"Contour" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... She assented absently as if she were thinking of something else, and once more gazed thoughtfully at the mummy. I watched her with deep content: noted the lovely contour of her cheek, the soft masses of hair that strayed away so gracefully from her brow, and thought her the most wonderful creature that had ever trod the earth. Suddenly she ...
— The Vanishing Man • R. Austin Freeman
... the young men. The contour of some of their heads peculiarly interested me. To be sure, you could not tell what the girls' heads were like because of so many etceteras bulging out all over; but as I looked at many of the young men's heads, I was not long in deciding that ...
— Fifteen Years With The Outcast • Mrs. Florence (Mother) Roberts
... calzoncillos puffing out along the seams. The bottoms of the calzoneros were trimmed with stamped black leather; and under these were yellow boots, with a heavy steel spur upon the heel of each. The broad peaked strap that confined the spur, passing over the foot, gave to it that peculiar contour that we observe in the pictures of armed knights of the olden time. He wore a black, broad-brimmed sombrero, girdled by a thick band of gold bullion. A pair of tags of the same material stuck out from the sides: the fashion of ...
— The Scalp Hunters • Mayne Reid
... A current flowing through a rectilinear conductor. The action of currents depending on their distance from the points where they act, their contour is a controlling factor. This contour is determined by the conductors ...
— The Standard Electrical Dictionary - A Popular Dictionary of Words and Terms Used in the Practice - of Electrical Engineering • T. O'Conor Slone
... dexterity only seen in perfection in the Fatherland. I am afraid that as a nation we think rather more of our eating and drinking than is reasonable, and this no doubt explains why so many of us, by the time we are thirty, have lost the original classicality of our contour. Walking in the streets of a town you are almost sure to catch the word essen in the talk of the passers-by; and das Essen, combined, of course, with the drinking made necessary by its exaggerated ...
— The Solitary Summer • Elizabeth von Arnim
... while we were awake between bed and dinner in poring upon maps. I have always been fond of maps, and can voyage in an atlas with the greatest enjoyment. The names of places are singularly inviting; the contour of coasts and rivers is enthralling to the eye; and to hit, in a map, upon some place you have heard of before makes history a new possession. But we thumbed our charts on these evenings with the blankest unconcern. We cared ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... only to where the coral began, half-way to the reef. This was away from the path of the Vairahaha River, and where the coral souls had manifestly indulged a thousand fancies in contour and color. After the million years of their labor in throwing up the bastion of the reef, with all its architectural niceties, they had found in the repose behind it opportunities for the indulgence of their artistry. They were the sculptors, painters, and gardeners ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien
... have hinted, they are more, indeed, than this. For if we look closer we shall perceive, as in a glass, darkly, the contour of a ...
— The Memoirs of Madame de Montespan, Complete • Madame La Marquise De Montespan
... eyes—heaving bosom—and an expression of countenance denoting a fixed determination to accomplish some deed from which her better feelings vainly bade her to abstain:—when she drew her tall—her even majestic form up to its full height, the drapery shadowing forth every contour of undulating bust and exquisitely modeled limb—while her haughty lip curled in contempt of any consideration save her own indomitable will—she appeared rather a heroine capable of leading an Amazonian army, than a woman to whom the sighing swain might ...
— Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf • George W. M. Reynolds
... possess a rare magnetism; most certainly men came under his influence with a noiseless, cheerful complaisance. It may have been that there was a slight fascination in the oblique contour of his eyes, but in reality his power lay in his exquisite finesse; people delved for him under the impression that they were laboring according to the dictates of their own sweet wills. Figuratively speaking, he ...
— Thoroughbreds • W. A. Fraser
... hers, but saw it placed upon the plate. It was placed upon it at an angle of ninety degrees from the position taken by her own hand. At my request the thumb was made particularly distinct, the whole hand being quite different in contour from ...
— The Problems of Psychical Research - Experiments and Theories in the Realm of the Supernormal • Hereward Carrington
... America in the heart of Minnesota is also the pinnacle of its watershed—the central source of the majestic rivers whose vast basins determine the physical contour, climates, products, commerce, industry, and political destiny of two-fifths ...
— Continental Monthly, Volume 5, Issue 4 • Various
... knowledge of the spot or any object to establish a connection with it. He can also readily rise high into the air so as to gain a bird's-eye view of the country which he is examining, so as to observe its extent, the contour of its coast-line, or its general character. Indeed, in every way his power and freedom are far greater when he uses this method than they have been in ...
— Clairvoyance • Charles Webster Leadbeater
... that it would be impossible to cross our wagon at any point on the bayou, and that we would have to ford around the mouth of the stream. Where the fresh and salt water met in the laguna, there had formed a delta, or shallow bar; and by following its contour we would not have over twelve to fourteen inches of water, though the half circle was nearly two miles in length. As we would barely have time to cross that day, the herd was at once started, veering for the mouth of the Arroyo Colorado. ...
— The Log of a Cowboy - A Narrative of the Old Trail Days • Andy Adams
... day, a determined and systematic attempt was made to cross the summit. Nearly the entire train was engaged in the work. The road, of course, was entirely obliterated by the snow. Guided only by the general contour of the country, all hands pressed resolutely forward. Here, large bowlders and irregular jutting cliffs would intercept the way; there, dizzy precipices, yawning chasms, and deep, irregular canyons would interpose, and anon a bold, impassable mountain of rock ...
— History of the Donner Party • C.F. McGlashan
... evoke; while his partner was the very reverse, by constitution weak and ailing, but withal a woman of whom any man might and ought to have been proud. Her elegant form, her fair transparent skin, the classical contour of her refined and expressive face, might have led a Canova to have selected her as a model of feminine beauty. But alas! she was weak; she could not work like other women; her husband could not ...
— Friends and Neighbors - or Two Ways of Living in the World • Anonymous
... pleasure in modelling any improvement that occurred to him; and in discussing the subject with the architects and builders who were professionally engaged in the works. His admirable knack of modelling the contour of the natural surface of the ground, and applying it to the proposed new roads or new buildings, was striking and characteristic. His efforts in this direction were so thoroughly disinterested that ...
— James Nasmyth's Autobiography • James Nasmyth
... now found to be not so, and to be full of detailed markings and varied depths of shadow. To suppose that these are all the same dead-level as the light-coloured portions are assumed to be, implies that the darkness is one of material and colour only, not of diversified contour, which again is contrary to experience, since difference of material with us always leads to differences in rate of degradation, and hence of diversified contour, as these dark spaces actually show themselves under favourable ...
— Is Mars Habitable? • Alfred Russel Wallace
... civilized and modernized Squire Western, nourished with beef and ale, and roughly hewn out of the most robust and least refined variety of human clay. Looking at him more narrowly, however, you would have reconsidered this judgment. Though his general contour and aspect were massive and sturdy, the lines of his features were delicately cut; his complexion was remarkably pure and fine, and his face was susceptible of very subtle and sensitive changes of expression. Here was a man of ...
