"Oblong" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... like a swimmer in morning sea amid the exclamations encircling him. He led through the straight passage of the galleried hall, offering two fair landscapes at front door and at back, down to the lake, Fredi's lake; a good oblong of water, notable in a district not abounding in the commodity. He would have it a feature of the district; and it had been deepened and extended; up rose the springs, many ran the ducts. Fredi's pretty little bathshed or bower had a space of marble on the three-feet shallow it overhung ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... was truth in what he said, for now that he had lit the gas, the oblong card, though not the word "Apartments" printed on it, could be plainly seen out-lined against the old-fashioned ...
— The Lodger • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... new contrast—disclosed something I was unaccustomed to. In place of the grand mud-colored brown fronts of San Francisco, I saw dwellings built of straw, adobies, and cream-colored pebble-and-shell-conglomerated coral, cut into oblong blocks and laid in cement; also a great number of neat white cottages, with green window-shutters; in place of front yards like billiard-tables with iron fences around them, I saw these homes surrounded by ample yards, thickly clad with green grass, and shaded by tall ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... she began almost to think that she had imagined the black box altogether. Was it square or oblong? and how shallow was it? Sometimes while she was ill she had seen a black box as big as a house; sometimes it was a ...
— Great Possessions • Mrs. Wilfrid Ward
... later the Herr Doctor Holtzenschuer was handing a bundled figure into the closed carriage that stood before the gate. A huge, oblong package rested against a lamp-post beside him, and near it stood the Fraeulein Marie, rosy and shy. The young man turned to her ...
— Unfinished Portraits - Stories of Musicians and Artists • Jennette Lee
... the matter of herding the twelve oxen. This arrangement suited me exactly. Small game abounded, and I had the use of a gun. My favorite pasturage area was the big shallow basin to the westward, within the perimeter of which was a low, oblong rise covered with long grass, and at the eastern end of which stood a grove of exceptionally large camel thorn trees. This rise afterwards came to be known as "Colesberg Kopje"; eventually it was named ...
— Reminiscences of a South African Pioneer • W. C. Scully
... roofed over or not, for holy water; a flight of steps; a portico, continued as a verandah all round the temple; a roof of tremendously disproportionate size and weight, with a peculiar curve; a square or oblong hall divided by a railing from a "chancel" with a high and low altar, and a shrine containing Buddha, or the divinity to whom the chapel is dedicated; an incense-burner, and a few ecclesiastical ornaments. The symbols, idols, and adornments ...
— Unbeaten Tracks in Japan • Isabella L. Bird
... chiefly of stockade works, flanked, at its several angles, by strong bastions, and covered by a demi lune of five guns, so placed as to command every approach by water. Distant about three hundred yards on his right is a large, oblong square building, resembling in appearance the red low roofed blockhouses peering above the outward defences of the fort. Surrounding this, and extending to the skirt of the thinned forest, the original boundary of which ...
— The Canadian Brothers - or The Prophecy Fulfilled • John Richardson
... relationship. Similar confusion arises in the case of plants of the same species producing foliage of varied form. One of the figs (FICUS OPPOSITA) displays such remarkable inconsistency that until reassured by many examples it is difficult to credit an undoubted fact. The typical leaf is oblong elliptical, while individual plants produce lanceolate leaves with two short lateral lobes, with many intermediate forms. As the plant develops, the abnormal forms tend to disappear, though mature plants occasionally ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... never afterwards sell one for less, and we could not afford to buy as many as it was probable we should want at that price. The bread-fruit grows on a tree that is about the size of a middling oak: Its leaves are frequently a foot and an half long, of an oblong shape, deeply sinuated like those of the fig-tree, which they resemble in consistence and colour, and in the exuding of a white milky juice upon being broken. The fruit is about the size and shape of a child's head, and the surface ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 12 • Robert Kerr
... are found in the district of Auvergne in France. Solidified streams of lava occur at Volvic near Riom; and the crater whence they descended is still visible on the top of the Puy de Nugere. It is an oblong basin, having its edge broken on the side down which the lava flowed. In its descent the fiery stream appears to have encountered a knoll of granite, by which it was divided into two branches. These seem to have reunited lower down, ...
— Wonders of Creation • Anonymous
... end of the gallery stood the large, newly made casket, which was open, the corpse covered with cloth resting inside. It was an oblong, heavy box supposed to represent a rhinoceros, though nothing positively indicated this except the large head of this animal at one end, which, though rudely made, was cut with considerable artistic skill. The family sat around the casket, one man ...
— Through Central Borneo: - An Account of Two Years' Travel in the Land of Head-Hunters - Between the Years 1913 and 1917 • Carl Lumholtz
... poet's bust is a nameless, oblong, cubic tomb, supposed to be that of a clerical dignitary of the fourteenth century. The church has other mural monuments and altar-tombs, one or two of the latter upholding the recumbent figures of knights in armor and their dames, very eminent and worshipful personages in their ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... through the dining room and told them to help themselves.... Then we roamed through the living rooms, the boudoirs, straight through to the washing room and bath; then back through the oblong archway into the little square room beyond the study, where I halted them and said: 'Men, these women will die before they'll tell us where the treasure is at present. The OLD MAN and WOMAN seem utterly indifferent to their fate; we can get nothing out of them. Now, what do ...
— Rescuing the Czar - Two authentic Diaries arranged and translated • James P. Smythe
... invitation to his friend, who was generally known as "Sir Charles." Like most clever men, he was simplicity itself, and he watched Nell through his pince-nez as she surveyed the brilliant line of guests round the long, oblong table, with ...
