"Transparent" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... by intensity of color, were incorporated with the walls. There were but few mirrors. At the end of each suite, one, of fabulous size, without frame, made to appear, by a cunning arrangement of dark draperies, like a transparent portion of the wall itself, extended ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Number 9, July, 1858 • Various
... correspondingly large harvest of grapes. Encouraged by this success, he built a piggery, having a glass roof, of which one portion was fitted with panes of blue glass, and the other with ordinary transparent glass. It was claimed that the pigs kept under the former developed more rapidly than those under the latter. An Alderney bull-calf, which was very small and feeble at birth, was placed in a pen under ...
— Primitive Psycho-Therapy and Quackery • Robert Means Lawrence
... enough. The two men had been descending the glacier in the afternoon, the avalanche had fallen and swept them down. He dropped upon his knees and peered into the crevasse. The walls of the chasm descended smooth and precipitous, changing in gradual shades and color from pale transparent green to the darkest blue, until all color was lost in darkness. He bent his head and ...
— Running Water • A. E. W. Mason
... Krafft; his flushed, transparent cheeks were aglow, his limpid eyes shone like stars. ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... white, half-transparent hands, took it as if it had been a human baby and looked at it lovingly till the tears came in her eyes. She would have made a tender picture, as she then lay, with her two hands up, holding the little ...
— The Seaboard Parish Volume 1 • George MacDonald
... long steps carried the girl in the sparkling dress and transparent cloak into the Strand again. But something queer was happening there. People were shouting and running. A man with a raucous, alcoholic voice, yelled words Annesley could not catch. A woman gave a squeaking scream that ...
— The Second Latchkey • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... rose shut in a book In which pure women may not look, For its base pages claim control To crush the flower within the soul; Where through each dead roseleaf that clings, Pale as transparent psyche-wings, To the vile text, are traced such things As might make lady's cheek indeed More than a living rose to read; So nought save foolish foulness may Watch with hard eyes the sure decay; And so the lifeblood of this rose, Puddled ...
— Traffic in Souls - A Novel of Crime and Its Cure • Eustace Hale Ball
... rushing through me as I sat with an empty jug in my hand in a room that was sounding like a market-place. With a start I wakened up to find the landlord making a buffoon's attempt at a dance in the middle of the floor to the tune of the Jew-trump, a transparent trick to restore the good-humour of his roysterers, and the black man who had fetched the spae-wife was standing at my side surveying me closely out of the corners of his eyes. I stood to my feet and ganted with great deliberation to pretend I had been half-sleeping. He yawned too, but with such ...
— John Splendid - The Tale of a Poor Gentleman, and the Little Wars of Lorn • Neil Munro
... things which I particularly noted. As there was no effort made to impress us by what was said (they spoke with transparent honesty and natural simplicity, and in nearly all cases the conversations were begun by us), so there was a total absence of anything like exultation over what they must consider a military success. Not a word, not a look, not a gesture or sign, that could by the ...
— In the Shadow of Death • P. H. Kritzinger and R. D. McDonald
... produce nothing new. Alas! there is nothing new under the sun. Nothing remains for the moderns, but to practise the oldest follies the newest ways. Would you, for the sake of your female friends, know the fashionable dress of a Parisian elegante, see Seneca on the transparent vestments of the Roman ladies, who, like these modern belles, were generous in the display of their charms to the public. No doubt these French republicanists act upon the true Spartan principle of modesty: they take the most efficacious method to prevent ...
— Tales And Novels, Vol. 8 • Maria Edgeworth
... time. The fault was hers, she had been too hasty, too excitable, too impetuous. Ah, yes, that was always her fault! She looked at William with everything that she thought and felt clearly to be seen on her transparent face. But a ray of comfort shone through the cloud which darkened her spirits. Surely this and everything else would be well when she had told him how sorry she was, and how plainly she saw her mistake. ...
— Round Anvil Rock - A Romance • Nancy Huston Banks
... the stir of a single chair and knew that the great-grandson was leaving. The wall might have been transparent, so sure was he of the smile upon Picard's face, a sinister speculating smile. But his imagination did not pursue Breitmann, whose lips also wore a smile, one of irony and bitterness. Neither did he hear Picard murmur "Dupe!" nor Breitmann ...
— A Splendid Hazard • Harold MacGrath
... by summer brides whether they should wear bonnets or round hats for their travelling-dress. We unhesitatingly say bonnets. A very pretty wedding bonnet is made of lead-colored beads without foundation, light and transparent; strings of red velvet and a bunch of red plums complete this bonnet. Gold-colored straw, trimmed with gold-brown velvet and black net, makes a pretty travelling-bonnet. Open-work black straw trimmed with black lace and red roses, very high ...
— Manners and Social Usages • Mrs. John M. E. W. Sherwood
... that this streak was caused by a shoal of small fishes. I had some water drawn up in a bucket, and really found a few dozen living creatures, which, in my opinion, however, belonged rather to some species of molluscae than to any kind of fish. They were about three-quarters of an inch long, and as transparent as the most delicate water-bubbles; they were marked with white and light yellow spots on the forepart of their bodies, and ...
— A Woman's Journey Round the World • Ida Pfeiffer
... rain is sleet, which is never seen in summer. It is caused by the rain in the upper air falling through a cold layer of surface air and becoming frozen on the way. Sleet is ice, and transparent. ...