— Confessions and Criticisms • Julian Hawthorne
... brass T-squares that are parallel with each other and at right angles with the first, or parallel with the axis of the Y's. Between these two rulers move two carriages, the first of which (nearest the axis of the X's) carries a point, A, designed to follow the contour of the curve to be integrated, while the second, which is placed further away, is provided at the center with a drawing-pen, A', whose point is guided by two equidistant wheels, R, R', that roll over the paper in such ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 514, November 7, 1885 • Various
... of the years written upon it seemed a masquerade—the face of a clear-eyed girl of fourteen made up to represent her own aunt at a fancy dress party. A face drawn a trifle fine, a little ascetic, but balanced by the humour of the large, shapely mouth, and really beautiful in bone and contour. The beauty of mignonette, and doves, and ...
— Red Saunders • Henry Wallace Phillips
... we are to have Ohio on the right bank and West Virginia on the left. There is no perceptible change, of course, in the contour of the rugged hills which hem us in; yet somehow it stirs the blood to reflect that quite within the recollection of all of us in Pilgrim's crew, save the Boy, that left bank was the house ...
— Afloat on the Ohio - An Historical Pilgrimage of a Thousand Miles in a Skiff, from Redstone to Cairo • Reuben Gold Thwaites
... with a human contour. So she was discovered! She rolled her eyes wildly toward Matilda; Matilda ...
— No. 13 Washington Square • Leroy Scott
... A contour map plan of a very rough piece of ground is shown in Fig. 3. The sides of the place are high, and it becomes necessary to carry a walk through the middle area; and on either side of the front, it skirts the banks. Such a plan is usually unsightly on paper, but ...
— Manual of Gardening (Second Edition) • L. H. Bailey
... gradually becoming more and more convinced that all the important elements of the Globigerina ooze lived on the surface, and it seemed evident that, so long as the condition on the surface remained the same, no alteration of contour at the bottom could possibly prevent its accumulation; and the surface conditions in the Mid-Atlantic were very uniform, a moderate current of a very equal temperature passing continuously over elevations and depressions, and everywhere yielding to the tow-net the ooze-forming Foraminifera in the ...
— Discourses - Biological and Geological Essays • Thomas H. Huxley
... berme usually left between the bottom of the parapet slope and the ditch was cut away so as to leave no level standing-place at the top of the scarp. This was the work which Longstreet afterward assaulted. Its chief defect was due to the situation and the contour of the ground around, which made its position so prominent a salient in the lines that the flanking fire was necessarily imperfect, leaving a considerable sector without fire beyond the angle of the northwest bastion. ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V2 • Jacob Dolson Cox
... a natural phenomenon, identical with that produced on the moon when she is in her octants, the contour of the terrestrial globe could be traced. Its entire disc appeared slightly visible through an effect of pale light, less appreciable than that of the moon. The reason of this lessened intensity is easy ...
— The Moon-Voyage • Jules Verne
... quelle nuit! la, rien n'a de contour ni d'age; Et le nuage est spectre, et le spectre est nuage. Et ...
— La Legende des Siecles • Victor Hugo
... form of bacteria. The colony when very young appears as a pale and small spot, not completely spherical as other bacterial colonies in gelatine are wont to be, but with a more or less irregular, protruding, or jagged contour. It also very soon takes on a somewhat granular appearance. As the colony increases, the granular character becomes more marked, until it seems to be made up of highly refractile granules, like a mass of particles of glass. In its further growth the ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 458, October 11, 1884 • Various
... fastidiousness of earlier days caused him to shrug his shoulders. Yet underneath the tan there was the glow of perfect young health; the eyes were frank, brave, unflinching; while the rounded chin held a world of character in its firm contour. Somehow the sight of this brought back to him that abiding faith in her "dead gameness" which had first awakened his admiration. "She's got it in her," he thought, silently, "and, by thunder! I 'm here to help ...
— Bob Hampton of Placer • Randall Parrish
... I desired nothing better. The guerilla leader was a man of striking appearance, tall, spare, and long limbed. The contour of his face was Indian; he had the deep-set eyes, square jaws, and lank hair of the abonguil race. But his eyes were blue, his hair was flaxen, and his skin as fair as that of a pure-blooded Teuton. ...
— Mr. Fortescue • William Westall
... hills by a trough carried over the temple,) but it is particularly ugly and monotonous in its line of fall, and the water below forms a dead-looking pond, on which some people are fishing in punts. The banks of this river resemble in contour the later geological formations around London, constituted chiefly of broken pots and oyster-shells. At an inconvenient distance from the water-side stands a city, composed of twenty-five round towers and a pyramid. Beyond the city is a handsome bridge; beyond the bridge, ...
— Modern Painters Volume I (of V) • John Ruskin
... whose atmosphere is as a nun's veil, whose sad divinity is a crown,—do you dare imagine that the holy despair you have imaged, the pause of a saint's resignation and a martyr's courage, is but the outline and the faultless contour of a stone? Come back, Pygmalion, from your mythic sleep! return, Art's divinest mystery, germ of all its power, from the deep dust of ages! and teach these modern men that his story whose passion fired a statue's breast was but an immortal fable, a similitude of the truth ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various
... the soldier of Marengo is among us again. His lips are thinner, perhaps, than they were before! how white his teeth are! you can just see three of them pressing his under lip; and pray remark the fulness of his cheeks and the round contour of his chin. Oh, those beautiful white hands! many a time have they patted the cheek of poor Josephine, and played with the black ringlets of her hair. She is dead now, and cold, poor creature; and so are Hortense and bold Eugene, than whom the world "never saw a curtier knight," as was said ...
— The Second Funeral of Napoleon • William Makepeace Thackeray (AKA "Michael Angelo Titmarch")
... not by any means the best way of seeing the beauty of the country; you see beauty better by walking, and best of all by sitting still. But it is a good method in any enterprise that involves a parody of the military or governmental quality—anything which needs to know quickly the whole contour of a county or the rough, relative position of men and towns. On such a journey, like jagged lightning, I sat from morning till night by the side of the chauffeur; and we scarcely exchanged a word to the ...
— Alarms and Discursions • G. K. Chesterton
... Delta. The last undulations of the Arabian hills, from Gebel Mokattam to Gebel Geneffeh, were its boundaries on the east, while a sinuous and shallow channel running between Africa and Asia united the Mediterranean to the Red Sea. Westward, the littoral followed closely the contour of the Libyan plateau; but a long limestone spur broke away from it at about 31 deg. N., and terminated in Cape Abukir. The alluvial deposits first tilled up the depths of the bay, and then, under the influence of the currents which swept along its eastern ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 1 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... the world; no stars had yet come through, and, far away, as though in search of them, the moor rose to a line of hills. Their rounded tops had no defiance, their curve was that of a wave without the desire to break, held in its perfect contour by its own content. The moor itself had the patience of the wisdom which is faith, and Helen might have heard it laughing tenderly if she had been less concerned with the discovery of her fires. She stood still, and her ...
