"Perceptible" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... shifting light appeared in the east, a faint rumble became perceptible and increased. The swaying shaft of light intensified and a moment later the long-drawn poignancy of a chime-whistle blowing for the river-road crossing, exquisitely softened by distance, echoingly ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1920 • Various
... attempt at public speaking, but her heart was so in the movement that she was determined to try. She advanced to the front of the platform, but was so nervous that she required the assuring arm of the president and her kindly voice to give her courage to proceed. When she did, it was with a perceptible tremor in her tones. After an apology, she read her memorial, which had been presented to the judiciary committee, reported the result of her interview with them, and said she had the assurance that it would be favorably reported, and that the heart of every man in Congress was in the movement. ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... familiar incidents of the human story, approached poetically and passionately. As the young husband sat in the quiet of his wife's room, the occasional restless movements of the small brown head against her breast causing the only sound perceptible in the country silence, he felt all the deep familiar currents of human feeling sweeping through him—love, reverence, thanksgiving—and all the walls of the soul, as it were, expanding ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... there was no change for the better, nor any very perceptible change for the worse. The patient was a little weaker, and suffered from a depression of mind, against which all ...
— Milly Darrell and Other Tales • M. E. Braddon
... any sentry be posted there, that we should be discovered. The lieutenant accordingly gave it as wide a berth as he could. Once round it, we could see the masts of the brig against the sky, but there was no light visible, nor was any movement perceptible on board her. We pulled on steadily, hoping to get up to her without being discovered. We fancied that the Frenchmen must be keeping a bad look-out. On and on we glided, like spirits of evil bent on mischief, when, as we were within ...
— Will Weatherhelm - The Yarn of an Old Sailor • W.H.G. Kingston
... to prepare himself by a strange weaving motion of his neck against the friction of his collar—for thus, instinctively, he strove to obtain greater ease and some decent appearance of manly indifference. He felt that his efforts were a failure; that his agitation was ruinous and must be perceptible at a distance of miles, not feet. And then, in the instant of panic that befell, when her dark-lashed eyelids slowly lifted, he had ...
— Seventeen - A Tale Of Youth And Summer Time And The Baxter Family Especially William • Booth Tarkington
... its inception, it would afterwards be gradually improved as variations of more and more utility presented themselves, until not only would finer and finer degrees of difference between light and shade become perceptible, but even the outlines of solid bodies would begin to be appreciated. And so on, stage by stage, till from an ordinary nerve-ending in the skin is evolved ...
— Darwin, and After Darwin (Vol. 1 and 3, of 3) • George John Romanes
... of the woman before us shook involuntarily, but her lips made no protest. I doubt if she possessed the power of speech at that moment. A change, subtle, but quite perceptible, had taken place in her emotions at mention of her sister's husband, and, though she exerted herself to remain calm, the effort seemed too much for her strength. Anxious to hide this evidence of weakness, she rose impetuously; and then we saw how tall she was, how the long lines of her cloak ...
— The Filigree Ball • Anna Katharine Green
... times record many such penmen, whose glory consisted in writing in so small a hand that the writing could not be legible to the naked eye. Menage mentions, he saw whole sentences which were not perceptible to the eye without the microscope; pictures and portraits which appeared at first to be lines and scratches thrown down at random; one formed the face of the Dauphiness with the most correct resemblance. He read an Italian poem, in praise of this princess, containing some thousand ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... it was a yard or more from me. The sensation is somewhat like receiving a smart blow in the face. I am frequently aware of passing a building while riding along a country road, and the proximity of trees, fences and other objects is quite perceptible. ...
— The World As I Have Found It - Sequel to Incidents in the Life of a Blind Girl • Mary L. Day Arms
... him with a certain air of boldness, that slowly withered, however, under the fire that leaped up in the white man's weary blue eyes. Under his savage inscrutability the signs of fidgets became perceptible. Perhaps he had not expected the trooper to brave him single-handed, but had hoped for more time to obliterate tracks, and let matters quiet down. Many a dark breast within hearing quailed at the sound of ...
— The Woman from Outside - [on Swan River] • Hulbert Footner
... either side by fallen trees, and occasionally assumed, when half obliterated by the ravages of storms, the appearance of desolate and irregular marshes. In other places they were less palpable. Here, the temporary path was entirely hidden by the incursions of a swollen torrent; there, it was faintly perceptible in occasional patches of soft ground, or partly traceable by fragments of abandoned armour, skeletons of horses and men, and remnants of the rude bridges which had once served for passage across a river or transit ...
— Antonina • Wilkie Collins
... slender neck, no hump; and the points of the horns do not turn towards each other at the tip, but bend slightly backwards, and they are much smaller; the legs too are of a purer white. The very young bull has the forehead narrower than the cow, and the bony frontal ridge scarcely perceptible. The horns too turn more upwards. In old individuals the hair on the upper parts is often worn off. The skin of the under parts when uncovered is deep ochrey-yellow."—'Mammals of ...
— Natural History of the Mammalia of India and Ceylon • Robert A. Sterndale
... broad passage, a man taken from the mounted detachment and whose scabbard and spurs clattered and jingled, hour after hour, as he walked. The sound produced something half rhythmical, like a broken tune in search of itself, and the change of sentinels made no perceptible difference in the regular nature of ...
— A Cigarette-Maker's Romance • F. Marion Crawford
... Although spiritual pleasures are by their nature greater than bodily pleasures, they are not so perceptible to the senses, and consequently they do not so strongly affect the sensitive appetite, against whose impulse the good of reason is safeguarded by moral virtue. We may also reply that spiritual pleasures, strictly speaking, ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... the champagne, the supper, and the boxes of cigars and cigarettes, an atmosphere of solemnity was distinctly perceptible. It was as if each one of these officers, hardened to human suffering by a lifetime of discipline and active service, to say nothing of the years of horror through which they had just passed, could not but feel that ...
— The Man Who Rocked the Earth • Arthur Train
... world, how often do naturalists dispute this same question, as I found with respect to the birds brought from the Galapagos islands. Yarrell has remarked that the individuals of the same undoubted species of birds, from Europe and N. America, usually present slight, indefinable though perceptible differences. The recognition indeed of one animal by another of its kind seems to imply some difference. The disposition of wild animals undoubtedly differs. The variation, such as it is, chiefly affects the same parts in wild organisms as in domestic breeds; for instance, the size, colour, and the ...
— The Foundations of the Origin of Species - Two Essays written in 1842 and 1844 • Charles Darwin
... had been, that portion of the Algerian coast which is bounded on the north by the Mediterranean, and on the west by the right bank of the Shelif, appeared to have suffered little change. It is true that indentations were perceptible in the fertile plain, and the surface of the sea was ruffled with an agitation that was quite unusual; but the rugged outline of the cliff was the same as heretofore, and the aspect of the entire scene appeared unaltered. The stone hostelry, with the exception of some deep clefts ...
— Off on a Comet • Jules Verne
... the final splinter, they promptly invalided me home. From the day I limped on board the Cumberland transport in the Tagus, leaning on two crutches, I began to mend: and within twelve months—as may hereafter be recounted—I was back again, hale and hearty, marching with no perceptible limp, on ...
— The Adventures of Harry Revel • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... certain degree, persecution had made them what they are. He further said that the Government were now adopting a new plan, and were treating the Jews with toleration, liberality, and love, but it would take a long time, he remarked—perhaps a century—before any difference would be perceptible. He did not consider the present generation, and only thought of the future. He concluded by observing the Jews were loyal subjects, and immediately complied with every ...