— The Boy with the U. S. Weather Men • Francis William Rolt-Wheeler
... bodice of rich velvet harmonized most exquisitely with her soft spirituelle beauty and set off the purity of the purely transparent complexion. ...
— Marguerite Verne • Agatha Armour
... soon that animal life does exist of so transparent a texture that to all intents and purposes it is invisible. The spawn of frogs, the larvae of certain fresh-water insects, many marine animals, are of so clear a tissue that they are seen with difficulty. In the tropics a particular inhabitant ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 10 • Various
... so lately clogged with mist, had suddenly become transparent. To the southward, beyond a broad stretch of gently heaving waters, rose a range of snow-capped mountains, extending far to the westward. Reaching up from the nearby northern shore of the bay, and stretching away over gently rolling hills ...
— The Gaunt Gray Wolf - A Tale of Adventure With Ungava Bob • Dillon Wallace
... feeling a little puzzled; but Merry quickly changed the conversation, for she did not want to have any more talk with regard to Maggie Howland. Merry, however, had a very transparent face. Her conversation with her friend had left traces of anxiety and even slight apprehension on her sweet, open face. Merry Cardew was oppressed by the first secret of her life, and it is perhaps to be regretted, or perhaps ...
— The School Queens • L. T. Meade
... firm and substantial, and there is nothing hollow and unsound in it, and because it is plain and open, fears no Discovery; of which the Crafty Man is always in danger, and when he thinks he walks in the dark, all his Pretences are so transparent, that he that runs may read them; he is the last Man that finds himself to be found out, and whilst he takes it for granted that he makes Fools of others, he ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... the hectic flush upon Mr. Melville's cheeks, and his white, transparent hands, and his ...
— Do and Dare - A Brave Boy's Fight for Fortune • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... He looked again, and saw every feature of the girl of twelve looking through the transparent countenance of the perfect woman of twenty. It was a moment of blissful revelation, for he felt an assurance at that moment that Amelie was the same to him now as in their days of youthful companionship. "How like it is to you yet, Amelie!" ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... joyousness thus tempered, she was in her manners remarkably cordial, frank, open, straightforward, natural, and without any shade of reserve. Her whole mind was pure and transparent. One felt one knew her thoroughly and could trust her. I always thought, that come what might, we should have had in our old age at least one loving soul which nothing could have changed. All her movements were vigorous, active, and usually graceful. When going round the Sand-walk ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume I • Francis Darwin
... Brent sent me some scapular hackles from a young Birchen Duckwing Game cock, in which the naked barbs became densely re-clothed with barbules towards their tips; so that these tips, which were dark coloured with a metallic lustre, were separated from the lower parts by a symmetrically-shaped transparent zone formed of the naked portions of the barbs. Hence the coloured tips appeared like little ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication - Volume I • Charles Darwin
... vast gelatinous and transparent masses, from which oozed out a yellow-tinted liquid, of so venomous a character that a drop falling on the skin raised a blister. Other fungi were of dazzling whiteness, which Lejoillie likened to a casket of pearls, supported by an azure stalk. Many were in the shape ...
— In the Wilds of Florida - A Tale of Warfare and Hunting • W.H.G. Kingston
... replied Thorndyke. "But it must be on a totally different scale from that of the stage. A wig, and especially a beard or moustache, must be joined up at the edges with hair actually stuck on the skin with transparent cement and carefully trimmed with scissors. The same applies to eyebrows; and alterations in the colour of the skin must be carried out much more subtly. Polton's nose has been built up with a small covering of toupee-paste, the pimples on the cheeks produced with little particles of the ...
— The Mystery of 31 New Inn • R. Austin Freeman
... of Yellow Barbee, she sniffed. Barbee was about her own age; she considered him a mere child and transparent. ...
— The Desert Valley • Jackson Gregory
... Monie Creek before a good breeze and a lee tide. The chain dredge for terrapin was thrown over the side, but the boat made too much sail for Wonnell to take more than one or two tardy animals with his tongs, as they hovered around the transparent bottoms making ready for their winter ...
— The Entailed Hat - Or, Patty Cannon's Times • George Alfred Townsend
... sort of optical conversation commenced between the two young people. Every time that Clara's glance said, "I trust you," Thurstane's responded, "I will die for you." It was a perilous sort of dialogue, and liable to involve the two souls which looked out from these sparkling, transparent windows. Before long the Lieutenant's modest heart took courage, and his stammering tongue began to be loosed somewhat, so that he uttered things which frightened both him and Clara. Not that the remarks were audacious in themselves, but he was conscious ...
— Overland • John William De Forest
... she permitted Margaret McKeon to dress her, in a golden brown dress which her husband had admired. Through the transparent stuff that draped the corsage modestly her warm white shoulders gleamed. Her arms were very beautiful. She remembered as she sat in front of the glass, while the maid dressed her hair, that her husband had said she was more beautiful than the ...
— Love of Brothers • Katharine Tynan
... demonstration, on the faith of letters written by their own mothers, to have had chiselled noses, undeniable chins, forms that might have served the sculptor for a model, exquisitely-turned limbs and polished foreheads of so transparent a texture that the blue veins might be seen branching off in various directions, like so many roads on an ethereal map. This fact in itself, though it had been a solitary one, would have utterly settled and clenched the business in hand; for it is well known, on the ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... man, returning to his oars; and nothing more could I get out of him, but strange glances and an ominous nodding of the head. In spite of myself, I was infected with a measure of uneasiness; I turned also, and studied the wake. The water was still and transparent, but, out here in the middle of the bay, exceeding deep. For some time I could see naught; but at last it did seem to me as if something dark—a great fish, or perhaps only a shadow—followed studiously in the track of the moving coble. ...
