"Pebble" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... grains, and the silica taken up is redeposited on others. I cannot explain the chemical reaction that produces this deposition, but that it takes place in the rock during some period of its history is certain. I exhibit a quartzite pebble taken from the Triassic sandstone at Stanlow Point, which, as can be easily seen, was at one time worn perfectly smooth by attrition and long-continued wear, for the quartzite is very hard. Upon this worn surface you will see spangles and facets which reflect the light, and on closer ...
— The American Architect and Building News, Vol. 27, Jan-Mar, 1890 • Various
... small! No lily-muffled hum of summer-bee But finds some coupling with the spinning stars; No pebble at your foot but proves a sphere: . . . . . Earth's crammed with Heaven, And every common bush afire with God; But only he who ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... points of the desolate environs of this important haven, among others to the immense, but then and generally empty water reservoirs which the English have made in the neighbourhood of the town. No place in the high north, not the granite cliffs of the Seven Islands, or the pebble rocks of Low Island on Spitzbergen, not the mountain sides on the east coast of Novaya Zemlya, or the figure-marked ground at Cape Chelyuskin is so bare of vegetation as the environs of Aden and the parts of the east coast of the Red Sea which ...
— The Voyage of the Vega round Asia and Europe, Volume I and Volume II • A.E. Nordenskieold
... French they would be attacked. The next day the Jats, to the number of 20,000, attacked them on the march. The fight lasted the whole day, and the French fired 6000 musket shots and 800 cannon. The cannon-balls were made of clay moulded round a pebble, and were found sufficiently ...
— Three Frenchmen in Bengal - The Commercial Ruin of the French Settlements in 1757 • S.C. Hill
... road with a solemn, placid expression, as of men to whom the Atlantean weight of this weary world was as the down on a feather. Calmly and judicially, as if seeing nothing, yet weighing all things, they looked on pebble and broken limestone, never raising their heads, never removing their hands from their pockets. They had been there since breakfast time that morning, and it was ...
— My New Curate • P.A. Sheehan
... similar position in the Swiss Alps, he remarked that the pebbles, being for the most part of an oval shape, had their longer axes parallel to the planes of stratification (see Figure 54). From this he inferred that such strata must, at first, have been horizontal, each oval pebble having settled at the bottom of the water, with its flatter side parallel to the horizon, for the same reason that an egg will not stand on either end if unsupported. Some few, indeed, of the rounded stones in a ...
— The Student's Elements of Geology • Sir Charles Lyell
... that's nearest, Though it's dull at whiles, Helping, when we meet them, Lame dogs over stiles. See in every hedgerow Marks of angels' feet; Epics in each pebble Underneath our ...
— The Long Vacation • Charlotte M. Yonge
... open fifty feet ahead of us. Alan stopped, seized a chunk of rock, flung it up. I saw the giant's face above us. He was kneeling, trying to reach in. The rock hit him in the forehead—a pebble, but it stung him. His ...
— Astounding Stories, March, 1931 • Various
... suspicions of a robin who lived in the neighborhood; for unfortunate is the student whose ways are not acceptable to one of this noisy family. I found, however, when my patience gave out, that the robin will take a hint. On throwing a pebble through the branches near him, as a suggestion that his attentions were not welcome, he flew to a tree a little farther off, and resumed his offensive remarks; another pebble convinced him that the distance might be profitably increased, and thus I drove ...
— Little Brothers of the Air • Olive Thorne Miller
... been used for some other purpose—what purpose I could not, at the moment, guess. Habitual thieves, you know, often have curious superstitions, and some will never take anything without leaving something behind—a pebble or a piece of coal, or something like that—in the premises they have been robbing. It seemed at first extremely likely that this was a case of that kind. The match had clearly been brought in—because, ...
— Martin Hewitt, Investigator • Arthur Morrison
... the ancient fisherman: "Oh, what was that, my daughter?" "'Twas nothing but a pebble, sir, I threw into the water." "And what is that, pray tell me, love, that paddles off so fast?" "It's nothing but a porpoise, sir, that's ...
— Little Masterpieces of American Wit and Humor - Volume I • Various
... tossed a pebble through a window in the fort, then Bert tried it, but neither stone went ...
— The Bobbsey Twins at the Seashore • Laura Lee Hope
... beaks and feet of birds are generally clean, earth sometimes adheres to them: in one case I removed sixty-one grains, and in another case twenty-two grains of dry argillaceous earth from the foot of a partridge, and in the earth there was a pebble as large as the seed of a vetch. Here is a better case: the leg of a woodcock was sent to me by a friend, with a little cake of dry earth attached to the shank, weighing only nine grains; and this contained a seed of the toad-rush (Juncus bufonius) which germinated and flowered. Mr. ...
— On the Origin of Species - 6th Edition • Charles Darwin
... a line of thought as a corrective. Thud, thud, go the oars, steadily nodding by the movement of the waves go the rod tops. Aye, hours of this would suggest a certain sameness, probably. And then came the startling moment that is so delicious, the jump of the flat pebble off the line pulled out upon the bottom boards, the rattle of the check, the strong curve of the rod. It all takes place in a swift moment. You are on your feet and playing your fish as if by instinct. The Jock Scott had attracted this fish, and the familiar process was followed—the ...
— Lines in Pleasant Places - Being the Aftermath of an Old Angler • William Senior
... scenes of imagery, points of conceit, unexpected sallies, and artful compliments. Trifles always require exuberance of ornament; the building which has no strength can be valued only for the grace of its decorations. The pebble must be polished with care, which hopes to be valued as a diamond; and words ought surely to be laboured, when they are intended to ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D, In Nine Volumes - Volume the Third: The Rambler, Vol. II • Samuel Johnson
... competition to have the largest fire. Each person put in one stone to make a circle about it. The young people ran about with burning brands. Supper was eaten out-of-doors, and games played. After the fire had burned out, ashes were raked over the stones. In the morning each sought his pebble, and if he found it misplaced, harmed, or a footprint marked near it in the ashes, he believed he should die ...
— The Book of Hallowe'en • Ruth Edna Kelley
... with cabriole legs. Don't bother with her much. They're lower case people—tin pergola and pebble garden sort. And early Victorian bathrooms. You ...
— Ptomaine Street • Carolyn Wells
... windows to watch. "That's why you should appreciate being about to marry such a resourceful fellow," he said more gently. And now he dropped all banter. "I've been thinking about how long it's been, too. That's why I decided to try to kill a couple of sparrows with one pebble." ...
— Cubs of the Wolf • Raymond F. Jones
... the Stone of Shelter was now our utmost object of ambition, but it was clear that that was impracticable—so we looked about for some place of refuge, and with little difficulty discovered a stone about the size of a parish church lying like a pebble at the foot of a mountain, with a projecting ledge on the lee side, sufficiently large to protect our party. Some dry furze happened, by a singular accident, to lie heaped in a corner of this natural shed. With a little judicious management it was ignited, and burned ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, No. 382, October 1847 • Various
... and to employ colporteurs to vend the books in the streets. He despatched consignments of books to towns he had visited that required them, and in the enthusiasm of his eager and active mind foresaw that, "as the circle widens in the lake into which a stripling has cast a pebble, so will the circle of our usefulness continue widening, until it has embraced the whole vast ...