— Diaries of Sir Moses and Lady Montefiore, Volume I • Sir Moses Montefiore
... with which the keeper, to whose custody Paul and Silas were committed by their prosecutors, addressed his prisoners, when he saw them freed from their bonds by the perceptible agency of divine favour, and was, therefore, irresistibly convinced that they were not offenders against the laws, ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 3 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... knot and then immerse them in the brook, when the water began to get warm, and in due time we would have just as many animals, with the power of locomotion and appearance of snakes, as there were hairs in the bundle. I have raised them one-eighth of an inch in diameter, with perceptible eyes and mouth on the butt end or root part of the hair. Take such a snake and dip it in an alkaline solution, and the flesh or mucus that formed about the hair will dissolve, and the veritable horse hair is left. They ...
— Scientific American, Vol. 17, No. 26 December 28, 1867 • Various
... a colloquy, and Aragon, not to be behindhand, flashed a few words across the conversation, right and left as it were, his expressions appearing to be in a different tongue from those used by the chief interpreter, and both utterly without perceptible resemblance to the rolling consonants and gutturals of the savages. Marcoy imbibed a strong impression that the only terms understood in common were the words of Spanish with which the palaver was thickly interlarded. This was the first time the interpreters were put on their mettle ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, No. 23, February, 1873, Vol. XI. • Various
... to trudge up the flat-sounding slate treads she discovered that her head was aching as though some one were pinching the top of her eyeballs. Each time she moved her head the pain came in a perceptible wave. The hallway reeked with that smell of onions and fried fish which had arrived with the first tenants. Children were dragging noisy objects about the halls. As the throb grew sharper during the centuries it took her to climb the first three flights of stairs, Una realized how ...
— The Job - An American Novel • Sinclair Lewis
... dimly shining the tracks, lifting her head incessantly to listen and peer into the darkness, her quick eye caught something ahead—something very slightly different from the wall of black obscurity—a vague hint of colour—the very vaguest tint scarcely perceptible at all. ...
— The Flaming Jewel • Robert W. Chambers
... Spencer's Italian rhymes are better finished than his French; and indeed the facility of composing in that most poetical of all languages must be obvious: but, as a composer in Italian, he and all other Englishmen are much inferior to Mr. Mathias. It is very perceptible in many of Mr. S.'s smaller pieces that he has suffered his English versification to be vitiated with Italian 'concetti'; and we should have been better pleased with his compositions in a foreign language, had they not induced him to ...
— The Works of Lord Byron: Letters and Journals, Volume 2. • Lord Byron
... showing that oxygen supports combustion, we find—(1) that the taper which only glowed before being plunged into the oxygen, bursts into flame when there—Sequence; (2) that this begins to happen at once without perceptible interval—Immediacy; (3) that no other agent or disturbing circumstance was present (the preparation of the experiment having excluded any such thing)—Unconditionalness; (4) the experiment may be repeated as often as we ...
— Logic - Deductive and Inductive • Carveth Read
... poles, at which the stationary atmosphere would not whirl the car, and where we might also profit by an ascending current of air. The attraction of the sun is so slight at the distance of Uranus, that a stone flung out of the car would have no perceptible motion, as it would only fall towards the sun a mere fraction of an inch per second, or some 355 feet an hour; hence, as Dr. Preston has calculated, one ounce of matter ejected from the car towards the sun every five minutes, with a velocity of 880 feet a second, ...
— A Trip to Venus • John Munro
... although John had denied this fact, owing to his lack of memory of his past incarnation. Jesus the Master saw clearly that which John the Forerunner had failed to perceive concerning himself. The plainly perceptible characteristics of Elijah reappearing in John bear out the twice-repeated, positive assertion of the Master that John the Baptist ...
— Mystic Christianity • Yogi Ramacharaka
... his head, and the opposition leaders learned, not from punishment, but from quiet contempt, to express dissent in modes other than those of arson and sticks and stones. For seven years, by methods so restrained as to be hardly perceptible even in his private letters to Grey, he guided the first experimental cabinets into smooth water, and when he resigned, he left behind him politicians {206} trained by his efforts to govern Canada according ...
— British Supremacy & Canadian Self-Government - 1839-1854 • J. L. Morison
... potent influences at work, and accepting these representative utterances, it may yet be asked by the incredulous—What of the inherent conservatism, the proverbial tenacity of India? Is there really any perceptible and significant change to record as the outcome of the influences of the nineteenth century? Well, the expression "Indian conservatism" is misleading. There is no Indian conservatism in the sense of a philosophy of politics, of society, or ...
— New Ideas in India During the Nineteenth Century - A Study of Social, Political, and Religious Developments • John Morrison
... one part of the distribution of the garden-culture. Far north along the Atlantic seaboard, and as far inland as the mild Atlantic climate is perceptible, the same type prevails. Its ancient limit is traced meteorologically in Tacitus' complaints (for example) of the austerity of the lands beyond the Rhine. In this northern region grain crops pass from red to white wheat, from barley to oats, ...
— The Unity of Civilization • Various
... Weinlich—by an exhaustive study of counterpoint. If, therefore, in later years I again expressed opinions in my casual writings on matters pertaining to that art which so particularly interested me, it is certain that traces of what I learned from my study of Schopenhauer's philosophy were clearly perceptible. ...
— My Life, Volume II • Richard Wagner
... interesting bit of character," said Lady Mabel, with a faintly perceptible sneer. "Worthy ...
— Vixen, Volume III. • M. E. Braddon
... no perceptible start; only, as he said this, Audrey raised her face from his knee, and looked at him. She was very pale, but her eyes were quite dry; only the firm, beautiful lips ...
— Lover or Friend • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... even elisions. Yet, if I may trust my judgment, all of them can still be read with pleasure; the sapphics may almost be called a success. This is even more true of metres, where these faults are less perceptible or more easily avoided, for instance, Asclepiads. Take the verses on solitariness, Arcadia, ...
— The Poems and Fragments of Catullus • Catullus
... breath, or as what Hindu grammarians call vyanjana, i.e., determinants; and no vowels except as modified by consonants. In order to support the second part of this statement, viz., that it is impossible to pronounce an initial vowel without a slight, and to many hardly perceptible, initial noise, the coup de la glotte, I had appealed to musicians who know how difficult it is, in playing on the flute or on the violin, to weaken or to avoid certain noises (Ansatz) arising from the first impulses imparted to the air, before it can produce really musical ...
— Chips from a German Workshop - Volume IV - Essays chiefly on the Science of Language • Max Muller
... be replaced the first few years and is something not to be worried about. Dr. G. A. Zimmerman said, "Why worry about the blight? The wild ones have always had it to a small extent. Spread is so slow it isn't perceptible, damage being almost ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Twenty-Fourth Annual Meeting • Northern Nut Growers Association
... in barbarism, which gave an almost romantic character, a virtuous quality and power, to what was read in a book, independently of the thoughts or images contained in it. This feeling is very often perceptible in Dante. ...
— Literary Remains (1) • Coleridge
... Over the Teacups, in which he discoursed at the tea table in a similar vein, but not in quite the same fresh, buoyant, humorous way in which the Autocrat talked over his morning coffee. The decline in these books is gradual, although it is barely perceptible in the Professor. The Autocrat is, however, the brightest, crispest, and most vigorous of the series, while Over the Teacups is the calmest, as well as the soberest ...
— History of American Literature • Reuben Post Halleck
... gardener's phrase is, it would rot. Even in the city of Mexico itself, a couple of feet of digging in its alluvial foundation brings you to the water-level in the dry season, and seventy or eighty yards of boring does not carry you beyond the perceptible influence of tequisquite.[33] The effects of this law of evaporation puzzled the Aztecs, who were, of course, ignorant of all philosophical principles, and could only account for the disappearance of the immense mass of water that fell ...