— Nell, of Shorne Mills - or, One Heart's Burden • Charles Garvice
... persisted in retaining as head groom an old dolt whom no sort of lever could move out of his old habits, and who was allowed to hire a succession of raw Loamshire lads as his subordinates, one of whom had lately tested a new pair of shears by clipping an oblong patch on Arthur's bay mare. This state of things is naturally embittering; one can put up with annoyances in the house, but to have the stable made a scene of vexation and disgust is a point beyond what human flesh ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot
... his pocket a bunch of oblong cards. Each bore, she could see from the corner of her eye, a full face and a profile picture of a woman, and on the back of the ...
— Constance Dunlap • Arthur B. Reeve
... neat shrub of trailing habit, and with flowers resembling those of the Arbutus, but much smaller. The leaves are entire, dark green in colour, and about an inch long, and obovate or oblong in shape. Fruit globular, of a bright red, smooth and shining. This is a native shrub, being found in Scotland, ...
— Hardy Ornamental Flowering Trees and Shrubs • A. D. Webster
... explained perhaps with reference to the state of the weather, and the long distance which many of them have to travel. The storm had the effect at least of thinning the audience, and bringing it down from about 800, its usual number, to 500 or so. The church was an oblong building, with the pulpit on one of the side walls, and a deep gallery, resting on thick, heavy pillars, on the other. The men and women occupied separate places. With this exception, I saw nothing to remind me that I ...
— Pilgrimage from the Alps to the Tiber - Or The Influence of Romanism on Trade, Justice, and Knowledge • James Aitken Wylie
... has deliberately shot six No. 40 calibre bullets into various places in the person of his venerable father, who has nurtured him from childhood, stored his mind with useful knowledge, or perchance played mumblety peg with a shingle across the place where in later years another father may plant oblong pieces of leather, because of his habit of leaning his youthful stomach across the gate whereon swings a gentle maiden belonging to this other father, the while giving her glucose in regard to a beautiful castle that he will rear with his own hands on a commanding eminence, ...
— Peck's Sunshine - Being a Collection of Articles Written for Peck's Sun, - Milwaukee, Wis. - 1882 • George W. Peck
... so I laughed at myself for blushing at it when he had shut the door and got upon the box; and we all three laughed and chatted about our inexperience and the strangeness of London until we turned up under an archway to our destination—a narrow street of high houses like an oblong cistern to hold the fog. There was a confused little crowd of people, principally children, gathered about the house at which we stopped, which had a tarnished brass plate on the door with the ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... keenly awake, and when the girls went into the privacy of the screens he sat looking out of the window at the oblong of darkly blue night sky which it shaped for him. His temples throbbed. Though the strange conditions around him were not able to vary his usual habits of thought, something exhilarated him; and he wondered at that, when Peggy had told him Angelique's decision ...
— Old Kaskaskia • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... had opened and that we were all three of us, on the threshold of another chamber. At the end of it stood something like a little altar of hard, black stone, and on this altar lay a mass of substance of the size of a child's head, but fashioned, I suppose from fantasy, to the oblong shape ...
— Ayesha - The Further History of She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed • H. Rider Haggard
... been left in an oblong valley between two gentle ridges—in such a valley was this one standing. Near a pool formed by a spring—here, too, was the same, for they could perceive the water shining. But in all other respects ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid
... supposed to have included a colonnaded court in front of the present faade, and pylon towers at the entrance; but these were never built, probably for lack of funds. The building, which is of sandstone, measures about 300 ft. from front to back, and consists of two oblong rectangles; the foremost, placed transversely to the other, is the great hypostyle hall or pronaos, the broadest and loftiest part of the temple, measuring 135 ft. in width, and comprising about one-third of the whole structure; the faade ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 2 - "Demijohn" to "Destructor" • Various
... narrow, reeking with a musty odor that nauseated the Judge; on narrow ledges where they had to hug the walls to keep from falling, and then into an open court with a stone floor, stained dark, in the center a huge oblong block of stone, surmounting a pyramid, appalling in ...
— 'Firebrand' Trevison • Charles Alden Seltzer
... the first place, different in shape; either from our physical differences, or from a habit of drawing certain shapes of a picture, which itself usually indicates—as you know, or ought to know—whether we are looking far or near. Two were oblong, but of different proportions; one was more nearly a square; the distance taken in to the right and left was smaller in the latter case, and, on the contrary, the height up and down—that is to say, the portion of land beneath and the portion of sky ...
— A Study of Poetry • Bliss Perry
... in the chamber, F, substantially as and for the purposes set forth and described in the drawing and specification hereunto annexed, without confining myself to any particular form, size, or shape of the pipes or tubes, whether they be vertical or horizontal, round, square, oval, oblong, or in any other form, neither do I confine myself to any particular form of ice receptacle, ...
— Scientific American, Vol. 17, No. 26 December 28, 1867 • Various
... It was an oblong room with red plush seats along the walls behind a line of marble-topped tables. The customers were all men, chiefly clerks and warehousemen, I thought, and the attendants were girls in ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine
... appeared, bulging, oval, implacable; and between them opened a great, hooked beak, like a giant parrot's. There was no separate head behind this gaping beak, but eyes and beak merely marked the blunt end of a mottled, oblong, ...
— Kings in Exile • Sir Charles George Douglas Roberts
... the first of the two puzzles last given—to cut a rectangle of the shape of a half-square into three pieces that will form a Greek cross—is shown in Figs. 37 and 38. It will be seen that we divide the long sides of the oblong into six equal parts and the short sides into three equal parts, in order to get the points that will indicate the direction of the cuts. The reader should compare this solution with some of the previous illustrations. ...