— The Merry Men - and Other Tales and Fables • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Embassy to China, mentions a circumstance of a legate of the emperor, who was degraded from his office, for disobeying the orders of his imperial majesty, being reduced to wear an opaque white, instead of a transparent blue button, and a crow's instead of a peacock's tail-feather pendant from his cap. The splendour of this bird's plumage certainly demands our highest admiration, but, independent of its beauty, it has few excellencies to boast. ...
— Domestic pleasures - or, the happy fire-side • F. B. Vaux
... fire still held its green and red color, although its light was much less intense. It held its characteristic shape. Though clearly definable, under the rays of the sun it became quite transparent. Looking through it, I could see plainly the crowd of people on the farther side of the field. The effect was similar to looking through a faintly tinted glass, except that now I noticed that the ...
— The Fire People • Ray Cummings
... the winter, please ourselves with the belief that October is one of the finest months of the year, and that we have many warm, bright, still days yet before us. Of course we know we are practising upon ourselves a cheerful, transparent delusion; even as the man of forty-eight often declares that about forty-eight or fifty is the prime of life. I like to remember that Mrs. Hemans was describing October, when she began her beautiful poem on The Battle of ...
— The Recreations of A Country Parson • A. K. H. Boyd
... that, Monsieur—all the papers of M. Richaud, the papers to prove that corruption exists there in Tonkin, should be thrown overboard, all thrown into the sea? Yes! and on what pretext? To save the rest of the ship from the cholera! Is it transparent, that? No! ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... disgraceful, and Evelyn noticed hastily the dark almond eyes that saved the face from insipidity; the black eyebrows were firmly and delicately drawn, her complexion, without being pale, was extraordinarily transparent, and the thin hands and long, narrow fingers, half hidden beneath the long sleeves, were in the ...
— Evelyn Innes • George Moore
... foreground and middle distance and of the introduction of 'life,' whilst with more technical skill in the manipulation of screens and exposures he emphasises the subtle shadows of the snow and reproduces its wondrously transparent texture. He is an artist in love with his work, and it was good to hear his enthusiasm for results of the past and plans of ...
— Scott's Last Expedition Volume I • Captain R. F. Scott
... the Master," he returned quietly. "Do you take me for a fool, Mackellar? Understand it once and for all, I treat this beast in my own way; fear nor favour shall not move me; and before I am hoodwinked, it will require a trickster less transparent than yourself. I ask service, loyal service; not that you should make and mar behind my back, and steal my own money ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition, Vol. XII (of 25) - The Master of Ballantrae • Robert Louis Stevenson
... scheme is too transparent to succeed, and temporary devotion to another girl is definite damage to his cause, for it indicates fickleness and instability. There is only one way by which a man may discover his true position without asking any questions, and that is—a state secret. ...
— The Spinster Book • Myrtle Reed
... treetops and poised directly above them, about fifty feet up. An egg-shaped thing, six or seven feet in length, and seemingly made of white metal. It swayed there gently, without visible means of support, and they could make out a transparent disk on its side, back of which there was a human head with eyes ...
— Creatures of Vibration • Harl Vincent
... drawn in pain; and there was blood upon them, where white, even teeth had bitten in the way that those who suffer have of trying to hide a greater suffering beneath a lesser. The eyes, deep and dark, were dull and half-hidden by their blue, transparent lids. And the cheeks were sunken, and ghastly—touched by ...
— A Fool There Was • Porter Emerson Browne
... indistinguishable from the reality. The checkered earth, too, is canopied with a heaven as variegated as itself. You see, high up in the sky, rosy clouds at noonday, colored probably by reflection from the ruddy mountains, while near the horizon float cumuli of a transparent, ethereal blue, seemingly balled up out of the clear cerulean substance of the firmament, and detached from the heavenly vault, not by color or consistence, but solely by the light and shade of their salient and retreating outlines.] The most sanguine believer in indefinite ...
— The Earth as Modified by Human Action • George P. Marsh
... filled with charcoal, and heated to redness so as to form cyanide of ammonium, which is converted into the ferrocyanide of potassium by contact with potash solution and suitable iron compounds. Ferrocyanide of potassium is in large beautiful transparent four-sided tabular crystals, of a lemon-yellow color, soluble in four parts of cold and two of boiling water, insoluble in alcohol. Exposed to heat it loses three eq. of water, and becomes anhydrous; at a high temperature it yields cyanide of potassium, carbide ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 483, April 4, 1885 • Various
... are made yearly, mostly for matches, but almost all at two factories, one in England, and one in France. 202. Properties.—P is a colorless, transparent solid, when pure; the impure article is yellowish, translucent, and waxy. It is insoluble in water, slightly soluble in alcohol and ether, and it readily dissolves in CS2, oil of turpentine, etc. Fumes, having a garlic ...
— An Introduction to Chemical Science • R.P. Williams
... lived, the small-paned windows stood open, drinking in the slight coolness there was in the air, while the dwellers within went about their occupations more or less lightly clothed. A faint breath only now and again stirred the half transparent curtains, or the white clothes hanging on ...