— The Life of George Borrow • Herbert Jenkins
... rising of the moon, then well advanced toward her second quarter; and as the light gradually brightened, they became aware of certain shadowy forms indistinctly seen moving hither and thither in the deeper shadow of the trees, their whereabouts betrayed by the momentary rattle of a displaced pebble, or the soft plash of their feet in the shallow pools ...
— With Airship and Submarine - A Tale of Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... Spring plunges up from beneath through an opening nine feet in diameter, in the midst of a pool of water six feet deep, and having an unvarying temperature of forty-nine degrees throughout the year. This water is so perfectly clear that not the least pebble is obscured from view, and the ...
— Cave Regions of the Ozarks and Black Hills • Luella Agnes Owen
... here and there with brown specks which even the uninitiated will know are cattle, and the river, one of Arizona's minor streams, a few yards across and only a couple of feet deep, but swift-rushing, pebble-strew'd ...
— Arizona's Yesterday - Being the Narrative of John H. Cady, Pioneer • John H. Cady
... "It seems to me," he retorted, "that your proceedings are rather like those of the amiable individual who offered the bear a flint pebble, that he might crack it and extract the kernel. Your confounded will seems to offer no soft spot on which one could commence an attack. But we won't give up. We seem to have sucked the will dry. Let us now have a few facts ...
— The Mystery of 31 New Inn • R. Austin Freeman
... very hot weather, one canteen of water should last for the entire day's march. Excessive water drinking on the march will play a man out very quickly. Old soldiers never drink when marching. A small pebble carried in the mouth keeps it moist and therefore reduces thirst. Or a small piece of chocolate may occasionally be eaten. Smoking is very depressing ...
— Manual for Noncommissioned Officers and Privates of Infantry • War Department
... only thing sure of any landing is the sea. The long desolation of the sea rolls in with a sound of melancholy, the gray fog droops its fold of drizzle in the leaden-tinted troughs, the pent cliffs overhang the flapping of the sail, and a few yards of pebble and of weed are all that a boat may come home upon harmlessly. Yet here in the old time landed men who carved the shape of England; and here even in these lesser days, are ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... term Happiness, although there may be unlimited diversity of opinion as to its nature, and the means to attain it. The truth of (b) also becomes apparent if the matter is carefully reflected upon. Everything that is en rapport with all other things: the pebble cast from the hand alters the centre of gravity in the Universe. As in the world of things and acts, so in the world of thought, from which all action springs. Nothing can happen to the part but the ...
— No Animal Food - and Nutrition and Diet with Vegetable Recipes • Rupert H. Wheldon
... few seconds—a minute—they waited in breathless suspense. Then came a slight rustle as from some disturbance of the vine, then footfalls, again, modulated and stealthy they seemed, on the door just above them. A speck of dirt, or an infinitesimal pebble, maybe, fell upon Archer's head from the slight jarring of some crack in ...
— Tom Slade with the Boys Over There • Percy K. Fitzhugh
... the many in the one and the one in the many. Did Sir Isaac think what he was saying when he made HIS speech about the ocean,—the child and the pebbles, you know? Did he mean to speak slightingly of a pebble? Of a spherical solid which stood sentinel over its compartment of space before the stone that became the pyramids had grown solid, and has watched it until now! A body which knows all the currents of force that ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... never seems to have been passively crushed. But, for the forces which cause this passive ruin of the tourmaline,—here is a stone which will show you multitudes of them in operation at once. It is known as 'brecciated agate,' beautiful, as you see; and highly valued as a pebble: yet, so far as I can read or hear, no one has ever looked at it with the least attention. At the first glance, you see it is made of very fine red striped agates, which have been broken into small pieces, and fastened together again by paste, also of agate. There would ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... out, as if by the margin of a large Caryophyllia. Beyond 33 fathoms I sounded only once; and from 86 fathoms, at the distance of one mile and a third from the edge of the reef, the arming brought up calcareous sand with a pebble of volcanic rock. The circumstance of the arming having invariably come up quite clean, when sounding within a certain number of fathoms off the reefs of Mauritius and Keeling atoll (eight fathoms in the former case, and twelve ...
— Coral Reefs • Charles Darwin
... came as they reached the front of the pit, and had to swing off to the right. There was little or no cover, and it was necessary to crawl flat on their stomachs. To make matters worse, the ground was rough and stony, and every time a pebble rolled, Ken's ...
— On Land And Sea At The Dardanelles • Thomas Charles Bridges
... water; but when the Crow put its beak into the mouth of the Pitcher he found that only very little water was left in it, and that he could not reach far enough down to get at it. He tried, and he tried, but at last had to give up in despair. Then a thought came to him, and he took a pebble and dropped it into the Pitcher. Then he took another pebble and dropped it into the Pitcher. Then he took another pebble and dropped that into the Pitcher. Then he took another pebble and dropped that into the Pitcher. Then he took another ...
— Aesop's Fables • Aesop
... loquacious by his calling. He hardly spoke to his PEONS. They understood their duties perfectly. If one of the mules stopped, they urged it on with a guttural cry, and if that proved unavailing, a good-sized pebble, thrown with unerring aim, soon cured the animal's obstinacy. If a strap got loose, or a rein fell, a PEON came forward instantly, and throwing off his poncho, flung it over his beast's head till the accident was repaired ...
— In Search of the Castaways • Jules Verne
... east, a large mass of rock near the foot of the Fauconnaire, upon which I often sat on a calm day, looking down into the mysteries of the sea. The water was so wonderfully clear, that at a depth of twenty feet I could see every pebble and bunch of weed as plainly as if only a sheet of glass hid them from view. This was to me very remarkable, as on the sandy east coast of England, an object two or three feet beneath the surface is hidden from the eye by the discolouration of ...
— Jethou - or Crusoe Life in the Channel Isles • E. R. Suffling
... there are no final statements in this world, least of all in Art. There are many things besides pines in the valley, and more important, and they can be drawn meanwhile. Besides, if all the pines, why not every pebble and blade of grass? ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 77, March, 1864 • Various
... just above what were commonly called (from their slaty color) the Blue Rocks; it seemed the topmost pebble left by some tide that had receded,—which perhaps it was. Nurses and children thronged daily to these rocks, during the visitors' season, and the fishermen found there a favorite lounging-place; but nobody scaled ...
— Oldport Days • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... effect of a clog. A pebble may stop a log, the branch of a tree turn aside an avalanche. The carronade stumbled. The gunner, taking advantage of this critical opportunity, plunged his iron bar between the spokes of one of the hind wheels. The cannon ...
— International Short Stories: French • Various
... and tapering toward the summit, like the giant tooth of a monster of the deep. White with the dirty gray white of the cliff, the awful monolith was streaked with horizontal lines marked by flint and displaying the slow work of the centuries, which had heaped alternate layers of lime and pebble-stone one atop of ...
— The Hollow Needle • Maurice Leblanc
... the assembly that their vote must decide whether this avowed doctrine r endered Anaxagoras of Clazomenae worthy of death. A brazen urn was carried round, in which every citizen deposited a pebble. When counted, the black pebbles predominated over the white, and Anaxagoras ...
