"Curve" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... down a strange hill with a curve at its bottom. There is no telling what you will meet when it ...
— Social Life - or, The Manners and Customs of Polite Society • Maud C. Cooke
... then making her lie down, he fastened her wrists to two other rings in the wall, distant about three feet from each other. The head was at the same height as the feet, and the body, held up on a trestle, described a half-curve, as though lying over a wheel. To increase the stretch of the limbs, the man gave two turns to a crank, which pushed the feet, at first about twelve inches from the rings, to a distance of six inches. And here we may leave our ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - THE MARQUISE DE BRINVILLIERS • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... below the brink of the hill a slight curve in the slide around a thick clump of evergreens hid the sled from the group at the top. They could hear only the delighted screams of the girls until, with a loud ring of metal on crystal, the runners clashed upon the ice and the bobsled darted into view again upon ...
— Nan Sherwood's Winter Holidays • Annie Roe Carr
... faded wall-paper showing large grey flowers, and furnished with four armchairs and a sofa, covered with horse-hair. On the sofa now slept Desiree, stretched out at full length, with her head resting on her clenched hands. The pronounced curve of her bosom was raised somewhat by her upstretched arms, bare to the elbows. She was breathing somewhat heavily, her red lips parted, ...
— Abbe Mouret's Transgression - La Faute De L'abbe Mouret • Emile Zola
... the flaming curve in vain. They seized the men by their collars and dragged them back. The gray soldiers tore away, rushed to the smoking rim and fired as long as they had ...
— The Man in Gray • Thomas Dixon
... one. At low-water springs you may cross afoot between Saaron and Brefar, and from either of them, with a little more danger, to Inniscaw, picking your way between the pools and along the sandy flats that curve about the southern end of the Sound and divide it from the great roadstead. Also there are legends of stone walls and foundations of houses laid bare as the waters have sunk after a gale, and by the next tides covered ...
— Major Vigoureux • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... in a row of noble elms around the churchyard which he is said to have planted, some of them of great size. The view from the Prospect, however, is the town's chief present glory. It stands on the brink of the river-cliff, with the Wye sweeping at its feet around the apex of the long horseshoe curve. Within the curve is the grassy Oak Meadow dotted with old trees. On either hand are meadows and cornfields, with bits of wood, and the Welsh hills ...
— England, Picturesque and Descriptive - A Reminiscence of Foreign Travel • Joel Cook
... full grown is about one and three-quarter inches in length; its tail is thin and whip-like and head thick and terminating in a curve somewhat resembling the crook of a stick. The presence of these parasites may be detected by a light-yellow substance (the eggs of the worms) which adheres to the skin below the anus. Pin Worms like Round Worms frequently come away with ...
— The Veterinarian • Chas. J. Korinek
... request at the Muffats', he had met with such a cold reception from the count that he had prudently refrained. The business struck him as a failure. Nana fixed her clear eyes on him; she was sitting, leaning her chin on her hand, and there was an ironical curve about her lips. ...
— Nana, The Miller's Daughter, Captain Burle, Death of Olivier Becaille • Emile Zola
... This turns and breaks the furrow slice. The degree to which the mouldboard pulverizes depends on the steepness of its slant upward and the abruptness of its curve sidewise. The steeper it is and the more abrupt the curve, the greater is its pulverizing power. A steep, abrupt mouldboard is adapted to light soils and to the heavier soils when they are comparatively ...
— The First Book of Farming • Charles L. Goodrich
... lift and sink, waiting for it, helped to pass the time. Then at last it came alongside, and he crawled cautiously down the curve of the bilge and secured it. After he had braced it in the hole in the schooner's bottom with the help of Mr. Speed, the girl gave him a crumpled wad of cloth when he ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day
... formed less to speak than to quiver, less to quiver than to kiss. Some might have added, less to kiss than to curl. Viewed sideways, the closing-line of her lips formed, with almost geometric precision, the curve so well known in the arts of design as the cima-recta, or ogee. The sight of such a flexible bend as that on grim Egdon was quite an apparition. It was felt at once that the mouth did not come over from Sleswig with a band ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy
... lawn, the young woman opened a gate concealed by shrubs and entered the avenue by the banks of the river. This avenue described a curve around the garden, and led to the principal entrance of the chateau. Night was approaching, the countryside, which had been momentarily disturbed by the storm, had resumed its customary serenity. The leaves of the trees, as often happens after a rain, looked as fresh as a newly varnished picture. ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... the planking and frames secured; then the inner stem was built, and the sides nailed to it, after which the bulkhead and a few rough temporary molds were made and put in place and the boat's sides bent to the desired curve in plain view. For bending the sides a "Spanish windlass" of rope or chain was used. The chine pieces were inserted in notches in the molds inside the side planking and fastened, then the keelson was made and placed in notches in the molds and bulkhead along the centerline. Next, the ...
— The Migrations of an American Boat Type • Howard I. Chapelle
... near the great gray boundary-wall of the valley, and the sound of roaring water grew tumultuous as they rounded the curve in the road and came into the little triangular nook which had been anciently formed by the Colorow as it descended in power from its source in the high parks. On the left the ledges rose almost sheer for a thousand feet, and from the edge of this ...
— The Tyranny of the Dark • Hamlin Garland
... they are still savages from the waist up." This seems difficult to believe, in spite of the numerous scars one sees, as one could not but feel friendly toward the Filipinos. Their courtesy is typified in their road signs that we passed, "Slow please," and after the curve was rounded, "Thank you." ...