— Amusements in Mathematics • Henry Ernest Dudeney
... to gaped in the late painful stage in building before the healing touch of the plasterer assuages the roughness of the brickwork. The space for the shop yawned an oblong gap below, framed above by an iron girder; "windows and fittings to suit tenant," a board at the end of the row promised; and behind was the door space and a glimpse of stairs going up to the living rooms above. "Not a bad position," said ...
— The History of Mr. Polly • H. G. Wells
... feature, like the arcaded loggie of old Venetian towns, is the Nampolo, or palaver-house, which may be described as the club-room of the village. An open hangar, like the Ikongolo or "cask-house" of the trading places, it is known by a fire always kept burning. The houses are cubes, or oblong squares, varying from 10 to 100 feet in length, according to the wealth and dignity of the owner; all are one-storied, and a few are raised on switch foundations. Most of them have a verandah facing the street, and a "compound" or cleared space in the rear for cooking and ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... her sex's ingenuity, would have been puzzled to construct a neck capable of supporting it; wherefore she wisely declined the attempt, and settled it firmly on the top of his back bone, just between the shoulders. His body was oblong, and particularly capacious at bottom; which was wisely ordered by Providence, seeing that he was a man of sedentary habits, and very averse to the idle labor of walking. His legs were very short, but sturdy in proportion ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... daintily devouring the solitary ice, and felt a certain pathos about the parti-coloured oblong, a something of the haunting sadness of "The Last Rose of Summer." It would make a graceful, serio-comic triolet, he was thinking. But at the last spoonful, his beautiful companion dislocated his ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill
... said Culver. "And on my mind it weighs tons." He reached into his large bag—at sight of it Pauline had wondered why he had brought such a bag up from the hotel when his papers for her inspection were so few. He lifted out an oblong, bulky package. ...
— The Cost • David Graham Phillips
... required to register their names and destination. At the foot of the broad staircase hung the bulletin board in the pale flicker of a lowered gas-jet. The morning light was brightening through the windows beyond. Berta halted mechanically to scan the oblong of dark red in search of possible new notices. Something may have been ...
— Beatrice Leigh at College - A Story for Girls • Julia Augusta Schwartz
... of birch, or other hard wood, was set; and, in short, a roof closed on it. A straight pole was set up in the centre of this building, the upper end fixed by a wooden pin to the top of the couple, and the lower end in an oblong trink in the earth or floor; and lastly, another pole was set across horizontally, having both ends tapered, one end of which was supported in a hole in the side of the perpendicular pole, and the other end in a similar hole in the couple ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 323, July 19, 1828 • Various
... found would be almost quite suitable for my purpose, requiring but little alteration, but the large room was of course atrociously impossible in the American fashion, with unsightly walls, the floors covered with American cloth of a garish pattern, and the small, oblong tables and flimsy ...
— Ruggles of Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... varieties of Cyclamen the corolla looks at first sight as if double, and the plan of the flower is oblong or elliptical, instead of circular. In these flowers each lobe of the corolla is divided almost to the base into two lobes, so that there appear to be ten lobes to the corolla instead of five, as usual. The stamens are normal in form ...
— Vegetable Teratology - An Account of the Principal Deviations from the Usual Construction of Plants • Maxwell T. Masters
... the sun able to throw into it a few straggling beams; whilst, during the cold damps of winter, a chilling fog, which seems to penetrate everything, hangs constantly above the miry pavement of this species of oblong well. ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... "Why is symmetry so agreeable to the eye? What is symmetry? Of course it is an innate sense," I continued; "yet what is its basis? Perhaps everything in life is symmetry? But no. On the contrary, this is life"—and I drew an oblong figure on the board—"and after life the soul passes to eternity"—here I drew a line from one end of the oblong figure to the edge of the board. "Why should there not be a corresponding line on the other side? If there be an eternity on one side, there must surely ...
— Boyhood • Leo Tolstoy
... incomplete in formation; and then the red cells, which are completed by the addition of the oxygen received from air in the lungs. Fig. 49 represents part of a magnified blood-vessel, a, a, in which the round cells are the white, and the oblong the red cells, floating in the blood. Surrounding the blood- vessels are the cells forming the adjacent membrane, bb, each having a ...
— The American Woman's Home • Catherine E. Beecher and Harriet Beecher Stowe
... to these steps was oblong and little furnished. There was a hat-rack, a fireplace (in which a fire was not lit) and two pictures; one a photograph of the poor men to whom the owner paid weekly wages at his Works, all set out in a phalanx, or rather fan, with the Owner of the House (and them) in ...
— On Nothing & Kindred Subjects • Hilaire Belloc
... are oblong frames, covered with taffeta, and attached to the ends of two rods, adjusted on the shoulders The wings work up and down. Those in front are worked by the hands; those behind by the feet, which are connected with the ends of the rods by strings. The ...
— Wonderful Balloon Ascents - or, the Conquest of the Skies • Fulgence Marion
... square, which he knew by its corners; and that it was longer in one direction than it was in the other. On being desired to point to the corners, he did it with great precision and readily carried his finger in the line of its longest diameter. I then showed him a small oblong bandbox covered with red leather, which he said was red and square, and pointed at once to its four corners. After this I placed before him an oval silver box, which he said had a shining appearance, and presently afterward that it was round, because ...
— The Mind of the Child, Part II • W. Preyer
... simple inscription, "Miss Bissell," written in a crabbed, angular hand. This satisfied her that the message was not from Bud, and with trembling fingers she opened it. Inside was an oblong sheet of paper filled with the same narrow handwriting. Going to the window to catch the ...