— Moor Fires • E. H. (Emily Hilda) Young
... is superb. Looking back on Africa, we saw on the horizon the pale contour of the Gebel Ataki beyond the silvery line of the Bitter Lakes and the Canal. On its Asiatic side, the detached posts of Oldham, Railhead, and Salford, held by other battalions of the Manchesters, glittered under a torrid sky amid ...
— With Manchesters in the East • Gerald B. Hurst
... production of chord successions which could be felt by the hearer only as such, since sixteen real parts moving within the three octaves of choral compass were necessarily obliged to cross each other continually, whereby the contour of the different voice melodies became lost in the mixture, and only the chords and chord successions came to realization. In this way, perhaps, the perception of harmonic good and evil was very much forwarded ...
— The Masters and their Music - A series of illustrative programs with biographical, - esthetical, and critical annotations • W. S. B. Mathews
... noticed the wistful contour of her cheek, her sensitive mouth, and the fine modelling of her chin. She had clear, candid eyes and sweeping lashes, too. Her ears were shell-like, and her hair soft, wavy and warm. These things ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service
... d'esprit, though she wished to pass for one. Round, rosy, potelee, she yet had not the temperament of her appearance; she was a femme austere. I have often noticed that contradiction in American ladies. You see a plump little woman, with a speaking eye, and the contour and complexion of a ripe peach, and if you venture to conduct yourself in the smallest degree in accordance with these indices, you discover a species of Methodist—of what do you call it?—of Quakeress. ...
— The Pension Beaurepas • Henry James
... glorious in youth, these dark-skinned, passionate daughters of the sunny Pacific shore soon begin to fade. Although their scant costume and the manto y saya—the dress favored at night—serve only to expose and display the charming contour of their youthful form, as the years roll on and rob them of these alluring attractions, the simple array becomes ugly and ridiculous. Often did we laugh at the absurd figure presented by some stout, middle-aged half-caste, or a good many ...
— The Aldine, Vol. 5, No. 1., January, 1872 - A Typographic Art Journal • Various
... strongest proof against the theory. Indeed, there is nothing remarkable in our host's countenance, if we except its floridness; but a blunt nose protruding over a wide mouth and flat chin gives the contour of his face an expression not the most prepossessing. He has been heard to say, "A man who didn't love himself wasn't worth loving:" and, to show his belief in this principle of nature, he adorns his face with thick red whiskers, not ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... thin woman look anything but thin. Often by accentuating her thinness, a woman can make an effect as type, which gives her distinction. If she were foolish enough to try to look fatter, her lines would be lost without attaining the contour of the rounded type. There are of course fashions in types; pale ash blonds, red-haired types (auburn or golden red with shell pink complexions), dark haired types with pale white skin, etc., and fashions in figures are as many ...
— Woman as Decoration • Emily Burbank
... adapted in design to the form of the hill. These consist of two lower terraces which are square in form; four galleries (or passages, with sculptures on either side), which are still rectangular in form, but have twenty angles to admit of their following the rounded contour of the hill; and four terraces, of which the first has twelve angles, while the remaining three are circular, adorned with cupolas, each containing a statue of Buddha; and finally the whole is surmounted by a huge cupola, fifty feet in diameter, in which rests the central figure of Buddha. Access ...
— A Visit to Java - With an Account of the Founding of Singapore • W. Basil Worsfold
... other things which gave him the look of the great Napoleon. The contour of feature was the same: and on his brow, broad and massive, there might be seen those grand shadows with which French artists love to glorify the Emperor. Yet in addition to this he had that same serene immobility of countenance which characterized the other, which could serve as ...
— Cord and Creese • James de Mille
... beauty, strolled up to Ray, who was straightening a pile of corset covers and brassieres. Miss Myrtle was the store's star cloak-and-suit model. Tall, svelte, graceful, lovely in line and contour, she was remarkably like one of those exquisite imbeciles that Rossetti used to love to paint. Hers were the great cowlike eyes, the wonderful oval face, the marvellous little nose, the perfect lips and chin. Miss Myrtle could don a forty-dollar gown, parade it before a possible ...
— Cheerful—By Request • Edna Ferber
... of medallions with twin profiles distinct, one head slightly higher, bent forward a little—the four figures of four slight, rather fragile taller children, are outlined with sharp white contour against the curtain. ...
— Hymen • Hilda Doolittle
... dunes used to shine in the sunlight, when he first saw them a third of a century ago. In coming from Fort Leavenworth up the Smoky Hill route to the Santa Fe Trail, where the former joined the latter at Pawnee Rock, the contour of the Arkansas could be easily traced by the white sand hills referred to, long before ...
— The Old Santa Fe Trail - The Story of a Great Highway • Henry Inman
... of perfect contour. Small and delicately fair, soft bands of light-brown hair shaded the low, smooth brow and large gray eyes, and the full red lips were tremulous with varying expression. Her hands and figure were of the same delicate outline as her face. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 97, November, 1865 • Various
... and polished chin, the contour of her glowing mouth, and the kindling beauty of her eyes were forever fresh delights to Le Rossignol. The dwarf watched the shapely and majestic woman moving ...
— The Lady of Fort St. John • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... crossing and military depot, but now also historically, on account of the operations centring around it, is at a height of 3,300. Beyond it the country, though often rough in detail, is gently rolling in general contour till near Glencoe, where the road climbs eight hundred feet in ten miles. From Glencoe a branch runs five miles east to Dundee, the site of extensive collieries, upon which Natal ...
— Story of the War in South Africa - 1899-1900 • Alfred T. Mahan
... shorter and stouter than Duke Philip, but well formed, strong in arm and thigh. His shoulders were rather thick-set and a trifle stooping, but his body was well adapted to activity. The contour of his face was rounder than that of his father, his complexion brunette. His eyes were black and laughing, angelically clear. When he was sunk in thought it seemed as though his father looked out of them. Like his father's mouth was his, full and red. ...
— Charles the Bold - Last Duke Of Burgundy, 1433-1477 • Ruth Putnam
... far, was sheer, fresh youth with her; her eyes had not lost their dewy beauty; the splendour of her hair remained unchanged. There were no lines, nothing lost, nothing hardened in contour. Clear and smooth her snowy chin; perfect, so far, the lovely throat: nothing of blemish was visible, no souvenirs ...
— Athalie • Robert W. Chambers
... book in his lap, had a look of being closed. Two things distinguished him from other men: his great length of limb and the color and close-cropped, almost moulded, effect of his hair. It was the color of old Domingo mahogany, and showed off the contour of his fine round head with ...