— The Log of the Empire State • Geneve L.A. Shaffer
... creatures; to confirm this interpretation, based solely upon details of adult structure, young crabs pass through a stage when to all intents and purposes they are counterparts of lobsters. Even the twisted hermit crab, which has a soft-skinned hinder part coiled to fit the curve of the snail shell used as a protection, is symmetrical and lobster-like when ...
— The Doctrine of Evolution - Its Basis and Its Scope • Henry Edward Crampton
... the evening glow and the light wind, in which the branches were rustling and the leaves dropping, lulling her luxuriously, she heard some one striding swiftly along the path behind. She looked back; but there was a curve in the way; and she could not see who was coming. Then it occurred to her that it might be Conolly. Dreading to face him after what had happened, she stole aside among the trees a little way, and sat down on a stone, hoping that he might pass by without seeing her. The next moment ...
— The Irrational Knot - Being the Second Novel of His Nonage • George Bernard Shaw
... tree to be seen. From a root, which, in old trees, spreads much above the surface of the ground, the trunk rises to a considerable height in a single stem. Here it usually divides into two or three principal branches, which go off by a gradual and easy curve. Theses stretch upwards and outwards with an airy sweep, become horizontal, the extreme half of the limb, pendent, forming a light and regular arch. This graceful curvature, and absence of all abruptness, in the primary limbs and forks, ...
— Outlines of Lessons in Botany, Part I; From Seed to Leaf • Jane H. Newell
... "envelope" structure of many of the Psalms, where the initial phrase or idea is repeated at the close, after the insertion of illustrative matter, thus securing a pattern by the "return" of the main idea—the closing of the "curve"—may serve to illustrate the universality of the principle of balance and contrast and repetition in the architecture of verse. For Hebrew poetry, like the poetry of many primitive peoples, utilized the natural pleasure which the ear takes in listening for and perceiving again an already ...
— A Study of Poetry • Bliss Perry
... pair soon spied each other; But neither seem'd to own a brother; The course on both sides took a curve, As dogs when shy are apt to swerve; But each o'er back and shoulder throwing A look to watch the other's going, Till, having clear'd sufficient ground, With one accord they turn'd them round, And squatting down, for forms not caring, At one another fell to staring; ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... consciousness, as for the naive, every experience is an unitary whole; and it is only the habit of abstract reflection upon experience that makes the objective and subjective worlds seem to fall apart as originally different forms of existence. Just as a plane curve can be represented in analytical geometry as the function of two variables, the abscissae and the ordinates, without prejudice to the unitary course of the curve itself, so the world of human experience may be ...
— The Approach to Philosophy • Ralph Barton Perry
... stretching shore, Down on the beauties of your scenes we cast A tender look, the longest and the last! Amid the arch of heaven, extended clear, Scarce the thin flecks of feathery clouds appear; 280 Beyond the long curve of the lessening bay The still Atlantic stretches its bright way; The tall ship moves not on the tranquil brine; Around, the solemn promontories shine; No sounds approach us, save, at times, the cry Of the gray gull, that scarce is ...
— The Poetical Works of William Lisle Bowles, Vol. 1 • William Lisle Bowles
... Halbrane has passed beyond the imaginary curve drawn at twenty-three and a half degrees from the Pole, it seems as though she had entered a new region, "that region of Desolation and Silence," as Edgar Poe says; that magic person of splendour and glory in which the Eleanora's singer ...
— An Antarctic Mystery • Jules Verne
... the suggestion of Eliot, Rodney Grant was simply putting the ball over, now and then using speed, of which he apparently had enough, and occasionally mixing in a curve. Behind the pan Eliot would hold up his big mitt first on one corner then the other, now high, now low, and almost invariably the ball came whistling straight into the pocket of that mitt, which caused Roger to nod his head and brought to his face a faint touch ...
— Rival Pitchers of Oakdale • Morgan Scott
... the edge of a romance. Then she turned towards the letter-rack at her side, and he saw her face in profile. It bore a sudden and astonishing likeness to the profile of Cyril Povey; a resemblance unmistakable and finally decisive. The nose, and the curve of the upper lip were absolutely Cyril's. Matthew Peel- Swynnerton felt very queer. He felt like a criminal in peril of being caught in the act, and he could not understand why he should feel so. The landlady looked in the 'P' pigeon-hole, ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... (the so-called PALMETTE). Above the spiral roll is a low abacus, oblong or square in plan. In Fig. 62 the profile of the abacus is an ovolo on which the egg-and-dart ornament was painted (cf. Fig. 66, where the ornament is sculptured). In Fig. 61, as in Fig. 71, the profile is a complex curve called a CYMA REVERSA, convex above and concave below, enriched with a sculptured LEAF-AND-DART ornament. [Footnote: The egg-and-dart is found only on the ovolo, the leaf-and-dart only on the cyma reversa or the cyma recta (concave ...
— A History Of Greek Art • F. B. Tarbell
... of the swamp lay between them and the sight. Sid's announcement put new energy into them, however, and they plied their paddles vigorously for ten minutes, when, with a sudden swing around a last curve of the creek, Sam brought his boat fairly out into the river, and turned her head down stream. The river was full to its banks, and in places it had already overflowed. The current was so strong that the mouth of the creek, out of which they had come, was out of sight in a very few minutes. ...