— One of Life's Slaves • Jonas Lauritz Idemil Lie
... me man," George interrupted, his face twisted into lines of transparent guile. "I am boss and others do as I say. You beat me, then ...
— The Lani People • J. F. Bone
... dull reddish-orange. The cells with chlorophyll next lose more or less completely their green colour, and their contents finally become brown. The parts thus affected often appeared almost black by reflected light; but when viewed as a transparent object under the microscope, minute specks of light were transmitted, and this was not the case with the unaffected parts of the same leaves. These effects, however, merely show that the secreted fluid is highly injurious or poisonous to leaves; for nearly ...
— The Formation of Vegetable Mould through the action of worms with • Charles Darwin
... are the common wattles of this country, their bark affording excellent tan, as well as an extract to export to England; while from their trunks and branches clear transparent beads of the purest Arabian gum are seen suspended in the dry spring weather, which our young currency bantlings eagerly search after and regale ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris
... was up with the appearance of the dawn, and, having suffered much from the heat the preceding day, I walked to a suitable spot, threw off my clothes, and plunged into the basin. The water was transparent almost as air; and I happened to select a place where the coral grew within a few yards of the surface. As I dove, my eye fell on a considerable cluster of large oysters that were collected on the rock, and, reaching them, I succeeded in bringing up half a dozen that clung ...
— Afloat And Ashore • James Fenimore Cooper
... spectrum—these ultraviolet rays. The quartz lens is necessary, because these rays will not pass through ordinary glass, while the silver film acts as a screen to cut off the ordinary light rays and those below the spectrum. By this means, most white objects are photographed black and even transparent ...
— The Dream Doctor • Arthur B. Reeve
... on this valley from a distance one would fain believe it to be in reality, as in appearance, an idyllic garden of Arcadian innocence and happiness, and, forgetting the disillusions of maturer years, dream that all human hearts are as transparent as its atmosphere, and that all life is ...
— John L. Stoddard's Lectures, Vol. 10 (of 10) - Southern California; Grand Canon of the Colorado River; Yellowstone National Park • John L. Stoddard
... its transparent depths, with his vision focused upon the spot of light where the rays of the setting sun touched it into flame, he was but little surprised to discover that he could make out tiny figures in the crystal. For the moment this ...
— Tales of Fantasy and Fact • Brander Matthews
... easy to climb. Besides, d'Artagnan was but twenty years old, and consequently had not yet forgotten his schoolboy habits. In an instant he was among the branches, and his keen eyes plunged through the transparent panes into the interior ...
— The Three Musketeers • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... quite agree with it," and there was an odd look in her bright transparent eyes that made Grace speculate whether she could have heard that agreement with the Invalid in the "Traveller's Review" was one of the primary articles of faith acquired ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge
... some fifteen or twenty miles a day, thoroughly enjoying the trip. The sky was radiant, the aspens were putting forth transparent yellow leaves. On the grassy slopes some splendid yellow flowers quite new to me waved in the warm but strong breeze. On the ninth day we reached Soda Creek, which is situated on the Fraser River, at a point where the muddy stream is deep sunk ...
— The Trail of the Goldseekers - A Record of Travel in Prose and Verse • Hamlin Garland
... seen in clusters at the bottom of the valleys running inland. There were also many other fine timber trees, while graceful ferns and flowering shrubs formed a dense undergrowth over all the uncultivated parts of the country. The water was so transparent that we could see the fish swimming about as we looked over the side of the boat. We had, fortunately, some hooks and lines, and as nearly anything served for bait, we were able to catch as many as ...
— The Cruise of the Dainty - Rovings in the Pacific • William H. G. Kingston
... kiss the golden sun gives not To those fresh morning drops upon the rose, As thy eye-beams, when their fresh rays have smote The night of dew that on my cheeks down flows; Nor shines the silver moon one half so bright Through the transparent bosom of the deep, As doth thy face through tears of mine give light. Thou shin'st in every tear that I do weep: No drop but as a coach doth carry thee; So ridest thou triumphing in my woe. Do but behold the tears that swell in me, And they ...
— Love's Labour's Lost • William Shakespeare [Craig, Oxford edition]
... glass or porcelain; it consisted of a number of steps rising up the sides of the hill. These, my friend told me, were incrustations which had formed themselves over the roots of trees growing on either side. The water came flowing down over them, transparent as crystal, and as the rays of sunlight played between the waving branches of the trees, the water glittered with a thousand variegated tints. We descended from our carriages to enjoy a more perfect view. Tom and Charley took it into their heads to attempt ...
— Paddy Finn • W. H. G. Kingston
... and fat shoulders peeping through the transparent muslin of their chemises, make a bouquet of colors, with their gay sarafani, their many-hued cashmere caps attached to pearl-embroidered, coronet-shaped kokoshniki, and terminating in ribbons which descend to their ...
— Russian Rambles • Isabel F. Hapgood
... the moonbeam's mellow light, By my brother Frost, for we (they join hands) Both go hand in hand, you see. North Wind goes gaily with us both, To help us he is nothing loath. And he and Frost and Rain combine To give what in the clear sunshine Shimmers sparkling—pure and nice, Transparent, white, and glistening Ice. ...