— IT and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris
... seen from behind at his library bureau, where it was his practice to spend most mornings from half-past nine to eleven or even twelve, was observed to be of a shape to throw no small light upon his class and character. Its contour was almost national. Bulging at the back, and sloping rapidly to a thin and wiry neck, narrow between the ears and across the brow, prominent in the jaw, the length of a line drawn from the back headland to the promontory at the chin would have been extreme. Upon the observer there ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... and peculiar contour of head and face rose among the round chubby English faces like a jessamine among daisies, and at that moment she was undertaking, with an exquisite smile, the care of the gown that Giles laid at her ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte M. Yonge
... but to a close observer, however, with common discernable perception, it presents at first sight a most striking and correct resemblance of the great original. From midway the bridge which crosses the Potomac, the countenance and contour of the face to me, appeared discriminatingly perfect, and constrained me to look upon it as one of the most wonderful, and the ...
— Scientific American magazine, Vol. 2 Issue 1 • Various
... having been encountered by the writer in an experience of many years. The map seems to show more local relief to this terrace than the general view indicates, but it should be borne in mind that the contour interval is ...
— Aboriginal Remains in Verde Valley, Arizona • Cosmos Mindeleff
... blemish of acute physical suffering had vanished; the clear pallor of her complexion, the full white throat, the rounded contour of the graceful form, bespoke complete restoration of all the vital forces; and never had she ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... guerre," now placed at the head of the Tuileries Gardens. It is Madame France wearing a poilu's helmet. There is a look of triumph in her upturned face. France in her has become younger. Most figures of France are Diana-like, but here apparently is one the tender contour of whose limbs is not official but intimate. A policeman is in charge, but it verges on the indiscreet to ask him any questions. One dare be certain that Paris will not accept this statue, for though it expresses something of the new spirit of France, it is not in perfect taste, ...
— Europe—Whither Bound? - Being Letters of Travel from the Capitals of Europe in the Year 1921 • Stephen Graham
... low cabin, whose familiar contour told the alarming fact that he had come back to his starting-point, and was among the Comanches in front of his ...
— The Great Cattle Trail • Edward S. Ellis
... thirty years which some archaeologists are inclined to consider a possible representation of Vergil.[8] It is the so-called "Brutus." The argument for its attribution deserves serious consideration. The bust, while it shows a far younger man than the African mosaic, reveals the same contour of countenance, of brow, nose, cheeks and chin. Furthermore it is difficult to think of any other Roman in private life who attained to such fame that six marble replicas of his portrait should have survived the omnivorous lime-kilns ...
— Vergil - A Biography • Tenney Frank
... oppresses him, let him observe how every spot of immensity whereon the eye of science has fallen is crowded with unnumbered amazing examples of design, love, beneficence, and he will perceive that the irrefragable lines of argument drawn through the boundless spaces of creation light up the stupendous contour of God and show the expression of his features to be love. It seems as though any man acquainted with the truths and magnitudes of astronomy, who, after seeing the star strewn abysses, would look in his mirror and ask if the image reflected ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... he fully recognised the limits of his powers, he had great faith in his own critical judgment; and with good reason, for his perception of the beautiful in contour and attitude and grouping was almost unerring. All the drawings which Miss Thomson made for his "Three Sunsets" were submitted to his criticism, which descended to the smallest details. He concludes a letter to her, which contained ...
— The Life and Letters of Lewis Carroll • Stuart Dodgson Collingwood
... view is a wide one from the Pic d'Entecade. The summit, 7300 feet above the sea, is an island in a circle of valleys. The hospice basin has dwindled into insignificance. Behind is the trough of the Luchon depression, its floor invisible but the main contour traceable for miles. The Valley of Aran, which opens out below us on the east, shows the fullest reach in the view; its entire course lies under the eye, and the lines of rivers and roads are marked as on a map, while we count no less than fourteen villages ...
— A Midsummer Drive Through The Pyrenees • Edwin Asa Dix
... his words, the coldness of his smile, his apparently utter indifference to her had sent something that was almost like a quick, physical pain into her eyes. He drew a step nearer, so that he caught the soft contour of her cheek. Joanne Gray heard him, and lowered her head slightly, so that he could not see. She was a moment too late. On her cheek Aldous saw ...
— The Hunted Woman • James Oliver Curwood
... strange detachment, I watched her descend, swaying foot following swaying foot falteringly down the stairs, I was able to see that only the emotions which denaturalised her expression were a woman's; that her features, her pose, and the peculiar childlike contour of the one cheek open to view were those of one whose yesterday was ...
— The House of the Whispering Pines • Anna Katharine Green
... wanted contour, and yet were of snowy whiteness, were skillfully draped in her many-colored robe so as to cover all defects; and a chaplet of pearls, mingled with diamonds, concealed the slight prominence of the collar-bones, and descended low ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield
... aid, these efforts at self-culture? or shall we encourage and guide them as normal exercises of the perceptions and the powers of manipulation? If by furnishing cheap woodcuts to be painted, and simple contour-maps to have their boundary lines tinted, we can not only pleasurably draw out the faculty of colour, but can incidentally produce some familiarity with the outlines of things and countries, and some ability to move the brush steadily; and if by the supply ...
— Essays on Education and Kindred Subjects - Everyman's Library • Herbert Spencer
... this talk is shewn by his letter to Mrs. Thrale of May 1, 1780, and by her answer. He wrote:—'The Exhibition, how will you do, either to see or not to see? The Exhibition is eminently splendid. There is contour, and keeping, and grace, and expression, and all the varieties of artificial excellence.' Piozzi Letters, ii. III. She answered:—'When did I ever plague about contour, and grace, and expression? I have dreaded them all three since ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell
... melee one woman, whose eyes and facial contour betrayed Chinese blood, but who was very comely and neat, pushed forward and pointing to the glittering center of attraction repeated ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien
... pure outline (A), seen from above, it is very nearly a long oval, but with this peculiarity, that it has, as it were, projecting shoulders at a 1 and a 2. I merely desire you to observe this, in passing, because one usually thinks of the contour as sweeping unbroken from the root to the point. I have not time to-day to enter on any discussion of the reason for it, which will appear when we examine the placing of the wing feathers ...
— Love's Meinie - Three Lectures on Greek and English Birds • John Ruskin
... niece with questions, but each talked quietly to the other; and thus left alone, as it were, Nellie found sufficient time to study both faces, and jot down mentally her opinion of each at first sight. One glance at Miss Deborah's rounded contour and twinkling eyes was quite enough; but Miss Latimer's peaceful countenance fascinated the young girl, and seemed to hold her spell-bound. Yet, from a critical point of view, Aunt Judith's was not a pretty face. It was defective ...
— Aunt Judith - The Story of a Loving Life • Grace Beaumont
... is inclined to suppose that the general resemblance in facial appearance, bodily contour, and interests which we observe in children of the two sexes, indicates that deeper distinctions are latent rather than active. This is much more than an academic question, for if our subject in the present volume ...
— Woman and Womanhood - A Search for Principles • C. W. Saleeby
... contour and pure grace Made the sweet marvel of her singing face; She was the very may-time that comes in When hawthorns bud and nightingales begin. To see her tread the red-tippt daisies white In the green fields all golden with delight, Was to believe Queen Venus come ...