— Philothea - A Grecian Romance • Lydia Maria Child
... Before he goes I want you all to see his beautiful eyes. In most breeds of dogs with the veil you will find the hairs of the face discolored by tears, but the Skye terrier's are not, and his eyes are living jewels, as sunny a brown as cairngorms in pebble brooches, but soft and deep and ...
— Greyfriars Bobby • Eleanor Atkinson
... hour I lay stretched out in the sun luxuriating in the warmth and breathing in the fragrant odor of the pines. While I was lazily watching a Chinese green woodpecker searching for grubs in a tree near by, there came the faintest sound of a loosened pebble on the cliff above my head. Instantly I was alert and tense. A second later Smith's rifle banged ...
— Across Mongolian Plains - A Naturalist's Account of China's 'Great Northwest' • Roy Chapman Andrews
... Teignmouth, and they extend inland, producing a red soil, past Exeter and Tiverton. A long narrow strip of the same formation reaches out westward on the top of the Culm as far as Jacobstow. Farther east, the Bunter pebble beds are represented by the well-known pebble deposit of Budleigh Salterton, whence they are traceable inland towards Rockbeare. These are succeeded by the Keuper marls and sandstones, well exposed at Sidmouth, where ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 3 - "Destructors" to "Diameter" • Various
... can do when we fight something really stronger than ourselves; we can deal it its death-wound one moment; it deals us death in the end. It is something if we can shock and jar the unthinking impetus and enormous innocence of evil; just as a pebble on a railway can stagger the Scotch express. It is enough for the great martyrs and criminals of the French revolution, that they have surprised for all time the secret weakness of the strong. They have awakened and set leaping and quivering in his crypt for ...
— Tremendous Trifles • G. K. Chesterton
... 'Fool, that is not your little cat, that is the morning sun which is shining on the chimneys.' Hansel, however, had not been looking back at the cat, but had been constantly throwing one of the white pebble-stones out of his pocket on ...
— Grimms' Fairy Tales • The Brothers Grimm
... sources run Turned by a pebble's edge, Is Athabasca, rolling toward the sun Through ...
— Home Life of Great Authors • Hattie Tyng Griswold
... men went on; yet five men provided with tools were occupied two hours in completing this opening and closing it again, for I left everything precisely as I had found it. The stones were of all sizes, from one as weighty as a strong man could lift, to the smallest pebble. The base of each heap was covered with a rank vegetation, but the top was clear, from the stones there ...
— Journals Of Two Expeditions Of Discovery In North-West And Western Australia, Vol. 1 (of 2) • George Grey
... taught to write, lest they should scribble assignations), flowers, cinders, pebbles, etc., convey the sentiments of the parties, by that universal deputy of Mercury—an old woman. A cinder says, "I burn for thee;" a bunch of flowers tied with hair, "Take me and fly;" but a pebble declares—what nothing else can. [Compare The Bride ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Vol. 3 (of 7) • Lord Byron
... haven't the strength. I should stumble and fall over the smallest pebble in the path. Listen to me. I am afraid of myself. I know not what man dwells in me. I have murdered myself, and my hands are red with blood. If you took me away, you would never see aught in ...
— Abbe Mouret's Transgression - La Faute De L'abbe Mouret • Emile Zola
... protruded from the external cut. Warren relates the history of a case in which the vertebral artery was wounded by the discharge of a pistol loaded with pebbles. The hemorrhage was checked by compression and packing, and after the discharge of a pebble and a piece of bone from the wound, the man was seen a month afterward in perfect health. Corson of Norristown, Pa., has reported the case of a quarryman who was stabbed in the neck with a shoemaker's knife, severing the left carotid ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... is how I most exactly remember her, in that dress, in that hat, looking over her shoulder at me so that the eyes flashed very blue—dark pebble blue... ...
— The Good Soldier • Ford Madox Ford
... and I behind the veil are past, Oh, but the long, long while the world shall last, Which of our coming and departure heeds As the Sev'n Seas shall heed a pebble-cast. ...
— The Philosophy of Despair • David Starr Jordan
... possessed a dog, which seemed to set a value on white and shining pebble stones, of which he had made a large collection in a hole under an old tree. A dog in Regent Street is said to have barked with joy on hearing the wheels of his master's carriage driven to the door, when he could not by any possibility ...
— Anecdotes of Dogs • Edward Jesse
... can be enumerated (e.g., "two ball-class potatoes," "three sheet-class carpets") or even said to "be" or "be handled in a definite way" (thus, in the Athabaskan languages and in Yana, "to carry" or "throw" a pebble is quite another thing than to carry or throw a log, linguistically no less than in terms of muscular experience). Such instances might be multiplied at will. It is almost as though at some period in the past the unconscious mind of the race had made a hasty inventory of experience, ...
— Language - An Introduction to the Study of Speech • Edward Sapir
... have just as easily have tiptoed downstairs and out the back door, but it would have spoiled the romance of it all. The absolute stillness and the pitch black darkness of the night were awe-inspiring. The roll of a pebble or the crack of a twig under foot would set us all a-tingle as we stole out to our cave house. Sometimes the night was so black that we could hardly find the entrance of the cave. Once inside, in the light of a few candles, the nervous tension was relieved, and we reveled in a banquet ...
— The Scientific American Boy - The Camp at Willow Clump Island • A. Russell Bond
... one, and of late seems to have lost both virtues. The Americans at least have acted like men,(172) gone to the"bottom at once, and set the whole upon the whole. Our conduct has been that of pert children: we have thrown a pebble at a mastiff, and are surprised that it was not frightened. Now we must kill the guardian of the house which will be plundered the moment little master has nothing but the old nurse to defend it. But I have done with reflections; you will be ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... shore of that island beneath you," replied the voice. "A pebble, dropped from your hand, would strike in the ...
— Myths That Every Child Should Know - A Selection Of The Classic Myths Of All Times For Young People • Various
... the sentinels, belong to us. Hush—no one knows; it must never be guessed. To-night, after dark, someone whistled—one was waiting for me in the corridor with the keys; the others were drugged. They handed me on to someone outside; I was dropped like a pebble over the wall. Then I ...
— The Black Cross • Olive M. Briggs
... little thing that might just as well be done now. Generally, the thing to be done was so trifling in itself, that the effort to do it appeared altogether disproportionate at the time. It was like exerting the strength of a giant to lift a pebble. ...
— Words for the Wise • T. S. Arthur
... 'ravine' of verse 3 of this chapter, which is described by a different word from that for 'vale' in verse 2—the one meaning a much broader opening than the other—and from it came the 'five smooth stones.' Notice the minute topographical accuracy, which indicates history, not legend. The pebble-bed may supply a missile to hit the modern 'giant' of sceptical criticism, who boasts much ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... fire; took down the bow and arrow Warwick had made her from above the etagere, where she had arranged the spoils of her happy voyage, snapped them across her knee and sent them after the holly; followed by the birch canoe, and every pebble, moss, shell, or bunch of headed grass he had given her then. The osier basket was not spared, the box went next, and even the wrapper was on its way to immolation, when, as she rent it apart, with a stern pleasure in the sacrifice ...