— Christmas Entertainments • Alice Maude Kellogg
... herself with a true woman's delight in dessous; and he was quick to notice the mauve gleam of ribbon shoulder straps under the filmy black of her bodice, which gave the sombre gown a charming colour-note; her sleeves, transparent, long, and braceleted round the wrists with black velvet bands, showed the whole length of her white arms; in her ears amethyst earrings repeated the note of the mauve ribbons. Her stockings were silk and her ...
— Married Life - The True Romance • May Edginton
... grand durbar for the reception of the Talukdars. It was the first function of the sort I had witnessed, and was an amusing novelty to my wife, who, with Lady Canning and some of the other ladies in camp, viewed the proceedings from behind a semi-transparent screen, it not being considered at that time the thing for ladies to appear at ceremonials when Natives were present. The whole scene was very impressive, though not as brilliant in colouring as it would have been in any other part of India, owing to the Chiefs ...
— Forty-one years in India - From Subaltern To Commander-In-Chief • Frederick Sleigh Roberts
... in the side of the hall, and led a lady forward, habited in regal splendor, and covered from head to foot with a veil of so transparent a texture, that her costly apparel and majestic contour were distinctly seen through it. She was conducted to a chair on an elevated platform a few paces from where Wallace stood. On her being seated the regent rose, and in ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter
... professes to consider a legal instrument, framed by a legal Convention, and approved by a legal election of the people,—and which is therefore not to be set aside except by the same sovereign power by which it was created. It would be a good excuse, if it were not a transparent and monstrous quibble from beginning to end. The Lecompton Constitution has no one element of legality in it; from the Whereas, to the signatures, it is an imposture;—for neither had the Legislature, that called the Convention in which it was made, lawful authority ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 6, April, 1858 • Various
... till behold, one day, a culprit comes whose crime merits hanging; and the strict-minded Max must abdicate, for his conscience will not permit the dooming of any son of Adam to die. A strict-minded, strait-laced man! A man unfit for Revolutions? Whose small soul, transparent wholesome-looking as small ale, could by no chance ferment into virulent alegar,—the mother of ever new alegar; till all France were grown ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... Then the long-armed Krishna, that soother of miseries, said unto Bhimasena, 'Do thou speedily invite the Munis to dinner.' Then, O good king, the celebrated Bhimasena quickly went to invite all those Munis, Durvasa and others, who had gone to the nearest stream of transparent and cool water to perform their ablutions. Meanwhile, these ascetics, having plunged into the river, were rubbing their bodies and observing that they all felt their stomachs to be full. And coming out of ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa Bk. 3 Pt. 2 • Translated by Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... admiration which each day sunk into his heart a little more deeply, trying to understand the beautiful sphinx draped in purple cashmere and ecru lace, who worked away bravely amid her clay, a burnisher's apron reaching nearly to her neck, allowing her small, proud head to emerge with those transparent tones, those gleams of veiled radiance of which the sense, the inspiration bring the blood to the cheek as they pass. Paul always remembered what had been said of her in his presence, endeavoured to form an opinion for himself, doubted, worried ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet
... "barleycorn" pseudomorphs of calcium carbonate after celestite from Sangerhausen in Thuringia; it was not until about 1843 that the name was used in its present sense. The mineral had, however, long been known under the names calcareous spar and calc-spar, and the beautifully transparent variety called Iceland-spar had been much studied. The strong double refraction and perfect cleavages of Iceland-spar were described in detail by Erasmus Bartholinus in 1669 in his book Experimenta Crystalli Islandici ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... in the most plentiful mines it is rare to find one in digging;... they are frequently enclosed in clods,... some... have the earth so fixed about them that till they grind them on a rough stone with sand, they cannot move it sufficiently to discover they are transparent or... to know them from other stones. At the first opening of the mine, the unskilful labourers sometimes, to try what they have found, lay them on a great stone, and, striking them one with another, to their costly experience, discover ...
— Arts and Crafts in the Middle Ages • Julia De Wolf Addison
... cried in despair, "what can be so wrong with you! Pray tell me—please tell me—" She made no answer; her hand was cold and unresisting as he raised it with the soft white arm from the grass; the sleeve fell back, and the setting sunlight showed each little vein in her transparent skin. "Pray, tell me!" Geoffrey went on, and then, more softly, "You know ...
— The King's Men - A Tale of To-morrow • Robert Grant, John Boyle O'Reilly, J. S. Dale, and John T.
... other substance. This is a not unusual character of the most beautiful part of the decorations of the more sheltered ice-caves, as for instance the lowest cave in the Upper Glaciere of the Pre de S. Livres; the white appearance is not due to the presence of air, for the ice is transparent and homogeneous, and the naked eye is unable to ...
— Ice-Caves of France and Switzerland • George Forrest Browne
... all his persuasions. It was a general doubt. It was not a specific suspicion upon this point or that. It was a feeling of detachment and unreality at once extraordinarily vague and extraordinarily oppressive. It was as if he discovered himself flimsy and transparent in a world of minatory solidity and opacity. It was as if he found himself made not of flesh and blood but ...