— The Free Range • Francis William Sullivan
... the tube, M, in a particular manner, and of certain definite proportions. Fig. 3 exhibits its bore and shape in an enlarged view. A short distance below the orifice of the tube it is slightly expanded, and then gradually contracts to the place, b. It then again expands to an oblong cavity, and contracts again to a neck, e, which is a trifle wider than that at b, and which must be so situated that the column of water passing through b is exactly perpendicular to the center of the aperture at e. The tube ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 664, September 22,1888 • Various
... reached her bedroom, she carefully closed and locked the door, went to her bureau, opened the top-drawer, and took from it a small oblong mahogany glove-box. She unlocked the latter, and took out a small parcel, which she unwrapped and laid before her ...
— The Missing Bride • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... of increased importance, he moved a large oblong canvas from its hiding-place, to prop it artistically at such an angle as showed the lights and shades of its finished portion to the best advantage. Then he fell back a couple of paces, contemplating it in silence with his head ...
— M. or N. "Similia similibus curantur." • G.J. Whyte-Melville
... was alive with thaw; it was so nearly warm that a breeze drifting low along the sidewalk brought to Anthony a vision of an unhoped-for hyacinthine spring. Above in the blue oblong of sky, around them in the caress of the drifting air, the illusion of a new season carried relief from the stiff and breathed-over atmosphere they had left, and for a hushed moment the traffic sounds and the murmur of ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... of chairs are drawn up to the bedside, upon one of which stands a blown-out candle; the other supports an oblong, coffin-shaped box, narrower at one end than at the other, and painted black. Too small for a coffin, however; no human corpse, at least, is contained in it. But the frame that lies so quiet and motionless here, thrills, when awaked to life, ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne
... the barn a house of the century before last—a low, square stone house, half stripped of its ancient stucco skin, a high-roofed one-story affair, with sagging dormers peering from the slates and little oblong loop-holes under the eaves, from which the straw of birds' nests fluttered ...
— The Gay Rebellion • Robert W. Chambers
... the catastrophe," resumed Arletta, "was a small oblong continent surrounded by what are now known as the Indian and South Atlantic Oceans. It ran from north-east to southwest. Its extreme length was nine hundred and twenty-eight miles and its greatest width was three ...
— Born Again • Alfred Lawson
... transport vehicles had somewhat camouflaged themselves, having been decorated on all sides by wonderful and mystic signs, so as to show to the initiated to what unit they belonged. If you enquired you would be told that the dark blue square meant "First Line Transport," the narrow light green oblong edged with white placed on the left of this square was for the "8th Sherwood Foresters," whilst the square divided diagonally into red and green, and bordered with white, was the sign of the "46th Division." ...
— The Sherwood Foresters in the Great War 1914 - 1919 - History of the 1/8th Battalion • W.C.C. Weetman
... she rolls it up, and, embracing it with her legs, flies home with it, often appearing to have a bundle disproportionately large. Each cell is made up of a dozen or more pieces: the larger ones, those that form its walls, like the walls of a paper bag, are oblong, and are turned down at one end, so as to form the bottom; not one thickness of leaf merely, but three or four thicknesses, each fragment of leaf lapping over another. When the cell is completed, it is filled about two thirds full of bee-bread,—the ...
— The Writings of John Burroughs • John Burroughs
... end, masking a door, was a portiere, the colour of hyacinth. Near it, were two unupholstered chairs; one, white; the other, black. Save for these, save too for a succession of mirrors and of lights, the room was bare. In addition, it was spacious, a long oblong, ceiled high with light frescoes, the proper aviary ...
— The Paliser case • Edgar Saltus
... from its box by this time. It was a thick oblong locket of dead gold, plain and massive; the handsomest of its kind that a Southampton jeweller ...
— Vixen, Volume I. • M. E. Braddon
... seemed to be to maintain an area of clear air in the midst of the swirling purple vapors that pressed in against it from the top and from every side. In shape it was a great oblong cell, some fifty feet high, two hundred yards long, and about one hundred yards wide. The three ...
— Zehru of Xollar • Hal K. Wells
... Isle of Wight, and then within almost a few hours after that it spread over the whole of the south of England and over Scotland.... When the disease begins to make its appearance, the fungus produces these large oblong bodies (conidia), and the question is how these bodies are spread, and the disease scattered.... I believe that these bodies, which are produced in immense quantities, and very speedily, within a few hours after the disease attacks the potato, are ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 595, May 28, 1887 • Various
... near the window, was spread a foreign red carpet. On the side of honour, were laid deep red reclining-cushions, with dragons, with gold cash (for scales), and an oblong brown-coloured sitting-cushion with gold-cash-spotted dragons. On the two sides, stood one of a pair of small teapoys of foreign lacquer of peach-blossom pattern. On the teapoy on the left, were spread out Wen Wang tripods, spoons, chopsticks and scent-bottles. ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... extensive oblong space running along the strand, with a ditch dividing it from Strand-street. It has a border of a double row of fine flowering trees, and must be a delightful place for a stroll on ...
— Kathay: A Cruise in the China Seas • W. Hastings Macaulay
... room of one of my friends hangs a mirror. It is an oblong sheet of glass, set in a frame of dark, highly varnished wood, carved in the worst taste of the Regency period, and relieved with faded gilt. Glancing at it from a distance, you would guess the thing ...
— Noughts and Crosses • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... Edition is printed on a superior quality paper, especially made for it. The shape is oblong, and spaces are provided according to the different requirements of the ...