— Moods • Louisa May Alcott
... intervals considerable pools, in which the rays of the sun were reflected with a brilliancy equal to that of the most polished mirror. The banks were low and grassy, with a margin of gravel and pebble-stones; there were marks of flood to the height of about twelve feet, when the river would still be confined within its secondary banks, and not overflow the rich lands that bordered it. Its usual width ...
— Australia, its history and present condition • William Pridden
... pebbles, and his legs torn with briars, until he came to where the valley became narrower, and where one might have thought the rocks and banks on each side had been cleft by the hand of a giant, so nicely would they have fitted could they have been brought together again. The brook ran along a pebble channel between these rocks and banks, and there was a rude path which went in a line with the brook; a path which was used only by the gipsies and a few poor cottagers, whose shortest way from ...
— The Fairchild Family • Mary Martha Sherwood
... earthly things he filled the niche of a giant green tree-frog, and one of us seemed to remember that the Knight Gawain was enamored of green, and so we dubbed him. For the hours of daylight Gawain preferred the role of a hunched-up pebble of malachite; or if he could find a leaf, he drew eighteen purple vacuum toes beneath him, veiled his eyes with opalescent lids, and slipped from the mineral to the vegetable kingdom, flattened by masterly shading which ...
— Edge of the Jungle • William Beebe
... decay of vegetable matter. The ashes of the grass that is annually burnt, by degrees form a soil. We are even now witnessing the operation that has formed, and is still increasing, the vast tract of alluvial soil through which we have passed. There is not a stone nor even a small pebble for a distance of two hundred miles; ...
— Ismailia • Samuel W. Baker
... at our own hands; such blessings will you have if you live along with women. Wherefore if any one give not ear to my authority, be it man or woman, or other between [these names[109]], the fatal pebble shall decide against him, and by no means shall he escape the doom of stoning at the hand of the populace. For what passeth without is a man's concern, let not woman offer advice—but remaining within do thou occasion no mischief. Heard'st thou, or heard'st thou ...
— Prometheus Bound and Seven Against Thebes • Aeschylus
... travelled barefooted through the snow, and not have felt less proud or less happy, for I was thus saving one or two louis with which I could purchase some days of happiness. I reached the barrier of Paris without having felt a pebble of the road. The night was dark, and it was raining hard; I took up my portmanteau, and soon after knocked at the door of the humble lodging ...
— Raphael - Pages Of The Book Of Life At Twenty • Alphonse de Lamartine
... when I came up, and I believe he had caught the scare. Boys will do that. The captain tried to keep me from going in again, but I knew it was all nonsense to be frightened. I was going to bring up something from the bottom, if it was only a pebble. ...
— A Jolly Fellowship • Frank R. Stockton
... or the Wonderful One-Hoss Shay" is the most popular of the humorous poems. Many readers enjoy this excellent skit without thinking what the author meant by calling it "a logical story." It is, in fact, the best pebble that he hurled from his sling against his bete noire; for the old "shay" which went to pieces all at once was a symbol of Calvinistic theology. That theology was called an iron chain of logic, every link so perfectly forged that ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long
... fading, and the other brightening—as I quitted the park, and climbed the stony by-road branching off to Mr. Heathcliff's dwelling. Before I arrived in sight of it, all that remained of day was a beamless amber light along the west: but I could see every pebble on the path, and every blade of grass, by that splendid moon. I had neither to climb the gate nor to knock—it yielded to my hand. That is an improvement, I thought. And I noticed another, by the aid of my nostrils; a fragrance of stocks and wallflowers wafted on the ...
— Wuthering Heights • Emily Bronte
... living prevailed, must not be taken as typical of the whole country. The buildings of Boston in 1683 were spoken of as "handsome, joining one to another as in London, with many large streets, most of them paved with pebble stone." Money in the country towns was merchantable wheat, peas, pork, and beef at prices current. Time was reckoned by the farmers according to the seasons, not according to the calendar, and men dated events by "sweet corn time," "at the beginning of last ...
— The Fathers of New England - A Chronicle of the Puritan Commonwealths • Charles M. Andrews
... sniffing. The scent grew stronger. Another two yards down the slope he found it very strong under a rock. It was a big rock, and weighed probably two hundred pounds. Thor dragged it aside with his one right hand as if it were no more than a pebble. ...
— The Grizzly King • James Oliver Curwood
... same, except that she has that grey streak in front to match her husband. You can see the car in the drive; the treads of the tires must have just been scrubbed; they're not even dusty. There's not a pebble out of place; all the flowers are in full bloom; no dead ones. No leaves on the lawn; no dry twigs showing on the trees. That other house in the background looks like a palace, and the man with the rake, looking over the fence: he ...
— It Could Be Anything • John Keith Laumer
... tail," said Fancy, and put two slender white shells for feet, at the lower edge of the fringed skirt. She laid a wreath of little star-fish across the brown hair, a belt of small orange-crabs round the waist, buttoned the dress with violet snail-shells, and hung a tiny white pebble, like ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag VI - An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott
... weak! The trance, the swoon, the dream, is o'er! I feel the chill of death no more! At length, I stand renewed in all my strength! Beneath me I can feel The great earth stagger and reel, As it the feet of a descending God Upon its surface trod, And like a pebble it rolled beneath his heel! This, O brave physician! this Is ...
— The Golden Legend • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... in such a season of business: by the manner in 'Which you have considered it, you have shown me that your very minutes of amusement you try to turn to the advantage of your country. It was this pleasing prospect of patronage to the arts that tempted me to offer you my pebble towards the new structure. I am flattered that you have taken notice' of the only ambition I have: I should be more flattered if I could contribute to the smallest of your lordship's designs for illustrating Britain. The hint your lordship is so good as to give me for a ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... pebble as though for the first time of the afternoon. Before they had gone more than a quarter of a mile, a pretty ...
— The Spanish Chest • Edna A. Brown
... will find it much weaker than on first trial. That is the smooth skin, sometimes called lapstreak. They, the clinker canoes, are easily tightened when they spring a leak through being rattled over stones in rapids. It is only to hunt a smooth pebble for a clinch head and settle the nails that have started with the hatchet, putting in a few new ones if needed. And they are put together, at least by the best builders, without any cement or white lead, naked ...
— Woodcraft • George W. Sears
... the principal people. It differs little from the common ones, except in extent. Its principal part is a large oblong pile of stones, lying loosely upon each; other, about twelve or fourteen feet high; contracted toward the top, with a square area on each side, loosely paved with pebble stones, under which the bones of the chiefs are buried. At a little distance from the end nearest the sea is the place where the sacrifices are offered, which, for a considerable extent, is also loosely paved. There is here a very large scaffold, or whatta, on which ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 16 • Robert Kerr
... He had his hands on his knees, with his elbows out at right angles, like a nigger minstrel of the old school about to ask Mr. Bones why a chicken crosses the road, and he was staring before him with a smile so fixed and pebble-beached that I should have thought that anybody could have guessed that there sat one in whom the old familiar juice was plashing up against the back of the ...
— Right Ho, Jeeves • P. G. Wodehouse
... jets. Press very hard above the wound. Tie a strong bandage (handkerchief, belt, suspenders, rope, strip of clothing) around the wounded member, and between the wound and the heart. Under it and directly over the artery place a smooth pebble, piece of stick, or other hard lump. Then thrust a stout stick under the bandage and twist until the wound stops bleeding. A tourniquet should not ...
— Camping For Boys • H.W. Gibson
... palette, when he heard the boy saying, over his shoulder: "I don't think that looks very much like it." He had last been aware of the boy sitting at the grassy edge of the lane, tossing small bits of earth and pebble across to his dog, which sat at the other edge and snapped at them. Then he lost consciousness of him. He answered, dreamily, while he found a tint he was trying for with his brush: "Perhaps you don't know." He was so sure of his effect that the popular ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... this tender tale I have already forgotten; indeed I listened to it with a heart like a very pebble stone, having hard work to repress a smile while Master Simon was putting on the amorous swain, uttering every now and then a sigh, and endeavouring ...
— Bracebridge Hall • Washington Irving
... nearer approach, proved to be only the dismembered academical of some gentleman-commoner hung up as a trophy by the town raff. Broken windows and shutters torn from their hinges, and missiles of every description covering the ground, from the terrific Scotch paving-pebble torn up from the roads, to the spokes of coach-wheels, and the oaken batons, and fragments of lanterns belonging to the town watch, skirts of coats, and caps, and remnants of togas both silken and worsted, bespoke the quality of the heroes of ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... glow. At 166th Street is an open area now called Mitchel Square, with an outcrop of rock polished by the rearward breeks of many sliding urchins. Some children were playing on that small summit with a toy parachute made of light paper and a pebble attached by threads. On 168th Street alongside the big armoury of the Twenty-second Engineers boys were playing baseball, with a rubber ball, pitching it so that the batter received it on the bounce and struck it with his ...
— Plum Pudding - Of Divers Ingredients, Discreetly Blended & Seasoned • Christopher Morley
... self-amusement he would lie down as if life were useless, and wait until something or somebody came along to amuse him. His greatest delight was in fishing things out of a pan of water, and he would wash every pebble or plaything that he owned and carefully lay it out to dry. One day he pounced upon a rooster who insulted him by drinking from his water vessel, and plucked a long feather from his tail so quickly that we could ...
— The Human Side of Animals • Royal Dixon
... of all control over what they are thinking and saying!... And, in the midst of this confusion, in the storm that tosses them to and fro, to catch sight of the tiny spark which will flash forth somewhere or other!... Look at him! Look at the fellow! A hundred thousand francs for a valueless pebble ... if not, prison: it's enough to turn ...
— The Eight Strokes of the Clock • Maurice Leblanc
... Mercury, so is he that giveth honor to a fool." For, since the gentiles ascribed the keeping of accounts to Mercury, "the heap of Mercury" signifies the casting up of an account, when a merchant sometimes substitutes a pebble [*Lapillus or calculus whence the English word 'calculate'] for one hundred marks. So too, is a fool honored if he stand in God's place or represent the whole community: and in the same way parents and masters ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... these six degrees of goodness to the object? To that end we must needs have the power to change our taste, or the things, as we please. That would be almost as if I could say to [424] lead, Thou shalt be gold, and make it so; to the pebble, Thou shalt be diamond; or at the least, Thou shalt look like it. Or it would be like the common explanation of the Mosaical passage which seems to say that the desert manna assumed any taste the Israelites desired ...
— Theodicy - Essays on the Goodness of God, the Freedom of Man and the Origin of Evil • G. W. Leibniz
... usual Jewish way, by means of pebbles. The people of a village would be divided into tens, then a bag would be brought out containing nine dark-coloured pebbles and one white one. The ten men would all draw from the bag, and the man who drew the white pebble would be the one who was to remove to Jerusalem. By this means the capital would be provided with about 20,000 inhabitants, and would be in a condition to ...
— The King's Cup-Bearer • Amy Catherine Walton
... number thirty is being heard, waits for case nine hundred and thirty, against which on the calendar that is reposing by the side of the complaisant clerk in the corner, his name is placed as counsel—shining there like a pebble on ...
— The International Monthly Magazine - Volume V - No II • Various
... Mall, broke into loud hissing and hooting when George III left Buckingham House in the state carriage to proceed to Westminster for the opening of Parliament. The tumult reached its climax as the procession approached the Ordnance Office, when a small pebble, or marble, or shot from an air-gun, pierced the carriage window. The King immediately said to Westmorland, who sat opposite, "That's a shot," and, with the courage of his family, coolly leaned forward to examine the round hole in the glass. Similar scenes ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... head, impatient against the restraint his rider put upon him. Halfway down the stretch he lunged sidewise toward Smoky, but that level-headed little horse swerved and went on, shoulder to shoulder with the other. At the very last Skeeter rolled a pebble under his foot and stumbled—and again Smoky came in with his slaty nose in ...
— Cow-Country • B. M. Bower
... aloud, as she skipped, "I won't go back, I won't go back," keeping time with her feet until she was out of breath and almost intoxicated, delirious, casting herself down, her heart beating wildly, on a bank of ferns, burying her face in them. She had really stopped because a pebble had got into her shoe, and as she took it out she looked at her bare heel and remarked ruefully:—"Those twenty-five cent stockings ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... hard, as a marble, button, pebble, bead, the greatest care must be exercised. Try to make the object fall out. To effect this, turn the child's head downward with the injured ear toward the floor. Then pull the lobe of the ear outward ...
— The Eugenic Marriage, Volume IV. (of IV.) - A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies • Grant Hague
... absolutely impossible to find anything more for his hands to do. He had swept the barn floor until it was as clean as a broom could make it; the wood in the shed had been piled methodically; a goodly supply of kindlings were prepared, and not so much as a pebble was to be seen ...
— Aunt Hannah and Seth • James Otis
... surpassing skill, and he reached the top without rustling a bush or sending a single pebble rolling. Then he peered cautiously over the rim and beheld a great fire burning not more than a hundred yards away. Thirty or forty warriors were sitting around it, eating. He did not see Tandakora among them, but he surmised, ...
— The Lords of the Wild - A Story of the Old New York Border • Joseph A. Altsheler
... persons, that drift into the story on no principle of artistic selection and combination. The style, while it has the raciness of individual peculiarity and the careless ease of familiar gossip, is as clear, pure, and flexible as if its sentences had been subjected to repeated revision, and every pebble which obstructed its lucid and limpid flow had been laboriously removed. The characterization is almost perfect of its kind. Becky Sharp, the Marquis of Steyne, Sir Pitt Crawley and the whole Crawley family, Amelia, the Osbornes, Major Dobbin, not to mention others, are as well known to most ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 91, May, 1865 • Various
... come hither this night, otherwise sore I fear they will seize him and do him a harm and well-away for his lost youthtide!" All this took place between mother and daughter whilst the Caliph stood upon the terrace-roof listening to their say, and presently he picked up a pebble the size of a vetchling[FN163] and, setting it between his thumb and forefinger, jerked it at the wax candle which burned before the young lady and extinguished the light. "Who put out yon taper?" cried the old woman, "and left the others afire?" and so saying ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... can take placer claims—can hold them, you know—for one man. That's the limit, a hundred and sixty acres. Those eight men aren't jumping that ranch as eight individuals; they're in the employ of a principal who is engineering the affair. If I were going to shy a pebble at the head mogul, I'd sure try hard to hit our corpulent friend with the fishy eye. And that," she added, "is what all these cipher messages for Saunders mean, very likely. Baumberger had to have someone here to spy around for ...
— Good Indian • B. M. Bower
... have continued this chase until one or the other of the horses dropped, but now her horse picked up a pebble and went somewhat lame. She pulled up and told me to ride on alone. After a pause I slowly approached the top of the next ridge, and there, as I more than half suspected, I saw the antelope lying down, its ...
— The Way of a Man • Emerson Hough
... foretell. cel'lar, a lower room. bur'row, hole for shelter. sel'ler, one who sells. bor'ough, a corporate town. ces'sion, a giving up. ses'sion, a sitting. bold'er, more bold. cous'in, a relation. bowl'der, a large pebble. ...
— McGuffey's Eclectic Spelling Book • W. H. McGuffey
... writes [553] that in Rajputana the washermen's wells dug at the sides of streams are deemed the most impure of all receptacles. And one of the most binding oaths is that a man as he swears should drop a pebble into one of these wells, saying, "If I break this oath may all the good deeds of my forefathers fall into the washerman's well like this pebble." Nevertheless the Dhobi refuses to wash the clothes of some of the lowest castes as the Mang, Mahar and Chamar. Like the Teli the Dhobi is unlucky, and ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume II • R. V. Russell
... mother's high-post bedstead. Perhaps the one element of tragedy lay in the fact that Della was no mechanician, and she had not foreseen that, having one flat side, her balls might decline to roll. But that dismay was brief. A weaker soul would have flinched; to Della it was a futile check, a pebble under the wave. She laid her balls calmly aside. Some day she would whittle them into shape; for there were always coming to Della days full of roomy leisure and large content. Meanwhile apples would serve her turn,—good alike to draw a weary mind out of its channel or teach ...
— Tiverton Tales • Alice Brown
... A pebble had rattled down the rocky wall and bounded off some yards to the front of them. Silver Face started and would have bounded away had not a firm hand been at that instant laid on the ...
— The Pony Rider Boys in the Grand Canyon - The Mystery of Bright Angel Gulch • Frank Gee Patchin
... still lay there a pebble touched the dirt lightly just before his face. Raising his head a couple of inches he saw a hand, dimly outlined at the edge ...
— Uncle Sam's Boys with Pershing's Troops - Dick Prescott at Grips with the Boche • H. Irving Hancock
... make a good orator at last. Demosthenes, who was the most gifted orator of antiquity, had an impediment in his speech in early life. But he determined to overcome it, and be an orator in spite of it. He tried various expedients, and finally went to a cave daily, on the sea-shore, where, with pebble-stones in his mouth, he declaimed, until the impediment was removed. By patience and perseverance he became a renowned orator. It was somewhat so, too, with Daniel Webster, whom you all know as the greatest orator of our land and times. The first time he went upon the stage to speak, he ...
— The Bobbin Boy - or, How Nat Got His learning • William M. Thayer
... and cloudy, the pebble pathway is wider and better than yesterday, for it is now the thoroughfare along which thousands of coolies stagger daily with heavy loads of merchandise to the commencement of river navigation at Nam-hung. The district is populous and productive; ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... wouldn't say that!" declared Hanky Panky; "there are other ways of doing it, you can wager. That hill yonder isn't the only pebble on the beach. ...
— The Big Five Motorcycle Boys on the Battle Line - Or, With the Allies in France • Ralph Marlow
... rocky strait, through which the coaster was making her way, but still she glided safely on. The strait once cleared, a large bay opened before her, in which the sea was more calm, and rippled gently up against a beach of sand and pebble. ...
— Wood Rangers - The Trappers of Sonora • Mayne Reid
... overmuch grinding may be attributed to the Grindstone, or muller, for that some of their parts may be worn off and mixt with the colour, yet there seems not very much, for I have done it on a Serpentine-stone with a muller made of a Pebble, and yet observ'd ...
— Micrographia • Robert Hooke
... hair down, and walk bareheaded in and out and in and out round all the circle of stones. Then you put an offering of flowers on that biggest stone—the Giant King, he's called—and throw a pebble into the little pool below. You count the bubbles that come up—one for A, two for B, &c.,—and they'll give you the initial of your future lover. With very great luck, you might see his shadow in the pool, but that does ...
— A Popular Schoolgirl • Angela Brazil
... everywhere around; on the chairs, the bedstead, the walls and ceiling. The closest scrutiny failed to detect any movement on the part of those present that could account for the noises, which were accompanied by a scratching or tearing sound. Suddenly a large pebble fell in my presence on to the bed; no one had moved to dislodge it, even if it had been placed for the purpose. When I replaced the candle on the window-sill in the kitchen, the knocks became still louder, like those made by ...
— True Irish Ghost Stories • St John D Seymour
... I should remain hidden, when, all on a sudden, I slipped over a round pebble, fell from one stone to another, down into the depths of the mountain. At last it was pitch dark and I could neither see nor ...
— Good Stories For Great Holidays - Arranged for Story-Telling and Reading Aloud and for the - Children's Own Reading • Frances Jenkins Olcott
... the deserted vessel, behind it, his lump of iron swung like a pebble in a sling. A cloud of smoke burst from the burned lining of the friction brake, in the reel. Then the wire was all out; ...
— Salvage in Space • John Stewart Williamson
... pebble was long preserved, but mysteriously disappeared when the person who sought it ...
— The Religion of the Ancient Celts • J. A. MacCulloch
... The fishermen that walk upon the beach Appear like mice; and yond tall anchoring bark, Diminish'd to her cock; her cock a buoy Almost too small for sight: the murmuring surge That on the unnumber'd idle pebble chafes Cannot be heard so high.—I'll look no more; Lest my brain turn, and the deficient ...
— The Tragedy of King Lear • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... as penances, of a piece of haircloth worn next the skin, and a pebble in the shoe, she dismissed them both. The haircloth could not be found, and the pebble would attract the notice of the Argus-eyed aunt, besides being a foolish bar to the activity of a person who had to do housework and walk a mile and a ...
— Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... talked of them with the Latin eloquence and facility, as no veteran of the north could have talked; he was in a moment the equal of these great affairs in which he had mingled; so that one felt in him the son of a race which had been rolled and polished—a pebble, as it were, from rocks which had made the primeval frame-work of the world—in the main course and ...
— Lady Rose's Daughter • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... journey to find the missionary. She was a maiden, not beautiful, but she was a comely Indian girl, attractive and clever in her way, and she well knew that many a young hunter had sat down beside her wigwam door or had dropped the shining, white pebble before her in the path, thus plainly intimating his desire to win her notice and esteem. But to all of them she had turned a deaf ear, and had treated them, without exception, with perfect indifference. As shy and timid as a young fawn of the forest, she had lived under the watchful ...
— Oowikapun - How the Gospel Reached the Nelson River Indians • Egerton Ryerson Young
... pushed a pebble along one of the lines drawn in charcoal on the stone coping, "Ewans, you must find it tiresome ...
— The Aspirations of Jean Servien • Anatole France
... the pebble which his kingly foot First presses into some more costly stone Than ever blinded eye. I'll have one mark it And bring it me. I'll have it burnish'd firelike; I'll set it round with gold, with pearl, with diamond. Let the great ...
— Queen Mary and Harold • Alfred Lord Tennyson
... didn't quite catch what she said. On the principle that a rose by any other name would still have its thorns, I didn't ask her to repeat it. I just said, "Thank you, ma'am," in my best tramp manner and set off down the road to the sea. On the way my left boot burst and a pebble worked in through the opening and set me limping. To make matters worse the day was perhaps the hottest of all that memorable summer, and the glare from the white grit of the road played the devil ...
— The Lost Valley • J. M. Walsh
... this pitch?" asked the manager, taking up a pebble from a little pile that lay at his elbow, and casting it into ...
— Deep Down, a Tale of the Cornish Mines • R.M. Ballantyne
... smooth as a mirror, and there seemed to be scarcely a grass-blade out of place. The streams wound through ("snaked themselves through," is the German expression,) with a subdued ripple, as if they feared to displace a pebble, and the great ash trees which stood here and there, had lined each of their leaves as carefully with silver and turned them as gracefully to the wind, us if they were making their toilettes ...
— Views a-foot • J. Bayard Taylor
... both beyond me. Mark me, I care no more for you, as a woman, than for the beggars in our High Street; but, for the sake of the charities which stand to the account of one Squire Kate, I throw into the current a small pebble. ...
— The Squire - An Original Comedy in Three Acts • Arthur W. Pinero
... heavy, and even the merest pebble has a perceptible weight, yet the entire planet, toward which both gravitate, floats more lightly than any feather. In literature somewhat analogous may be observed. Here also are found the insignificant lightness of the pebble and the mighty lightness of the planet; while between ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 51, January, 1862 • Various
... singular appearance. She had been playing in the brook, her favorite companion, and now, with little spatters of mud ornamenting both face and pantalets, her sun-bonnet hanging down her back, and her hands full of pebble-stones, she stood furtively eyeing the stranger, whose mental exclamation was: "Mercy, ...
— Cousin Maude • Mary J. Holmes
... not thirst alone, but the unchanging sight of the desert, that fatigued the mind. There was not a variation in the surface of the soil, not a hillock of sand, not a pebble, to relieve the gaze. This unbroken level discouraged the beholder, and gave him that kind of malady called the "desert-sickness." The impassible monotony of the arid blue sky, and the vast yellow expanse of the desert-sand, at length produced a sensation of terror. In this inflamed atmosphere ...
— Five Weeks in a Balloon • Jules Verne
... railway—had it been constructed—could have established an active circulation of social life in that sequestered nook where human existence stagnated like dead water. Forgotten, therefore, Lourdes remained slumbering, happy and sluggish amidst its old-time peacefulness, with its narrow, pebble-paved streets and its bleak houses with dressings of marble. The old roofs were still all massed on the eastern side of the castle; the Rue de la Grotte, then called the Rue du Bois, was but a deserted and often impassable road; no houses stretched down to the Gave as now, ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... will do when his cue is masonry,—in the Coliseum. What the execution of that drawing is you may judge by looking with a magnifying glass at the ivy and battlements in this, when, also, his cue is masonry. What then can he mean by not so much as indicating one pebble or joint in the ...
— Lectures on Landscape - Delivered at Oxford in Lent Term, 1871 • John Ruskin
... this part of the country was very striking. We met no rocks during our walk; a porphyritic pebble or two being the only stones noticed; they were flattened, evidently showing that the water by which they were carried had a slow motion, which supports the view I have put forward in an early page of this volume, with reference to the gradual northerly discharge ...
— Discoveries in Australia, Volume 2 • John Lort Stokes
... will the community esteem him; and he who assumes to lead or dictate will soon be permitted to do so, and will become the first in prominence and influence in his neighborhood, county, or State. Greatness commences humbly and progresses by assumption. The humble ruler of a neighborhood, like a pebble thrown into a pond, will continue to increase the circle of his influence until it reaches the limits of his county. The fathers speak of him, the children hear of him, his name is a household word; if he but assumes enough, in time he becomes the ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks
... that shot away the hand of the Countess as she held a wine-glass up, drinking confusion to her enemies. No wonder little boy Crockett got absent-minded one day, when he dropped his watch instead of a pebble in wanting to test the time the stone ...
— The Heather-Moon • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... poor Jim-jim, who was afterwards, as I said, to perish by an awful fate, otherwise he would testify to the truth of my plain story. I began poking among the rocks in the dry basin of the donga, {23} and had just picked up a pebble—I knew it by the soapy feel for a diamond. Uncut it was about three times the size of the koh-i- noor, say 1,000 carats, and I was rejoicing in my luck when I heard the scream of a human being in the last agony ...
— Old Friends - Essays in Epistolary Parody • Andrew Lang
... dabs and great sloshy washes; but the memories of Pear-tree Gully, of the Kapanja Sirt, and Chocolate Hill are drawn in with a fine mapping pen and Indian ink—like a Rackham fairy-book illustration—every blade of dead grass, every ripple of blue, every pink pebble; and towards the firing-line I could draw it now, every inch of the way up the hills with every stone and jagged ...
— At Suvla Bay • John Hargrave
... the wind rise, moan a little while in the gorge and then die; he heard a fitful breeze rustle the boughs on the slopes and then grow still, and he heard his comrades move once or twice to ease their positions, but no other sound came to him until nearly midnight, and then he heard the fall of a pebble on the slope, absolute proof to one experienced as he that it had been displaced by the incautious foot of a ...
— The Masters of the Peaks - A Story of the Great North Woods • Joseph A. Altsheler
... of sulphuret of iron down upon the edge of the wheel, which was notched, and touched the priming in the pan. The friction produced the sparks. It was from this use that the sulphuret of iron derived the name of pyrites, or fire-stone. Afterwards a flint or any common hard pebble was used. The complicated nature of this lock, and its uncertainty, prevented its general adoption. The next improvement was due to the Dutch. About the year 1600 there was in Holland a band of marauders known as snaphausen, or poultry-stealers. ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various
... absolute nothingness of man, when measured on the inconceivably magnificent scale of the universe. No one, it is well known, felt this conviction more deeply than Newton himself. "I have been but as a child," said he, "playing on the sea-shore; now finding some pebble rather more polished, and now some shell rather more agreeably variegated than another, while the immense ocean of truth extended itself ...
— A Theodicy, or, Vindication of the Divine Glory • Albert Taylor Bledsoe
... choking with rage. For awhile, in silence, the party gazed at the pitiful, hideous monstrosity that had once been a man. Then the ever-practical Redmond proceeded, with the aid of a large pebble, to burst, strand by strand, the wire which bound the stone to ...
— The Luck of the Mounted - A Tale of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police • Ralph S. Kendall
... but he must, of necessity, influence, to a more or less degree, the conduct of those he meets, whether he will or no,—and there lies the terror of it! Thus, to some extent, we become responsible for the actions of our neighbors, even after we are dead, for Influence is immortal. Man is a pebble thrown into the pool of Life,—a splash, a bubble, and he is gone! But—the ripples of Influence he leaves behind go on widening and ever widening until they reach the farthest bank. Oh, had I but dreamed of this in my youth, I might have been—a happy man ...
— The Amateur Gentleman • Jeffery Farnol et al
... thought. Did not his great ancestor, as young and as untried, a beardless stripling, with but a pebble, a small smoothed stone, level a mailed giant with the ground, and save ...
— Alroy - The Prince Of The Captivity • Benjamin Disraeli
... others taking care of babies; while others, at little stands and stalls, sold gingerbread and cakes. At one place Rollo stopped to look at two little children that were playing in the gravel and throwing the little pebble stones about. Their grandmother, who was sitting near, said something ...
— Rollo in Paris • Jacob Abbott
... palaestra. But at that time the best master of rhetoric and argument was the best man, and my father, who himself could shine in the senate as an ardent and elegant orator, looked upon me as a half idiotic ne'er-do-weel, until one clay a learned client of our house presented him with a pebble on which was carved an epigram to this effect: 'He who would see the noblest gifts of the Greek race, should visit the house of Herophilus, for there he might admire strength and vigor of body in Menander, and the same qualities of mind in Apollonius.' These lines, which were written ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... discomforts thereof. During the great storm of March '52, when the light-house on Minot's Ledge was overturned, an immense wave rolled across the centre of Appledore from side to side. There are windows in the hotel on Star Island where one can drop a pebble into the sea, and go to sleep listening to the murmur of the waves. Even in summer the surf sometimes runs so high that it is dangerous to approach the edge of the cliffs; and few people know how pleasant it is to watch the eddying swirl of the water round the promontories on the westerly side. ...
— Sketches from Concord and Appledore • Frank Preston Stearns
... my foot dislodged a pebble, which fell inward, into the dark, with a hollow chink. At once, the noise was taken up and repeated a score of times; each succeeding echo being fainter, and seeming to travel away from me, as though into remote distance. ...
— The House on the Borderland • William Hope Hodgson
... sake thou nam'st, not for Ferdinand. There liv'd a Knight exceld his petty fame As far as costly Pearle the coursest Pebble,— An English Knight cald Pembroke: were his bones Interred heere, I would confesse of him Much more than thou requir'st, and be content To hang both shield and sword ...
— A Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. III • Various
... bobbing up serenely with something, but still unable to say whether it be pearl or pebble. Mrs. Blythe is not the grand personage I pictured her to be, for there was no liveried footman to meet me at the station, no carriage in waiting. Nor is she an author. Mrs. Crum, the landlady of ...
— Mary Ware's Promised Land • Annie Fellows Johnston
... of this elysian isle— Conscious, inseparable, one. Meanwhile We two will rise and sit and walk together Under the roof of blue Ionian weather; And wander in the meadows; or ascend The mossy mountains, where the blue heavens bend With lightest winds to touch their paramour;{9} Or linger where the pebble-paven shore Under the quick faint kisses of the sea Trembles and sparkles as with ecstasy;— Possessing and possessed by all that is Within that calm circumference of bliss, And by each other, till to love and ...
— Six Centuries of English Poetry - Tennyson to Chaucer • James Baldwin
... are crowded all day with holiday people, and somewhat obstructed by the fashion of the inhabitants taking their meals in the street. We also, in the evening, dine at an open cafe (with a marble table and a pebble floor) amidst a clamour and confusion of voices, under the shadow of old eaves—with creepers and flowers twining round nearly every window, where the pigeons lurk and dive at stray morsels. The evening is calm and bright and the sky overhead a deep ...
— Normandy Picturesque • Henry Blackburn
... of the Duke de Morlay had fallen like a pebble in the stream and began to ripple the waters; a spreading circle of thoughts, fears, resentments began to move in every heart. The philosopher himself was troubled, for he had been prompted by Maurice to observe the assiduous attractions of the Duke, and ...
— The Idol of Paris • Sarah Bernhardt
... rocks, Sabrina's waves, Still many a shining pebble bear: Where nature's studious hand engraves The PERFECT FORM, and ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... make the claim That they are sure expected at this hour To hobnob with you on some public stunt. Francos: Hold, Seldonskip! Thy tongue unruly wags Like to the shuttle on its weaving way To fashion fabric of but little worth 'Twere well to throttle it or else belike A pebble small, in gear of great machine Disaster grave may ...
— 'A Comedy of Errors' in Seven Acts • Spokeshave (AKA Old Fogy)
... effect on scientific theory of the identification of aesthetic objects with productions of art. To say that the experience of exploring with the fingers a velvety petal or the smooth surface of a sea-rounded pebble has no aesthetic element savours of a perverse arbitrariness. Touch is no doubt wanting in a prerogative of hearing and sight which we shall presently see to be important, namely, that being acted on by objects at a distance they admit ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... the disquieting taps, she stole to the window, and, keeping herself hidden, peeped out. All she could see was a man standing close to a shrub, as if to take advantage of its concealment, who occasionally raised an arm and tossed a pebble against the panes. Really alarmed, the girl was on the point of seeking her mother, when her eyes took in the fact that Clarion was standing beside the cause of her fright, and seeking, so far as he could, to win his attention. Reassured, the girl raised the sash, and instantly her father's ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford
... calmly lit his pipe, A trophy which survived a hundred fights, A beacon which had cheered ten thousand nights. The fourth and last of this deserted group Walked up and down—at times would stand, then stoop 110 To pick a pebble up—then let it drop— Then hurry as in haste—then quickly stop— Then cast his eyes on his companions—then Half whistle half a tune, and pause again— And then his former movements would redouble, With something between carelessness and trouble. This is a long description, but ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron
... hula ili-ili, pebble-dance, was a performance of the classical times, in which, according to one who has witnessed it, the olapa alone took part. The dancers held in each hand a couple of pebbles, ili-ili—hence the name of the dance—which they managed to clash against each other, after the fashion of castanets, thus ...
— Unwritten Literature of Hawaii - The Sacred Songs of the Hula • Nathaniel Bright Emerson
... suddenly placed his hand upon something hard, which rolled under the pressure. Clasping it tight in his fist, he rushed to the grating and looked at the article. Yes, sure enough, it was a piece of paper wrapped round a pebble. He softly called Roger to his side, and, opening the folded missive, both began to read. And, as they read, both faces became several shades paler, and their hearts beat thickly. The note ran ...
— Across the Spanish Main - A Tale of the Sea in the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood
... dropped into the silence like a pebble into a deep well. There was no answer, but at the same moment I heard someone moving away from me across the room in the direction of the door. It was a confused sort of footstep, and the sound of garments brushing ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Ghost Stories • Various
... Lesson described the black variety as a distinct species, under the name of Lepus magellanicus, but this, as I have elsewhere shown, is an error.[268] Within recent times the sealers have stocked some of the small outlying islets in the Falkland group with rabbits; and on Pebble Islet, as I hear from Admiral Sulivan, a large proportion are hare-coloured, whereas on Rabbit Islet a large proportion are of a bluish colour which is not elsewhere seen. How the rabbits were coloured which were turned out on these ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Vol. I. • Charles Darwin |