— Soul of a Bishop • H. G. Wells
... by railway into Indiana. Winter had completely set in; and when he at length arrived at Winiamac, he found that a sleigh was a far readier mode of conveyance to Massissauga than the wagons used in summer. His drive, through the white cathedral-like arcades of forest, hung with transparent icicles, and with the deep blue sky above, becoming orange towards the west, was enjoyable; and even Massissauga itself, when its skeleton trees were like their neighbours, embellished by the pure snowy covering, looked less forlorn than when their death contrasted with the exuberant life ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... dreamt not then that, ere the rolling year Had filled its circle, I should wander here In musing awe; should tread this wondrous world, See all its store of inland waters hurled In one vast volume down Niagara's steep, Or calm behold them, in transparent sleep, Where the blue hills of old Toronto shed Their evening shadows o'er Ontario's bed; Should trace the grand Cadaraqui, and glide Down the white rapids of his lordly tide Through massy woods, mid islets flowering fair, And blooming glades, where the first sinful pair ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... the other vanquished; then for three thousand more for each they are to contend with each other, each destroying reciprocally the works of the other; after which Ahriman is to perish, and men, wearing transparent bodies, to enjoy ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... would mount and march, like the excellent minion he was, Aye, another and yet another, one crowd but with many a crest, Raising my rampired walls of gold as transparent as glass, Eager to do and die, yield each his place to the rest: 20 For higher still and higher (as a runner tips with fire, When a great illumination surprises a festal night— Outlining round and round Rome's dome from space to spire) Up, the pinnacled glory reached, and the pride of my soul ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning
... form and face were growing, not small, but transparent like something dissolving away. He could see the side of the blue cave through her very heart. She melted slowly away till all that was left was a pale face with two great ...
— At the Back of the North Wind • Elizabeth Lewis and George MacDonald
... a certain harshness of demeanor; but the disguise was a transparent one. How well do I remember the time—oh, so long ago!—when for some reason or other I happened to have his boat instead of my own, one day, with one of the boys of the village, to go to Matamet, twelve miles off, to visit certain ...
— By The Sea - 1887 • Heman White Chaplin
... sees on the wall of the room the very crime which he committed, with HIMSELF as the principal actor; one of the easy effects of double exposure. The substantial and ofttimes corpulent ghost or spirit of the real stage has been succeeded by an intangible wraith, as transparent and unsubstantial as may be demanded in the best book of fairy tales—more double exposure. A man emerges from the water with a splash, ascends feet foremost ten yards or more, makes a graceful curve and lands on a spring-board, runs down it to the bank, and his clothes fly gently up from ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... evenings at Arden, and he vastly enjoyed angling about the edges of her rural pool. But he was unaware that she had never left its limpid depths. He did not suspect—because he did not think it possible—that, like a goldfish, she had only swum about in the limited sphere of her transparent bowl, looking out at the universe with large eyes which seemed, but were not, wise; and ready, if danger came, to scurry back into the little frosted castle that constituted the center of ...
— Sunlight Patch • Credo Fitch Harris
... speak, and with his hand to his ear he prepared himself to catch every word that Mr. Dillon was about to utter, and the speech of Mr. Dillon was—in spite of the halting tones which excitement, unpreparedness, the sense of his responsibility produced—singularly effective. The passionate and transparent sincerity of the man—the sense of all the years of suffering through which he passed—the recollection of all the risks he has run in the great contemporary Irish Revolution—all these things spoke in his favour. Especially was he effective ...
— Sketches In The House (1893) • T. P. O'Connor
... fireless grate with their tea-table not yet cleared between them. Aunt Ellen, ninety-three years of age, with a lace cap on her head and a white silk shawl over her shoulders, was sitting upright in her low chair, knitting. She wore no glasses, and her old hands, meagre, almost transparent, with large knuckles, and skin that looked as if it had been polished, fumbled a little with her needles and the thick wool. Her eyesight was failing, though in the pride of her great age she would not acknowledge it; but her hearing was almost perfect. Aunt Laura, who was seventy-five, ...
— The Squire's Daughter - Being the First Book in the Chronicles of the Clintons • Archibald Marshall
... speaking very importunately, and repeating these Words, 'What, not one Smile?' We followed the Sound till we came to a close Thicket, on the other side of which we saw a young Woman sitting as it were in a personated Sullenness just over a transparent Fountain. Opposite to her stood Mr. William, Sir Roger's Master of the Game. The Knight whispered me, 'Hist, these are Lovers.' The Huntsman looking earnestly at the Shadow of the ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... mornings the bank of city smoke northward was like gray powder, out of which the skyscrapers stretched their lofty heads. The buildings along the shore, etched in the transparent air, breathing silently white mists of steam, lay like a mirage wonderfully touched with purplish shadows. The great steel works rose to the south, visibly near, mysteriously remote. The ribbons of fiery smoke from their furnaces were the first signs of the city's awakening ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... his back with his hands under his head, and the sleeves of his shirt rolled back left bare his mighty forearms with their faded tattooings. His big, beardless face was red, like rusty iron, with over thirty years of seafaring; it was simple and strong, a transparent mask of the man's upright and ...
— Those Who Smiled - And Eleven Other Stories • Perceval Gibbon
... spot, and one would lose all authority. Some of the juniors smile when I impress on them to be very careful about their dress—quiet, of course, as becomes their situation, but unobjectionable. With more responsibility they will see the necessity of such details. I will remember your transparent sticking-plaster—a ...