— Stamp Collecting as a Pastime • Edward J. Nankivell
... boxes full of snow, or at least partly full, for Tom Osby had done his best. In one of these boxes appeared the proof of Curly's truthfulness—three cans of oysters, delicacies hitherto unheard of in that land! In the other box was an object almost as unfamiliar as an oyster can,—an oblong, smooth, and now partially frost-covered object with tinfoil about its upper end. A certain tense ...
— Heart's Desire • Emerson Hough
... like the pedestal of a monument upon a plinth, rested the base of the Holy House, a structure of glassy white marble about two feet in height, with a bench of sharp inclination from the top. At intervals it was studded with massive brass rings. Upon the base the Kaaba rose, an oblong cube forty feet tall, eighteen paces lengthwise, and fourteen in breadth, shrouded all in black silk wholly unrelieved, except by one broad band of the appearance of gold, and inscriptions from the Koran, ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 1 • Lew. Wallace
... congregated especially at the east end, where the Brontes' pew still stood awaiting demolition at the hands of a reforming vicar. As David and his guide came up they found a young weaver in a black coat, with a sallow oblong face, black hair, high collars, and a general look of Lord Byron, haranguing those about him on the iniquity of removing the pews, in a passionate undertone, which occasionally rose high above the key prescribed by decorum. It was a half-baked eloquence, sadly liable to bathos, ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... group of artillery who did it. As that big oblong crowd of Turks showed their left flank to Baikie's nine batteries they were swept in enfilade by shrapnel. The fall of the shell was corrected by the two young R.A. subalterns at the front, neither of whom would observe in the usual way through his periscope. They ...
— Gallipoli Diary, Volume I • Ian Hamilton
... of which we all have heard, yet none, or but very few of us, have seen—I myself amongst the fortunate few! As a piece of furniture this hospitable, but rather primitive, piece of joinery is not of much account, the top being of plain deal (pace Thackeray's "Mahogany Tree"), oblong in shape, with rounded ends. But its associations render it a treasure among treasures, a rich and priceless gem. For at this Table nearly every man upon the Staff has, from the day it was made, sat and carved his initials upon it ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... gelatinous plants, of a screen color, growing in fresh water, composed of cells devoid of a silicious coat, of peculiar forms such as oval, crescentic, shortly cylindrical, cylindrical, oblong, etc., with variously formed rays or lobes, giving a more or less stellate form, presenting a bilateral symmetry, the junction of the halves being marked by a division of the green contents; the individual cells being free, or arranged in linear series, collected into fagot-like bundles or in elegant ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 384, May 12, 1883 • Various
... sarcophagi were generally parallel, oblong or elongated oval in shape, with an arched or angular covering and several feet. One has been found ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... hunt or during warfare he also carries a wooden shield and a steel-pointed spear from eight to ten feet in length. For attacks at a distance he depends on the spear, but in a close encounter he uses his head-ax and shield, the latter being oblong in shape and having two prongs at one end and three at the other. The two prongs are to be slipped about the neck of the victim while the head-ax does its work, or the three prongs may be slipped about the ...
— Philippine Folk Tales • Mabel Cook Cole
... flat split pieces of bamboo being fastened on top of them with chair-cane. These split pieces then form the seats of the chairs and the tops of the tables, instead of the boards and large bamboo laths used at other times. It is equally easy to make an oblong opening in a large bamboo in which to fit the ...
— The Former Philippines thru Foreign Eyes • Fedor Jagor; Tomas de Comyn; Chas. Wilkes; Rudolf Virchow.
... hatched the males seek the underside of the leaves, while the females prefer the young shoots as a place of abode. If the under surface of a leaf be examined, it will be found to be studded, particularly on its basil half, with minute yellowish-white specks of an oblong form.[1] These are the larvae of the males undergoing transformation into pupae, beneath their own skins; some of these specks are always in a more advanced state than the others, the full-grown ones being whitish and scarcely a ...
— Sketches of the Natural History of Ceylon • J. Emerson Tennent
... men, and there were elderly women, in gowns of drab or gray, with white silk shawls and black silk-covered cardboard bonnets. Here and there a man or woman was in gayer colours or wore buckles, and some had silver buttons; but these were rare. The Meeting-room was, so to speak, a large oblong box with whitewashed walls. A broad passage ran from the door to the farther end; on the right of it sat the men, on the left the women; against the remoter wall, facing the rude benches, were three rows of seats, one above the ...
— Hugh Wynne, Free Quaker • S. Weir Mitchell
... them build their nests in mud, which they fix against the shingles of our roofs, as nigh the pitch as they can. These aggregates represent nothing, at first view, but coarse and irregular lumps, but if you break them, you will observe, that the inside of them contains a great number of oblong cells, in which they deposit their eggs, and in which they bury themselves in the fall of the year. Thus immured they securely pass through the severity of that season, and on the return of the sun are enabled to perforate their cells, and to open themselves a passage from ...
— Letters from an American Farmer • Hector St. John de Crevecoeur
... inclose an oblong circle some 18 by 22 feet at the base, converging to a point at least 30 feet high, covered with buffalo-hides dressed without hair except a part of the tail switch, which floats outside like, and mingled with human scalps. The different skins ...
— An introduction to the mortuary customs of the North American Indians • H. C. Yarrow
... as if "Hollis" and "Stoughton" had been transplanted from Cambridge,—carried there in the night by orthodox angels, perhaps, like the Santa Casa. Away to my left again, but abreast of me, was the bleak, bare old Academy building; and in front of me stood unchanged the shallow oblong white house where I lived a year in the days of James Monroe ...
