"Overhead" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... out along the Bois, the leaves were overhead, And I saw a regiment of the line that swung in blue and red; The youth of things, the joy of things, they made my heart to beat, And the quick-step lilting and the tramp of feet! Flic flac, flic flac, ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, September 9, 1914 • Various
... from my grandfather's house was very grand. Standing up, right opposite, was the steep Castle rock, with its crown buildings and circular battery towering high overhead. They seemed almost to hang over the verge of the rock. The houses on the opposite side of the Grassmarket were crowded under the esplanade ...
— James Nasmyth's Autobiography • James Nasmyth
... a clear night overhead, and the stars were shining. Orion in particular was making the most of his bright belt and golden sword. But the moon was only a poor thin crescent. There was just one great, jagged, black and gray cloud in the sky, ...
— At the Back of the North Wind • George MacDonald
... large square room, with brick floor, rough shack walls and smoky rafters overhead from which pended strings of garlic, red peppers and herbs. The light was supplied ostensibly by two tallow dips, but in reality by the glowing wood embers of the great open stove bricked into one ...
— The Four Pools Mystery • Jean Webster
... have a beauty of their own, those great fens," he said, "a beauty of the sea, of boundless expanse and freedom. Overhead the arch of heaven spreads more ample than elsewhere, and that vastness gives such cloud-lands, such sunrises, such sunsets, as can be seen ...
— Immortal Memories • Clement Shorter
... shutting a door and withdrawing into privacy. He lit his pipe, hesitated a moment, then went to lie down under her room. Now he no longer saw her, but he heard her movements overhead. The dry brushwood crackled as she lay down, as she settled herself. She was lying surely at full length. He guessed that she had stretched out her arms and put her two hands under her head. She sighed. Below he ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens
... the foot of the Snowdon range. Meadows and woods embower Llanystumdwy. Rushing through the village a rock-strewn stream pours down from the mountains to the sea, with the trees on its banks locking their branches overhead in an irregular green archway. Look westward to the coast from Llanystumdwy and you have in Carnavon Bay one of the finest seascapes in Britain. Turn to the east, and the rising mountains culminate in the white summit of Snowdon and other giant peaks stretching upward through the clouds. ...
— Lloyd George - The Man and His Story • Frank Dilnot
... ranged, or all day long Sat often in the seaward-gazing gorge, A shipwreck'd sailor, waiting for a sail: No sail from day to day, but every day The sunrise broken into scarlet shafts Among the palms and ferns and precipices; The blaze upon the waters to the east; The blaze upon his island overhead; The blaze upon the waters to the west; Then the great stars that globed themselves in Heaven, The hollower-bellowing ocean, and again The scarlet ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... the moment that Nancy's disturbed fancies had taken the form of a resolution Billie and Mary opened their eyes on a world of velvety blackness. Straight overhead through the lacework of intertwined boughs gleamed an occasional tiny star, like the light shining through a pin prick in a black curtain. Scarcely two hours had passed since they had slipped into the unknown, and now sitting up and rubbing their eyes, they wondered where ...
— The Motor Maids in Fair Japan • Katherine Stokes
... locally of Joanna was full of profound suggestions to a heart that listened for the stealthy steps of change and fear that too surely were in motion. But if the place were grand, the times, the burthen of the times, was far more so. The air overhead in its upper chambers were hurtling with the obscure sound; was dark with sullen fermenting of storms that had been gathering for a hundred and thirty years. The battle of Agincourt in Joanna's childhood had ...
— Miscellaneous Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... were progressing through the nave of a mighty church with a muted organ in the distance. There was animal life too, a strange lizard-like bird that rose up in flocks ahead of us and flew screaming overhead. ...
— The Long Voyage • Carl Richard Jacobi
... nearly took the masts out of the vessel. It was my watch below when the gale came on, and I was awoke by the terrific blows which the schooner received on her bows; and what with the darkness and the confusion caused by the noise of the sea and the rattling of the blocks aloft, the stamp of feet overhead, and the creaking of the bulk-heads, I fully believed the ship was going down, and that my last moment had come. I thought of my poor old grandmother's warnings, and I would have given anything if I could have recalled my oath and found myself ...
— Will Weatherhelm - The Yarn of an Old Sailor • W.H.G. Kingston
... the forest and deep, and overhead Hang stars like seeds of light In vain, though not since they were sown was bred ...
— Last Poems • Edward Thomas
... wavering, silver-plated wave-guide tube of the radar suddenly steadied. It ceased to hunt restlessly among all places overhead for a tiny object headed for Earth. It stopped dead. It pointed, trembling a little as if with eagerness. It pointed somewhere east of due south, and ...
— Long Ago, Far Away • William Fitzgerald Jenkins AKA Murray Leinster
... blue as the summer sea, The depths were cloudless overhead; The air was calm as it could be; There was no sight or sound ...
— Molly Bawn • Margaret Wolfe Hamilton
... been wafted to his ears, but certain it was, that in place of a living occupant of flesh and blood, nothing but the wavering shadow of an ancient high-backed chair near the fire—which cast a faint and uncertain light through the apartment—met the eyes of the angry lieutenant. A heavy step overhead announced that he had just retired to his sleeping-room. Thus was the now greatly increased curiosity of the smoking club doomed to receive an unexpected check. The stranger was evidently no ordinary person—the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 579 - Volume 20, No. 579, December 8, 1832 • Various
... how the overhead train at the Morningside curve Loops like a sea-born dragon its sinuous flight. Loops in the night in and out, high up in the air, Like a serpent of stars with the coil and ...