— McClure's Magazine, Volume VI, No. 3. February 1896 • Various
... The ancient Greeks, in offering their oblations to Apollo, presented turnips in lead, beets in silver, and radishes in vessels of beaten gold." Pliny describes a radish eaten in Rome as being so transparent one might see through the root. It was not until the sixteenth century that the plant was introduced into England. Gerarde mentions cultivating four varieties for Queen Elizabeth in Lord ...
— Wild Flowers, An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and - Their Insect Visitors - - Title: Nature's Garden • Neltje Blanchan
... thin, and with a transparent delicacy of complexion. She had greatly grieved over her grandfather's illness and the first change in her happy home; and she must have been much disappointed at Griffith's absence. Emily dreaded her mention of the subject when ...
— Chantry House • Charlotte M. Yonge
... cylindrical form, which grew and grew until it attained a height of ten or twelve feet, when it remained stationary and threw out branches. And the three men now saw it was a tree—a tree with a sleek, pulpy, semi-transparent, perspiring trunk full of a thick, white, vibrating, luminous fluid; and that it was laden with a fruit, in shape resembling an apple, but of the same hue and material as the trunk. Spread out on the ground around it, were its roots, twitching and palpitating with repulsive life, ...
— The Sorcery Club • Elliott O'Donnell
... long ago perceived that real material spheres were unnecessary; such spheres indeed, though possibly transparent to light, would be impermeable to comets: any other epicyclic gearing would serve, and as a mere description of the motion it is simpler to think of a system of jointed bars, one long arm carrying a shorter arm, the two revolving at different rates, and the end of the short ...
— Pioneers of Science • Oliver Lodge
... brethren! One knoweth a little too much about every one! And many a one becometh transparent to us, but still we can by no ...
— Thus Spake Zarathustra - A Book for All and None • Friedrich Nietzsche
... Christian philosopher. The facts which are intended to be impressed upon the mind by the force of the allegory, are seen and appreciated by the Christian without requiring much investigation; while the 'Holy War' is carried on under an allegorical representation by no means so transparent. Man's soul is figured under the simile of a town, which having surrendered to an insidious and mortal enemy, is besieged by its lawful Sovereign with all the 'pomp and circumstances' of war; the arch-enemy is ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... series of transparent containers from a pouch slung at one side of the suit. I recognize them as the envelopes in which we put what are referred ...
— The Lost Kafoozalum • Pauline Ashwell
... it's so transparent—less of a sham, less of a dishonesty," she began impulsively, and then paused again, a little annoyed at the overemphasis of her words. Why was she explaining and excusing herself to this stranger? Did she propose ...
— The Fruit of the Tree • Edith Wharton
... Elisha, with curt authority, pays no heed to the tears of Joash, but bids him take bow and arrows. 'And he said to the king of Israel, Put thine hand upon the bow,' and he put his hand upon it; and 'Elisha put his hands upon the king's hands.' Then, when the thin, wasted, transparent fingers of the old man were thus laid, guiding and infusing strength, by a strange paradox, into the brown, muscular hands of the young king, he tells him to open the casement that looked eastward towards the lands of the enemy, and, as ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers • Alexander Maclaren
... and hasn't come back yet," Von Barwig confided to his friends; and they laughed too. Poons could not understand why the men laughed at his troubles. The simple German lad had been swindled out of all his money, two hundred marks, by the simplest and most transparent of the many methods of swindling, the confidence game, and the immigration authorities had refused to allow him to land, as he had no means of subsistence. Von Barwig had very little money with him, so he consulted with his friends. They ...
— The Music Master - Novelized from the Play • Charles Klein
... round circle of light with the figures in the middle of it; but in the Phantasmagoria they see the figures only, without any circle of light. The exhibition is produced by a magic lantern, placed on that side of a half-transparent screen which is opposite to that on which the spectators are, instead of being on the same side, as in the ordinary exhibition of the magic lantern. To favor the deception, the slides are made perfectly opaque, ...
— Entertainments for Home, Church and School • Frederica Seeger
... more beautiful than the one likeness King had seen of her that for a second he doubted who she was—more lovely than he had imagined her even in his dreams—she stood there, human and warm and real, who had begun to seem a myth, clad in gauzy transparent stuff that made no secret of sylph-like shapeliness and looking nearly light enough to blow away. Her feet—and they were the most marvelously molded things he had ever seen—were naked and played restlessly on ...
— King—of the Khyber Rifles • Talbot Mundy
... side stretched a peat-moss, upon which the mist was producing a singular mirage. We seemed to be upon a causeway traversing an immense lake whose waves crept up gently, dying in transparent folds along the edge of the embankment. Here and there a group of trees or a cottage, emerging like an island, completed the illusion, for such it was. A sheet of bluish mist, floating a little above the ground and curling ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume V (of X) • Various
... covered with the whitest of cloths and of china, and bearing a pigeon-pie, ham, round of cold boiled beef cut from a mammoth ox, and the great loaf of household bread on a wooden trencher. And here comes in the stout head waiter, puffing under a tray of hot viands—kidneys and a steak, transparent rashers and poached eggs, buttered toast and muffins, coffee and tea, all smoking hot. The table can never hold it all. The cold meats are removed to the sideboard—they were only put on for show and to give us an appetite. And now fall on, gentlemen all. It is a well-known ...