— Right Royal • John Masefield
... chieftain's glance. Like a mountain-ash he stood, straight and strong, his magnificent frame tapering wedge-like from his broad shoulders. The bulging line of his thick neck, the deep chest, the knotty contour of his bared forearm, and the full curves of his legs—all denoted a wonderful ...
— The Spirit of the Border - A Romance of the Early Settlers in the Ohio Valley • Zane Grey
... said, had already discovered Brook Farm, a pleasant place, varied in contour, with pine woods close at hand, the Charles River within easy distance, and plenty of land—whether of a sort to produce paying crops or not they were later to learn. That winter Ripley wrote to Emerson: "We propose to take a small tract ...
— The Romance of Old New England Rooftrees • Mary Caroline Crawford
... indicates the extreme importance of the melodic idea in music form. Without such "tone-lines" the effect would be similar to that of daubs or masses of color without a drawing, without the evidence of contour ...
— Lessons in Music Form - A Manual of Analysis of All the Structural Factors and - Designs Employed in Musical Composition • Percy Goetschius
... since he disappeared after obstructing passage through Committee of Tithes Bill, turned up again. Curiously regarded by House; looked for signs of privation, but no falling off visible, whether in physical contour or volume of voice. Tithes Bill during his absence has gone through Committee and Report stage. Now awaiting Third Reading. GEDGE proposed to continue his speech interrupted by stroke of Midnight, when House in Committee. Fixed ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100. February 21, 1891 • Various
... agreeable face; inasmuch as it was smoothly shaven, and exhibited a peculiar mobility, it might have denoted him an actor; but the actor is wont to twinkle a good-natured mood which did not appear upon this visage. The contour was good, and spoke intelligence; the eyes must once have been charming. It was a face which had lost by the advance of years; which had hardened where it was soft, and seemed likely to grow harder yet; for about the lips, as he stood examining these pictures, ...
— The Crown of Life • George Gissing
... accents hailed the masthead with a tremendous 'where-away?' The black cook thrust his woolly head from the galley, and Boatswain, the dog, leaped up between the knight-heads, and barked most furiously. Land ho! Aye, there it was. A hardly perceptible blue irregular outline, indicating the bold contour of ...
— Typee - A Romance of the South Sea • Herman Melville
... transparent green shadows they drew bridle; she leaned forward, clearing the thick tendrils of hair from her forehead, and sat stock-still, intent, every exquisite line and contour in ...
— A Young Man in a Hurry - and Other Short Stories • Robert W. Chambers
... a string like a child's toy, with dun-coloured hair lying thin and soft at the back and sides of his head; his forehead was so large it seemed to overbalance the rest of his face, which had, indeed, lost its natural contour by the absence of all the teeth. The eyes absolutely gleamed with intelligence; so keen, so observant, you felt as if they were almost wizard-like. Indeed, the whole room looked not unlike a wizard's dwelling. Instead ...
— Mary Barton • Elizabeth Gaskell
... woman, with a sudden swift movement, threw back her veil, revealing a face of unusual beauty,—oval in contour, of a rich olive tint, with waving masses of jet-black hair, framing a low, broad forehead. But her eyes were what drew Kate's attention: large, lustrous, but dark and unfathomable as night, yet with a look in them of dumb, agonizing ...
— At the Time Appointed • A. Maynard Barbour
... Gifted.—Happily all the flowers of the family are not geniuses or specially talented. Some are just beautiful to look at and yet unspoiled by flattery. It is a great gift of nature to be able to give happiness just by allowing people to look at one! The contour of the face, the turn of the head, the light in the eye, the freshness of the complexion, the grace of the movement, and the sweetness of the voice all go together, if the manner and the feeling only match the coloring ...
— The Family and it's Members • Anna Garlin Spencer
... his country; and his genuine humour, ample obesity, and originality of delivery, entitle him to honourable identification with "Sir John." Now, by the soul of Momus! who ever beheld a woe-begone face at Paddy White's? Even our own, remarkable for "loathed melancholy," has changed its moody contour into the lineaments of mirth, while listening to him. View him holding forth to his auditors between the intervening whiffs of his soothing pipe, and you see written in wreaths of humour on his jolly ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 13, No. 374 • Various
... closely, watching her fine free movements, the charm of her figure in its plain white morning-dress bound at the waist with a purple ribbon. Her golden-yellow hair lay in curls upon her shoulders: now and then I caught a glimpse of the contour of her face as she half turned to see if I were close behind her. Neither of us ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December 1878 • Various
... level, covered with coarse grass, Aigues-Mortes presents quite the appearance of the walled town that a school-boy draws upon his slate, or that we see in the background of early Flemish pictures—a simple parallelogram, of a contour almost absurdly bare, broken at intervals by ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 3 • Various
... front, studying the contour of the country and the chance of defending it. His judgment was that it could not be done with the men on hand. He was not sure that the line could be held even with reinforcements. But there was nothing for it but to try. He sent a man to Crawford, ...
— Gunsight Pass - How Oil Came to the Cattle Country and Brought a New West • William MacLeod Raine
... whorl of the lupin sends up its blossom stalk, not holding any constant blue, but paling and purpling to guide the friendly bee to virginal honey sips, or away from the perfected and depleted flower. The length of the blossom stalk conforms to the rounded contour of the plant, and of these there will be a million moving indescribably in the airy current that flows down ...
— The Land of Little Rain • Mary Austin
... the height of our eyes. Great waves of glitter blew lightly along the pitted dark surface, as swift as feathers chased by the breeze. A chain of islands sat broken and massive facing the wide estuary, displayed in a sheet of pale glassy water reflecting faithfully the contour of the shore. High in the colourless sunshine a solitary bird, all black, hovered, dropping and soaring above the same spot with a slight rocking motion of the wings. A ragged, sooty bunch of flimsy mat hovels was perched over its own inverted image ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad
... have a more pleasing expression, but the timid furtive look, the ungainly gait, and the ungraceful contour of their abak skirts, detract from the moderate beauty that they possess in their youth. After marriage their beauty ...
— The Manbos of Mindano - Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume XXIII, First Memoir • John M. Garvan
... secret aspirations, you are becoming quite a work of art. A few more touches of the knife, and something like perfection shall have been attained! Look here, Dick, when I turn it towards the light—so—isn't there a beauty about the contour of that upper ...
— Personal Reminiscences in Book Making - and Some Short Stories • R.M. Ballantyne
... the tin tub the orderly had placed beside my bed and went down to porridge in a glow. Porridge, for the major was Scotch, and had taught his French cook to make it as the Scotch make it. Then, going out into the hall, from a table on which lay a contour map of the battle region, the major picked up a hideous mask that seemed to have been made for ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... that were so wise and steel-like in battling with the breakers, and that yet were such just mere-woman's arms, round and warm and white, delicious as a woman's arms should be, with the canny muscles, masking under soft-roundness of contour and fine smooth skin, capable of being flexed at will ...