— America To-day, Observations and Reflections • William Archer
... near quarrelling. He said the pleasantest manner of spending a hot July day was lying from morning till evening on a bank of heath in the middle of the moors, with the bees humming dreamily about among the bloom, and the larks singing high up overhead, and the blue sky and bright sun shining steadily and cloudlessly. That was his most perfect idea of heaven's happiness: mine was rocking in a rustling green tree, with a west wind blowing, and bright white clouds flitting rapidly above; and not only larks, ...
— Wuthering Heights • Emily Bronte
... their dinner, of which happily there was enough (although the suite was unexpected owing to my not having received a letter giving details), chatting and laughing afterwards till half-past eight, when they walked in darkness, and strange to say, mud! but with glorious stars overhead, the five minute' distance to their hotel, accompanied by Agatha and me. The drive to Bordighera next morning was the pleasantest part of the visit to us all—John, Princess Louis, and Prince Albert in their carriage, Crown Princess, Agatha, and I in ours. It is wonderful to hear ...
— Lady John Russell • Desmond MacCarthy and Agatha Russell
... passed. They are in the vast barricaded and partitioned space, already humming with the talk and tread of thousands,—the 'Tu es Petrus' overhead. Reggie Brooklyn would have hurried them on in the general rush for the tribunes. But Mrs. Burgoyne laid a restraining hand upon him. 'No—we mustn't separate,' she said, gently peremptory. And for a few minutes Mr. Reggie in an anguish ...
— Eleanor • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... newly-cut wheat-fields beat against our faces with a steady glare, and dipped into a cool, green, shady hollow where cows cropped the rich grass or stood knee-deep in the water of a little stream. Well they might stand in quiet contentment: a king might have envied them their surroundings. Overhead rose a dozen or more of the tallest and finest elms we had ever seen, stretching their thick branches till they met and formed a canopy so dense that only a stray sunbeam or two pierced through and fell upon the smooth green sward. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 26, July 1880. • Various
... sow entered into conversation with our interpreter, during which she told him that she was overhead and ears in love with me. He comforted her in the best manner he could, and promised her his support and aid; then he turned himself towards me and endeavored to persuade me to be easy; but when he observed that his flattering and arguments were vain, he advised ...
— Niels Klim's journey under the ground • Baron Ludvig Holberg
... away to see if all the preparations had been made to carry the wounded man. In less than twenty minutes, and with that marvellous skill which is one of the characteristic features of good sailors, a solid litter had been constructed; the bottom formed a real mattress of dry leaves; and overhead a kind of screen had been made of larger leaves. When they put Daniel in, the pain caused him to utter a low cry of pain. This was the first sign of life he ...
— The Clique of Gold • Emile Gaboriau
... across the Channel—a new Channel, peopled only with war-ships of every kind, from grim Dreadnoughts to submarines; with aircraft, bearing the red, white and blue circles of Britain, floating and circling overhead. Last time Cecilia had crossed, it had been with Aunt Margaret on a big turbine mail boat; they had reached Calais just as an excursion steamer from Margate came up, gay with flags and light dresses, with a band ...
— Back To Billabong • Mary Grant Bruce
... something Miss Celia said, a tart lay unguarded upon his plate, Sanch looked at Thorny, who was watching him, Thorny nodded, Sanch gave one wink, bolted the tart, and then gazed pensively up at a sparrow swinging on a twig overhead. ...
— St. Nicholas, Vol. 5, No. 5, March, 1878 • Various
... lay back in the comfortable seats, content to listen to the music of the birds overhead, and follow aimlessly the conversation between Bishop and Harding. The cider from the sacred cask had bridged the years which separated them from boyhood days back in ...
— John Henry Smith - A Humorous Romance of Outdoor Life • Frederick Upham Adams
... patent shoes, to the white bow which floated on the top of her lace parasol; a perfectly dressed, perfectly turned out woman. She had, too, the lazy confident air of a woman sure of herself and her friends. She knew nothing of the look which flashed down upon her from the window overhead. ...
— The Malefactor • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... Overhead vultures circled; a stein-adler, cleaving the blue, looked down where the surf made a thin white line along the coast, then set his ...
— The Dark Star • Robert W. Chambers
... the indigenes, few and far apart outside of Puforatoai, seemed to be set in terraces cut at the foot of the mountains which rose almost straight from the streak of golden sand to the skies. In every shade of green, as run by the overhead sun upon the altering facets of precipice and shelf, of fei and cocoa, candlenut and purau, giant ferns and convolvulus, tier upon tier, was a riot of richest vegetation. But everywhere in the lagoon were bristling and hiding dangers ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien
... garden, with the meadows beyond the village road, lay in that sweet September hush of sunlight and mellow color that seemed to embalm the house in peace. From the farm beyond the stable-yard came the crowing of a cock, followed by the liquid chuckle of a pigeon perched somewhere overhead among the twisted chimneys. And within this room all was equally at peace. The sunshine lay on table and polished floor, barred by the mullions of the windows, and stained here and there by the little ...
— The Necromancers • Robert Hugh Benson
... to this view for a time, as the lightning blazed from sky to earth, and the thunder cracked and roared overhead. The rain poured in such torrents that he feared Perkins might be drowned in the grave where he had been placed. As for Aun' Jinkey, she stared at her unexpected visitors in speechless perplexity and terror until the fury of the tempest had passed, their voices could ...