— Captain Sam - The Boy Scouts of 1814 • George Cary Eggleston
... sweeping curve of a beautiful bay, there is a kind of chasm or opening in one of the lofty cliffs which bound it. This produces a very romantic and striking effect. The steep descending sides of this opening in the cliff are covered with ...
— The Annals of the Poor • Legh Richmond
... curls about her head Were all her crown of gold, Her delicate arms drooped downwards In slender mould, As white-veined leaves of lilies Curve and fold. She moved to measures of music, As ...
— Jess • H. Rider Haggard
... mingled rose and snow, and a dash of gold-dust in her hair where the sun touched it. Her eyes, however, were dark hazel and full of fire, shaded and intensified by their long, sweeping lashes. Her mouth was a rosebud, and her chin and throat faultless in the delicious curve of their lines. In a word, she was somewhat of the Venus-di-Milo type; her companion was more of a Diana. Both were neatly habited in plain travelling-dresses and cloaks of black and white plaid, and both seemed utterly unconscious of the battery of eyes and eye-glasses ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 5 • Various
... wild grape vines that Helen and Ethel Brown found in the West Woods and used for Hallowe'en decorations? If we could get a thick one and wind it with green paper and let it curve from the rose toward the ground it ought to look like ...
— Ethel Morton at Rose House • Mabell S. C. Smith
... curve and wind hither and thither in the delightfulest way, unfolding pretty surprises at every turn: billowy masses of oleander that seem to float out from behind distant projections like the pink cloud-banks of sunset; sudden plunges among cottages and ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... a doorway stepped a young fellow with his hand on his hip. Pete's six-gun flashed upward in a quarter curve even as the bullet crashed on its way. The youth staggered against the wall and sank together into a heap. Champa, every sense alert, fired again, then waited warily to make sure this was not a ...
— A Man Four-Square • William MacLeod Raine
... dare to mingle these lustrous browns with pale gold, what master of form could shape the bold yet dainty waves and crisps and curls in its broad petals, what human imagination could bend the graceful curve, arrange the clustering masses of its bloom? All beauty that the mind can hold is there—the quintessence of all charm and fancy. Were I acquainted with an atheist who, by possibility, had brain and feeling, I would set that spray before him and await ...
— About Orchids - A Chat • Frederick Boyle
... bits of African country that I have seen outside of Kukuanaland. At this spot the mountain spur that runs out at right angles to the great range, which stretches its cloud-clad length north and south as far as the eye can reach, sweeps inwards with a vast and splendid curve. This curve measures some five-and-thirty miles from point to point, and across its moon-like segment the river flashed, a silver line of light. On the further side of the river is a measureless sea of swelling ground, a natural park covered with great patches of bush—some of them being ...
— Maiwa's Revenge - The War of the Little Hand • H. Rider Haggard
... of the most difficult and comparatively unproductive of any that the Army undertakes. The careers of these unfortunate street women, who are nearly all of them very fine specimens of female humanity, for the most part follow a rocket-like curve. The majority of them begin by getting into trouble, at the end of which, perhaps, they find themselves with a child upon their hands. Or they may have been turned out of their homes, or some sudden misfortune may have reduced them to destitution. At any rate, the ...
— Regeneration • H. Rider Haggard
... the storekeeper. And in the midst of the story, when the stolid steerage children were actually laughing over the antics of that remarkable dog, Jasper glanced up toward the promenade deck, took a long look, and started to his feet. "Why, Polly Pepper, see!" He pointed upward. There, on the curve, were old Mr. Selwyn and Tom walking arm ...
— Five Little Peppers Abroad • Margaret Sidney
... Gardens of the Zoological Society would be truly a noble pair, were it not for an unnatural curve in the neck of the male, in consequence, it is said, of its having formerly swallowed something more than usually bulky ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 17, - Issue 495, June 25, 1831 • Various
... picture, is always an imperfect likeness. For the image of the sitter on the artist's retina is passed on its way to the canvas through a mind chock full of other images; and is transferred—heaven knows how changed already—by processes of line and curve, of blots of colour, and juxtaposition of light and shade, belonging not merely to the artist himself, but to the artist's whole school. Regarding merely the latter question, we all know that the old Venetians painted people ample, romantic, magnificent; and the old Tuscans ...
— Hortus Vitae - Essays on the Gardening of Life • Violet Paget, AKA Vernon Lee
... his vagabond were talking earnestly. The vagabond seemed to belong to the class known as "crackers." Poverty, sickness, and laziness were written in every flutter of his rags, in every uncouth curve or angle of his long, gaunt figure and sallow face. A mass of unkempt iron-gray hair fell about his sharp features, further hidden by a grizzly beard. His black frock coat had once adorned the distinguished ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 7 • Various
... that real people get beyond looks, the outside—and that then life begins. They don't—at least real men don't. A woman may spend her heart's blood for a man through years, and for youthful charm and a face that is pretty, for the mere look in a pair of eyes or the curve of a mouth, he'll almost forget that she's alive, even when she's there before him. He'll take the other woman's part against her instinctively, whichever is in the right. If both women do exactly the same thing a man will find that the pretty woman has performed a miracle and the ugly woman ...