— Mexico and its Religion • Robert A. Wilson
... very surprising effect was perceptible, only the man stopped hauling. Then he went down on one knee, paying out several inches of the rope, and letting the suspended Silas dip accordingly. It became evident that he was hit; he still grasped the rope, but it began to glide through his hands. ...
— Cudjo's Cave • J. T. Trowbridge
... upon some subject which he thought was interesting, obeyed, however, the summons, first, wrapping the handkerchief round his neck by way of precaution against the cold air. The sound of wheels became now very perceptible, and Pleydell, as if he had reserved all his curiosity till that moment, ran out to the hall. The Colonel rung for Barnes to desire that the persons who came in the carriage might be shown into a separate room, ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott
... incense from Sheba, and sweet cane, the goodly, from a far country? Your burnt-offerings are not acceptable, nor your sacrifices pleasant unto me," chap. vi. 20. Towards the end of Josiah's reign, the approaching judgment of God upon Judah became more perceptible. The former Asiatic dominion of the Assyrians passed over entirely to the Chaldeans, whose fresh and youthful strength so much the more threatened Judah with destruction, that from the Assyrians they had inherited the ...
— Christology of the Old Testament: And a Commentary on the Messianic Predictions. Vol. 2 • Ernst Hengstenberg
... with herself for feeling a just perceptible response to his virile personality and his absolute sureness. Anything he wanted—— Then she bent her mind resolutely upon ...
— The Privet Hedge • J. E. Buckrose
... commenced to bother him. What was it he should have remembered—and couldn't? The intentness of his gaze disconcerted Ruth. The Minister changed it to look down at his thrumming fingers, and continued in his suavest tones, following that scarcely perceptible pause. ...
— Charred Wood • Myles Muredach
... meditated upon the meaning of this phenomenon, he was surprised to see swim into his ken from the same point of departure another moving speck, as different from the first as well could be, insomuch that it was perceptible only by its blackness. Slowly and regularly it took the same course, and there was not much doubt that this was the form of a man. He, too, gradually descended from the upper levels, and was lost in the ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy
... protestations of critics; and that an improved and enlarged edition of the poem might probably appear after his death. Struck with the especial knowledge displayed of the author in question, I asked if he happened to be a friend. Then, with a scarcely perceptible smile playing about the corners of the mouth (a circumstance without significance for me at the time and only remembered afterwards), my new acquaintance answered: "He is my oldest and dearest friend." ...
— Recollections of Dante Gabriel Rossetti - 1883 • T. Hall Caine
... comparatively easy work of it. It was nearly dinner-time, and Deck had ordered the meal to be served on the meadow to those that remained there of the escort. During all this time the heavy guns had been thundering in the vicinity of Logan's Cross Roads; and as the day advanced the roar was perceptible nearer, indicating that the enemy had been driven from the first ...
— A Lieutenant at Eighteen • Oliver Optic
... matter over often and gravely when we were alone and in quiet places. Mother's lips were sealed. From the day when Sel made the first disclosure, she was never heard once to refer to the matter. A perceptible haughtiness crept into her manner towards the girl. She even talked of dismissing her; but repented it, and melted into momentary gentleness. I could have cried over her that night. I was beginning to understand what a pitiful struggle her life had become, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 106, August, 1866 • Various
... where the water bounds forth, a living joy, out of the rocky cleft—unlike those sluggish springs of the North that ooze regretfully upwards, as though ready to slink home again unless they were kicked from behind, and then trickle along, with barely perceptible movement, amid weeds ...
— Alone • Norman Douglas
... of the fugitive "anilines" for ink uses, and "wood pulp" as a material for paper, two French chemists, Chevallier and Lassiagne, published in the Journal de Chimie Medical, an article "On the Means to be Employed for Detecting and Rendering Perceptible Fraudulent Alterations in Public and Private Documents," which as translated is valuable enough to quote ...
— Forty Centuries of Ink • David N. Carvalho
... time before there was any perceptible movement in the crowd, but at last the two girls were released from their corner, and pushed their way ...
— Kate's Ordeal • Emma Leslie
... inform'd, by the help of these Glasses, strange things, which pass in our World for Non-Entities, is to be seen, and very perceptible; for Example: ...
— The Consolidator • Daniel Defoe
... his coat-tail pulled and looking up would see the face of Mr. Pulcifer solemnly gazing over his head at the rows of letter boxes. Apparently Raish was quite unconscious of the little man's presence, but there would come another tug at the coat-tail and a barely perceptible jerk of the Pulcifer ...
— Galusha the Magnificent • Joseph C. Lincoln
... the influences of Turgot's reasoning on Smith's mind to be easily perceptible to any reader of the Formation and Distribution of Wealth and of the Wealth of Nations. Dupont de Nemours once went so far as to say that whatever was true in Smith was borrowed from Turgot, and whatever was not borrowed from Turgot was not true; but he afterwards ...
— Life of Adam Smith • John Rae
... lightning gun-pulling ever witnessed in the Southwest. As Sharp's pistol was being raised—and the act was really quicker than the eye could follow—a glittering .44 appeared as if by some conjuring trick in the right hand of Mr. Standifer, who, without a perceptible movement of his arm, shot Benton Sharp through the heart. It seems that the new Commissioner of Insurance, Statistics, and History has been an old-time Indian fighter and ranger for many years, which accounts for the happy knack he has of handling ...
— Roads of Destiny • O. Henry
... calms" were a delusion, there were at least several beautifully clear, moderately calm days in June. The expectation of colder weather had been realized, and by the end of the month it was a perceptible fact that the sun had definitely turned, describing a longer arc when skimming the distant fleets of bergs along the northern horizon. Thus on June 28 the refracted image of the sun rose into visibility about eleven o'clock, heralded by ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson
... nerves are discovered, towards the origin of the canal, r. inserted into the seminal vessels and distribute in them, and towards the root of the penis many ramifications undoubtedly serving for the motion of these parts. Two small parts, perceptible near the nerves, are two ligaments for retaining the generative organs in their proper place, so that except the root of the penis, they cannot be drawn out without some exertion; it and the lenticular body however can protrude, and actually do so during copulation. A certain degree ...
— New observations on the natural history of bees • Francis Huber
... taste and culture, proud of his Knickerbocker ancestry. Physically as well as intellectually he was every inch a man, with his bright eye, fine face and, in later years, a snow-white beard. Even in his three score years and ten a decline was hardly perceptible until in the fall of 1887 the companion of his lifetime and partner of his literary pursuits was taken ...
— The Kirk on Rutgers Farm • Frederick Bruckbauer
... of surpassing clearness, melody, and strength. In the matter of eyes, also, my acquaintance was pre-eminently endowed. Either one of such a pair was worth a couple of the ordinary ocular organs. They were of a deep hazel, exceedingly large and lustrous; and there was perceptible about them, ever and anon, just that amount of interesting obliquity ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 4 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... addressed rather to her than to Bertha. A scarcely perceptible smile on the lips of the ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie
... this couple I saw him halt just a perceptible instant, his eye upon the hurrying waiter; then he stepped quickly before the coming couple and made a courteous but positive gesture, clearly an order to halt. The man did not halt, but brushed past the polite guard with ...