— Miss Lou • E. P. Roe
... not be repeated here. Suffice it that as the wine went round he heard enough to acquaint him with the characters and designs of those whose conversation he overhead; to possess him with the full extent of Ralph's villainy, and the real reason of his own presence being required in London. He heard all this and more. He heard his sister's sufferings derided, and her virtuous conduct jeered at and ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... I tell you, Charley, never despair! no matter how dark the cloud is overhead, work on, and look up; the sun will shine through, by and by;—it did ...
— Little Ferns For Fanny's Little Friends • Fanny Fern
... came overhead, hovering a moment, and a pair of the great bird-lizards dropped upon the middle of the heap. Hooting savagely, with wings half uplifted, they struck about them with their terrible beaks till they had ...
— In the Morning of Time • Charles G. D. Roberts
... sweeping there has been! For the pigeons didn't scrub their house (I think they all forgot), And the fairies like their home so scrup'lous clean; There are fairy dusters hanging from the sumach as you pass; Tiny drops are dripping still from overhead; Broken fairy-brooms are lying near the fir-tree on the grass, Though the fairies went an ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Apr 2, 1919 • Various
... Dainty Chase were parted in long, gasping breaths; the blue eyes were dilated in a blank and straining gaze. She rose slowly, staggeringly, to her feet, and as the black clouds parted overhead, and the full moon glimmered through, flooding the wet earth with splendor, as though diamonds strewed every blade of grass, she stepped, slowly, falteringly, down to the road, dragging her drenched body along aimlessly toward the open country ...
— Dainty's Cruel Rivals - The Fatal Birthday • Mrs. Alex McVeigh Miller
... Aristocracy, nor Yeomanry Captains cultivating milk-white mustachios, nor the perpetual racket, and "dinner at eight o'clock," could altogether countervail the fact that green Earth was around one and unadulterated sky overhead, and the voice of waters and birds,—not the foolish speech of Cockneys at all times!—On the last morning, as Richard and I drove off towards the railway, your Letter came in, just in time; and Richard, who loves you well, hearing from whom it was, asked with such an air ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, - 1834-1872, Vol. I • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... yellow of gorse and broom, and edged round with the delicate greys and silver and green of the young birch trees. Tiny blue and brown butterflies fluttered above the fronds of heather, revelling in the sunlight, and overhead the larks were singing as only larks can sing. It was a day ...
— The Toys of Peace • Saki
... they had passed together down a walk called the tunnel walk, on account of the arching boughs of the lime-trees that interlaced themselves overhead. At the end of this avenue, and on the borders of the lake, there stood an enormous but still growing oak, known as Caresfoot's Staff. It was the old squire's favourite tree, and the best topped piece of timber for many ...
— Dawn • H. Rider Haggard
... world of civilization and Christianity which he was organizing in that tropic wilderness. I listened with a dim jealous understanding—not of the words, but of the facts. I saw them instinctively, as in a dream. She pointed up to me in terror and disgust, as I sat gnashing and gibbering overhead. He threw up the muzzle of his rifle carelessly, and fired—I fell dead, but conscious still. I knew that my carcase was carried to the settlement; and I watched while a smirking, chuckling surgeon dissected me, ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al
... that it's going to have anything to do with it," came the answer; "but we want to know every little point as we go on. And Bob, just remember that the wind was coming out of the Southeast; and a clear sky overhead!" ...
— The Saddle Boys of the Rockies - Lost on Thunder Mountain • James Carson
... the way and making a vista, at the end of which was the brown door of the parsonage. Always that was a pleasant view to Matilda, for she associated the brown door with a great many things; however, this day she did not seek the old knocker which hung temptingly overhead, but sheered off and went round to the back of the house; and there entered at once, and without knocking, upon Miss Redwood's premises. They were in order; nobody ever saw the parsonage kitchen otherwise; and Miss Redwood was sitting in ...
— What She Could • Susan Warner
... strange; it seemed as if her father must both get down with her from the carriage and come to meet her from the house. Her glance involuntarily took in the familiar masses and details; the patches of short tough grass mixed with decaying chips and small weeds underfoot, and the spacious June sky overhead; the fine network and blisters of the cracking and warping white paint on the clapboarding, and the hills beyond the bulks of the village houses and trees; the woodshed stretching with its low board arches to the barn, and the milk-pans ...
— Annie Kilburn - A Novel • W. D. Howells
... rattled back to Estcourt through the twilight; and the long car, crowded with brown-clad soldiers who sprawled smoking on the floor or lounged against the sides, the rows of loopholes along the iron walls, the black smoke of the engine bulging overhead, the sense of headlong motion, and the atmosphere of war made the volunteer seem perhaps more than he was; and I thought him a true and valiant man, who had come forward in time of trouble quietly and soberly ...
— London to Ladysmith via Pretoria • Winston Spencer Churchill
... Bob!" cried Lennox, for the firing from the farther bank suddenly ceased, and the rustling and cracking of twigs somewhere overhead told that the fresh ...
— The Kopje Garrison - A Story of the Boer War • George Manville Fenn
... category the emotion belonged. They were alone. Stifford had gone for the half-holiday. Darius, sickly, would certainly not come near. The printers were working as usual in their place, and the clanking whirr of a treadle-machine overhead agitated the ceiling. But nobody would enter the shop. His excitement increased, but did not define itself. There was a sudden roar in ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... A nightingale, close overhead, burst into a peal of song, repeating his one favourite note, which seemed to her to cry out "Although my heart is broke, broke, broke, broke." The tears rushed into her eyes, but at a noise as of opening doors or windows at the house, terror mastered her again, and she hurried on to ...
— Love and Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... had betaken herself and her disgust to the edge of the woods. She was so very miserable that she didn't know herself and she knew herself less than ever in this next act. Alone in the woods, as she thought, with only moss underfoot and high green boughs overhead, Elliott lifted her foot and deliberately and with vehemence stamped it. "I don't like things!" she whispered, a little shocked at her own words. "I don't ...