— A Spirit in Prison • Robert Hichens
... else's shouting, is equally trying. About two feet from plate center to plate center is ideal. If the chairs have narrow and low backs, people can sit much closer together, especially at a small round table, the curve of which leaves a spreading wedge of space between the chairs at the back even if the seats touch at the front corners. But on the long straight sides of a rectangular table in a very large—and impressive—dining-room there should be at least a foot of ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post
... battles from yesterday—of battle-fields that, long since, nature had healed and reconciled to herself with the sweet oblivion of flowers—of battle-fields that were yet angry and crimson with carnage. Where the terraces ran, there did we run; where the towers curved, there did we curve. With the flight of swallows our horses swept round every angle. Like rivers in flood, wheeling round headlands; like hurricanes that side into the secrets of forests; faster than ever light unwove the mazes of ...
— Miscellaneous Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... roomy vessel, very broad in the beam, with a graceful curve in her bows, and masts which were taller than any that I had seen on such a boat on the Solent. She was decked over in front, but very deep in the after part, with ropes fixed all round the sides to ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle
... was one region which he preferred. The lake is five or six leagues long and three or four broad; although it presents the appearance of an almost perfect oval, it forms, commencing from Tiberias up to the entrance of the Jordan, a sort of gulf, the curve of which measures about three leagues. Such is the field in which the seed sown by Jesus found at last a well-prepared soil. Let us run over it step by step, and endeavor to raise the mantle of aridity and mourning with which it has been covered by ...
— The Life of Jesus • Ernest Renan
... the two men stood gazing intently towards the south-west horizon. Presently a faint flash was seen, so faint that they could not be certain it was that of a signal-gun. In a few minutes, however, a thin thread of red light was seen to curve upwards into ...
— The Floating Light of the Goodwin Sands • R.M. Ballantyne
... independent thought, that a thought and its limitation are two thoughts; whereas they are but the two aspects of the one thought, like two sides to the one disc, and the absurdity of speaking of them as separate thoughts is as great as to speak of a curve seen from its concavity as a different thing from the same curve regarded from its convexity. The privative can help us nowhere and to nothing; the positive ...
— The Religious Sentiment - Its Source and Aim: A Contribution to the Science and - Philosophy of Religion • Daniel G. Brinton
... the stars had the gold fire with which they shine when the sky is violet. Above the horizon a shimmering halo marked the cluster of cities and towns. In the immediate foreground the great elm was leafless now, but for that reason more clearly etched against the starlight—line on line, curve on curve, sweeping, drooping, interlaced. Guion stood with head up and figure erect, as if from strength given back to him. Even through the darkness he displayed some of the self-assurance and stoutness of heart of the man with whom things are ...
— The Street Called Straight • Basil King
... spoke. "We shall come to some shade directly. There is a belt of pine trees round the next curve." ...
— The Swindler and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... him, leaping together out of the white blur that they had been into something more lovely than he had imagined. He had never seen such calmness. And the calmness was not alone in her expression; the same sculptured quiet was in the white curve of her arms and the gentle swelling of her breast. He knew now why she was declared to be the most beautiful woman in England. But it was the wisdom of her far more than the beauty that enthralled him. There was no weakness ...
— The Kingdom Round the Corner - A Novel • Coningsby Dawson
... occupy is the mouth of the valley, up which the Cabul road runs: our camp stretches obliquely across this; the Shah's camp taking a curve and resting by its left on the river. On our (i.e. the sappers) right, is a range of hills, from the extremity of which the town is commanded; between us and the range in question, the 4th brigade is stationed, and on the ...
— Journals of Travels in Assam, Burma, Bhootan, Afghanistan and The - Neighbouring Countries • William Griffith
... sun, no longer sprayed out by the breeze, became almost too hot. But the procession passed; the banners glittered —far away down Whitehall; the traffic was released; lurched on; spun to a smooth continuous uproar; swerving round the curve of Cockspur Street; and sweeping past Government offices and equestrian statues down Whitehall to the prickly spires, the tethered grey fleet of masonry, and the ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf
... stood barely fifteen hands, but to see him was to forget his size. His flanks shimmered like satin in the sun. What promise of power in the smooth, broad hips! Only an Arab poet could run his hand over that shoulder and then speak properly of the matchless curve. Only an Arab could appreciate legs like thin and carefully drawn steel below the knees; or that flow of tail and windy mane; that generous breast with promise of the mighty heart within; that arched neck; that proud head with the pricking ears, wide forehead, and ...
— The Untamed • Max Brand
... affairs to remark that he was her bee. The voluble young lady herself, following some half-a-dozen yards behind, forgot her wrongs in contemplation of the stranger's back. There was this that was peculiar about the stranger's back: that instead of being flat it presented a decided curve. "It ain't a 'ump, and it don't look like kervitcher of the spine," observed the voluble young lady to herself. "Blimy if I don't believe 'e's taking 'ome 'is washing up ...
— Passing of the Third Floor Back • Jerome K. Jerome
... bye they coasted down a long hill and puffed up the other side. He guessed this to be the valley between Ninety-third street and One Hundred and Fourth, and presently knew he was right, when he heard the wheels of the elevated trains grinding on a curve high overhead. The Hundred and Tenth street curve, of course; there is no other ...
— The Deaves Affair • Hulbert Footner
... the sun uprears himself among The lesser dazzling substances, and drives His eager steeds along the fervid curve,— ...