— Against Odds - A Detective Story • Lawrence L. Lynch
... not so much directed to her as to the listeners and spies. Such a discovery in a mood so anxious and irritable accounts for a certain harshness in him;—and yet a wild up-working of love, sporting with opposites in a wilful self-tormenting strain of irony, is perceptible throughout. 'I did love you once:'—'I lov'd you not:'—and particularly in his enumeration of the faults of the sex from which Ophelia is so free, that the mere freedom therefrom constitutes her character. Note Shakspeare's charm of composing the female character ...
— Literary Remains, Vol. 2 • Coleridge
... colonists in a ready-made state on the island. As soon as they had settled themselves and built their barracks and Government House, they set to work and cleared away the bush for an area of from four to six miles round the town. The ground soon became overgrown again, but this clearing is still perceptible in the different type of forest on it, and has enabled the gardens and little plantations round Clarence to be made more easily. My Spanish friends assure me that the Portuguese, who discovered the island in 1471, {48a} and ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... then," said Edward, with his habitual quickness. However, his remark did not make Madame de Villefort even smile, so much was every mind engaged, and so solemn was the situation. Astonishment was at its height. Something like a smile was perceptible on Madame de Villefort's countenance. Valentine instinctively raised her eyes, as ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... forcing of students into learned historical paths, instead of giving them a practical training; the connection of certain practices, encouraged in the public schools, with the objectionable spirit of our journalistic publicity—all these easily perceptible phenomena of the teaching of German led to the painful certainty that the most beneficial of those forces which have come down to us from classical antiquity are not yet known in our public schools: forces ...
— On the Future of our Educational Institutions • Friedrich Nietzsche
... he saw certain letters dotted over, not entirely perceptible, yet quite discernible. He turned the paper over. The reverse was perfectly clear. He held it to the light ...
— The Loyalist - A Story of the American Revolution • James Francis Barrett
... narrow sandy valleys the long days of June, July, and August are sometimes uncomfortably hot. The nights, however, are ordinarily cool. Going west through the middle of the region, from Westport to Saranac, a difference of several weeks in the progress of vegetation is perceptible. Long after the linnaea had ceased to bloom at Elizabethtown, we found its tender, fragrant, pink bells flushing a wooded bank near Lake Placid. Good grass grows upon the hillsides, and in the valleys are found excellent potatoes, oats, peas, beans, and buckwheat. The corn is ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 6, No 5, November 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... Tuileries gardens in the afternoon, it somehow happened that the backs of the ladies' chairs were mostly turned towards him. He was still dapper in appearance; but a close observer could see a difference. Management was perceptible in his dress. He had no watch; but the diamond remained on his finger—for the present; and yet society had nothing seriously compromising to say against him. It was rumoured that he had seen the interior ...
— The Cockaynes in Paris - 'Gone abroad' • Blanchard Jerrold
... rapidly and repeatedly, under the orders of the little Frenchman; and we were soon clear of the reef and breakers. It was now nearly dark. In a few moments after reaching the anchorage ground, we glided up a gentle slope, without perceptible shock; and the bow of the vessel was almost ...
— Company 'A', corps of engineers, U.S.A., 1846-'48, in the Mexican war • Gustavus Woodson Smith
... sparrows flew from the roof of the school to the window ledge nearest him, intent on their noisy quarrel, and he gave a scarcely perceptible sigh. Birds could enjoy the sunshine unmolested—why not he? A horse sounded a rapid tattoo of hoof beats over the heated street macadam below and he longed—as he had longed for the launch that morning—for ...
— A Son of the City - A Story of Boy Life • Herman Gastrell Seely
... saints reascend (Canto xxii.): and Dante and Beatrice follow them, mounting by the ladder, but, as it would appear, with no perceptible lapse of time. The eighth heaven, that of the Fixed Stars, is reached in the sign of the Twins; under which Dante himself had been born. At this point Beatrice directs him, before entering on the final blessedness of heaven, and doubtless with the ulterior view of leading him to a ...
— Dante: His Times and His Work • Arthur John Butler
... marching between two of them. Frequent were the looks of suspicion which he cast around him; but no ill design was perceptible in the banditti. They guided him onwards, till they reached a canal, loosened a gondola, placed themselves in it, and rowed till they had gained the most remote quarter of Venice. They landed, threaded several by-streets, and at length knocked at the door ...
— The Bravo of Venice - A Romance • M. G. Lewis
... magnificent harbour, larger than any other on our coast, lay some fifty transports and steamers at anchor, and here we dropped our anchor, almost directly between the two forts[10] taken by Dupont last November. These forts, by the way, are so inconspicuous as to be hardly perceptible to a passer-by, and would certainly fail to attract the attention of a person not on the lookout for them. The shore is as flat as flat can be, sand-banks and beaches being the only variety, backed by long dark green masses of foliage of the pitch-pine, reminding me forcibly of the coast of Egypt, ...
— Letters from Port Royal - Written at the Time of the Civil War (1862-1868) • Various
... works arises from a quality the very reverse of that which produces obscurity, properly so-called. Obscurity is the natural product of turbid forces and confused ideas; of a feeble and clouded or of a vigorous but unfixed and chaotic intellect.... Now if there is any great quality more perceptible than another in Mr. Browning's intellect it is his decisive and incisive faculty of thought, his sureness and intensity of perception, his rapid and trenchant resolution of aim.... The very essence of Mr. Browning's aim and method, as exhibited in the ripest fruits of his intelligence, is such as ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning
... the parterre of the human heart, none so rich, so rare, as this one flower of Truth. Other flowers there may be that yield as rich perfume, but they must be crushed in order that their fragrance become perceptible. But the soul of this flower courses its way down the garden walk, out through the deep, dark dell, over the burning plain, up the mountain-side, up and ever UP it rises into the beautiful blue; all along the cloudy corridors of the day, up along ...
— The Seeker • Harry Leon Wilson
... limit in the second century, when the influence of Christianity becomes perceptible, we should form our judgment of the politics of antiquity by its actual legislation, our estimate would be low. The prevailing notions of freedom were imperfect, and the endeavours to realise them were wide of the mark. The ancients understood ...
— The History of Freedom • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... might perhaps call it poetic fancy suddenly stimulated at moments by animal spirits into rapid movements—so rapid, indeed, that what in slower movement would be merely fancy, in him became wit. Beneath the coruscations of this wit a rare and deep intellect was always perceptible. ...
— Aylwin • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... other a glittering golden bronze—the cosmos continued to be as always. The haze from explosive fumes and rocket-fuel was, perhaps, a little thinner. The brighter stars shone through it. The gas-giant planet outward from the sun was a perceptible disk instead of a diffuse glow. The oxygen-planet to sunward showed again as ...
— The Aliens • Murray Leinster
... trickled a little stream, to the crag that dominated the house and garden. It was covered with heather and winberries, and just below the summit grew two rowan-trees. So bright was the moon that the colour of the berries was almost perceptible. Sir Henry stood moon-gazing and presently heaved a ...
— Mummery - A Tale of Three Idealists • Gilbert Cannan
... things by day and night in the small laboratory he had arranged next to his bedroom, and unholy and evil smells issued at times through the cracks of the door, and penetrated from the bedroom to the stairs outside, and were distinctly perceptible all over the house. Therefore Stefanone maintained for a long time that his lodger was in league with the powers of darkness, and that it was not safe to keep him in the house, though he paid his bill so very regularly, ...