— The Camerons of Highboro • Beth B. Gilchrist
... neighbourhood of Oxford is low and flat, and except where a few lights marked the outskirts of the city a wall of darkness shut them in, permitting nothing to be seen that lay more than a few paces away. A grey drift of clouds, luminous in comparison with the gloom about them, moved slowly overhead, and out of the night the raving of a farm-dog or the creaking of a dry bough came to ...
— The Castle Inn • Stanley John Weyman
... rejoicing that my predecessor had been so fond of farming that he had rented land in the neighbourhood of the vicarage, and built this large barn, of which I could make a hall to entertain my friends. The night was frosty—the stars shining brilliantly overhead—so that, especially for country people, there was little danger in the short passage to be made to it from the house. But, if necessary, I resolved to have a covered-way built before next time. For how can a ...
— Annals of a Quiet Neighbourhood • George MacDonald
... for Labrador, flying against the stiff gale with reefed wings, or else circling round first, with all their paddles briskly moving, just over the surf, to reconnoitre you before they leave these parts; gulls wheeling overhead, muskrats swimming for dear life, wet and cold, with no fire to warm them by that you know of; their labored homes rising here and there like haystacks; and countless mice and moles and winged titmice along the sunny windy shore; ...
— A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers • Henry David Thoreau
... weekly boats). They come on board and find their forecastle just as the last crew left it, full of a week's filth,[2] possibly lumbered up with hauling lines and what-not, wanting painting badly, and often showing unmistakable signs of overhead leakage. This is quite enough to make a respectable man discontented, and naturally so. In common fairness, the often wretched place that the men have to occupy ought to be put in decent order to receive the new crew. Again, they should be distinctly ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 832, December 12, 1891 • Various
... proceed to the burial of the hinder part of the Mole; they twitch and jerk it now in this direction, now in that. Nothing comes of it; the thing refuses to give. A fresh sortie is made by one of them to discover what is happening overhead. The second ligature is perceived, is severed in turn, and henceforth the work proceeds as well as ...
— The Wonders of Instinct • J. H. Fabre
... airport. They roared through the gateway and directly out upon the darkened field. Something bellowed and raced down a runway and took to the air. Other things followed it. They gained altitude and circled back overhead. Tiny bluish flickerings moved across the overcast sky. ...
— The Invaders • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... gave any woman a son like him," said she as the sound of Joe's steps fell quiet overhead, "and I've sold him into slavery and bondage, just to save my own unworthy, coward'y, ...
— The Bondboy • George W. (George Washington) Ogden
... High overhead the windless air Throbbed with the homesick coursing cry Of swallows that did everywhere Wake echo ...
— Collected Poems 1901-1918 in Two Volumes - Volume I. • Walter de la Mare
... the room without taking the least notice of either of them, whether he saw them or not; and they heard him go upstairs, and shut the door, and then his footsteps overhead. ...
— The Camera Fiend • E.W. Hornung
... laterally, for instance; while that part of an exercise which exerts a pressure against the walls of the chest should be accompanied by exhalation, as for example, lowering arms laterally from shoulders or overhead. ...
— Manual of Military Training - Second, Revised Edition • James A. Moss
... Bertha had shot its bolt, that was the end of it. Whomever it hit was hurt, but after that the steel fragments of the shell lay on the ground harmless and inert. The men in the dugouts could hear the shells whistle overhead without alarm. But the poison gas could penetrate where the rifle ball could not. The malignant molecules seemed to search out their victims. They crept through the crevices of the subterranean shelters. They hunted for the pinholes in the face ...
— Creative Chemistry - Descriptive of Recent Achievements in the Chemical Industries • Edwin E. Slosson
... suddenly that it looked like a lake. The country, for miles about, was threaded by little streams of water: which of them were sea making up, and which were river coming down, it was hard to tell. In early morning they were blue as the sky overhead; at sunset they glowed like a fiery net, suddenly flung over the grasses and rushes. Great flocks of marsh birds dwelt year after year in these cool, green labyrinths, and made no small part of the changeful beauty of the picture, ...
— Hetty's Strange History • Anonymous
... to churn the butter; but when he had churned a while he got thirsty, and went down to the cellar to tap a barrel of ale. So, just when he had knocked in the bung, and was putting the tap into the cask, he heard overhead the pig come into the kitchen. Then off he ran up the cellar steps, with the tap in his hand, as fast as he could, to look after the pig, lest it should upset the churn; but when he got up, and saw the pig had already knocked the churn over, and stood there, routing and grunting amongst ...
— Childhood's Favorites and Fairy Stories - The Young Folks Treasury, Volume 1 • Various
... of the gate I rode through on the roan that's long dead,— I remember the dawn was but pale, and the stars overhead; Of the babe that is grown to a maid, and of Martha, my wife, And the spring on the wolds far away, and gave thanks ...
— Ride to the Lady • Helen Gray Cone
... occasion we rolled back the Brussels carpet, brought in the maids and one or two friends of Tiare's, and danced, though now to the wheezy music of a gramaphone. On the verandah the air was scented with the heavy perfume of the tiare, and overhead the Southern Cross shone in ...
— The Moon and Sixpence • W. Somerset Maugham
... the weedy mussels Crusting the wrecked and rotting hulls, Hear once again the hungry crying Overhead, ...