— Modern Italian Poets • W. D. Howells
... long curve, bathed a row of white houses in the distance, which were reflected in the water. The girl picked the daisies and made them into a great bunch, whilst he sang vigorously, as intoxicated as a colt that has been turned into a meadow. On their left, a vine-covered slope followed ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume II (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... said Mary; "that is, the descent of the pebble. You see the attraction of the earth causes the pebble to go down if it can, and the confinement of the string prevents its going down in any other way than in that curve or arc. For the string keeps it always just its own length from the branch, and so that makes the curved line the arc of ...
— Rollo's Experiments • Jacob Abbott
... Monass. The descent is steep but winding, the face of the hill being nearly precipitous. Close to the river we passed a small field of Cajanus, used for feeding the lac insect. The bridge is a suspension one, the chains, one on either side, being of iron in square links; the curve is considerable, in the form of the letter V, the sides being of mat. Hence it is difficult to cross, and this is increased by the bridge swinging about considerably: it is seventy yards in span, and about thirty above ...
— Journals of Travels in Assam, Burma, Bhootan, Afghanistan and The - Neighbouring Countries • William Griffith
... near the Tour Eiffel, the German described a graceful, sweeping curve off over the Ecole Militaire, and threw another bomb which struck the roof of a house in the Avenue Bosquet. He then turned northward and sailed off in triumph over Montmartre, apparently unscathed. The French machine had ...
— The Note-Book of an Attache - Seven Months in the War Zone • Eric Fisher Wood
... bellow to the wind. Near these a crew amphibious, in the docks, Rear, for the sea, those castles on the stocks: See! the long keel, which soon the waves must hide; See! the strong ribs which form the roomy side; Bolts yielding slowly to the sturdiest stroke, And planks which curve and crackle in the smoke. Around the whole rise cloudy wreaths, and far Bear the warm pungence of o'er-boiling tar. Dabbling on shore half-naked sea-boys crowd, Swim round a ship, or swing upon the shroud; Or in a boat purloin'd, with paddles play, And grow familiar with the watery ...
— The Borough • George Crabbe
... rural sights and sounds which exhilarate the spirit. But this marvellously delved, methodised and trimmed countryside had a character and a stimulus of its own. It reflected the energy and persistence that had subdued it. I saw nothing ugly. The tidied rice plots, shaped at every possible curve and angle, and eloquent of centuries of unremitting toil; the upland beyond them, worked to a skilled perfection of finish; the nesting houses which nowhere offended the eye; the big still ponds contrived by the rude forefathers of the ...
— The Foundations of Japan • J.W. Robertson Scott
... Ridge, but from here it bent southwestward behind the Haanebeek stream, which it followed to a point about half a mile east of St. Julien. Thence it curved back again to the Vamheule Farm, on the Ypres-Poelcappelle road, running from here in a slight southerly curve to a point a little west of the Ypres-Langemarck road, where it joined the French. In the last mentioned quarter of the field it followed generally the line of a low ridge running from west to east. On the French front ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 3, June, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... still. Even while it strove to sleep it muttered with digestions of the day before, and these already merged with rumblings of the morrow. "Owl" cars, bringing in last passengers over distant trolley-lines, now and then howled on a curve; faraway metallic stirrings could be heard from factories in the sooty suburbs on the plain outside the city; east, west, and south, switch-engines chugged and snorted on sidings; and everywhere in the air there seemed to be a faint, voluminous ...
— Alice Adams • Booth Tarkington
... you reach the grade and put your headlamp out," said Grant. "I want you to stop just this side of the curve, and wait ...
— The Cattle-Baron's Daughter • Harold Bindloss
... A curve turned, and the lights of Brocton were in sight. Before the runaway caboose slowed down entirely it must have gone fully three-quarters of ...
— Ralph on the Engine - The Young Fireman of the Limited Mail • Allen Chapman
... side, she beheld the gaze of Leta fixedly fastened upon her over Sergius's shoulder. In the sparkle of those burning eyes and in the curve of those half-parted lips, there appeared no longer any vestige of the former pretended sympathy or affection. There was now malice, scorn, and hatred—all those expressions which, from time to time, had separately excited doubt and dread, now combining ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 4, October, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... uniform as to face. All of them wore the flexible pearly armor, the skull-strip helmets. Though there were individual differences in ornaments and the choice of weapons. The majority of the men did carry curve-pointed swords, though those were broader and heavier than those the Terran had seen ashore. But several had axes with sickle-shaped heads, whose points curved so far back that they nearly ...
— Key Out of Time • Andre Alice Norton
... A fair curve of sandy beach separates Weelocksebacook from its neighbor. There is buried one Melattach, an Indian chief. Of course there has been found in Maine some one irreverent enough to trot a lame Pegasus over this grave, and accuse the frowzy old red-skin ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... no need for words," said one of them. "Every curve and droop of his figure, as he walked slowly and with bent head, told all of us who saw him that hope was gone and that death had ...
— Twelve Men • Theodore Dreiser
... iron gates Gertie saw two figures coming around the curve of the gravelled carriage-way; she took ambush hurriedly near to an oak tree. Henry's voice could be heard, with an occasional remark from Miss Loriner. "And if I promise to worship you all my life," Henry was saying, "will you ...
— Love at Paddington • W. Pett Ridge
... On causing the curve (Fig. 3, No. 3) to pass through the four points thus determined, we find, for 1612, the declination 81/2 deg.. This is, with an approximation closer than that of the measurements that can be made upon ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 810, July 11, 1891 • Various
... and why are not hives, in the swarming season, almost certain to become queenless? We can never sufficiently admire the provision so simple and yet so effectual, by which such a calamity is prevented. The queen bee never stings unless she has such an advantage in the combat, that she can curve her body under that of her rival, in such a manner as to inflict a deadly wound, without any risk of being stung herself! The moment that the position of the two combatants is such that neither has the advantage, ...
— Langstroth on the Hive and the Honey-Bee - A Bee Keeper's Manual • L. L. Langstroth
... added, in explanation to his sister: "The carriage was so far back, as it rounded a curve, permitting me to look into it, that I ...
— Barbara's Heritage - Young Americans Among the Old Italian Masters • Deristhe L. Hoyt
... morning the extremity of Regent's Channel was passed; the angle on the west coast was followed by a deep curve in the land. By consulting his map the doctor recognised the point of ...
— The English at the North Pole - Part I of the Adventures of Captain Hatteras • Jules Verne
... imperial—also dyed the deepest black—just under the lower lip. In appearance he was, spite of the false touches, good-looking, sensitive, and perhaps too mild. The cleft in his rounded chin was the sole mark of decision in a countenance whose features were curved—wherever a curve was possible—to a degree approaching caricature. Temples, eyebrows, nostrils, and moustache, all described a series of semi-circles which, accentuated by a livid complexion and curling hair, presented an effect somewhat commonplace and a little tiresome. He had spent his existence ...
— Robert Orange - Being a Continuation of the History of Robert Orange • John Oliver Hobbes
... that, in general, a curved outline is more beautiful than a right-lined figure. For a straight-lined figure necessarily requires at least half as many laws as it has sides, while a curvilinear outline requires, in general, but a single law. In a true curve, every point in the whole line (or surface) is subject to one and the same law of position. Thus, in the circle, every point of the circumference is subject to one and the same law,—that it must be at a certain distance from the centre. Half a dozen ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various
... reckoning, and changing; and the purse was crammed so extraordinarily full that it would shower three-skilling pieces, [Footnote: Skilling, a halfpenny.] or a shining half-dollar would swing itself over the side, make a graceful curve, like a skater, round the floor, and disappear behind the stove. It had to be got out before it could be changed, ...
— Norse Tales and Sketches • Alexander Lange Kielland
... scene, that the sound caused not the slightest excitement, even internally and mentally. But the sympathetic spirit who was directing this geographic burlesque overplayed, and followed the soft curve of audible wistfulness with an actual bluebird which looped across the open space in front. The spell was broken for a moment, and my subconscious autocrat thrust into realization the instantaneous report—apparent bluebird call is the note of a small flycatcher and ...
— Edge of the Jungle • William Beebe
... might reveal the scene of steamboat disasters or some surveyor's memory of the Arabian Nights. Below Dogtooth Island, under Brooks Point, were a number of golden sandbars and farther down, in the lower curve of the famous S-bends she read the name "Greenleaf," which was ...
— The River Prophet • Raymond S. Spears
... woman once wore something like it when she fed the novelist. Unbalanced by the joy of the situation, he did not accurately observe the garb of the ministering angel, and hence we read of "a clinging white gown" in the days of stiff silks and rampant crinoline; of "the curve of the upper arm" when it took five yards for a pair of sleeves, and of "short walking skirts" during the ...
— Threads of Grey and Gold • Myrtle Reed
... be flagged for the benefit of passengers, but the office was locked. Thurston, who knew that shortly a freight train would pass, broke in the window, borrowed a lantern, lighted it, and hurried up the track which here wound round a curve through the forest and over a trestle. It is not pleasant to cross a lofty trestle bridge on foot in broad daylight, for one must step from sleeper to sleeper over wide spaces with empty air beneath, and, ...
— Thurston of Orchard Valley • Harold Bindloss
... as the little book was concerned. Save, perhaps, that after I had walked to the station with White Pigeon and she had boarded the car, she stepped out upon the rear platform, and as I stood there at the station watching the train disappear around the curve, White Pigeon reached into the Boston bag, took out the little ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 6 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Artists • Elbert Hubbard
... ripening years cling to all belonging or seeming to belong to vanished youth, and to suffer under the loss of anything they possessed then, even though a better thing has come to them in its place. She was a woman completing her destined course; and so that the cycle-curve swept on unbroken, she would be as happy on the downward sweep as when the ...
— The Devil's Garden • W. B. Maxwell
... and was taking the specie home with him; the fact was known in Charleston where Doc Holliday had stopped within the last hour. The vehicle was rounding a long turn; the horseman cut across country through the mesquite; he reached the farther end of the curve just in time to ...
— When the West Was Young • Frederick R. Bechdolt
... poor invalids who attend the establishment regularly, and whose apparition, silent as night-birds in the fencing-room where they come to be weighed, contrasts so strangely with the healthy laughter and superabundant vigour of the rest of the company. But the contemptuous curve of the large nose and the weary lines round the mouth vaguely recalled some face he knew in society. In his dressing-room he asked the man who was shampooing him, 'Who was that, Raymond, who ...
— The Immortal - Or, One Of The "Forty." (L'immortel) - 1877 • Alphonse Daudet
... From every direction, over the bluff, out from the tall grass, across the slope on the south, came Indians, hundreds on hundreds. They seemed to spring from the sod like Roderick Dhu's Highland Scots, and people every curve and hollow. Swift as the wind, savage as hate, cruel as hell, they bore down upon us from every way the wind blows. The thrill of that moment is in my blood as I write this. It was then I first understood the tie ...
— The Price of the Prairie - A Story of Kansas • Margaret Hill McCarter
... of Constantinople, which may be considered as an arm of the Bosporus, obtained, in a very remote period, the denomination of the "Golden Horn." The curve which it describes might be compared to the horn of a stag, or as it should seem, with more propriety, to that of an ox. The epithet of golden was expressive of the riches which every wind wafted from the most distant countries into the secure ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 03 • Various
... coming from the front we could hear before we could see it. And it wasn't the engine that we heard, because that came so slowly, but I could hear the boys singing as they came round the curve, ...
— Your Boys • Gipsy Smith
... hooted Flame. In the curve of her cheek a dimple opened suddenly. "Well ... maybe," ...
— Peace on Earth, Good-will to Dogs • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... coordinated that they seemed one and instantaneous, the girl stooped, caught up the lamp, and threw it with all her might. Victor ducked his head. The lamp sailed on, described a descending curve through the open doorway into the well of the staircase, struck, and exploded. In the clutches of the maniac, Sofia was aware of the lurid glare, momentarily gaining strength, that filled ...
— Red Masquerade • Louis Joseph Vance
... wheels and the clang of giant hoofs made roaring echo, and above thundered the trains. The vaults, barely illumined with gas-jets, seemed of infinite extent; dim figures moved near and far, amid huge barrels, cases, packages; in rooms partitioned off by glass framework men sat writing. A curve in the tunnel made it appear much longer than it really was; till midway nothing could be seen ahead but deepening darkness; then of a sudden appeared the issue, and beyond, greatly to the surprise of any one who should have ventured ...
— The House of Cobwebs and Other Stories • George Gissing
... his elbows, and in the curve of his neck and right shoulder I could just see, though so near, the dark-spotted body of the panther. There was no time to lose. "Can I hit it without killing Blake?" I thought in an agony of uncertainty, but the hazard followed quick ...
— Adventures in Many Lands • Various
... Ceropegia, as I hear from Prof. Harvey, for these plants in their native dry South African home generally grow erect, from 6 inches to 2 feet in height,—a very few taller specimens showing some inclination to curve; but when cultivated near Dublin, they regularly twined up sticks 5 or 6 feet in height. Most Convolvulaceae are excellent twiners; but in South Africa Ipomoea argyraeoides almost always grows erect and compact, from about 12 to 18 inches in height, ...
— The Movements and Habits of Climbing Plants • Charles Darwin
... after the little band as they loped gently down the street and round the curve till a bank cut off the view. "Say, boys, this is great," he said, "I wouldn't have missed it for anything. There's going to be a real ...
— The Preacher of Cedar Mountain - A Tale of the Open Country • Ernest Thompson Seton
... called the class, was thinking about an obstinate rhyme still and never missed her. Once, when nobody was looking, Gilbert took from his desk a little pink candy heart with a gold motto on it, "You are sweet," and slipped it under the curve of Anne's arm. Whereupon Anne arose, took the pink heart gingerly between the tips of her fingers, dropped it on the floor, ground it to powder beneath her heel, and resumed her position without deigning to bestow ...
— Anne Of Green Gables • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... many a curve my bank I fret By many a field and fallow, And many a fairy foreland set With willow-weed ...
— Graded Memory Selections • Various
... done with the snow shoes (page 39). Before bending the boards we had fixed screw eyes in the ends of each batten, except the forward one; a rope had been strung through these screw eyes and the ends were now tied to the head piece and drawn tight so as to bend the boards into a graceful curve. In this way the ropes were of service not only for curving the front end into a hood, but also for side rails, to hold on by when shooting swiftly ...
— The Scientific American Boy - The Camp at Willow Clump Island • A. Russell Bond
... an elephant, carved where the largest stone of all begins to curve outward, on the side of the stone as you go outward from ...
— Told in the East • Talbot Mundy
... adorned themselves on great days and at religious ceremonies. The skin was sometimes carelessly thrown over the left shoulder and swayed with the movement of the body; sometimes it was carefully adjusted over one shoulder and under the other, so as to bring the curve of the chest into prominence. The head of the animal, skilfully prepared and enlivened by large eyes of enamel, rested on the shoulder or fell just below the waist of the wearer; the paws, with the claws attached, hung down over the thighs; the spots of the ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 1 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... lay waving chapparel, where cocoa-palms and breadfruit trees intermixed with the mammee apple and the tendrils of the wild vine. On one of the piers of coral at the break of the reef stood a single cocoa-palm; bending with a slight curve, it, too, seemed seeking its ...
— The Blue Lagoon - A Romance • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... doubt his sex. His eyes, which, as I say, were soft as a dove's pair, he was not fond of showing; and this gave them the more searching appeal when he did. His mouth, full and fleshy in the lips, had a lovely curve. He kept it very demure, and, when he spoke, spoke softly. This was a young man born to be Lancilotto to some Ginevra or other; and, to do him justice, he had had his share of adventure in that sort at an early age. He had ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... would come all right, but the 'co-ka-koo-oi-oo' seemed to come from a distance. And sometimes the whole crow would go wrong, and come back like an echo that had been lost for a year. Bill would stand on tiptoe, and hold his elbows out, and curve his neck, and go two or three times as if he was swallowing nest-eggs, and nearly break his neck and burst his gizzard; and then there'd be no sound at all where he was—only a cock crowing in ...