— Casa Braccio, Volumes 1 and 2 (of 2) • F. Marion Crawford
... beginning:—"Why—what?..." But she had to stand inquiry over. For nothing was possible against Gwen's:—"Now, Aunt Connie dear, don't ask questions. You shall be told the whole story, all in good time! Let's get her upstairs and get the doctor." They both followed Mr. Pellew into the street, where a perceptible crowd, sprung from nowhere, was already offering services it was not qualified to give, in ignorance of the nature of the emergency that had to be met, and in ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... obtained by these and other measures. By 1852, there was a partial but perceptible improvement in the position. The house was reopened in a very quiet way by arrangement, and the allowance for Sir Stephen's expenditure was rather more than doubled. But there was nothing like ease for him until the ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... Ireland. For a long series of years the religion of the majority of the Irish people had been treated by the state as hostile. That notion, however, had been gradually abandoned: the penal laws had either been removed, or were in the course of removal, although traces of them were still perceptible, and operating most noxiously in their interference with the education of the people. Sir James Graham next proceeded to discuss what was the best mode of educating the people of Ireland, contending that it consisted in the absence of all religious tests. It wras on this principle ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... the tunes, we recognized several of our popular airs, which we, without doubt, have taken from the Spanish. In the dancing, I was much disappointed. The women stood upright, with their hands down by their sides, their eyes fixed upon the ground before them, and slided about without any perceptible means of motion; for their feet were invisible, the hem of their dresses forming a perfect circle about them, reaching to the ground. They looked as grave as though they were going through some religious ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... is fed by a perpetual spring, whose current is so sluggish as scarcely to be perceptible, but which yet has the vitality ...
— Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands V2 • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... the instrument, so that the ray of direct solar light passes through the flame before entering the spectroscope. The observer sees at once the two lines known as D flash out with a greatly increased blackness and vividness, while there is no other perceptible effect on the spectrum. A few trials show that this intensification of the D lines is due to the vapour of sodium arising from the salt burning in the lamp through ...
— The Story of the Heavens • Robert Stawell Ball
... character of the new movement with an appropriate modification of tempo—i.e., to take the notes which immediately succeed the Adagio for a link, and so unobtrusively to connect them with the following that a change in the movement is hardly perceptible, and moreover so to manage the ritardando, that the crescendo, which comes after it, will introduce the master's quick tempo, in such wise that the molto vivace now appears as the rhythmical consequence of the increase of tone during the crescendo. But the modifications here indicated ...
— On Conducting (Ueber das Dirigiren): - A Treatise on Style in the Execution of Classical Music • Richard Wagner (translated by Edward Dannreuther)
... beating of her own heart. The sound of her progress was almost inaudible. As the day was damp, she was wearing goloshes, and her small, rubber-shod feet fell upon the stone floor with a gentle patter that was scarcely perceptible. ...
— The Ashiel mystery - A Detective Story • Mrs. Charles Bryce
... had shone forth while we were there was the only intermission vouchsafed by the rain, which afterwards poured down with a steady vehemence and pertinacity seldom seen on the Ligurian Riviera. The effects of this rare continuance of wet weather were soon made impressively perceptible to the four as they emerged upon the open road, after passing the Lighthouse of Genoa and the long straggling suburbs of San Pier d'Arena, Pegli, and Voltri. The horses splashed through channels of water which filled the spongy ruts, smoking, and toiling, and plunging on; while the whoops ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 107, September, 1866 • Various
... collection of his grace the duke of Hamilton, the other at Dalkeith house. The whole appearance of the ground, even including a few old houses, is the same which the scene now presents: The removal of the porch, or gateway, upon the bridge, is the only perceptible difference. The duke of Monmouth, on a white charger, directs the march of the party engaged in storming the bridge, while his artillery gall the motley ranks of the Covenanters. An engraving of ...
— Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, Vol. II (of 3) • Walter Scott
... line," she says, "scarcely perceptible through the gloom, announced the presence of the great river. We followed its course all night, catching a glimpse of it from time to time by the faint glimmer of the stars, and by the lights of the fishermen's lanterns flashing here and there along its banks. There was an originality in ...
— Celebrated Women Travellers of the Nineteenth Century • W. H. Davenport Adams
... occupation without regard to the occupation of his neighbors. If a man emigrates it does not affect the occupation of those who farm the land all about him. They go on ploughing and digging, buying and selling, just as before. They suffer no perceptible economic loss by the departure of half-a-dozen men from the district. A true community would, of course, be affected by the loss of its members. A co-operative society, if it loses a dozen members, the milk of their cows, their ...
— National Being - Some Thoughts on an Irish Polity • (A.E.)George William Russell
... in the length of their hair. On a closer inspection I noticed the difference of dress of the sexes; also that the men, if not sterner, had faces at all events less mild and soft in expression than the women, and also a slight perceptible down on the cheeks and ...
— A Crystal Age • W. H. Hudson
... tremor or a change of color perceptible, and though the missiles continued to fly through the broken sashes, and the hootings and yellings increased outside, so powerfully did her words and tones hold that vast audience, that, imminent as seemed their peril, scarcely a man or woman moved ...
— The Grimke Sisters - Sarah and Angelina Grimke: The First American Women Advocates of - Abolition and Woman's Rights • Catherine H. Birney
... was another matter. But who could have failed to feel genial towards the quiet, scholarly, altogether charming gentleman of Sunnyside? Also the legs of Irving fitted well and often under the Hone mahogany, and the part of the author that was perceptible above the table gave a flavour and dignity to the board. Somehow we see Hone's cheeks puffed out with pride as he chronicles: "My old friend, Washington Irving, who visits his native country after an absence of seventeen ...
— Fifth Avenue • Arthur Bartlett Maurice
... sensible of change in the tenor of their intercourse, sensible of a just perceptible hardness in his bearing and aspect. For some cause, the nature of which she failed to divine though she registered the fact of its existence, he no longer had complete faith in her, was no longer wholly ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... figures in their places upon them. The sarcophagus under the Day and Night has been copied from the one seen by Michael Angelo: its mouldings are still beautiful, but heavier, more deeply cut, and of less subtle line in the section. The difference is perceptible to the eye and evident with the aid of a good foot-rule. This sarcophagus is of a different marble, as has been said. As to the third period, the garlands and little pretty vases over the doors of ...
— Michael Angelo Buonarroti • Charles Holroyd
... said—his tone was severe, but a barely perceptible gleam of humorous appreciation flashed across his eyes as he spoke—'that you have been exceedingly insolent to ...
— Hyacinth - 1906 • George A. Birmingham
... larger the nearer they are approached, this tower appears largest when seen from afar, and seems less as you come nearer. This may be accounted for, as the tower stands in a very large plain, and with its surrounding ruins forms the only perceptible object; so that from a distance the tower and the mountains formed of its ruins make a greater shew than it is found to ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VII • Robert Kerr
... as Sohrinja in Bengal, and Muringo in Malabar is obtained from the seeds or nuts of the horseradish tree, Moringa pterygosperma, Burmann; the Hyperanthera Moringa, of Linnaeus. This clear limpid oil having no perceptible smell, is much esteemed by watchmakers and perfumers; it is expensive and not often to be procured pure, consequently the oil would be a very profitable export. It grows rapidly and luxuriantly everywhere in Jamaica, particularly on the north side of the ...
— The Commercial Products of the Vegetable Kingdom • P. L. Simmonds
... Bonaparte;—we can easily believe that these things were related, as he tells us they were, "with epic simplicity," and may even conclude that some other qualities of the epic would to more cautious ears have been equally perceptible in the narration. Of a like character, we suspect, is the statement that Selves, being on the staff of Grouchy on the day of Waterloo, "urgently represented to that general the propriety of joining the main body of the army ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 30. September, 1873 • Various
... suited to the victims of the Markerstown. As to sailing qualities:—we know, of course, that all speed is relative. For a sea-comet, the Markerstown would be somewhat leisurely, though answering well for an oceanic fixed star, having no perceptible motion. One man on board—the Captain—was accommodated: the kidnapped all suffered. Whether the Markerstown should be reckoned as first-class or last-class is a question depending simply on where the counting begins, and which way it runs. "Steam-packet" she was ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... steadily, and Grant returned it with a curious gravity, though there were fearless cattle-men at Cedar Range who did not care to meet its owner's gaze when he regarded them in that fashion. With a just perceptible gesture he directed the younger man's attention to the red splashes ...