— Second April • Edna St. Vincent Millay
... shepherds, calling in their flocks as they trooped homewards to their mountain villages, sent up plaintive echoes which moaned through those rocky and lonely steeps; the stars began to glimmer in the purple heavens spread serenely overhead and the faint crescent of the moon, which had peered for some time scarce visible in the azure, gleamed out more brilliantly at every moment, until it blazed as if in triumph at the sun's retreat. 'Tis a ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray
... the ear of the wayfarer as the shades of evening deepen into night, one of the commonest is a rather faint chirping noise which comes mysteriously from overhead. On looking up in search of the source of this peculiar sound, we may see a small, dark, shadow-like creature sweeping to and fro with great rapidity. It is one of the curious groups of animals called Bats, representatives of which are to be met with ...
— A Book of Natural History - Young Folks' Library Volume XIV. • Various
... answered; and without more he saw his ally glide away and disappear in the darkness. A cautious word set the troop in motion, and a very few minutes saw them standing on the edge of the moat, the outline of the gateway tower looming above them, a shade darker than the wrack of clouds which overhead raced silently across the sky. A moment of suspense while one and another shivered—for there is that in a night attack which touches the nerves of the stoutest—and the planks were found, and as quietly as possible laid across the moat. This was so ...
— In Kings' Byways • Stanley J. Weyman
... further weariness of the flesh. Rachel put down her cup and leant forward with curiously expectant eyes. They were sitting in the cool, square hall, with doors shut or open upon every hand, and the gilded gallery overhead. Statuettes and ferns, all reflected in the highly polished marble floor, added a theatrical touch which was not out of keeping with a ...
— The Shadow of the Rope • E. W. Hornung
... of the gothic pillars and arches springing from the green turf, the large carved window empty of glass, the broken walls; and looking up to the blue sky, she tried to imagine the time when the gothic roof closed overhead, and music sounded through the arches, and trains of stoled monks paced through them, where now the very pavement was not. Strange it seemed, and hard, to go back and realise it; but in the midst ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Susan Warner
... so fresh and invigorating as that of the Sussex Downs; no turf so springy to the feet as their soft greensward. A flight of larks flies past us, and a cloud of mingled rooks and starlings wheel overhead.... The fairies still haunt this spot, and hold their midnight revels upon it, as yon dark rings testify. The common folk hereabouts term the good people 'Pharisees' and style these emerald circles ...
— Seaward Sussex - The South Downs from End to End • Edric Holmes
... the cellar-stairs, with a lighted candle, after some butter for tea, spied the beautiful rolls swinging overhead. What possessed her to, she could not herself have told—she certainly had no wish to injure Mrs. Dorcas' wicks—but she pinched up a little end of the fluffy flax and touched her candle to it. She thought she would see how ...
— The Adventures of Ann - Stories of Colonial Times • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... resign themselves passively to the wind; or, again sailing high and level far above the mountain's peak, no bluster and haste, but as stated, occasionally a terrible earnestness and speed. Fire at one as he sails overhead and, unless wounded badly, he will not change ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs
... rapt fancy through the gulfs of hell: Struck with contagion, kindling fancy hears The songs of heaven, the music of the spheres! Borne on Newtonian wing, through air she flies, Where other suns to other systems rise. These front the scene conspicuous; overhead Albion's proud oak his filial branches spread: 830 While on the sea-beat shore obsequious stood, Beneath their feet, the father of the flood: Here the bold native of her cliffs above, Perch'd by the martial ...
— The Poetical Works of Beattie, Blair, and Falconer - With Lives, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Rev. George Gilfillan [Ed.]
... from the bench, he took out the half-completed tangle of wires, and by the light of a small flashlight, he peered into the maze, trying to figure out where Roger had left off. He had traced the connections and was about to go to work when suddenly the overhead light was switched on, bathing the storeroom in light. Jeff whirled around to see Vidac, standing in the open hatch, ...
— The Space Pioneers • Carey Rockwell
... closed. She meant to have given the note to Petty directly after luncheon. How provoking! Maybe Petty had seen her catch it up and had come for it herself. She would go and ask her. As she turned to make her intention known to the others there was a snap overhead. The heat had burned Aileen's string before the fudge had begun to boil and pail and contents descended upon the study table with a rattle and splash, the hot mass scattering in ...
— A Dixie School Girl • Gabrielle E. Jackson
... Crash overhead! a window smashed aie! aie! clatter! clatter! screams of infantine rage and feminine remonstrance, feet pattering, and a general hullabaloo, cut the soft recital in two. The ladies clasped hands, like ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade
... family; and there George Stephenson was born, the second of a family of six children, on the 9th of June, 1781. The apartment is now, what it was then, an ordinary labourer's dwelling,—its walls are unplastered, its floor is of clay, and the bare rafters are exposed overhead. ...
— Lives of the Engineers - The Locomotive. George and Robert Stephenson • Samuel Smiles
... and chilly when I arrived at Manchester. The great station was nearly empty. I drove hurriedly through dimly-lit streets. Sometimes great factories towered up, or dark house-fronts shuttered close. Here there were high steel networks of viaducts overhead, or parapets of bridges over hidden waterways. At last I came to where a great church towered up, and an iron-studded door in a blank wall appeared. I was told this was the place, and pushing it open I went ...
— Hugh - Memoirs of a Brother • Arthur Christopher Benson
... or where to go, she had no more idea than the blue clouds overhead. She had no doubt her brother was close behind, trying to overtake her. Her sole thought was, that she "wouldn't ever see Hollis no more." She knew nothing could make him so unhappy as that. "I'll lose me, and then ...