— Tom Brown's Schooldays • Thomas Hughes
... decision of the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania, not so bold and avowed an act of judicial legislation as that just mentioned, but not less transparent, which may be cited as strongly illustrating the same consequences of uncertainty and litigation flowing from a disregard of the principle adverted to. From the year 1794, there had existed in Pennsylvania an act of Assembly limiting the lien ...
— An Essay on Professional Ethics - Second Edition • George Sharswood
... pint Milk—2 1/2d. * * 2 quarts Bone Stock * * 1 Leek * * Salt and Pepper—1/2d. * * Total Cost—4d. * * Time—Half an Hour. * Wash the sago in cold water, boil the leek in the stock for ten minutes, take it out and stir in the sago; continue stirring until the sago is transparent and the stock quite thick, then pour in the milk and bring up to the boil. Season with ...
— The Art of Living in Australia • Philip E. Muskett (?-1909)
... has continued, with more or less violence, for a certain time, it gradually moderates. The evolution of bubbles slackens, and finally comes to an end; scum and lees alike settle at the bottom, and the fluid is once more clear and transparent. But it has acquired properties of which no trace existed in the original liquid. Instead of being a mere sweet fluid, mainly composed of sugar and water, the sugar has more or less completely disappeared, and it has acquired that peculiar smell and taste which we call "spirituous." Instead ...
— Critiques and Addresses • Thomas Henry Huxley
... warm, the sky is clear, The waves are dancing fast and bright, Blue isles and snowy mountains wear The purple noon's transparent might." ...
— Shelley • Sydney Waterlow
... neglect the subject of his experiment. His watchful eye noted everything—the mass, of clots growing like a great crimson fungus under the wounded shoulder, the deadly pallor, the dark circles forming around the sunken eyes, the blanched lips, the transparent nostrils, the slow, deep respiration. From time to time he felt the wounded man's pulse and counted it carefully. Ninety—he went out again into the open air; one hundred—"The loss of blood tells," he muttered, and began ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 11, - No. 22, January, 1873 • Various
... in the last century, partly through ignorance of Oriental affairs, and partly also through the eloquence of Burke. There is no figure in English political history for which I at least entertain a greater reverence than Edmund Burke. I believe him to have been a man of transparent honesty, as well as of transcendent genius; but his politics were too apt to be steeped in passion, and he was often carried away by the irresistible force of his own imagination and feelings. Misrepresentations were greatly consolidated by the Indian History of James Mill, which was for a long ...
— Historical and Political Essays • William Edward Hartpole Lecky
... readily be seen that a white ground might be of considerable assistance to an artist. His needle penetrates the white to the copper, giving the familiar effect of a reddish ink line on white paper. A normal ground, without treatment, is virtually transparent, making the etcher's lines rather difficult to see.[21] The most usual procedure, both in the 17th century and today, is to smoke the ground and incorporate the soot with the ground by heating the plate slightly. This gives a black ...
— Rembrandt's Etching Technique: An Example • Peter Morse
... by Julia, who was watching the doctor and her sister with a feeling of almost fiendish hatred. When she saw the bright look of joy which passed over Fanny's face as the doctor whispered to her, she pressed her small white hands together until her long transparent nails left their impress in ...
— Tempest and Sunshine • Mary J. Holmes
... your bright sparkling Eyes I was undone; Rays, you have, rays more transparent than the Sun Amidst its glory in the rising Day; None can you equal in your bright array; Constant in your calm, unspotted Mind; Equal to all, but will to none Prove kind, So knowing, seldom one ...
— Threads of Grey and Gold • Myrtle Reed
... Jupiter, whose thunder could be heard rumbling in the dressing-room, supported her claim, and Venus was on the point of carrying it off,—that is to say, without allegory, of marrying monsieur the dauphin, when a young child clad in white damask, and holding in her hand a daisy (a transparent personification of Mademoiselle Marguerite of Flanders) came to contest it ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
... serrated nervure is rubbed against the rounded hind-corner of the opposite wing, the edge of which is thickened, coloured brown, and very sharp. In the right wing, but not in the left, there is a little plate, as transparent as talc, surrounded by nervures, and called the speculum. In Ephippiger vitium, a member of this same family, we have a curious subordinate modification; for the wing-covers are greatly reduced in size, but "the ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin
... satisfaction, when they play for nothing: But proceeds from both these causes united, though separately they have no effect. It is here, as in certain chymical preparations, where the mixture of two clear and transparent liquids produces a third, which ...
— A Treatise of Human Nature • David Hume
... from the singular vivacity with which the Celtic races have inspired their feeling for nature. Their mythology is nothing more than a transparent naturalism, not that anthropomorphic naturalism of Greece and India, in which the forces of the universe, viewed as living beings and endowed with consciousness, tend more and more to detach themselves from physical phenomena, and to become ...
— Literary and Philosophical Essays • Various
... backwoodsman rose to his feet; and silently, but with rather an awkward grace, walked towards the tent—not Marian's. He might as well have spared himself the trouble of taking up some of his accoutrements, and pretending to examine them. The feint was perfectly transparent to the rest of us—especially when the action ended, by his strolling off almost on the identical ...
— The Wild Huntress - Love in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... Grandmother insisted on his drinking a glass of Virginia apple-brandy after his long walk in the cold, and when a faint flush came up in his cheeks, his features might have been cut out of a shell, they were so transparent. He said almost nothing, and smiled rarely; but as he rested there we all had a sense of ...
— My Antonia • Willa Sibert Cather |