— The Cattle-Baron's Daughter • Harold Bindloss
... accustomed to "appeal from mere formulae": accordingly, he sets at nought the whole of the mathematics, which he does not understand. This equivocation between the formula of the physician and that of the mathematician is as good, though not so perceptible to the world at large, as that made by Mr. Briggs's friend in Punch's picture, which I cut out to paste into my Logic. Mr. Briggs wrote for a couple of bruisers, meaning to prepare oats for his horses: his friend sent him the ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume II (of II) • Augustus de Morgan
... a calm, rather rosy, cheerful, high-dried old Frenchman, quite small and thin, and with a very perceptible stoop; but Antoine said afterwards that there was a very terrible look in his face just then—such a look as may have been born, perhaps, in the days of Terror, when he stood in the crowd beneath the guillotine and saw the head of ...
— Miss Grantley's Girls - And the Stories She Told Them • Thomas Archer
... water. The body is largest about the middle, and tapers suddenly towards the tail. The general colour is a blackish-grey, with part of the lower jaw, and throat, and belly white. The lips are five or six feet high, the eyes very small, and the external opening of the ears scarcely perceptible. The pectoral fins or arms are not long, and are placed about two feet behind the angle of the lips. The black whale has no teeth; but from the upper palate and jaw there hang down perpendicularly numerous ...
— Old Jack • W.H.G. Kingston
... the desire to follow a line of thought that causes us excessive emotion may lead to the inroad of a horde of secondary ideas, which press one upon the other without any perceptible continuity, carrying with them neither ...
— Poise: How to Attain It • D. Starke
... warning. Shocking enough it must be, especially to a young fresh mind, full of faith—the spectacle of a man meant for better things sunk at my age in such dishonour." St. George, in the same contemplative attitude, spoke softly but deliberately, and without perceptible emotion. His tone indeed suggested an impersonal lucidity that was practically cruel—cruel to himself—and made his young friend lay an argumentative hand on his arm. But he went on while his eyes seemed ...
— The Lesson of the Master • Henry James
... languidly, as though her lids were weighted with sleep and it cost her an effort to raise them. Her glance fell on his hand, which now completely covered the end of her work and grasped it as if it were a part of herself. He saw a scarcely perceptible tremor cross her face, and without knowing what he did he stooped his head and kissed the bit of stuff in his hold. As his lips rested on it he felt it glide slowly from beneath them, and saw that Mattie had risen ...
— Ethan Frome • Edith Wharton
... Magdeburg, his hands were deeply steeped in blood; war rendered savage and ferocious his disposition, which had been cultivated by youthful studies and various travels. On his forehead, two red streaks, like swords, were perceptible, with which nature had marked him at his very birth. Even in his later years, these became visible, as often as his blood was stirred by passion; and superstition easily persuaded itself, that the future destiny of the man was thus impressed upon the forehead ...
— The History of the Thirty Years' War • Friedrich Schiller, Translated by Rev. A. J. W. Morrison, M.A.
... a relief we experienced when we heard that the enemy was falling back—ever so slightly. Then every one of us, women and children, wanted to look through the telescope, and for once I did see in it, and hailed with heartfelt thanksgivings, the scarcely perceptible retreating movement of ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... lay wide beds of solid rock, or pebbles mixed with mud or sand, left high and dry by the summer shrinking of the stream, where the Indians might easily have quitted the water without leaving a trace perceptible to the eye. At such places Burl would call Grumbo over to help the eye with the more unerring nose, when, having satisfied themselves that the trail had not yet left the water, the dog, swimming and wading, would return to his side, and abreast ...
— Burl • Morrison Heady
... see the set of the tide far out in the lake, sliding, driving, crowding, hurrying in with smooth currents and swirling eddies, toward the corner of escape. By the rocky cove where the Island House peers out through the fir-trees, the current already has a perceptible slope. It begins to boil over hidden stones in the middle, and gurgles at projecting points of rock. A mile farther down there is an islet where the stream quickens, chafes, and breaks into a rapid. Behind the islet it drops down in three or four foaming steps. On the outside it makes one ...
— Little Rivers - A Book Of Essays In Profitable Idleness • Henry van Dyke
... world, but also those genera whose nearer relations are now extinct—as, for instance, the club-moss-trees, the trilobites, the ammonites, the belemnites, the sauria, the nummulites,—show still a very perceptible relationship with living genera, and can be quite accurately included in the botanical and zooelogical systems; nay, they even fill up gaps in it. The anatomical, morphological, and, so far as we can judge, the physiological and biological relationship ...
— The Theories of Darwin and Their Relation to Philosophy, Religion, and Morality • Rudolf Schmid
... painful impression has vanished. What keen perceptions Aniela has! I endeavored to be cheerful, though I felt out of spirits, and I do not think there was any perceptible change in my behavior; yet she perceived a change at once. To-day, when we looked at the albums and were alone,—which happens pretty often, on purpose I suppose,—she grew embarrassed and changed color. I saw at once she wanted to say something, and did not dare. For a single moment the ...
— Without Dogma • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... to slide down a yard, turn over and sit up; but it was even harder for Smoke to remain flattened and maintain a position that from instant to instant made a greater call upon his muscles. As it was, he could feel the almost perceptible beginning of the slip when the rope tightened and he looked up into his companion's face. Smoke noted the yellow pallor of sun-tan forsaken by the blood, and wondered what his own complexion was like. But when he saw Carson, with shaking fingers, ...
— Smoke Bellew • Jack London
... is a perceptible tumble. One can't "square" the weather or "get at" the glass. A storm? Oh! 'twas merely the least little rumble,— ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 93, August 13, 1887 • Various
... a gale from the north-west, which had continued for three days, and by which the Circassian had been driven into the Bay of Biscay, that, at about twelve o'clock at night, a slight lull was perceptible. The captain, who had remained on deck, sent down for the chief mate. 'Oswald,' said Captain Ingram, 'the gale is breaking, and I think before morning we shall have had the worst of it. I shall lie down for an hour or two: call me if there ...
— The Pirate and The Three Cutters • Frederick Marryat
... Nothing seemed to have happened during the last ten minutes. A pale young man on the next bench, whom I had noticed when I entered, was reading a dirty pink newspaper. Pigeons and sparrows hopped about unconcernedly. On the file of cabs, just perceptible through the foliage, the cabmen lolled in listless attitudes. Sir Bartle Frere stolidly kept his back to me, not the least interested in this Gilbert a Becket story. I always thought something was wrong with ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke
... turned back to the task which she had left them, dreading the effects of her absence. She was missed, but less than they feared; the faculties had become too feeble for such strong emotion as had followed Gilbert's departure; and the void was chiefly perceptible by the plaintive and exacting clinging to Albinia, who had less and less time to herself and her children, and was somewhat uneasy as to the consequences as regarded Maurice. While Gilbert was at home, the child had been under some supervision; but now his independent and unruly ...