— Little Folks Astray • Sophia May (Rebecca Sophia Clarke)
... shop practice. He compared the plans he suggested for the office supplies stock room, with the "tool crib" in the factory. He explained his idea of office organization by using as a model a chart of the plant departments. He compared office expenses with factory overhead. ...
— Certain Success • Norval A. Hawkins
... shining at intervals, for the night was partially clouded. There seemed to be nobody stirring, though his attention was unusually awake, and he could hear the whirr of the bats overhead, and the pulsating croak of the frogs in the distant pools and marshes. Presently he detected the sound of hoofs at some distance, and, looking forward, saw a horseman coming in his direction. The moon was under a cloud at the moment, and he could only observe that the horse and his rider looked ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... storm was flying overhead in riven ribbons of cloud, through which the stars were already peeping. To the westward the sky was clear, and against the last faint glow of the departed sun the lightning ran hither and thither, ...
— The Last Hope • Henry Seton Merriman
... the ministry, the medical profession, can be blasted by fixing one's eyes only upon its ugliest aspects. And farming, at its best, has become a highly scientific, extraordinarily absorbing, and when all is said, a profitable, profession. Neighbours of mine have developed systems of overhead irrigation to make rain when there is no rain, and have covered whole fields with cloth canopies to increase the warmth and to protect the crops from wind and hail, and by the analysis of the soil and exact methods of feeding it with fertilizers, have come as ...
— Great Possessions • David Grayson
... We follow where the Swamp Fox guides, His friends and merry men are we; And when the troop of Tarleton [6] rides, We burrow in the cypress tree. The turfy hammock is our bed, Our home is in the red deer's den, Our roof, the tree-top overhead, For we are ...
— Poets of the South • F.V.N. Painter
... the game of playing at living. The sky shone brightly overhead; around the town stood hills which no romantic scene-painter could have bettered; the air of the man with water-cart, of the auctioneer's man with bell, and of the people popping in and out of the shops, was the air of those who did these ...
— The Tale of Timber Town • Alfred Grace
... and back upon its stand; a work of immense labor, rendered all the harder by the necessity of keeping silence. Tom was a man of great strength, however, and at last he had the satisfaction of seeing the barrel once more in its place without having heard a sound from the sleepers overhead. Having washed the buckets and tools, he put them back where they came from, locked the door, and for the second time that ...
— The Boys of Crawford's Basin - The Story of a Mountain Ranch in the Early Days of Colorado • Sidford F. Hamp
... with a loft upon one side of it. The floor was covered with sticks, straw and litter. In one corner was a barrel, three quarters filled with hay. There were two or three bars overhead for the hens to roost upon. Stuyvesant looked around upon all these objects for a few minutes in silence, and then pointing up to the ...
— Stuyvesant - A Franconia Story • Jacob Abbott
... coat-of-arms on it. I want to dress for dinner, and take in a girl with a white gown and smooth white shoulders. My sister clips roses in the morning, before breakfast, in a pink ruffled dress and garden gloves. Would you believe that, here, on Clark Street, with a whiskey sign overhead, and the stock-yard smells undernose? O, ...
— Buttered Side Down • Edna Ferber
... heads. They're at the Savoy Hotel, in Carlsbad I mean. I go to Pupp's. We meet. They stare. I come out of my British shell as the humble hero of the affair at the other Savoy. I crab my hotel. They swear by theirs. I go to see their rooms. I wait till I can get the very same thing immediately overhead on the second floor—where I can even hear the old swine cursing her from under his mud-poultice! Both suites have balconies that might have been made for me. Need I ...
— Mr. Justice Raffles • E. W. Hornung
... startled the easy-going Arved, who confessed that if he could rid himself of the wool in his throat, he would be comparatively happy. Then they stumbled along, bumping into trees, feeling with outstretched arms, but finding nothing to guide them save the few thin stars in the torn foliage overhead. Without watches, they could catch no idea of the hour. The night was far spent, declared Arved; he discovered that he was very hungry. Suddenly, from the top of a steep, slippery bank they pitched ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... Niagara one would like a dry strip of existence. And at any rate it is quite enough for me to have it under foot without having it overhead ...
— At Home And Abroad - Or, Things And Thoughts In America and Europe • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... August amid all the attendant secrecy of war conditions. The steamer was known only by a number, although later it turned out to be the White Star liner, Adriatic. Preceded by a powerful United States cruiser, flanked by destroyers, guided overhead by observation balloons, the Adriatic was found to be the first ship in a convoy of sixteen other ships with thirty thousand United ...
— The Americanization of Edward Bok - The Autobiography of a Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward William Bok
... said Red Bill Summers, unconsciously lowering his tone although there was no one about to hear but his companions, a few, blasted-looking yuccas and, far overhead, ...
— The Girl Aviators on Golden Wings • Margaret Burnham
... as well as for the members of the Order, the accommodation being sufficient for at least four hundred worshippers. The door through which they were peering was situated underneath a gallery, in which was placed the organ loft, for the notes of the instrument floated down to them from immediately overhead. To the right of them stretched away the main body of the church, one half of it—the half nearest them—being fitted with pews, while the other half, toward the great west door, was furnished with common rush-bottomed chairs, evidently ...
— Two Gallant Sons of Devon - A Tale of the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood
... garments on the clothes line overhead began to stir, and Nance, lifting her head gratefully to the vagrant breeze, caught her breath. There, just above the cathedral spire, white and cool among fleecy clouds, rose the full August moon. It was the same moon that at that moment was turning ocean waves ...
— Calvary Alley • Alice Hegan Rice
... its walls and floor—all rudely smoothed with the broadaxe and the whipsaw—hung overhead in massive beams. From these low, blackened timbers there swung many antique lamps, splendid enough for a palace and strangely out of place in a log house of the wilderness. On the rough walls there were also large sconces of burnished silver but poorly filled with tallow candles. In the ...
— Round Anvil Rock - A Romance • Nancy Huston Banks
... lay the hill-side city, with its grey towers and spires and snow-clad mountain. All along his way budding maple trees swayed their branches overhead; on the twigs of some there was the scarlet moss of opening flowers, some were tipped with red buds and some were grey. The March wind was surging through them; the March clouds were flying above them,—light grey clouds with no rain in them,—veil above ...
— A Dozen Ways Of Love • Lily Dougall
... writhes along the shadowy air, Taking a thousand strange, fantastic forms; And every form is lit with burning eyes, Which pierce me through and through like fiery arrows! The dim walls grow unsteady, and I seem To stand upon a reeling deck! Hold, hold! A hundred crags are toppling overhead. I faint, I sink—now, let me clutch that limb— Oh, devil! It breaks to ashes in my grasp! What ghost is that which beckons through the mist? The duke! the duke! and bleeding at the breast! Whose dagger ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... loom. A couple of his young offspring were playing about, dressed simply in their little negligee-strings. The mud walls were hung with completed blankets. Long, stringy strips of dried beef and mutton—the national dishes of the tribe—were dangling from cross-pieces overhead; and on a rug upon the earthen floor lay a glittering pile of bracelets and brooches that had been made by the old man out of Mexican dollars. When we came away, after spending fifteen minutes or so as their guests, the whole family came with us; but the old man tarried a minute ...
— Roughing it De Luxe • Irvin S. Cobb
... the charge; And on each side the footmen Strode on with lance and targe; And on each side the horsemen Struck their spurs deep in gore, And front to front the armies Met with a mighty roar: And under that great battle The earth with blood was red; And, like the Pomptine fog at morn, The dust hung overhead; And louder still and louder Rose from the darkened field The braying of the war-horns, The clang of sword and shield, The rush of squadrons sweeping Like whirlwinds o'er the plain, The shouting of the slayers, And screeching ...
— Lays of Ancient Rome • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... of the mine boss, carpenters had been at work since early morning making a roomy box-stall in place of two small ones, and providing it with a broad sling of strong canvas, which was hung from eye-bolts inserted in beams overhead. This was passed beneath the mule's belly, and drawn so that while he could stand on three legs if he wished, he could also rest the whole weight of his body ...
— Derrick Sterling - A Story of the Mines • Kirk Munroe
... at three hundred and fifty paces. While the porters were taking the skin, he could not help laughing, he says, at finding their party in the center of a great plain, stared at from all sides by enough wild animals to stock a circus. Vultures were flying overhead. The three rhinoceros were gazing at them, about half a mile away. Wildebeest (sometimes called gnu) which look something like the American buffalo or bison, and hartebeest, stood around in a ring, looking on. Four or five antelope came in closer to see what was happening, ...
— Theodore Roosevelt • Edmund Lester Pearson
... the bridge outside Hartley Kate arose, lifted her telescope from the rack overhead, and made her way to the door, so that she was the first person to leave the car when it stopped. As she stepped to the platform she had a distinct shock, for her father reached for the telescope, while his greeting and his face were ...
— A Daughter of the Land • Gene Stratton-Porter
... says, "two grimy stokers' heads arose for a breath of fresh air. What domestic drama they were discussing the world may never know. But the words that were actually heard passing between them, while the shells whined overhead, were these: 'What I says is, 'e ought ...
— Pebbles on the Shore • Alpha of the Plough (Alfred George Gardiner)
... collision instrument. "He's right overhead at thirty thousand," he added; "and there are more of them coming in from all sides. Now ...
— The Finding of Haldgren • Charles Willard Diffin
... comes Of Eden, where delicious Paradise, Now nearer, crowns with her enclosure green, As with a rural mound, the champaign head Of a steep wilderness, whose hairy sides, With thicket overgrown, grotesque, and wild, Access denied; and overhead up grew Insuperable height of loftiest shade, A sylvan scene, and as the ranks ascend Shade above shade, a woody ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William - IV, Volume 1 (of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... sound of feet overhead. Uncle Victor's room. A sound of a door opening and shutting. And then a scream, muffled by the shut door. Her heart checked; turned sickeningly. She ...
— Mary Olivier: A Life • May Sinclair
... uneventful. When the head of the column, on the 14th, debouched on Malvern Hill, a gunboat in the river, mistaking us for confederate cavalry, commenced firing with one of their big guns, and as the huge projectiles cut the air overhead the men declared they were shooting "nail-kegs." The signal corps intervened and ...
— Personal Recollections of a Cavalryman - With Custer's Michigan Cavalry Brigade in the Civil War • J. H. (James Harvey) Kidd
... Meanwhile, overhead the life was going out, the strong man yielding slowly to the inevitable. Twilight came on, the doctor returned and went away again, and the house became absolutely still. Once Isabelle crept upstairs to the door of the sick room. Alice was holding ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)
... ducks, and wild fowl of various kinds were in great numbers, and kept up an unceasing noise at night whilst passing from one lake to the other. Our stage had been twelve miles and a half, but the hilly and rugged nature of the road had made it severe upon the horses, whilst the wet overhead and the wet grass under our feet made it equally harassing to ourselves. From our encampment some white drifts in the coast line bore S. 35 degrees E., and probably were the "white streak in the ...
— Journals Of Expeditions Of Discovery Into Central • Edward John Eyre
... could see his precious doctor throwing up his hands: "Port after a bottle of champagne—you'll die of it!" And a very good death too—none better. A sound broke the silence of the closed-up room. Music? His daughter playing the piano overhead. Singing too! What a trickle of a voice! Jenny Lind! The Swedish nightingale—he had never missed the nights ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... "pinpoint" grew larger and it was obvious to the CAA man that something was approaching the airport at a terrific speed. As he watched, the object grew larger and larger until it flashed directly overhead and disappeared to the northwest. The CAA man said it all happened so fast and he was so amazed that he hadn't called anybody to come out of the nearby hangar and watch the UFO. But when he'd calmed down he remembered a few facts. The UFO had been ...
— The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects • Edward Ruppelt
... they flew, down hills and over bridges, under which, ordinarily, quiet streams flowed, but now swollen by the rains, they boiled and raced like angry torrents. They flashed through villages and past farmhouses without encountering a soul, while overhead the tempest ...
— The Boy Inventors' Radio Telephone • Richard Bonner
... miles within the hour on a summer-day; and it certainly struck us that the Water Cure had some rather violent measures in its repertory. We went a step or two down the ladder, and then plunged in overhead. 'One plunge more and out,' exclaimed the faithful William; and we obeyed. We were so thoroughly heated beforehand, that we never felt the bath to be cold. On coming out, a coarse linen sheet was thrown over us, large enough ...
— The Recreations of A Country Parson • A. K. H. Boyd
... stalls, the lad, taking his breakfast along with him, had gone down, together with a comrade, to bathe. He had hardly set foot in the water, when he had fallen and was drowned. At the cries of his comrade, some one from the house overhead on the bluff had hurried down, and wading in up to the knees, had dragged him from the water half dead; they had turned him upside down to make him throw up the water, they had shaken him, but to no purpose. To indicate just how far the poor little fellow ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... or no talk as the three doctors worked at the operating table. The overhead light in the ship's tiny surgery glowed brightly; the only sound in the room was the wheeze of the anaesthesia apparatus, the snap of clamps and the doctors' own quiet breathing as they worked desperately ...
— Star Surgeon • Alan Nourse
... belonged to a self that ought to have been dead long ago. Perhaps, if the fat old book-keeper had known it, he would have said that the man was better than he knew. But then,—poor Huff! He passed slowly through the alleys between the great looms. Overhead the ceiling looked like a heavy maze of iron cylinders and black swinging bars and wheels, all in swift, ponderous motion. It was enough to make a brain dizzy with the clanging thunder of the engines, the whizzing spindles of red and yellow, ...
— Margret Howth, A Story of To-day • Rebecca Harding Davis
... in company with an agreeable party, I spent a long summer day in exploring the Mammoth Cave in Kentucky. We traversed, through spacious galleries affording a solid masonry foundation for the town and county overhead, the six or eight black miles from the mouth of the cavern to the innermost recess which tourists visit,—a niche or grotto made of one seamless stalactite, and called, I believe, Serena's Bower. I lost the light of one day. I saw high domes, and bottomless pits; ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... nothing more depressing than a calm in the tropics,—a raging sun overhead, around an endless expanse of dead sea, and a feeling of utter helplessness that is overpowering. What if this should last? what a fate! The Rime of the Ancient Mariner comes to our mind. Come storm and tempest, come hurricanes ...
— The Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, 1995, Memorial Issue • Various
... beneath, from which the cliffs rise so abruptly, bears the hue of molten pitch; the trees, fast anchored in the rock, shoot out their branches across the opening, to form a thick tangled roof, at the height of a hundred and fifty feet overhead; while from the recesses within, where the eye fails to penetrate, there issues a combination of the strangest and wildest sounds ever yet produced by water: there is the deafening rush of the torrent, blent as if with the ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller
... glittering like silver over the mountains, their tops soaring above the mist like islands of the sea! Then the day gleaming over the dazzling white snow-peaks! And the evenings, and the sunsets with the pale moon overhead, white mountains and islands lay hushed and dreamlike as a youthful longing! Here and there past homely little havens with houses around them set in smiling green trees! Ah! those snug homes in the lee of the skerries awake a longing for life and warmth in the breast. You ...
— Farthest North - Being the Record of a Voyage of Exploration of the Ship 'Fram' 1893-1896 • Fridtjof Nansen
... us down into the pit. In frantic haste swung the picks and shovels, and the earth-mountains grew. No one spoke. Overhead the night was thick with stars, and the ancient Imperial Kremlin ...
— Ten Days That Shook the World • John Reed
... by no means isolated. It has happened time after time. The slightest sign of activity in a trench when a "Taube" is overhead suffices to cause the trench to be blown to fragments, and time after time the British soldiers have had to lie prone in their trenches and suffer partial burial as an alternative to being ...
— Aeroplanes and Dirigibles of War • Frederick A. Talbot
... no watchfulness: the ground was smooth, the light was fair; no motion save the pale flicker of the fireflies, no sound save the sigh of the night wind in the boughs that were so high overhead. Master and man, riding slowly and steadily onward through a wood that seemed interminably the same, came at last to think of other things than the road which they were traveling. Their hands lost grasp upon the reins, and their ...
— Audrey • Mary Johnston
... of the gloomy pass into the bright sunlight of the white road. Daisies with wide-open eyes looked up into the blue sky overhead. Golden glistened the buttercups among the shamrock. From the ditches peeped forget-me-not. Honeysuckle scented the hedgerows. Around, above, and afar, carolled the linnet, the lark, and the thrush. All was colour ...
— Celtic Tales - Told to the Children • Louey Chisholm |