— On the Track • Henry Lawson
... varied tints of the trees, looking from a distance like a huge bouquet in the hand of Dame Nature; again, a mountain stream dashing headlong down, down, gathering strength as it rolls until lost in some sudden curve or wild projection. A gleaming crag with belts of pine now burst upon the view, in its rich dark dress, while here we have the delicate tints of the valley. Let us kneel here as we gaze on the giants of the forest, as they ...
— A Heart-Song of To-day • Annie Gregg Savigny
... system, to serve out her twenty or thirty years, drying up in the thin, hot air of the schoolroom; then, ultimately, when released, to have the means to subsist in some third-rate boarding-house until the end. Or marry again? But the dark lines under the eyes, the curve of experience at the mouth, did not warrant that supposition. She had had her trial of ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... miles from where we are, the river makes a great curve. There the effendi landed in the night with four hundred men to march hither. But he commanded that the boats should come on slowly and receive the attack in the river, while he came ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... that they turned a curve in the right of way and beheld a train standing on the track. At least, there were a ...
— The Mission of Janice Day • Helen Beecher Long
... pilot-house such as this nondescript craft had on the forward end of its upper deck? Besides, there were no sweeps, nor was she in the least like any trading-scow Winn had ever seen. A low house occupied her entire width, and extended along her whole length except at the curve of her bows, where there was room left for a small deck. A structure with a door and windows, that was somewhat larger than the pilot-house, rose from the upper deck near its after-end. There were three doors on each side of the main house, a large one ...
— Raftmates - A Story of the Great River • Kirk Munroe
... supreme irony of such combinations which tickles the taste of advanced and artificial epochs, epochs when men ask for two sensations at once, like the contrary meanings fused by the smile of La Gioconda. And our satisfaction, too, in work of this kind is best expressed by that ambiguous curve of the lip which says: I feel your charm, but I am not your dupe; I see the illusion both from within and from without; I yield to you, but I understand you; I am complaisant, but I am proud; I am open to sensations, yet not the slave ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... on, the two branches again unite in the group of the mountains of Cuzco, and thence their direction is north 80 degrees west. This group of which the table-land inclines to the north-east, forms a curve, nearly from east to west, so that the part of the Andes north of Castrovireyna is thrown back more than 242,000 toises westward. This singular geological phenomenon resembles the variation of dip of the veins, and especially of the two parts of the ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America V3 • Alexander von Humboldt
... travel and makes calculations that enable him to place a shell at that point at just the right second. In this battle the shells of the British ship took about twenty seconds to go from the mouths of the guns to the German hulls. And they made a curve at the highest point of which they reached a distance of more than two miles; and most wonderful of all was the fact that at the beginning of the firing a man standing on the deck of one of the German ships could not even see the ship which ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume III (of 12) - The War Begins, Invasion of Belgium, Battle of the Marne • Francis J. Reynolds, Allen L. Churchill, and Francis Trevelyan
... as natural a thing to human minds as a centre is to a circle. But little-minded people's thoughts move in such small circles that five minutes' conversation gives you an arc long enough to determine their whole curve. An arc in the movement of a large intellect does not sensibly differ from a straight line. Even if it have the third vowel as its centre, it does not soon betray it. The highest thought, that is, is the most seemingly impersonal; it does not ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... near Philadelphia, there is a singular bridge of iron wire. It is four hundred feet in length, and extends, from the window of a wire factory, to a tree on the opposite shore. The wires which form the curve are six in number; three on each side, and each three-eighths of an inch in diameter. The floor of the bridge is elevated sixteen feet above the water; and the whole weight of the wires is about four thousand seven hundred pounds. It is possible to construct a bridge of this kind in the ...
— Travels in North America, From Modern Writers • William Bingley
... to read. The growth-rate of the leech. The energy-consumption rate, estimated. Its speed in space, a constant. The energy it would receive from the Sun as it approached, an exponential curve. Its energy-absorption rate, figured in terms of growth, expressed as a hyped-up ...
— The Leech • Phillips Barbee
... segments, the number varying from four to twenty. When the weather is wet the lining of the points of the segments become gelatinous and recurve, and the points rest upon the ground, holding the inner ball from the ground. In dry weather the soft gelatinous lining becomes hard and the segments curve in and clasp the inner ball. Hence its name, "hygrometricus," a measurer of moisture. The plant ...
— The Mushroom, Edible and Otherwise - Its Habitat and its Time of Growth • M. E. Hard
... since we constantly were moving in some direction, we looked upon many circles. But all circles looked alike. No tufted islets, gray headlands, nor glistening patches of white canvas ever marred the symmetry of that unbroken curve. Clouds came and went, rising up over the rim of the circle, flowing across the space of it, and spilling away and down ...
— The Cruise of the Snark • Jack London
... on the platform—and walked on ice. But that wasn't Toddles' undoing. The trouble with Toddles was that he was walking on air at the same time. It was treacherous running, they were nosing a curve, and in the cab, Kinneard, at the throttle, checked with a little jerk at the "air." And with the jerk, Toddles slipped; and with the slip, the center of gravity of the stack of periodicals shifted, and they bulged ominously from the middle. ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Campfire Stories • Various |