— Pages From an Old Volume of Life - A Collection Of Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... one of the lower rocks of Moel Gest, which, indeed, formed a side to the low, lengthy house. The materials of the cottage were the shingly stones which had fallen from above, plastered rudely together, with deep recesses for the small oblong windows. Altogether, the exterior was much ruder than Owen had expected; but inside there seemed no lack of comforts. The house was divided into two apartments, one large, roomy, and dark, into which Owen entered immediately; ...
— The Doom of the Griffiths • Elizabeth Gaskell
... tea gown. It is in two pieces. The characteristic short tunic reaches just below waist line in front and hangs in long, fine pleats (sometimes cascaded folds) under the arms, the ends of which reach below knees. The material is not cut to form sleeves; instead two oblong pieces of material are held together by small fastenings at short intervals, showing upper arm through intervening spaces. The result in appearance is similar to ...
— Woman as Decoration • Emily Burbank
... among its other uses, takes the place of the library, the selection of a suitable library table will be a good test of the homemaker's discrimination. The quality of this table should be at least equal to the best we have to show. Whether it shall be squared, or oblong with oval ends, depends upon tastes; by all means it should be get-at-able. That's what a library table is for. Good designs in "arts and crafts" may be had as low as $16.50 in a small size; 72-inch, about $50. Golden oak costs less, ...
— The Complete Home • Various
... tacking outside of us and fetching under the ship's stern. In these large canoes the paddles are of proportionate size and very clumsy—they are worked as oars with the aid of cane grommets—the sail is of the large oblong shape formerly described. One of the canoes was furnished with a small stage above the platform for the reception of a large bundle of coarse mats, six feet long and two and a half broad, made by interlacing the leaflets of the cocoa-palm; these mats are probably used in the construction ...
— Voyage Of H.M.S. Rattlesnake, Vol. 2 (of 2) • John MacGillivray
... up. It swung up on a creaking, unwilling hinge, and showed a growing oblong of dazzling daylight; and it fell back with a bang against something that kept it upright. Every one climbed out, but there was not room for every one to stand comfortably in the little paved house ...
— The Phoenix and the Carpet • E. Nesbit
... bright light, and we found ourselves in an oblong chamber, beautifully fitted up with polished woodwork, and leather-cushioned seats running round the sides. Many metallic knobs and handles ...
— A Columbus of Space • Garrett P. Serviss
... hour will be needed. Frost while hot, with one white of egg, beaten ten minutes with a small cup of sifted powdered sugar, and juice of half a lemon. This frosting hardens very quickly. Before it is quite hard, divide it into oblong or square pieces, scoring at intervals with the back of a large knife. The milk can be omitted if a richer cake is wanted. It may also be baked in jelly-cake tins; one small cocoanut grated, and mixed with one ...
— The Easiest Way in Housekeeping and Cooking - Adapted to Domestic Use or Study in Classes • Helen Campbell
... Wren," said the Doctor; "and you must be careful where you step, for this Wren knows where to put his nest safely out of the way of both House People and cats. He chooses a bunch of reeds, or a bush that is surrounded either by water or the treacherous green grass of bogs, and there weaves an oblong or globular nest from coarse grass and leaves, with a little hole on one side for a door. This done, he goes to a short distance and appoints himself day watchman to his home. If a footstep touches the grass ever so lightly, he tells his mate of it and they ...
— Citizen Bird • Mabel Osgood Wright and Elliott Coues
... of sovereign splendour in England was riding down the heavens, and drawing the royal mantle of the gold-fringed shadows over plain and wavy turf, blue water and woods of the country round Steignton. A white mansion shone to a length of oblong lake that held the sun-ball ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... three small enclosures with octagon pillars in the angles, on the top of which were formerly images of the Dog Star. Upon a stone in the middle of one of these enclosures the kings of the country have been crowned since the days of paganism; and below it is a large oblong slab of freestone, on which there is a Greek inscription, the translation of which is "Of King Ptolemy Euergetes, ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume 19 - Travel and Adventure • Various
... more was there further sight of the one-sided battle. Half a mile or more beyond the bare divide there rose against the southern sky a bold, oblong height or butte, studded with bowlders and stunted pine, and watchers at the fort became aware as the sun climbed higher that the smoke cloud, thinning gradually but perceptibly, was slowly drifting thither. The fire, too, grew faint and scattering. The war-whoops rang and re-echoed among ...
— Warrior Gap - A Story of the Sioux Outbreak of '68. • Charles King
... he followed her into the sitting-room, realised that she had all at once retreated a thousand miles away from him. He wondered what the contents of the telegram could have been. The oblong red envelope seemed to have descended suddenly between them ...
— The Moon out of Reach • Margaret Pedler
... Greenwich, and afterwards witnessed the laying of the table for her dinner. It was on Sunday. The queen was then in her sixty-fifth year, and "very majestic," as she walked in the splendid procession of barons, earls, and knights of the garter: "her face, oblong, fair, but wrinkled; her eyes small, yet black and pleasant; her nose a little hooked; her lips narrow, and her teeth black (a defect the English seem subject to from their great use of sugar). She had in her ears two pearls with very rich drops; she wore false hair, and that red; ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... said the Countess, and proceeded to unpack the provisions prepared for both couples. In one of those oblong dishes with a china hare upon the cover to indicate that a roast hare lies beneath, was a succulent selection of cold viands—brown slices of juicy venison mingled with other meats. A delicious square of gruyere cheese wrapped in ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 1 (of 8) - Boule de Suif and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... weeks nearly every nut produced a sapling. I kept them well cultivated the whole summer, and in the Fall the seedlings were from six to eight inches tall. The nuts on the Kozak farm were of different varieties; some were small, some large, some were round, some oblong, some paper-thin-shelled, some hard shelled; some varieties had sweet kernels, some had a little slightly bitter taste, some were flat. According to their variety the bark of the seedlings, some of them at least, was shiny brown, while other varieties ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the 43rd Annual Meeting - Rockport, Indiana, August 25, 26 and 27, 1952 • Various
... peonies and at first thought they were roses. The buds look almost like the buds of our big white roses and they are very fragrant. The peony beds are laid out in terraces held in place by brick walls, usually oblong or oval, something like a huge pudding mold on a table. Other times they are planted on the flat and surrounded by bamboo fences of fancy design and geometrical pattern, usually with a square form to include each division. The inner ...
— Letters from China and Japan • John Dewey
... gridiron top, only safe for shoeless feet, and Mr. Hawley and I went up to the fort by steps cut in the earth. There are fine mango-trees on the slopes, said to have been planted by the Dutch two centuries ago. The fort is nearly oblong, and has a wall of stones and earth round it, in which, near the entrance, some of the Dutch brickwork is still visible. The trees round it are much tattered and torn by English shell. In front of the entrance there is a large flat stone on a rude support. On this a young girl was sacrificed ...
— The Golden Chersonese and the Way Thither • Isabella L. Bird (Mrs. Bishop)
... somewhat older than itself! The limestone existed, he holds, as but a mere unformed pulp at the time the intertropical animals came floating northwards: they sank into it; the gasses evolved during putrefaction blew up the plastic lime above them into a great oblong bubble, somewhat as a glass-blower blows up a bottle; and hence the Kirkdale cavern, with its gnawed bones and its amazing number of teeth. And certainly a geologic argument of this ingenious character ...
— The Testimony of the Rocks - or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed • Hugh Miller
... to another part of the laboratory, and presently returned with two objects, one oblong and shallow, the other deep and square, which on being set down before Mr. Tertius proved to be glass boxes, wonderfully and delicately made, with removable lids that ...
— The Herapath Property • J. S. Fletcher
... platform, adjoining each other. The larger, a, is twenty feet in height, the lower, b, about fifteen feet. Their sides are oriented exactly to the true north. A section is shown in Fig. 5, g. Two small oblong mounds, c and d, about six feet high, and a square altar-like heap, f, appear to be in relation to the group. Numerous pieces of mortar and terra cotta occur in the vicinity, and 1500 feet directly west there is a ...
— The Battle and the Ruins of Cintla • Daniel G. Brinton
... share go under in his time, lying around him field after field. Holy fields. More room if they buried them standing. Sitting or kneeling you couldn't. Standing? His head might come up some day above ground in a landslip with his hand pointing. All honeycombed the ground must be: oblong cells. And very neat he keeps it too: trim grass and edgings. His garden Major Gamble calls Mount Jerome. Well, so it is. Ought to be flowers of sleep. Chinese cemeteries with giant poppies growing produce the best opium Mastiansky told me. The Botanic ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... the edge of one of these rock clearings. For the first time in weeks it had stopped raining, although the sun was still obscured. Dimly on the horizon could be seen the first of the foothills. Here they gathered some of the giant, oblong fungus that early explorers had taken for blocks of porous stone because of their size and weight, and, by dint of the plentiful application of fire pellets, managed to set it ablaze. The heat added nothing to their comfort, but ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, August 1930 • Various
... Italy. Feeling still disinclined for sleep, he lit a single candle and began to turn over some of the musical works which Mr. Gaskell had left on the table. His attention was especially attracted to an oblong book, bound in soiled vellum, with a coat of arms stamped in gilt upon the side. It was a manuscript copy of some early suites by Graziani for violin and harpsichord, and was apparently written at Naples in the year 1744, many ...
— The Lost Stradivarius • John Meade Falkner
... it was in this condition, and found, on examining it in a dark place, that the little creatures "could be distinctly seen emitting a bright speck of light. Sometimes this was like a sudden flash, at others appearing like an oblong or round luminous point, which continued bright for a short time, like a lamp lit beneath the water and moving through it, still possessing its definite shape, and then suddenly disappearing. When the bucket was sharply struck on the outside, there would appear at once a great ...
— The Ocean and its Wonders • R.M. Ballantyne
... thin cake of unleavened bread, fried with ghee, pounded and again made up into an oblong form with fresh bread, sugar and spices, and again fried with ghee. Krisara is a kind of liquid food made of milk, sesame, rice, sugar, and spices. Sashkuli is a kind of pie. Payasa is rice boiled ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... the carpenters and masons made much improvement, especially when, instead of flint hatchets, they had iron axes and tools. Then they hewed down trees, that had thick cross branches and set up columns in the center, and made timber walls and rafters. Then the house was square or oblong. In other words, the Cymric folks squared ...
— Welsh Fairy Tales • William Elliot Griffis
... of such animals. The tips of the ears, feet, and tail are red. Rows of red strokes, alternating with black, extend in a broad stripe from the point of the nose to the base of the neck. Red panels, inclosing rows of red dots and enframed by black lines, cross the back. On the sides we have oblong spaces filled in with the conventional devices so common in other animal representations. The legs are striped and dotted after the ...
— Ancient art of the province of Chiriqui, Colombia • William Henry Holmes
... a small insectivorous plant, Pinguicula vulgaris, which grows in wet, boggy land. It is a herb with a rosette of fleshy, oblong leaves, 1 to 3 in. long, appressed to the ground, of a pale colour and with a sticky surface. Small insects settle on the leaves and are caught in the viscid excretion. This, like the excretion of the sundew and other insectivorous plants, ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... The great, oblong, many-windowed carriage manufactories meet one at every turn, and often the smithy stands near with its clangor. This business used to be confined to West Amesbury, now Merrimac. At the beginning of the century it was started ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 6 • Various
... of their architecture. The first, or nomad, is the hide or mat thrown over a bush or a few standing sticks; then comes the cylinder, the round hovel of the northern and southern regions, with the extinguisher or the oven-shaped thatch-roof; and, lastly, the square or oblong form which marks growing civilisation. The American missionaries laboured strenuously to build St. Mark's Hospital and Church, the latter a very creditable piece of lumber-work, with 500 seats in nave and aisles. But now everything hereabouts is 'down in its luck.' This puerile copy, ...
