred of which we are now to give some account; and as probably most of our readers have heard the name of Syria pretty often of late, we need not display much geographical erudition in pointing out where it lies. It would be pleasant to us if we could atone for ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXVI. October, 1843. Vol. LIV. • Various
... scarcely possible to exaggerate the evil which has been brought upon the world by the religious glorification of celibacy and by the enormous development and encouragement of the monastic life. Generation after generation, century after century, and over the whole wide surface of Christendom, this conception of religion drew into a sterile celibacy nearly all who were most gentle, most unselfish, most earnest, studious, and religious, most susceptible to moral and intellectual enthusiasm, and thus prevented ...
— The Map of Life - Conduct and Character • William Edward Hartpole Lecky
... coldest, windiest, highest (on average), and driest continent; during summer, more solar radiation reaches the surface at the South Pole than is received at the Equator in an equivalent period; ...
— The 2004 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... predominates in proportion as the country grows larger. Wanting any great and acknowledged centre of national life and thought, our expansion has hitherto been rather aggregation than growth; reputations must be hammered out thin to cover so wide a surface, and the substance of most hardly holds out to the boundaries of a single State. Our very history wants unity, and down to the Revolution the attention is wearied and confused by having to divide itself among thirteen parallel threads, instead of being concentred on a single clew. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 121, November, 1867 • Various
... inexpressibly wild, plaintive cry, and fled screaming away to a more secure refuge among the reeds and sedges of a swamp. A number of ducks too, awakened by the unwonted sound, shot suddenly out from the concealment of their night's bivouac with erect heads and startled looks, sputtered heavily over the surface of their liquid bed, and rising into the air, flew in a wide circuit, with whistling wings, away from the scene of so much uproar ...
— The Young Fur Traders • R.M. Ballantyne
... let us also cast suspicion out of our minds. This is a good rule to observe: Never suspect folks. It is useless, anyway, for by and by what they are or what they do is always bound to come to the surface. ...
— How to Eat - A Cure for "Nerves" • Thomas Clark Hinkle
... for the scheme to fail, and success in it meant on the surface comparative wealth for us all, with, perhaps, in the not distant future an entrance through the McAllister-guarded ...
— Bidwell's Travels, from Wall Street to London Prison - Fifteen Years in Solitude • Austin Biron Bidwell
... other rivers there is a surface, and an underneath, and a vaguely displeasing idea of the bottom. But the Rhone flows like one lambent jewel; its surface is nowhere, its ethereal self is everywhere, the iridescent rush and translucent strength of it blue to the shore, and ...
— English: Composition and Literature • W. F. (William Franklin) Webster
... the sun. As to the river, it shone like a band of silver as it wound in and out, and here and there; and when you looked you could see the reflection of the great dragon-flies as they flitted and raced about over the glassy surface. The reeds on the bank were quite motionless; while, out in the middle, the fat old chub could be seen basking in the sunshine, wagging their great broad fantails in the sluggish stream, too lazy even to snap up the flies that passed over ...
— Hollowdell Grange - Holiday Hours in a Country Home • George Manville Fenn
... in concentrated caustic lyes, and, for the most part, in strong solutions of sodium chloride, hence the addition of caustic soda or brine to a solution of soda soap causes the soap to separate out and rise to the surface. Addition of brine to a solution of potash soap, on the other hand, merely results in double decomposition, soda soap and potassium ...
— The Handbook of Soap Manufacture • W. H. Simmons
... killed, the contents of their stomachs examined, and small portions of the body found. The question then arose whether the child was born alive; pieces of the lungs were placed in a basin of water, and the fact that they floated on its surface proved, beyond a doubt, that the child had breathed; the crime of infanticide was then charged upon the unhappy mother, who, appalled by this evidence ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I. February, 1862, No. II. - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... churches and palaces and other great buildings he sees to-day rest on an earlier and invisible city buried in dust beneath the foundations of the Rome of the Twentieth Century. In like manner, and because all visible things on the surface of the earth have grown out of older things which have ceased to be, the world of habits, the ideas, customs, fancies, and arts, in which we live is a survival of a younger world which long ago disappeared. When we speak of Friday ...
— Folk Tales Every Child Should Know • Various
... hemisphere of azure; and it was noticeable how much vaster the sea looked than the sky. We were so high above it that the heavings of its longer swells were leveled to imperceptibility, while the waves only graved the motionless surface. Here and there the rufflings of a breeze showed in darker markings, like the changes on watered silk. The most ephemeral disturbance made the most show. Dotted over the blue expanse were black spots, fishing boats; and a steamer with a long trail of smoke showed ...
— Noto, An Unexplored Corner of Japan • Percival Lowell
... were, off and on, stepping along a stony road; whilst being curried or when fidgeted by flies he will be forced to use his hoofs just as much as if he were walking. Nor is it the hoofs merely, but a surface so strewn with stones will tend to harden the frog ...
— On Horsemanship • Xenophon
... direct road for about half my journey, which could take me through the well-settled parish of St. John, afterwards I should run great risk of losing my way in the cockpit country, maybe stumbling upon a settlement of wild maroons, or stepping into one of the impassable sink holes whose grass-grown surface gives no warning of ...
— Humphrey Bold - A Story of the Times of Benbow • Herbert Strang
... Thibet it can be explained by motives of an economical nature; the small quantity of arable land falling to the share of each inhabitant. In order to support the 1,500,000 inhabitants distributed in Thibet, upon a surface of 1,200,000 square kilometres, the Buddhists were forced to adopt polyandry. Moreover, each family is bound to enter one of its members in a religious order. The firstborn is consecrated to a gonpa, which is inevitably found upon an elevation, at the entrance of every village. As soon as ...
— The Unknown Life of Jesus Christ - The Original Text of Nicolas Notovitch's 1887 Discovery • Nicolas Notovitch
... there was a terrific explosion— a mighty upheaval of the sea. A mountain of water shooting skyward, mingled with fragments of the steamer and bodies of men. As the spars and timbers dropped back into the sea, there floated on the surface but splinters where a few seconds before the proud steamer had stood. The Loa and her crew had been swept into eternity. It was then a cheer rang out from the little gig far in under the shore. A bold, dangerous game had been ...
— The Story of Paul Boyton - Voyages on All the Great Rivers of the World • Paul Boyton
... rough report on the appearance and landmarks of a stretch of country, not to exceed one-quarter of a mile and to be covered in not more than five minutes. Report should include such things as ground surface, buildings in sight, trees, ...
— Scouting For Girls, Official Handbook of the Girl Scouts • Girl Scouts
... the spot, and having their own cases considered. Meanwhile a telegram had been sent to Clatterby, and, in a short time, a special train arrived with several of the chief men of the line, and a gang of a hundred surface-men to clear away the wreck and remove the dead ...
— The Iron Horse • R.M. Ballantyne
... he made lifted the door half out of water, and shot it away from him, the wind filled its sail, and when Billoo came to the surface and looked for it, it was thirty feet off. But he set his teeth (I think he set them) and swam after it. Just as he reached it, he fetched an awful yell. He had been seized with cramps. Still, he had sense enough to cling to the door, and, ...
— The Spread Eagle and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris
... distance is anything but picturesque. From want of objects of comparison, the impression of great size is not produced; and nothing can be meaner in outline than two towers like truncated pyramids, pierced with small, square windows at irregular intervals. On a nearer approach, however, the surface-ornament begins to appear; and the central doorway, overhung by a rich and painted cornice, presents itself in its really grand proportions, but crushed, as it were, by the vast size of the twin towers, which now ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 428 - Volume 17, New Series, March 13, 1852 • Various
... superintendent was vexed. As for Mary Fortune, she sat at one side and pretended not to hear. Perhaps Rimrock was right and these first minor clashes were but skirmishes before a great battle. Perhaps, after all, Jepson was there to oppose him and it was best to ride over him roughshod. But it seemed on the surface extremely dictatorial, and against public policy as well. Mr. Jepson was certainly right, in her opinion, in his attitude toward Hicks' saloon; yet she knew it was hopeless to try to move Rimrock, so she smiled ...
— Rimrock Jones • Dane Coolidge
... light on a very difficult subject. Suppose that a picture is presented to you of a solid form; the picture, being made by pen or pencil on a sheet of paper, must show on the sheet, which is practically of two dimensions—a plane surface—a three dimensional form; so that if you want to represent a solid object, a vase, you must draw it flat, and you can only represent the solidity of that vase by resorting to certain devices of light and shade, to the artificial device which is called perspective, in order to make an illusory ...
— Avataras • Annie Besant
... of Sponkannis lies so quietly upon a protected spot on our Atlantic coast that it makes no more stir in the world than would a pebble which, held between one's finger and thumb, should be dipped below the surface of a millpond and then dropped. About the post-office and the store—both under the same roof—the greater number of the houses cluster, as if they had come for their week's groceries, or were waiting for the mail, while toward the west the dwellings become fewer and fewer, until at last ...
— The Magic Egg and Other Stories • Frank Stockton
... advantage of knowing the worst of him; her intelligent little eyes had seen him as he was; she could lay a soft finger on all his weak spots. There was this to be said for the Colonel, that he was all on the surface; there was nothing, positively nothing, behind him. Besides, Mrs. Fazakerly was not exacting. She had not lived forty years in the world without knowing the world, and no doubt she knew it too well to ask very much from it. Then the fact ...
— The Return of the Prodigal • May Sinclair
... some cheap picture and a portrait by Sargent. There were times when the story of the play seemed thin to him, and the other characters wooden, but in his blackest moods he was sure of Willie. All the contradictions in the character rang true: the humour, the pathos, the surface vanity covering a real diffidence, the strength and weakness fighting ...
— The Man Upstairs and Other Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... half a mile of the shore, where it stopped short, shooting in cat's—paws occasionally into the smooth belt of water beyond, where the long unbroken swell rolled like molten silver in the rising sun, without a ripple on its surface, until it dashed its gigantic undulations against the face of the precipitous cliffs on the shore, and flew up in smoke. The entrance to the harbour is very narrow, and looked from my perch like a zig—zag chasm in the rock, inlaid at ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... Stone-Cutter, or been a master in the Science of Quarrying. Nor is it easy at my advanced age, with a back no longer sinewy, and muscles grown flabby from lack of active exercise, for me to lift a virgin sheet of stone from the ground to the surface of my writing-desk without a derrick, but these are, after all, minor difficulties, and I shall let no such insignificant obstacles stand between me and the great purpose I have in mind. I shall persist in the ...
— The Autobiography of Methuselah • John Kendrick Bangs
... you can spare. A brave man scorns to quarrel once a day; Like Hectors in at every petty fray. Let those find fault whose wit's so very small, They've need to show that they can think at all; Errors, like straws, upon the surface flow; He who would search for pearls, must dive below. Fops may have leave to level all they can; As pigmies would be glad to lop a man. Half-wits are fleas; so little and so light, We scarce could know they live, but that they bite. But, as the rich, when tired with daily feasts, For change, become ...
— All for Love • John Dryden
... wish. She was a child of one idea and her head was filled with visions of Cedar Pond and its crowd of gay skaters. She could fairly see the boys gliding away across the glistening surface or cutting fancy figures they loved to boast of. She knew some of the girls at school skated. She had listened to glowing tales of the sport at recess the ...
— Chicken Little Jane • Lily Munsell Ritchie
... with Sugriva, borne o'erhead Ikshvaku's sons the legions led. Behind, the Vanar hosts pursued Their march in endless multitude. Some skimmed the surface of the wave, To some the air a passage gave. Amid their ceaseless roar the sound Of Ocean's fearful voice was drowned, As o'er the bridge by Nala planned They hastened on to Lanka's strand, Where, by the pleasant brooks, mid trees Loaded with fruit, ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI
... relations of life, and the eternal and immutable rules of morality, and appears in its substance alien to them, changes its nature, and, instead of justifying a breach of duty, aggravates all its mischiefs to an almost infinite degree; by the apparent lustre of the surface, it hides from you the baseness and deformity of the ground. Here is Mr. Hastings's agent, Mr. Larkins, the Company's general accountant, prefers his attachment to Mr. Hastings to his duty to the Company. Instead of the account which he ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. X. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... have been headed toward hysteria. But centuries of having had its own will had established the De Peyster habit of believing that things would eventuate according to the De Peyster wish; it was not in the De Peyster blood to give way. And yet, though self-control might restrain worry from the surface, it could not banish it from the private chambers ...
— No. 13 Washington Square • Leroy Scott
... infant's breath, Send up cold waters to the traveller With soft and even pulse! Nor ever cease Yon tiny cone of sand its soundless dance,[382:1] Which at the bottom, like a Fairy's Page, 10 As merry and no taller, dances still, Nor wrinkles the smooth surface of the Fount. Here Twilight is and Coolness: here is moss, A soft seat, and a deep and ample shade. Thou may'st toil far and find no second tree. 15 Drink, Pilgrim, here; Here rest! and if thy heart Be innocent, here too shalt thou ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... become an enthusiast so far as the new scheme was concerned, but while the way to mend matters looked rosy on the surface, I fancied there were breakers ahead. I was disappointed in the showing made by Philadelphia at the meeting, and had even then grave doubts as to the genuineness of the backing promised there, though Richter, who was even at that time pulling wires in order to be elected Secretary and Treasurer ...
— A Ball Player's Career - Being the Personal Experiences and Reminiscensces of Adrian C. Anson • Adrian C. Anson
... of Old St. Paul's had come down and the huge mass of wreckage been cleared away, working from the west the excavations for the new foundations were begun. The old cathedral had rested on a layer of loam, or "pot earth" or "brick earth," near the surface; and wells being sunk at various points to ascertain the depth of this, it was found that the loam, owing to the ground sloping towards the south, gradually diminished from a depth of six feet to four. Sinking further, they found sand so loose ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of St. Paul - An Account of the Old and New Buildings with a Short Historical Sketch • Arthur Dimock
... delivered. They breathed new ardour into the Spanish people: the Guerilla warfare, trampled down in one spot only to start up in fifty others, raged more and more widely, as well as fiercely, over the surface of the country: the French troops lost more lives in this incessant struggle, wherein no glory could be achieved, than in any similar period spent in a regular campaign; and Joseph Buonaparte, while the question of peace or war with Russia was yet undecided, became so weary of his situation, ...
— The History of Napoleon Buonaparte • John Gibson Lockhart
... or more simple members, or such clauses as complete their sense without subdivision, are constructed into a period; if they require a pause greater than that of the comma, they are usually separated by the semicolon: as, "Straws swim upon the surface; but pearls lie at the bottom."—Murray's Gram., p. 276. "Every thing grows old; every thing passes away; every thing disappears."—Hiley's Gram., p. 115. "Alexander asked them the distance of the Persian capital; what forces the king of Persia could bring into the ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... good!" added Bertha, applying her finger, not so gently, to the hot surface, and then putting it into her mouth to cool it! "It's the bestest jelly ...
— Nine Little Goslings • Susan Coolidge
... tack through alder copse and juniper jungle—hard indeed, and terribly vexatious—and he saw with delight the great open slope, covered with an unbroken surface of glittering snow. The sun (which at midwinter is but a few hours above the horizon) had set; and the stars were flashing forth with dazzling brilliancy. Ralph stopped, as he reached the clearing, to give Biceps an opportunity to overtake him; for Biceps, like all marine ...
— Boyhood in Norway • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... where the sphere had been and in its jaws it held the bar. But the end of the bar, the eight inches that had been within the sphere, was gone. It had been sliced off so sharply that it left a highly reflective concave mirror on the severed surface. ...
— Empire • Clifford Donald Simak
... Travaile into Virginia, says he saw oysters in Virginia that were thirteen inches long. Fortunately for the starving Virginians, oyster banks rose above the surface at ebb-tide at the mouth of the Elizabeth River, and in 1609 a large number of these famished Virginia colonists found in these oyster banks a means ...
— Home Life in Colonial Days • Alice Morse Earle
... solemnly. Pederson had little more than brushed the surface, but it was enough, it served to set the pattern; he could have sworn Pederson was aware of that. He said drily, "Thanks, Pederson. ...
— We're Friends, Now • Henry Hasse
... perusing a book or old newspaper; some leaning on the taffrail, watching the many-colored dolphin, and those beautiful, but spiteful, little creatures, the Portuguese men-of-war, which look so splendid as they sail gently on the smooth surface of the blue ocean, every little ripple causing a change of color in their transparent sails. I was admiring these curious navigators, as I stood with two or three friends, who, like myself, felt idle, and cared only to dispose of the time in the most agreeable manner ...
— The World of Waters - A Peaceful Progress o'er the Unpathed Sea • Mrs. David Osborne
... and the unconquerable Christian hero: but when death came to pluck him from the tree he dropped like a ripe fruit, smiling, into his hands: or, even as a gentle stream steals unperceived into the ocean, so calmly that its surface is not fretted with a ripple, his soul glided into eternity. To die upon the field of battle, amidst the shouts of victory, in presence of an admiring throng, surrounded by the badges of honor and respect, ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... in that locality, are simply waterworn pebbles of flint, which, when broken with a hammer, exhibit on the smooth surface some resemblance to the human face; and their possessors are thus enabled to trace likenesses of friends, or eminent public characters. The late Mr. Tennant, the geologist, of the Strand, had a collection of such stones. In the British ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... rendezvous on Sunday afternoon with a well-dressed circle. Miss Jelks only spoke to him once, and that was when he trod on her dress. A nipping wind stirred the surface of the river, and the place was deserted except for the small figure of Bassett sheltering under the lee of the boat-house. He came to meet them and raising a new bowler hat stood regarding Miss Jelks with an expression ...
— Salthaven • W. W. Jacobs
... perceived, between the twinkling leaves, a light, streaming from a distant cottage window. They proceeded along the edge of the brook to where the trees, crowding over it, excluded the moon-beams, but a long line of light, from the cottage above, was seen on its dark tremulous surface. Bertrand now stepped on first, and Emily heard him knock, and call loudly at the door. As she reached it, the small upper casement, where the light appeared, was unclosed by a man, who, having enquired what they wanted, immediately descended, let them into a neat rustic cot, and called ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe
... necessity of our own departure; we know that the schemes of man are quickly at an end, that we must soon lie down in the grave with the forgotten multitudes of former ages, and yield our place to others, who, like us, shall be driven awhile by hope or fear about the surface of the earth, and then like us be lost in the ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D, In Nine Volumes - Volume the Third: The Rambler, Vol. II • Samuel Johnson
... imperceptibly diminishing, and that the districts thus left unprotected proved to be below the sea-level—owing, as regards the forests, to gradual subsidence easily explicable in the case of undrained, swampy soil; and, as regards the rocks, to the fact that the newly exposed surface consisted of accumulations of ...
— The Forest of Vazon - A Guernsey Legend Of The Eighth Century • Anonymous
... the duke. Her own interest in the prince was, of course, the inspiration. To no one but herself could she entrust the delivery of the warning. Her agitated wish, openly expressed, that Quentin might win the contest had a much deeper meaning than would appear on the surface. ...
— Castle Craneycrow • George Barr McCutcheon
... that the canon originated in an underground stream which tunneled until it cut its way through to the surface. As improbable as is this theory it is as plausible as the erosion theory, but both theories appear to ...
— Arizona Sketches • Joseph A. Munk
... going to some harbor to feed. They belong to a guild of water birds that I think we might call Sea Sweepers; for they clear from the surface of the water the refuse that the tide would otherwise throw upon the beaches. They also follow in the wake of ships for the same purpose. Neither Gulls nor Terns can dive far under water like Ducks, for their bodies ...
— Citizen Bird • Mabel Osgood Wright and Elliott Coues
... hands before his eyes to shut out the darkness, and crouching in the corner, tried to sleep: ever and anon waking with a start and tremble, and drawing himself closer and closer to the wall, as if to feel even its cold hard surface were a protection in the gloom and loneliness ...
— Oliver Twist • Charles Dickens
... granted our request, but said we must sit very still, or we would find ourselves in the water. I did not wonder he thought so, for the canoe was very small, and the weight of three persons sank it almost even with the surface of the river, while the least motion would cause it to roll from side to side, so that we really felt that we were in danger of a very uncomfortable ...
— Life in the Grey Nunnery at Montreal • Sarah J Richardson
... lines were defined on the dead sky, the girdle of blue encircling sea was an image of eternity. All now was the past, there did not seem to be a present. Her mind was rocked to and fro, and on its surface words and phrases floated like sea weed.... To throw her down and ill-treat her. Her frock is spoilt; they will ask her where she has been to, and how she got herself into such a state. Mechanically she brushed herself, and mechanically, very mechanically she picked bits of furze from ...
— A Mere Accident • George Moore
... publisher's name are usually printed, for the foreign city of St. John. It was after we passed these lighthouses that we did n't see the whale, and began to regret the hard fate that took us away from a view of the Isles of Shoals. I am not tempted to introduce them into this sketch, much as its surface needs their romantic color, for truth is stronger in me than the love of giving a deceitful pleasure. There will be nothing in this record that we did not see, or might not have seen. For instance, it might not be wrong to describe a coast, a town, or an island that we passed while ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... and odds and ends of all kinds that we brought to the surface would have done a naturalist's heart good, for there were frequently objects brought to light that were quite out of ...
— Jethou - or Crusoe Life in the Channel Isles • E. R. Suffling
... relations between men, communities, bodies corporate, states and nations, and which they called in the Declaration "the Law of Nature and of Nature's God," according to which every community on the earth's surface, within reasonable limits for the formation and execution of a just public sentiment, is entitled to be a free state,—that is, to be free from external control, in executing its just public sentiment, except so far as may be necessary to enable it to conform to the terms ...
— "Colony,"—or "Free State"? "Dependence,"—or "Just Connection"? • Alpheus H. Snow
... beside a crooked sycamore tree, which grew mid-way of the stream and shaded the wheel and the shingled roof from the blue sky above. The old wooden race, on which the young green mosses shone like a coating of fresh paint on a faded surface, ran for a short distance over the brook, where the broad yellow leaves drifted down to the deep pond below. Across the slippery poplar log, which divided the mill from the road and the house occupied by the miller, there was a stretch of ...
— The Miller Of Old Church • Ellen Glasgow
... about the fire and searched for marks of the night's work. As the full rim of the sun crept over the eastern hills and its first rays quivered on the surface of the water, the huntsmen knelt by the bank of the Pottawattomie and washed the stains from ...
— The Man in Gray • Thomas Dixon
... colors, the lights and shadows of its surface, it was a simple, honest, practical effort for wiser forms of life than those in which we find ourselves. The criticism of science, the sneer of literature, the complaint of experience is that man is a miserably half-developed being, the proof of which is the condition of human ...
— Early Letters of George Wm. Curtis • G. W. Curtis, ed. George Willis Cooke
... fully acquainted with the situation of the fort and town and the parts relative to each. The cannon of the garrison was on the upper floors of strong blockhouses at each angle of the fort, eleven feet above the surface, and the ports so badly cut that many of our troops lay under the fire of them within twenty or thirty yards of the walls. They did no damage, except to the buildings of the town, some of which they much shattered; and their musketry, in the dark, employed against woodsmen ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 6 • Charles H. Sylvester
... warlike tribes, and those Who dwelt around Dodona's wintry heights, Or till'd the soil upon the lovely banks Of Titaresius, who to Peneus pours The tribute of his clearly-flowing stream; Yet mingles not with Peneus' silver waves, But on the surface floats like oil, his source From Styx deriving, in whose awful name Both Gods and men by ...
— The Iliad • Homer
... of thick and then), the teeth and one of the lips (practically always the upper teeth and lower lip, as in f), or the two lips (as in p or English w). The tongue articulations are the most complicated of all, as the mobility of the tongue allows various points on its surface, say the tip, to articulate against a number of opposed points of contact. Hence arise many positions of articulation that we are not familiar with, such as the typical "dental" position of Russian or Italian t and d; or the "cerebral" position of Sanskrit ...
— Language - An Introduction to the Study of Speech • Edward Sapir
... the English notabilities looked askance, and the Duke of Wellington dubbed him the Corporal. "God damme!" he exclaimed to Mr. Creevey, "d'ye know what his sisters call him? By God! they call him Joseph Surface!" At Valenciennes, where there was a review and a great dinner, the Duchess arrived with an old and ugly lady-in-waiting, and the Duke of Wellington found himself in a difficulty. "Who the devil is to take out the maid of honour?" he kept asking; but at last he thought of a solution. "Damme, Freemantle, ...
— Queen Victoria • Lytton Strachey
... flowed on each side of a hard, rock trail that ran straight through the center of the basin, and on both sides of the trail a black bog of quicksand spread, covering the entire surface of the land. ...
— Square Deal Sanderson • Charles Alden Seltzer
... nearest to the earth, shone with a borrowed light. But the starry globes very far surpassed the earth in magnitude. The earth itself indeed looked to me so small as to make me ashamed of our empire, which was a mere point on its surface. ...
— De Amicitia, Scipio's Dream • Marcus Tullius Ciceronis
... up at a lifeboat's full fall-like rate of climb, leaving a trail of blue-white flame behind it. All the surface of Darth seemed to contract swiftly below him. The spaceport and the town rushed toward a spot beneath the spaceboat's tail. They shrank and shrank. He saw other places. Mountains. Castles. He saw Don Loris' stronghold. ...
— The Pirates of Ersatz • Murray Leinster
... what I had suffered, I always found my spirits highest when alone. Still, the study of humanity apart, I felt that I ought not to shut myself out from my kind, but endure some little irksomeness, if only for the sake of keeping alive that surface friendliness which has its value in the nourishment of the deeper affections. On this particular occasion, however, I yielded the more willingly that, in the revival of various memories of Charley, it had occurred to me that I once heard him say that his sister had a regard for one ...
— Wilfrid Cumbermede • George MacDonald
... road, but drew up, and quitting his sleigh, turned over the body, which was almost invariably huddled with its back offered to the deadly, prevailing North wind. Against each this wind had piled a sloping bank of that fine snow which, even in the lightest breeze, drifts over the surface of the land like an ivory mist, waist high, and cakes the clothes. In a high wind it will rise twenty feet in the air, and blind any who try to ...
— Barlasch of the Guard • H. S. Merriman |