— The Young Step-Mother • Charlotte M. Yonge
... forest trees; and then reflect that all that knotted and gnarled bulk has been mainly formed out of air. We, in our gross conceptions, were wont to think that the fatness of the earth was the tree's chief source of nourishment. But it is not so. In some cases this is almost perceptible to the eye, for we see the towering pine springing from a soil manifestly of the scantiest nutritive power. When we once apprehend how large a constituent part, air is, of bodies inanimate and animate, of our own for instance, we shall be more easily convinced of the danger ...
— The Claims of Labour - an essay on the duties of the employers to the employed • Arthur Helps
... was intended to be a signal to some one. And presently it seemed as if his suspicions were correct. Wearied with the strain and fatigue of the day, Amanda stepped out upon the verandah, for a breath of fresh air. Her movements were very perceptible as she stood with her figure thrown into relief against the light within, and Mansana could see that she bent down to peer into the darkened square below her. Was she then expecting somebody who would ...
— Captain Mansana and Mother's Hands • Bjoernstjerne Bjoernson
... no perceptible religious element in these Australian ceremonies—no utterance of charms or prayers, no mention of any supernatural being. The acts appear to be simply procedures of imitative magic, customs sanctified by long usage. They relate to ...
— Introduction to the History of Religions - Handbooks on the History of Religions, Volume IV • Crawford Howell Toy
... particles of gold in the stone may be enveloped with a film of auriferous sulphide, by which they are protected from the solvent actions of the mercury. The sulphurisation of the gold gives no ocular manifestation by change of colour or perceptible increase of weight, as in the case of the formation of sulphides of silver, lead and other metals, on account of the extremely superficial action of the sulphur, and hence probably the existence of the gold sulphide ...
— Getting Gold • J. C. F. Johnson
... of his mild endeavors to calm and soothe me; of his intelligent conjecture that my fright and bewilderment were occasioned by the difference of form and movement between us which the wings that had excited my marvelling curiosity had, in exercise, made still more strongly perceptible; of the gentle smile with which he had sought to dispel my alarm by dropping the wings to the ground and endeavouring to show me that they were but a mechanical contrivance. That sudden transformation did but increase ...
— The Coming Race • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... completely hid; but her companion was not gazing on the picture: his head, a little turned, indicated that there was a living countenance more interesting to him than all the skill of the most cunning artist. Part of his cheek was alone perceptible, and that was ...
— The Young Duke • Benjamin Disraeli
... flowers last a prodigious time. Their extraordinary thickness in every part enables them to withstand bad air and changes of temperature, so that ladies keep them on a drawing-room table, night and day, for months, without change perceptible. Mr. Williams names an instance where a L. Skinneri, bought in full bloom on February 2, was kept in a sitting-room till May 18, when the purchaser took it back, still handsome. I have heard cases more surprising. ...
— About Orchids - A Chat • Frederick Boyle
... room, and the young girl had never thought their guest so lovely as she looked in that twilight. A night wrapper of the thinnest material only half hid her beautiful limbs. Round her flowing, fair hair, floated the subtle, hardly perceptible perfume which always pervaded this favorite of fortune. Two heavy plaits lay like sheeny snakes over her bosom and the white sheet. Her face was turned upwards and was exquisitely calm and sweet; and as she lay motionless and smiled up at Katharina, ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... machine, he saw that it was in the hands of a mechanic in overalls and jumper. In answer to Hambleton's question as, to the owner of the car, the mechanic told him pleasantly to go to the devil, and for once the sight of a coin failed to produce any perceptible effect. But the major-general, waiting half a block away, was still in the humor of giving fatherly advice. He welcomed Jim heartily. "That's a hole I ain't got no use for. ...
— The Stolen Singer • Martha Idell Fletcher Bellinger
... get up a sail on one of the studding-sail booms which was rigged as a yard across the mizzen topgallant mast that had been stepped in the centre of the platform. However, the wind was so light from their low elevation in the water, that the influence of this new motive power was only faintly perceptible, the shore seeming almost quite as far off after an hour's hard rowing as before, and ...
— The Wreck of the Nancy Bell - Cast Away on Kerguelen Land • J. C. Hutcheson
... occasions. The entrance of Dr. Rank in the last act of A Doll's House is a wholly unnecessary interruption to the development of the crisis between Nora and Helmer. The scene might be entirely omitted without leaving a perceptible hiatus in the action; yet who does not feel that this brief respite lends gathered impetus to the main action when it is resumed? The other instances are offered by the two apparitions of Ulric Brendel in Rosmersholm. ...
— Play-Making - A Manual of Craftsmanship • William Archer
... blustering March morning in 1919 that Tabs regained his freedom. His last five months had been spent among doctors, having sundry bullets extracted from his legs. He walked with a limp which was not too perceptible unless he grew tired. His emotions were similar to those of a man newly released from gaol: he felt dazed, vaguely happy and a little lost. He felt dazed because he hadn't remembered that the world was so wide and so complicated. He felt lost because he was discovering that this wasn't the same ...
— The Kingdom Round the Corner - A Novel • Coningsby Dawson
... money would have been of very short duration; for the mutilated pieces would have been detained only till they could be told and weighed; they would then have been sent back into circulation, and the recoinage would have taken place gradually and without any perceptible suspension or disturbance of trade. But against these great advantages were to be set off hazards, which Somers was prepared to brave, but from which it is not strange that politicians of less elevated character should have shrunk. The course which he recommended to his colleagues was indeed the ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... is, Captain Gills,' said Mr Toots, with a perceptible increase in the nervousness of his manner. 'It's not for me to say what may have taken place, or what may not have taken place. Indeed, I don't know. I get mixed up with all sorts of things that I don't ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... evening costume, and of established social position, there was to be observed a woman whose remarkable lowness of corsage attracted much criticism. Indeed, it obviously scandalised the audience, among the feminine portion of which a painful sensation was abundantly perceptible. At last, their indignation found tangible expression; and a voice from the pit was heard to utter in measured accents a stern injunction that could apply to but one individual. Blushing with embarrassment, ...
— The Magnificent Montez - From Courtesan to Convert • Horace Wyndham
... ship, which was by this time nearly opposite to their flagstaff, and seemed to be passing by without recognising the signal. This was not to be wondered at, for, although the flag was visible enough from landward, being well defined against the bright sky, it was scarce perceptible from seaward, owing to the hills which ...
— Shifting Winds - A Tough Yarn • R.M. Ballantyne
... swept—not with any uniform movement, but in dizzying swings and jerks, that sent us sometimes only a few hundred yards—sometimes nearly the complete circuit of the whirl. Our progress downward, at each revolution, was slow, but very perceptible. ...
— Elson Grammer School Literature, Book Four. • William H. Elson and Christine Keck
... and trace their breach upon the Bell Rock; but the height to which the cross-running waves rose in sprays when they met each other was truly grand, and the continued roar and noise of the sea was very perceptible to the ear. To estimate the height of the sprays at forty or fifty feet would surely be within the mark. Those of the workmen who were not much afflicted with sea-sickness came upon deck, and the wetness below being dried up, the cabins were again brought into a habitable state. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... to be drawn out to a terrible extent before there was a perceptible lightening on their left; and as soon as he saw that, though the mist was as thick as ever, Hickathrift rose and began to work with the pole, for he knew his bearings now by the position of the rising moon, and working away, in half an hour the little ...
— Dick o' the Fens - A Tale of the Great East Swamp • George Manville Fenn
... of the new family at Cloomber Hall had no perceptible effect in relieving the monotony of our secluded district, for instead of entering into such simple pleasures as the country had to offer, or interesting themselves, as we had hoped, in our attempts to improve the lot of our poor crofters and fisherfolk, they seemed to shun all observation, ...