— To The Gold Coast for Gold, Vol. II - A Personal Narrative • Richard Francis Burton and Verney Lovett Cameron
... from each other, or their position in any particular direction. Neither is there any proportion as to their size; some being large and commodious, from forty to fifty feet long, and twenty or thirty broad, while others of them are mere hovels. Their figure is not unlike oblong corn or hay-stacks; or, perhaps, a better idea may be conceived of them, if we suppose the roof of a barn placed on the ground, in such a manner as to form a high, acute ridge, with two very low sides hardly discernible at a distance. The gable at each end corresponding to the sides, makes these ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 16 • Robert Kerr
... ago The Dong was happy and gay, Till he fell in love with a Jumbly Girl Who came to those shores one day. For the Jumblies came in a sieve, they did,— Landing at eve near the Zemmery Fidd Where the Oblong Oysters grow, And the rocks are smooth and gray. And all the woods and the valleys rang With the Chorus they daily and nightly sang,— "Far and few, far and few, Are the lands where the Jumblies live; Their heads are green, and their ...
— Nonsense Books • Edward Lear
... the few yards of road which we had climbed; our boat lay at anchor under the rock in the last of all the compartments of the lake, a small oblong pool, almost shut up within itself, as several others had appeared to be, by jutting points of rock; the termination of a long out-shooting of the water, pushed up between the steps of the main shore where the huts stand, and a broad promontory which, with ...
— Recollections of a Tour Made in Scotland A.D. 1803 • Dorothy Wordsworth
... before two men, whose naked swords plainly intimate the consequences of any attempt to give alarm, or to offer resistance to their demands, have apparently been collecting all the money in the house and are laying it before the thieves. The oblong boxes are iron safes, in which the Japanese keep ...
— Sketches of Japanese Manners and Customs • J. M. W. Silver
... like magic. But from aloft Chris saw the trick and how the camouflage was worked. What appeared to be a slice of the jungle roof was, in reality, a metal framework cunningly plastered with layers of green growth. An oblong, some fifty by a hundred feet, it parted in the middle like a bridge that opens to let a steamer through, revealing the lair ...
— Raiders Invisible • Desmond Winter Hall
... then? We are no better off than before. Here is an empty oblong, eight or nine inches wide by sixteen inches high. You're not going to pretend that a woman can slip through an opening which would not admit the thinnest child ...
— The Crystal Stopper • Maurice LeBlanc
... their pride to strike awe into the visitor by the extent of accommodation afforded to their followers: some seated on benches of stone ranged along the walls; some grouped in the centre of the court; some lying at length upon the two oblong patches of what had been turf, till worn away by frequent feet,—this domestic army filled the young Nevile with an admiration far greater than the gay satins of the knights and nobles who had gathered round the lord of Montagu and Northumberland ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... curio-shop there, looking over some Algerian and Moorish tilings, when my attention was attracted by a sort of charm or pendant that hung in a glass case. It was not particularly beautiful, but its appearance was quaint and curious, and took my fancy. It consisted of an oblong block of ebony in which was set a single pear-shaped pearl more than three-quarters of an inch long. The sides of the ebony block were lacquered—probably to conceal a joint—and bore a number of Chinese characters, and at the top was a little gold image with a hole through it, presumably ...
— John Thorndyke's Cases • R. Austin Freeman
... Alice was now imprisoned formed part of the upper story of a building erected by Hamilton in one of the four angles of the stockade. It had no windows and but two oblong port-holes made to accommodate a small swivel, which stood darkly scowling near the middle of the floor. From one of these apertures Alice could see the straggling roofs and fences of the dreary little town, while from the other a long reach ...
— Alice of Old Vincennes • Maurice Thompson
... cylinder by an oblong deal-box, in such a manner that the cylinder could turn water-tight in the centre of the box, while the borer was pressed against the bottom of the cylinder. The box was filled with water until the entire ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: - Invention and Discovery • Various
... the blue sky looms the guillotine by the Barriere du Trone. Turn to that time-worn building, once the church and the convent of the Freres-Precheurs, known by the then holy name of Jacobins; there the new Jacobins hold their club. There, in that oblong hall, once the library of the peaceful monks, assemble the idolaters of St. Robespierre. Two immense tribunes, raised at either end, contain the lees and dregs of the atrocious populace,—the majority of that audience consisting of the furies of the guillotine ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... to take the public by storm with his "New and Sure Cure for Dyspepsia," Fink & Co. put a colored poster as large as a dining table on every wall and high fence below Sixty-first street; small oblong bills every ten feet along the curbstones of Broadway, Bowery, Wall street, Fulton street, Cortlandt street, and Third, Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, Eighth, Madison, and Lexington Avenues; besides throwing cheap ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... family of Versailles never worshipped more comfortably than did the Vice-Chancellor and heads of houses, in their beautiful armchairs, and the doctors sitting on the tiers of seats behind them. In this worship of the pulpit, the altar was quite disregarded.... The church thus became an oblong box, with the organ at the end, the Throne at the other, ...
— Beautiful Britain—Cambridge • Gordon Home |