— On the Makaloa Mat/Island Tales • Jack London
... deeply grooved, narrow, thin face was yet more elongated by the extension of a high forehead into a bald crown, for he wore his broad wool hat on the back of his head. There was something in his countenance not dissimilar to the facial contour of a grasshopper, and the suggestion was heightened by ...
— Wolf's Head - 1911 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... that means nothing," he said. "It is quite a mistake to believe, as many people do, that the mind shows itself in the face. Vice may sometimes write itself in lines and changes of contour, but that is all. Our faces are really masks given to us to conceal our minds with. Of course occasionally the mask slips partly off, generally when we are stupid and emotional. But that is an inartistic accident. Outward revelations ...
— The Green Carnation • Robert Smythe Hichens
... town and district of India, in Berar. The town had a population in 1901 of 4137. The district has an area of 3662 sq. m. The southern part forms a portion of Berar Balaghat or Berar—above the Ghats. Here the general contour of the country may be described as a succession of small plateaus decreasing in elevation to the extreme south. Towards the eastern side of the district the country assumes more the character of undulating high ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various
... remarked that he still wore the ring, and that his finger looked as pinched as a woman's waist beneath its clasp, I could not in any way have described Harvey Farnham's hand. I had doubtless a general impression of its shape and contour in my mind, but I did not now recall that there had been any recognisable likeness between it and the dead hand my dream had shown me. Still, though I was able to give myself a perfectly rational explanation of the dream, and even of the impression of Farnham's voice earlier in the night, I ...
— The House by the Lock • C. N. Williamson
... adopting fashions which compress the figure, give formality, or display angles. The close-fitting corsage and tight sleeve, becoming to the short, plump female, should be modified with simple trimmings, to give fullness and width across the shoulders and bust, and a rounded contour to the arms. Flounces and tucks, which rise high in the skirt, are not suitable to short persons; they cut the figure and destroy symetry. To tall women, on the contrary, they add grace and dignity. Dresses made half high are extremely unbecoming; they ...
— The Jewish Manual • Judith Cohen Montefiore
... the cliche—no doubt it is better known for what it is to good French writers—is the word or the phrase which has lost the original contour of its mintage and become a mere featureless coin, having still, as it were, its metallic meaning but no longer its fresh beauty and expressiveness. The young novelist whose hero "wends his way," and ...
— Impressions And Comments • Havelock Ellis
... attempted to concentrate his attention, and succeeded sufficiently to look as though some vestige of intellect remained in him. He saw her pick up a pad and pencil; the contour and grace of two deliciously fashioned hands arrested his mental ...
— The Tracer of Lost Persons • Robert W. Chambers
... practical engineer—that is, the engineer whose particular gift is coping with ordinary problems of construction, as against the genius who blazes new trails, like Watt and Westinghouse and Edison and Marconi and the Wright brothers—a head whose contour was along the "well-shaped" lines. The so-called genius usually has an odd-shaped head, I've noticed, but for purposes of this book we shall confine ourselves to the average ...
— Opportunities in Engineering • Charles M. Horton
... Bay Ship Channel, extending from the mouth of the Atchafalaya River across the shoal waters of Atchafalaya Bay, to about the 20-foot contour of the Gulf, a distance of fifteen miles, is through a material of slushy mud, with occasional thin pockets of sand. The shoaling runs from 540,000 to 1,680,000 cubic yards a mile a year. The highest rate is obtained in shallow water. Except in the stretch mentioned, the material on the Pontchartrain ...
— The Industrial Canal and Inner Harbor of New Orleans • Thomas Ewing Dabney
... young chemist pushed his hair back, looked out of the window, and then turned to Average Jones. The rather flabby lines of his face had abruptly hardened over the firm contour below. ...
— Average Jones • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... not look her best. Assuredly not after the withdrawal of Mrs. Strangeways, when her lips, sneering away their fine contour, grew to an ugly hardness, and her eyes smalled themselves in a vicious ...
— The Whirlpool • George Gissing
... feet away to the left—"I shall be able to get an uninterrupted view of the quebrada from top to bottom, and, by taking a series of vertical and horizontal angles from the top edge, can measure the contour of the two sides, at the point crossed by the survey ...
— Harry Escombe - A Tale of Adventure in Peru • Harry Collingwood
... microns thick, cylindrical and segmented, having more or less branching threads, which bear spores at the end. In the pus they occur as slightly ovoid bodies 3 to 5 microns long, which are somewhat pointed toward the poles, have a sharp double contour, and only on artificial cultivation at a temperature of over 18 deg. do they develop into the ...
— Special Report on Diseases of the Horse • United States Department of Agriculture
... until the day was lost, and thirty-three of their number had been slain, including the noble warrior, Tecumseh. After his fall, his lifeless corpse was recovered with great interest by the American officers, who declared that the contour of his features was majestic even in death. He left a son who fought by his side when he fell, and was seventeen years ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 2 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Edgerton Ryerson
... herself erect and with fine dignity. Even beneath the opera cloak it was easy to infer that her neck and shoulders were beautiful. Her almost extreme slenderness was, however, her characteristic; the curves of her figure, the contour of her shoulders, the swell of hip and breast were all low; from head to foot one could discover no pronounced salience. Yet there was no trace, no suggestion of angularity. She was slender as a willow shoot is ...
— The Pit • Frank Norris
... coming from the north, have been parallel to the coast-line, to which they are now often almost at right angles. The argument, moreover, which formerly had most weight in favour of floating ice, namely, that it explained why so many of the stones did not conform to the contour and direction of the minor hills and valleys, is now brought forward, and with no small effect, in favour of the doctrine of continental ice on the Greenlandic scale, which, after levelling up the lesser ...
— The Antiquity of Man • Charles Lyell
... for the post-house and well. It was very dark and we could not see where we were going, as the sand had covered up the track. We were among a lot of confused sand hills, and the high mountains stood directly in front like a formidable black barrier, their contour line just distinguishable against ...
— Across Coveted Lands - or a Journey from Flushing (Holland) to Calcutta Overland • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... this period of his highly variegated underwriting career, some forty-six years of age. A life whose private character no journal had as yet been tempted to divulge had left no trace upon the impassive contour of his face nor on the somber dignity of his bearing. He was of middle height, and somewhat stout, his hair was iron-gray, and he carried himself with a sort of restrained or reflective optimism, as though he forced himself to be cheerful ...
— White Ashes • Sidney R. Kennedy and Alden C. Noble
... Child, peeping sideways in half-reassured terror, as a mighty griffin with batlike wings, one of Leonardo's finest inventions, descends suddenly from the air to snatch up a lion wandering near them. But note in these, as that which especially belongs to art, the contour of the young man's hair, the poise of the slave's arm above his head, and the curves of the head of the child, following the little skull within, thin and fine as some seashell worn ...
— The Renaissance - Studies in Art and Poetry • Walter Pater
... revulsion from despair to joy that a faintness came upon her, and she almost swooned. She saw who the intruder was. For when he stepped into the recess he turned towards her, and the dim light struck upon him and showed her the contour of his face. It was her lover, Harry Wethermill. Why he had come at this hour, and in this strange way, she did not consider. Now she must attract his eyes, now her fear was lest he should ...
— At the Villa Rose • A. E. W. Mason
... contour and nature of the island, that it is hard to say. If it were low and heavily covered with their green-blue vegetation, we might not be able to see even a rather large one, whereas if it were hilly and bare, we could probably see one only a few ...
— Skylark Three • Edward Elmer Smith
... windy day, and, judging by the look of the trees, on the way to Southport, it must be almost always windy, and with the blast in one prevailing direction; for invariably their branches, and the whole contour and attitude of the tree, turn from seaward, with a strangely forlorn aspect. Reaching Southport, we took an omnibus, and under the driver's guidance came to our tall stone house, fronting on the sands, and styled "Brunswick ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... stage, and his attention was caught and fixed by the masked lady, whom he had not seen before, as his back was always turned to her box. Although her head and figure were much enveloped and disguised in a profusion of black laces, the attitude and general contour of this mysterious beauty seemed strangely familiar to him, and there was something about her that reminded him forcibly of the marquise, his own wife. "Bah!" said he to himself, "how foolish I am; she must ...
— Captain Fracasse • Theophile Gautier
... discuss their business without us," she said, "and I want to talk to you. Here, these are some rather interesting photographs. They are all actors or singers on this side; you'll observe the shape of the heads, the contour generally; these are politicians, and have quite a different aspect. Remarkable, isn't it? But I was just saying when we went down to dinner that I was awfully sorry to hear of all your troubles—of course we must not regret ...
— A Crooked Path - A Novel • Mrs. Alexander
... could catch a glimpse of her arm, as it lay outstretched, her fingers clasping a fan. So I knew her arms were round and taper, hence all her limbs and figure finely molded, because nature does not do such things by halves, and makes no bungles in her symmetry of contour when she plans a noble specimen of humanity. Here was a noble specimen of ...
— 54-40 or Fight • Emerson Hough
... said: "I have it, sir, in my head, but can not put it into words." The Instructor replied: "I suppose that under those circumstances, Mr. ——, the definition really would not help much." And so it is with contours—the definition does not help much if you know a contour when you meet it on a map. For examples of contours, turn to the map in section 2 and, starting at the United States penitentiary, note the smooth, flowing, irregular curved lines marked 880, ...
— Manual for Noncommissioned Officers and Privates of Infantry • War Department
... faintly tinted walls are framed with just one clear colored line, as finely placed as the member of a Greek capital; the door-handles and the lines of the panels of the door, the two chairs, the framework of the bed, the writing-table, have all that exquisite finish of contour that is begotten of sustained artistic effort. The graciously shaped windows each frame a picture—since they are draughtless the window-seats are no mere mockeries as are the window-seats of earth—and on the sill the sole thing to ...
— The Cost of Shelter • Ellen H. Richards
... woman ever knew more thoroughly her material of shape or color, or how to work it up. Not an ill-chosen fancy, either, that of the moist, warm month. Some tranced summer's day might have drowsed down into such a human form by a dank pool, or on the thick grass-crusted meadows. There was the full contour of the limbs hid under warm green folds, the white flesh that glowed when you touched it as if some smothered heat lay beneath, the sleeping face, the amber hair uncoiled in a languid quiet, while yellow jasmines ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 50, December, 1861 • Various
... thrown open. Either from the convenience of the opportunity, or because we had already a number of acquaintances in that part of the ship, Mr. Jones and I paid it a late visit. Steerage No. 1 is shaped like an isosceles triangle, the sides opposite the equal angles bulging outward with the contour of the ship. It is lined with eight pens of sixteen bunks apiece, four bunks below and four above on either side. At night the place is lit with two lanterns, one to each table. As the steamer beat on her way among the rough billows, ...
— Essays of Travel • Robert Louis Stevenson
... fictitious gravity, engendered by the centrifugal force of its rotation, ceased, so that passengers, most of whom were assembled in the main salon, which occupied the entire midship section, drifted away from the curved floor, whose contour followed that of the outer skin, to flounder in ...
— In the Orbit of Saturn • Roman Frederick Starzl
... intelligent; they remained, however, a very short time, their customary avocation not permitting a longer stay. The hair of these females was braided in a style peculiarly tasteful and becoming, and the contour of their oval faces was far from disagreeable. Their manners also were innocent and playful; the imaginary shepherdesses of our pastorals were not more modest, artless, and engaging in description, than these were in reality; they left behind them ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... pretty—but homely? by no means. Her thin face slanted to a sharpened chin. Her hair, drawn to the corner of either eye, left a white triangle whose apex pointed to the highest reach of the forehead. Thus the face, in all its contour, was rising, or falling, to a point. This sharpness of feature was in her verylaugh itself; while in that hair-encircled oval was the light of elfish mockery, but of no ...
— Fran • John Breckenridge Ellis
... the tenth century), music was noted in this way: an upstroke of the pen meant a raising of the voice, a downstroke lowered it, a flat stroke meant a repetition of the same note, thus [/ -] [G: c' g' c' c']. Gradually it became necessary to indicate the contour of the melodies with more accuracy; therefore the circumflex was added [Over-slur] [G: g' c'' g'] and reversed [Under-slur] [G: g' e' g']. Still later a sign for two steps was invented [Step] [G: e' g' b'] and when the progression was to be diatonically ...
— Critical & Historical Essays - Lectures delivered at Columbia University • Edward MacDowell
... the phonetic changes brought about by the phonetic drift were allowed to stand, it is probable that most languages would present such irregularities of morphological contour as to lose touch with their formal ground-plan. Sound changes work mechanically. Hence they are likely to affect a whole morphological group here—this does not matter—, only part of a morphological group there—and this may ...
— Language - An Introduction to the Study of Speech • Edward Sapir
... continued until the rocky shores of the Isle of Skye were reached, and the boat was put into one of the many inlets that break its irregular contour. Silence, indeed, was maintained until they had landed on a rocky shelf, and the boat had pushed off on its return journey. ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 4 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... mark of what you tell, and what you do, and what you laugh at, is left behind like a sketch traced in indelible fluid. There is no beauty that can stand the disfigurement of such a scar. However bright your eyes, and rosy-red your color, and soft the contour of lip and cheek, when the relish of an impure jest creeps in, the comeliness fades and perishes, as lilies in the languor of a poisonous breath from off the marshes. I beg of you, dear girls, shun the companion who seeks to foul your soul with an obscene story or picture, as you would shun ...
— A String of Amber Beads • Martha Everts Holden
... of language, his tact, fluency, fiery invective, and in the anti-climax of his career. If he had prepared his speeches for a body of men like the Roman senate, he might have been more nearly Cicero's equal. He used to wear a high-crowned soft felt hat, which was remarkably suited to the Roman-like contour of his face. He was skillful in all things, and might have been equally celebrated as a writer, an actor, or possibly as an artist, if his interest and inclination had led him in either of these directions. What we feel the lack of in him is ...
— Sketches from Concord and Appledore • Frank Preston Stearns
... Eolithic, Lower Paleolithic, and the Upper Paleolithic. In considering these divisions of relative time cultures, it must be remembered that the only way we have of measuring prehistoric time is through the geological method, based upon the Ice Ages and changes in the physical contour ...
— History of Human Society • Frank W. Blackmar
... Mediterranean; on the W. by the Ionian Sea and the Adriatic. With the exception of the Black Sea coast and the Albanian littoral, its shores are considerably indented and flanked by groups of islands. The Peninsula in its general contour resembles an inverted pyramid or triangle, terminating at its apex in a subsidiary peninsula, the Peloponnesus or Morea. Its surface is almost entirely mountainous, the only extensive plains being ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 2 - "Baconthorpe" to "Bankruptcy" • Various
... so perfect a contour I never beheld: she is the only woman I ever saw in whom the aquiline features seem more ...
— Ernest Maltravers, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... only to be achieved by the woman who makes the care of her appearance an art, and spends hours in absolute repose of mind and body. Her face had not a line in it of strain or sorrow. Faint pink tinted her cheeks. Her pink-linen gown, open in a low V, showed the perfect contour and creaminess of her breast. The restless, adoring eyes of her husband came back to her always with that glance, vigilant and sombre, that was ...
— Blue Aloes - Stories of South Africa • Cynthia Stockley
... to be beautiful. The so-called beauty is but skin deep. A burn, a scar, a disease, and beauty is fled, although contour and other evidences ...
— The Colored Girl Beautiful • E. Azalia Hackley
... changed utterly one thing; the old knitting and narrowing of the forehead were gone; instead, the eyes had widened their spaces with a real calm that had grown in her, and their outer curves fell in lines of largeness and content toward the contour of the cheeks, making ...
— The Other Girls • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... following closely in contour the wall of the hoof, is markedly convex from side to side, nearly straight from above to below, and closely dotted with foraminae of varying sizes. On each side of this surface is to be seen a distinct groove, the preplantar groove, or preplantar fissure, which, commencing behind, between ...
— Diseases of the Horse's Foot • Harry Caulton Reeks
... Normandie, il y a si bon nombre de maisons et habitans, qu'il contient une eglise parrochiale en son circuit fondee de saint George, et deux chapeles, l'une de saint Gabriel, et l'autre de saint Agnen, son contour contient un bon nombre de carneaux de visieres et de tours, et l'enclos du donion contient aussi nombre de carneaux, et quatre grosses tours sans celle du parmy, il y a encores au de la du donjon une grande terrasse, ...
— Architectural Antiquities of Normandy • John Sell Cotman
... disc, on the contrary, the terrestrial attraction, having acted in a direction perpendicular to that of the lunar, should have exerted greater power, and therefore given a different shape to the general contour. But no remarkable difference had so far been perceived by terrestrial observers; and none could now be detected by our travellers. Therefore the Moon must have found in herself alone the principle of her shape and of her superficial development—that is, she owed ...
— All Around the Moon • Jules Verne
... ever go to the Himalaya. Much in a scientific point of view has interested me, especially all about those wonderful moraines. I certainly think I quite realise the valleys, more vividly perhaps from having seen the valleys of Tahiti. I cannot doubt that the Himalaya owe almost all their contour to running water, and that they have been subjected to such action longer than any mountains (as yet described) in the world. What a ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume I • Francis Darwin
... trace it," said Villiers calmly, "but nevertheless others will. Some people say that no man knows what he really is like, and that even his own reflection in the glass deceives him. Besides, it is not so much the actual contour for the features that impresses one, it is the LOOK,—you have the LOOK of the Greek god, the look of ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... had a rare autumnal quality—the very apex of its perfection; in a few years, in a year, perhaps, the change would come and crabbed winter set in. He particularly admired the oval of her face, her soft brown eyes, and the harmonious contour of her head. He saw her instantly with a painter's imagination—filmy lace must modulate about her head like a dreamy aureole; across her figure a scarf of yellow silk; in her hands he would paint a crystal vase, and in the vase one rose with a heart of sulphur. ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... office and the contents of it. By structure should be understood the skeleton or frame that makes the groundwork of any given office, by contents the actual liturgical material employed in filling out the office to its proper contour. ...
— A Short History of the Book of Common Prayer • William Reed Huntington
... ever plague you about contour, and grace, and expression? I have dreaded them all three since that hapless day at Compiegne, when you teased me so, and Mr. Thrale made what I hoped would have proved a lasting peace; but French ground is unfavourable to fidelity perhaps, and so now you begin again: after having ...
— Autobiography, Letters and Literary Remains of Mrs. Piozzi (Thrale) (2nd ed.) (2 vols.) • Mrs. Hester Lynch Piozzi
... Style: that is to say, a certain absolute and unique manner of expressing a thing, in all its intensity and colour. For him the form was the work itself. As in living creatures, the blood, nourishing the body, determines its very contour and external aspect, just so, to his mind, the matter, the basis, in a work of art, imposed, necessarily, the unique, the just expression, the measure, the rhythm—the form in ...
— Appreciations, with an Essay on Style • Walter Horatio Pater
... no other man ever looked into and afterward forgot. His sunburnt, sallow, haggard, ghastly face, stained early and for life with the corpse-like coloring of malarious fevers, was a fit setting for such optics. Although it was nearly oval in contour, and although the features were or had been fairly regular, yet it was so marked by hard, and one might almost say fleshless muscles, and so brutalized by long indulgence in savage passions, that it struck you as frightfully ...
— Overland • John William De Forest
... hand familiarly upon my knee. In defence I remove her hand. Then she says: 'But you have always had such beautiful eyes.'.... I then distinctly see something like two eyes as a sketch or as the contour of ...
— Dream Psychology - Psychoanalysis for Beginners • Sigmund Freud
... and the fifth is the map table, groaning under a collection of large-scale maps and charts. Of all books these are the least wearisome to read and the richest in matter; the course of roads and rivers, the contour lines and the forests in the maps—the reefs, soundings, anchors, sailing marks and little pilot-pictures in the charts—and, in both, the bead-roll of names, make them of all printed matter the most fit to stimulate and satisfy ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... suffer by the comparison. She was doing just what thousands of other girls were doing in New York, with no more patience and no more self-sacrifice than they, but the childish vagaries of his visitor, still fresh in his memory, seemed to endow Dorothy Herrick with a firmer contour, a stronger claim on ...
— Madcap • George Gibbs |