— The Mystery of Cloomber • Arthur Conan Doyle
... suffer more in estimation by being contemplated in the absence of this poem than of any other single performance he has left us. Loftier flights he certainly has made, but in these he remained but a short while on the wing, and effort is too often perceptible; here the motion is easy, gentle, ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol X • Various
... far resembles this scarcely perceptible and yet skilful art, a mixture of instinct and method, and many years will pass before prose becomes, like verse, an art. In the fourteenth century English prose is used in most cases for want of something better, from necessity, ...
— A Literary History of the English People - From the Origins to the Renaissance • Jean Jules Jusserand
... calling forth from others these same splendid attributes. I have yet to find any one, man or woman, of the opposite habits and, therefore, trend of mind and heart who has had or who has even to the slightest perceptible degree the quality that we ordinarily think of when we use ...
— The Higher Powers of Mind and Spirit • Ralph Waldo Trine
... expense naturally retards the great advance which the French press is bound to make. Now you cannot increase the output of linen rags, a given population gives a pretty constant result, and it only increases with the birth-rate. To make any perceptible difference in the population for this purpose, it would take a quarter of a century and a great revolution in habits of life, trade, and agriculture. And if the supply of linen rags is not enough to meet one-half nor one-third of the demand, ...
— Two Poets - Lost Illusions Part I • Honore de Balzac
... pasture. The hill we had encamped on formed a sort of plateau; behind us stood dark mountains, and in our front lay fertile plains, from which green hills rose one behind the other until they were lost in the distance, without any perceptible change in the character of the country. To the eastward the prospect was similar, as well as to the westward, except that in this direction the hills were more lofty, and behind these the tropical sun was hurrying down with ...
— Journals Of Two Expeditions Of Discovery In North-West And Western Australia, Vol. 1 (of 2) • George Grey
... before assurance can be had that all powder fouling, has been removed and that the bore may be safely oiled. Normally, after firing a barrel in good condition the metal fouling is so slight as to be hardly perceptible. It is merely a smear of infinitesimal thickness, easily removed by solvents of cupro-nickel. However, due to pitting, the presence of dust, other abrasives, or to accumulation, metal fouling may occur in clearly visible flakes or patches of much greater ...
— Manual for Noncommissioned Officers and Privates of Infantry • War Department
... its true philosophy. Its fundamental error is the assumption that all our knowledge is confined to the observation and classification of sensible phenomena—that is, to changes perceptible by the senses. Psychology, based, as it is, upon self-observation and self-reflection, is a "mere illusion; and logic and ethics, so far as they are built upon it as their foundation, are altogether baseless." Spiritual entities, forces, causes, efficient ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... lie with Christ in the grave according to the flesh. Although it be true that we have the forgiveness of sins, that we are God's children and possess salvation, yet all this is not perceptible to our own senses or to the world. It is hidden in Christ by faith until the judgment day. For we do not yet experience in ourselves such righteousness, such holiness, such life and such salvation as God's Word describes and as faith expects ...
— Epistle Sermons, Vol. III - Trinity Sunday to Advent • Martin Luther
... rather than felt the swift movement of the canoe. There was no perceptible tremor to its progress. The current and a perfect craftsmanship with the paddles were carrying it along at six or seven miles an hour. He heard the rippling of water that at times was almost like the tinkling of tiny bells, and more and ...
— The Flaming Forest • James Oliver Curwood
... divided into three portions, like the nave and side aisles of a cathedral; the middle space, leading to the door, being wider than the others. The granite of the shafts is partly gray and partly rose-colored, but, in the shadow in which they stand, the difference of hue is hardly perceptible. The proportions of these columns are faultless; and their massive shafts and richly-carved capitals produce the effect, at once, of beauty and sublimity. The pediment above is now a bald front of ragged stone, but it was once adorned with bas-reliefs ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 7 - Italy, Sicily, and Greece (Part One) • Various
... Engineers, U. S. Army; Civil Engineer H. H. Rousseau, U. S. Navy; Mr. J. C. S. Blackburn; Col. W. C. Gorgas, U. S. Army, and Mr. Jackson Smith, Commissioners. This change of authority and direction went into effect on April 1, without causing a perceptible check to the progress of the work. In March the total excavation in the Culebra Cut, where effort was chiefly concentrated, was 815,270 cubic yards. In April this was increased to 879,527 cubic yards. There was a considerable ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... full command, and does not aim at setting it off by futile decorations, he is always respectable, and sometimes great. But when he attempts the ornamental, he is heavy and inelegant; and the awkwardness of his efforts is more perceptible from the hugeness of the body that is put in motion to produce them. He is like the animal whom Milton describes as making sport for our first parents ...
— Lives of the English Poets - From Johnson to Kirke White, Designed as a Continuation of - Johnson's Lives • Henry Francis Cary
... it was hardly perceptible: a faint reverberation of the ether that could scarcely be defined as sound; it would resolve itself into a low, continuous rumble, very much like distant thunder, that died away and recommenced nearer and more distinct. Then the sashes of the open window trembled, ...
— A Tall Ship - On Other Naval Occasions • Sir Lewis Anselm da Costa Ritchie
... was visible on the prisoner's face, except at the harsh mention of her mother's name; when a shudder was perceptible, as in one where dentist's steel pierces a sensitive nerve. In order to avoid the hundreds of eyes that stabbed her like merciless probes, her own had been raised and fixed upon a portion of the cornice in the room where a family of spiders held busy camp; but ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... brought some work in a gold-embroidered velvet bag. Her pretty little upper lip, on which a delicate dark down was just perceptible, was too short for her teeth, but it lifted all the more sweetly, and was especially charming when she occasionally drew it down to meet the lower lip. As is always the case with a thoroughly attractive ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... anxiously look out for a vessel, but we could see none, or if seen, they were too far off from the island to permit us to make signals to them. At last we began to give up all hope, and, as hope was abandoned, a settled gloom was perceptible on most of our faces. I believe that others would have now mutinied as well as myself, if they had known what to mutiny about. Your father and mother were the life and soul of the party, inventing amusements, or narrating a touching story in the evenings, so ...
— The Little Savage • Captain Marryat
... thus slipped so gradually into Dennet's hands that no change of government was perceptible, except that the keys hung at the maiden's girdle. She had grown out of the child during this winter of trouble, and was here, there, and everywhere, the busy nurse and housewife, seldom pausing to laugh or play except with her father, and now and then to chat ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte M. Yonge
... has paid any attention to this far corner of the peninsula. At present, considering the slender population, the means of communication are well kept up during eight months in the year, and the result is an increase (perceptible to an old resident, no doubt) in the activity ...
— Northern Travel - Summer and Winter Pictures of Sweden, Denmark and Lapland • Bayard Taylor
... boundlessness of the sphere of observation, render the task of explaining the forces of matter by that which is variable in matter, an impracticable one. What has been already perceived, by no means exhausts that which is perceptible. If, simply referring to the progress of science in our own times, we compare the imperfect physical knowledge of Robert Boyle, Gilbert, and Hales, with that of the present day, and remember that every few years are characterized by an increasing rapidity of advance, we shall ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson
... Church over the hearts and minds of men, is now greater far than it was when the Encyclopaedia and the Philosophical Dictionary appeared. It is surely remarkable, that neither the moral revolution of the eighteenth century, nor the moral counter-revolution of the nineteenth, should, in any perceptible degree, have added to the domain of Protestantism. During the former period, whatever was lost to Catholicism was lost also to Christianity; during the latter, whatever was regained by Christianity in Catholic countries was regained also by Catholicism. We should naturally have expected ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay |
