"Skeleton" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... glance the red-brown skin drawn so tightly over his face made him resemble a mummy more than a living being, while his worn canvas and skin garments clung so tightly to him that his bodily aspect was horribly suggestive of a clothed skeleton. ...
— The Peril Finders • George Manville Fenn
... russet, the forests are black, each tree seems a skeleton; all nature, save the evergreen, looks dead. But our mountains of firs, our hills of pine, our groves of cedar, our thickets of holly, our cliffs crowned with laurel, full of life, and covered with unchangeable verdure, keep eternally fresh and beautiful. ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 2, August, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... His eyes leaped from moundlike piles of tailings, the powdery crush spit out by the concentrating mills, to boulder-like heaps of rocks that had been wheeled away to save the teeth of the mills, and his ears turned distraught from the groaning clank of unwieldy iron tubs, swinging up through skeleton shafts, to the sputtering plunk-plunk of drill engines and the ...
— Sally of Missouri • R. E. Young
... littered all over with papers and official looking documents. The walls of the room were lined with shelves, on which were glass jars, retorts, countless bottles and many appliances of surgical science. A skeleton was propped against the mantelpiece. The atmosphere seemed heavy with the odour ...
— Anna the Adventuress • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... have been made from time to time at Compton Winyates. Not many years ago a bricked-up space was found in a wall containing a perfect skeleton!—at another an antique box full of papers belonging to the past history of the family (the Comptons) was discovered in a secret cavity ...
— Secret Chambers and Hiding Places • Allan Fea
... similar craft, sluggishly creeping. The towing-path was a morass of sticky brown mud, for, in the way of rain, that year was breaking the records of a century and a half. Thirty yards in front of each boat an unhappy skeleton of a horse floundered its best in the quagmire. The honest endeavour of one of the animals received a frequent tonic from a bare-legged girl of seven who heartily curled a whip about its crooked ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... they heard a murmur at their shoulders. The woman had followed them, and they turned to see that she had picked up a couple of rubies from among the bones of another skeleton, and was holding them out to ...
— Jack Haydon's Quest • John Finnemore
... Prussian and an Austrian, if they are of the same size, like Schrech and Rechberg, for example, that it will be difficult to distinguish between them; the stupid and the clever, too, properly reduced to the skeleton state, look a good deal like each other. Patriotism for a particular country is destroyed by this reflection, but we should have to despair in any case, even now, were it linked with our salvation. Farewell once more, with love to parents ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. X. • Kuno Francke
... cold. I drew the collar of my great-coat over my ears, and wrapped my half of the bull's hide well round my feet, and we started. The old mare went better than could have been expected from such a skeleton of a beast. To be sure, she had no weight of flesh to encumber her motions, and we were getting on pretty well, when the music master drove too near a stump, which suddenly upset us both, and tumbled him head foremost into a bank of snow. I fortunately rolled ...
— Life in the Clearings versus the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... passage of many centuries. Farther away the marshlanders have seized upon any slight piece of rising ground to establish a firm foundation for their humble homes; here and there a grey church tower or skeleton windmill breaks the line of the level horizon. The meres and marshes have the silence of long dead years resting upon them, save where the breeze stirs the riverside reeds or a curlew cries ...
— George Borrow in East Anglia • William A. Dutt
... lips I sat at the open window, looking out upon the skeleton trees of the orchard; for the buds of early spring were only just beginning to ...
— The Hand Of Fu-Manchu - Being a New Phase in the Activities of Fu-Manchu, the Devil Doctor • Sax Rohmer
... the foreman said, "and so they are. And the whole frame, before it's boarded in—before any boards are nailed on—looks like the skeleton of a house, and so it is. They'll have pretty near the whole frame up by the time you eat your supper; or to-morrow morning, at any rate. Then you look and see. It's much the same way that your body's made: your ribs and the other bones are the frame, and ...
— The Doers • William John Hopkins
... plates of gold and silver that might be found upon the coffins; the dead bodies of women and men were unshrouded after exhumation, to search in the coffins and shrouds to see if valuables were not here concealed; and, in numerous instances, the teeth were torn from the skeleton mouths of the dead for the gold plugs, or gold plates that might be found there. Nor was this heathenish rapacity confined to the common soldier; the commanders and subalterns participated with acquisitive eagerness, ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks
... planet. Nothing survives, except the humanities of the collection; and amongst these, two only I will molest the reader by noticing. One of the two was a mummy; the other was a skeleton. I, that had previously seen the museum, warned Lady Carbery of both; but much it mortified us that only the skeleton was shown. Perhaps the mummy was too closely connected with the personal history of Mr. White for exhibition to strangers; it was that of a lady who had been attended medically for some years by Mr. White, and had owed much alleviation of her sufferings to his inventive skill. ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... The first Otis elevators were moved by steam or hydraulic power. They were slow, noisy, and difficult of control. After the electric motor came in; the elevator soon changed its character and adapted itself to the imperative demands of the towering, skeleton-framed buildings which were rising ...
— The Age of Invention - A Chronicle of Mechanical Conquest, Book, 37 in The - Chronicles of America Series • Holland Thompson
... selling one's country and risking one's neck for four measly pounds sterling! If he had got four thousand, I should have had some respect for him. His home is in a wretched state, and his wife—a pretty woman, though almost a skeleton, and a very nicely mannered, honest woman—says that her husband unexpectedly gave her four pounds a month ago. He had kept none of the blood money for ...
— The Lost Naval Papers • Bennet Copplestone
... he lowered the last grinning skeleton into the pit. "There seems a kind of stern justice in their present position, Charley," he continued. "Now, they are resting side by side with those whom they tortured and enslaved ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... studies, was content with looking into the works of Dr. Willis. He was possessed of very few books, insomuch that when Dr. Bathurst, head of Trinity College, asked him once with surprise, where his study was? he pointed to a few vials, a skeleton, and a herbal, and said, "Sir, this ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19, Issue 544, April 28, 1832 • Various
... them there. And I did. But in doing it I nearly lost Merridy. You see, the constant travel and hardship was too much for a prattling baby, and she fell sick from the heat and the dust and the thirst. I'd been going and going till I was a riding skeleton, till my arms were crooked and dead from holding her, but this new thing frightened me like those men and dogs had never done. Here was a thing I couldn't hide from nor outride, so I doubled back and came boldly into the watered country again, ...
— The Barrier • Rex Beach
... voluptuous poke, and enjoyed the fun as much as a woman could. I think, (but recollection on that point is not clear, when I come to comparison), that she was the nicest woman to lay on I ever had. I was slim, though far from a skeleton, and as I laid naked on her between her large breasts, and between her thighs slightly elevated (for she usually raised her legs, after we had fucked and she had recovered from her pleasure, or when I mounted her ...
— My Secret Life, Volumes I. to III. - 1888 Edition • Anonymous
... Harry, do you know there are moments when I feel that I am changing towards the sex; when I fancy I can discern the skeleton, as it were, through the ...
— The Gay Lord Quex - A Comedy in Four Acts • Arthur W. Pinero
... up in the library," said Holmes. "He's in charge of the log, and as I have a pretty good general idea as to what is about to happen, I have mapped out a skeleton of the plot and set him to work writing it up." Here the detective gave a sudden start, placed his hand to his ear, listened intently for an instant, and, taking out his watch and glancing at it, added, quietly, "In three minutes ...
— The Pursuit of the House-Boat • John Kendrick Bangs
... education a few children succeed either because they are desirous of doing well, interested in the game of mental competition; or else because they contrive to clothe with flesh and blood some subject presented as a skeleton. It is not uncommon, indeed, to recognize in later years with astonishment a useful citizen or genius whom at school or college we recall as a dunce or laggard. In our present society, because of archaic methods of education, the development of such is ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... often seemed to hear Angelino calling to me amid the roar of the cannon, and always his tone was of crying. And when I came, I found mine own fast waning to the tomb! His nurse, lovely and innocent as she appeared, had betrayed him, for lack of a few scudi! He was worn to a skeleton; his sweet, childish grace all gone! Everything I had endured seemed light to what I felt when I saw him too weak to smile, or lift his wasted little hand. Now, by incessant care, we have brought him back,—who knows if that be ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. II • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... proud poverty, and no doubt not a little by the witch-shadow of Judge Hawthorne's unfortunate condemnation of Rebecca Nurse, whose dying curse was never ignored; partly also by a sense of superiority, which, I think, was the skeleton in every Hawthorne's body at ...
— Memories of Hawthorne • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop
... is so much like the procedure which makes up the Tangpap ceremony that it seems necessary to give it only in skeleton form, adding explanations whenever they appear to be necessary. In the balaua is spread a mat covered with gifts for the spirits who are expected. Here also is the spirit shield from the dwelling, and a great heap of refuse ...
— The Tinguian - Social, Religious, and Economic Life of a Philippine Tribe • Fay-Cooper Cole
... veils, and never to raise them when any person was in sight. They made no complaint, because he told them that he should be deeply involved in trouble if his participation in their escape should be discovered; but, happy as Rosa was in reciprocated love, this necessity of concealment was a skeleton ever sitting at her feast; and Floracita, who had no romantic compensation for it, chafed under the restraint. It was dusk when they returned to the cottage, and the thickets were alive with fire-flies, as if Queen Mab and all her train were ...
— A Romance of the Republic • Lydia Maria Francis Child
... the spirit in which this young girl braced herself to uncomplaining acceptance of desertion in this unwholesome swamp, with her two little ailing sisters, beside the sluggish stream, amid the skeleton trees—heroism the greater because there was no enthusiastic patriotism to uphold her—it was only the land of her captivity, whence she looked towards home like Judah ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... whenever there was a holiday and the school was shut, Heatherley employed the time in mending the skeleton; Butler's picture represents him so engaged in a corner of the studio. In this way he got his model for nothing. Sometimes he hung up a looking-glass near one of his windows and painted his own portrait. Many of these he painted out, but after his death we ...
— Samuel Butler: A Sketch • Henry Festing Jones
... A skeleton, which is computed to be 150,000 years old, has been discovered by a German professor. From the position in which it was found it is conjectured that the man was drowned, and the police will no doubt take the matter up, and the relatives will, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, March 25, 1914 • Various
... both animal and vegetable creation which we have already seen. Take the great beast which attacked us, for example. Unquestionably a counterpart of the Megatherium of the post-Pliocene period of the outer crust, whose fossilized skeleton has been found ...
— At the Earth's Core • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... like misformed brutes on Circean shores, the steamboat and the telegraph, are passing away on a Lethean tide, and our mysteries are departing from among us. The intelligence which so long gazed wistfully upon the barred door of nature, or picked unsuccessfully at the bolts, with skeleton theories, and vague speculations, had learned to try the 'open sesame' of science. The master key is turning, the shafts yield, and already a dim ...
— The Continental Monthly , Vol. 2 No. 5, November 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... it but for the War,' he muttered; 'but she stole eggs, poor thing; you couldn't break her of it. She ate three times as much as any other dog, too, and in spite of it was always a perfect skeleton—something wrong inside. The sort of dog, you know, no one would take, or treat decently if they did. Bad habits of every kind, poor dear. I bought her because she was being starved. But she trusted me, that's why I feel so like a murderer. When the ...
— Tatterdemalion • John Galsworthy
... tradesmen, a hand-lift was constructed outside the kitchens of the three flats comprising the house; i. e.:—Mr. Exel's, ground floor, Henry Leroux's second floor, and Dr. Cumberly's, top. It worked in a skeleton shaft which passed close to the left ...
— The Yellow Claw • Sax Rohmer
... weeks' provisions for six men, 56 lbs. sugar, 24 lbs. cocoa, 36 lbs. chocolate and 210 lbs. of biscuit, some Oxo and spare clothing. In short, after the sledge work which they proposed, and actually carried out, the men were left with skeleton rations for four weeks. They had also a spare tent and an extra sleeping-bag. It was not seriously anticipated that the ship would have great difficulty in picking them up in the latter ...
— The Worst Journey in the World, Volumes 1 and 2 - Antarctic 1910-1913 • Apsley Cherry-Garrard
... the veldt. "I want to ride as far as that skeleton tree," she said. "Don't come with me! I shall catch you up ...
— The Top of the World • Ethel M. Dell
... A mere skeleton of this simple plot (which barely hints at the real problem) can, of course, give no conception of the charm, the color, and the wonderful poetic afflatus of this exquisite little play. It may be well enough to say that such a situation is far-fetched and not very ...
— Essays on Scandinavian Literature • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... letisimulation when disturbed or when threatened by what they consider impending danger. If a "pitcher rotifer" (Brachionus urceolaris) be approached with a needle point, it will cease all motion and sink; the same is true of the "skeleton rotifer" (Dinocharis pocillum) and numerous others of this large family. Again, if a bit of alga on which there is a colony of "bell animalcules" (Vorticellae) be placed in a live box and then be examined with a moderate power, they can be seen to feign death. The rapidly vibrating cilia which ...
— The Dawn of Reason - or, Mental Traits in the Lower Animals • James Weir
... a few crooked steps that branched off in an unexpected manner from the stairs, you lost yourself in passages, with mangles in them, and three-cornered tables, and a native Hindu chair, which was also a sofa, a box, and a bedstead, and looked in every form something between a bamboo skeleton and a great bird-cage, and had been brought from India nobody knew by whom or when. From these you came on Richard's room, which was part library, part sitting- room, part bedroom, and seemed indeed a comfortable compound of many rooms. Out of that you went straight, with a little ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... an eye upon the waiters, Raffles showed me a skeleton key, newly twisted and filed; but my share of the extra pint (I am afraid no fair share) had made me dense. I looked from the key to Raffles with puckered forehead—for I happened to catch sight of it in ...
— Raffles - Further Adventures of the Amateur Cracksman • E. W. Hornung
... material, occurs in hair, nails, hoofs and feathers. It is quite insoluble in water, dilute acids and alkalies. Related to this substance are "neuro-keratin,'' found in the medullary sheath of nerves, and "gorgonin,'' the matrix of the axial skeleton of the coral Gorgonia Cavolinii. Elastin occurs either as thick strands or as membranes; it constitutes the "elastic tissue'' of the anatomist. Its insolubility is much the same as keratin. "Fibroin'' ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... grenadiers; these flashes are cuirassiers; this skeleton is Napoleon; this skeleton is Wellington: all this is non-existent, and yet still combats, and the ravines are stained purple, and the trees rustle, and there is fury even in the clouds and in the darkness, while all ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 4 (of 10) • Various
... my writing, because the fat idiot Backberg called me to the table. I sit next to the Russian Recha. She likes to pinch my leg; she says I'm too fat. She kisses tall Lehkind, because he looks like a skeleton. Anyway, I can't stand the vermin that have been assembled here. There's trouble every day. In particular, the very small seven-year old Max Mechenmal—an unusually insignificant person—causes me unusual trouble. He does not like me, because he is conscious ...
— The Prose of Alfred Lichtenstein • Alfred Lichtenstein
... all with the love of England. Fortunately for himself and for us, Brooke's patriotism found passionate voice in the sonnets which are rightly given pride of place in the 1914 section of this volume. Mr. Clement Shorter, who gives us the skeleton of a bibliography that is all too brief, draws special attention to 'New Numbers', a quarterly publication issued in Gloucestershire, to which Brooke contributed in February, April, August, and December of last year, his fellow poets being Lascelles Abercrombie, John Drinkwater, ...
— The Collected Poems of Rupert Brooke • Rupert Brooke
... God! That ghastly gibbet! How dismal 'tis to see The great tall spectral skeleton, The ladder, and the tree! Hark! hark! It is the clash of arms— The bells begin to toll— He is coming! he is coming! God's mercy on his soul! One last long peal of thunder— The clouds are clear'd away, And the glorious sun once more looks ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 347, September, 1844 • Various
... There are now large skeleton maps published, which have merely the principal cities, towns, and rivers, &c., marked down, so as not to present too many objects to confuse the young eye. There are also picture maps in which the chief productions of a country, both vegetable and animal, are delineated in ...
— The Infant System - For Developing the Intellectual and Moral Powers of all Children, - from One to Seven years of Age • Samuel Wilderspin
... information of such of our readers as prefer a skeleton of the Puseyite system of the sacraments, rather than wade through volumes of Semi-romish discussion, ...
— American Lutheranism Vindicated; or, Examination of the Lutheran Symbols, on Certain Disputed Topics • Samuel Simon Schmucker
... coat, clutched and lacerated his flesh till his nails dripped with blood." With emotions somewhat analogous, Mr. Dunbar sat as participant in this judicial rouge et noir, where the stakes were a human life, and the skeleton hand of death was already outstretched. Listening to the calm, mournful voice which alone had power to stir and thrill his pulses, he could not endure the pain of watching the exquisite face that haunted him day and night; and when ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... that what Barlasch had repeated as the gossip of the cafes was in part, if not wholly, true. She and Mathilde had long known that any mention of France had the instant effect of turning their father into a man of stone. It was the skeleton in this quiet house that sat at table with its inmates, a shadowy fourth tying their tongues. The rattle of its bones seemed to paralyze Sebastian's mind, and at any moment he would fall into a dumb and stricken apathy which terrified those about him. At such times it seemed ...
— Barlasch of the Guard • H. S. Merriman
... massive solidity of the walls which yet stand, proves its antiquity. A few years ago, a part of the outer walls which was remarked to have a hollow sound, was taken down, when there fell from a deep niche built therein, a skeleton, clad in a suit of the old German armor. We followed a road through the woods to the peak on which stand the ruins of St. Michael's chapel, which was built in the tenth century and inhabited for a long time by a sect of white monks. There is now but a single tower remaining, and all around is ...
— Views a-foot • J. Bayard Taylor
... voluptuary, of a man not likely to venture his all on a single hazard, or to be a martyr in any cause. To those who are acquainted with his countenance it will not seem wonderful that the writer in whom he most delighted was Montaigne. [418] Danby was a skeleton; and his meagre and wrinkled, though handsome and noble, face strongly expressed both the keenness of his parts and the restlessness of his ambition. Already he had once risen from obscurity to the height of power. He had then fallen headlong from ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... the Egyptians a small figure in the shape of a mummy was passed around to remind the guests that they, too, would soon be in the same condition, and have no more time to enjoy life and its pleasures. The Romans imitated this custom by sending the larva, a statuette in the form of a skeleton, to make the round of the revellers. The Greek love of beauty converted this ugly scarecrow ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... leaf turned upside down, with its cut side towards the door, and might enter any house in which they saw a loaf in this position, and carry it away with them. About thirty years ago, there was the skeleton of a hand hanging up as an offering in a Breton church near Quimperle, and the tradition was, that it was the hand of a rich Cagot who had dared to take holy water out of the usual benitier, some time at the beginning of the reign of Louis the Sixteenth; which an old soldier witnessing, ...
— An Accursed Race • Elizabeth Gaskell
... taken for a visitor from some strange and unexplored country. Here it was clear that you were not one of our race, and yet it was inconceivable what else you could be. We have no giants; the tallest skeleton preserved in our museums is scarcely a hand's breadth taller than myself, and does not, of course, approach to your stature. Then, as you have pointed out, your limbs are longer and your chest smaller in proportion to the rest of the body; probably because, as you ...
— Across the Zodiac • Percy Greg
... sticky, glue-like protoplasm. Then it passes on to the amoebae, which begins to show a slight difference in its parts. Then on the foraminifera, which secretes a shell of lime from the water. Then on a step higher to the polycystina, which secretes a shell, or skeleton of flint-like material from the water. Then come the sponges. Then the coral-animals, anemones and jelly-fish. Then come the sea-lilies, star-fish, etc. Then the various families of worms. Then the crabs, spiders, ...
— A Series of Lessons in Gnani Yoga • Yogi Ramacharaka
... castle-crowned city. Its story is written in letters scarlet with blood and dark with misery; illustrating Irving's idea that history is but a kind of Newgate calendar, a register of the crimes and miseries that man has inflicted on his fellow-man. Only the skeleton of a once great and thriving capital remains. It has no commerce and but one industry,—the manufacture of arms and sword-blades,—which gives occupation to a couple of hundred souls, hardly more. The coming and ...
— Due West - or Round the World in Ten Months • Maturin Murray Ballou
... begins where every sensible man would, by contemplating the natural foot as it appears in infancy, unspoiled as yet by social corruptions, in adults fortunate enough to have escaped these destructive influences, in the grim skeleton aspect divested of its outward disguises. We will give the reader two views of the latter kind, illustrating the longitudinal and transverse arches ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various
... window with a feeling of depression that was terrible, and, try how I would, to keep from thinking, I kept on seeing the fierce-looking lancers of Ny Deen making furious charges at perhaps a mere skeleton of a regiment of foot, which grew gradually less and less, till the men ...
— Gil the Gunner - The Youngest Officer in the East • George Manville Fenn
... — N. remainder, residue; remains, remanent, remnant, rest, relic; leavings, heeltap[obs3], odds and ends, cheesepairings[obs3], candle ends, orts[obs3]; residuum; dregs &c. (dirt) 653; refuse &c. (useless) 645; stubble, result, educt[obs3]; fag-end; ruins, wreck, skeleton., stump; alluvium. surplus, overplus[obs3], excess; balance, complement; superplus[obs3], surplusage[obs3]; superfluity &c.(redundancy) 641; survival, survivance[obs3]. V. remain,; be left &c. adj.; exceed, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... a skeleton, they bury an animal in an ant-hill and dig him up after many days with all the perishable matter fairly eaten away. That is the process which great men have to undergo. A vast multitude of insignificant, unknown, and unconscious critics destroy what has no genuine ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... science of anthropology Kirby knew enough to make him sure that the dolicocephalic skull and characteristically shaped pelvic and thigh bones of the skeleton had belonged ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, December 1930 • Various
... Billy wormed himself under cover as the train approached, and bided his time. Cautiously, peering from behind the huckleberry growth, he watched Pat slamming the milk cans around. He could see his bicycle lying like a dark skeleton of a thing against the gravel bank. It was lucky he got there before day, for Pat would have been sure to see it, and it might have given him an idea that Billy had ...
— The City of Fire • Grace Livingston Hill
... plan, scheme, design, project; proposal, proposition, suggestion; resolution, motion; precaution &c. (provision) 673; deep-laid plan &c. (premeditated) 611; system &c. (order) 58; organization &c. (arrangement) 60; germ &c. (cause) 153. sketch, skeleton, outline, draught, draft, ebauche[Fr], brouillon[Fr]; rough cast, rough draft, draught copy; copy; proof, revise. drawing, scheme, schematic, graphic, chart, flow chart (representation) 554. forecast, program(me), prospectus; carte du pays[Fr]; card; bill, protocol; order of the day, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... "Yes, sir; Skeleton Island they calls it. It were a main place for pirates once, and a hand we had on board knowed all their names for it. That hill to the nor'ard they calls the Fore-mast Hill; there are three hills in a row running south'ard—fore, main, and mizzen, sir. But the main—that's the ...
— Treasure Island • Robert Louis Stevenson
... inhabitants thereof. A conclave of "most grave and reverend signiors" was convoked, who ordained that the disturbed spirit should every night pluck a blade of grass till all should be gathered. And now, every night at the chilly hour of midnight, the lady in a splendid coach with four skeleton horses, a skeleton coachman, and skeleton footmen, is to be seen in the park obeying the dictum of the Oakhampton worthies. This legend will be found, I am told, in "Fitz, of Fitzford," by Mrs. Bray. I shall not comment on this, as it evidently appears ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 17, - Issue 491, May 28, 1831 • Various
... took her round. There was not much to show in such a bare skeleton of a house, but he made the most of it, and explained the different ornamental fittings that were soon to be fixed here and there. Lucy made but few remarks in reply, though she seemed pleased with her visit, and stole away down the ladder, ...
— Wessex Tales • Thomas Hardy
... I know," Laura replied, not affecting to misunderstand his jibe. Lucian Selincourt was her only brother and very dear to her, but there was no denying that his career had its seamy side. He was not, like her father, a family skeleton—he had never been warned off the Turf: but he was rarely solitary and never out of debt. "Poor Lucian, he's hard up too. I wish I could send him fifty pounds, but if I did ...
— Nightfall • Anthony Pryde
... some bones—the remains of a skeleton to which some scraps of clothing still hung. Suddenly, I turned pale. I had discovered, sticking in the earth, a small piece of iron cut in the form of a rectangle, on which I thought I could see red spots. I stooped and picked it up. That ...
— The Extraordinary Adventures of Arsene Lupin, Gentleman-Burglar • Maurice Leblanc
... the summit of the chest. The head and the chest are the first to give up and sag. We can see that the skeleton has no bones below the breast bone to support it. The lower ribs are floating ribs and the other ribs have an angle downward. Everything is arranged with reference to the expansion of the chest. This is the central ...
— How to Add Ten Years to your Life and to Double Its Satisfactions • S. S. Curry
... rocket screamed as vibration ran in torturing waves through its metal skeleton and skin. It passed the point of discomfort and became unbearable. Rick rocked his head from side to side, as though to get rid of the shattering howl, but it tore at his head, at his ...
— The Scarlet Lake Mystery • Harold Leland Goodwin
... same apartments in which Saxe had lived, when, at the height of power and glory, he visited Prussia. Frederic, indeed, stooped for a time even to use the language of adulation. He pressed to his lips the meagre hand of the little grinning skeleton, whom he regarded as the dispenser of immortal renown. He would add, he said, to the titles which he owed to his ancestors and his sword, another title, derived from his last and proudest acquisition. His style should run thus: Frederic, King ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... freak, yes, but with hands and feet. That's the living skeleton, but if he keeps on eating the way he's been doing lately the boss will have to change the bills and bill him as the ...
— The Circus Boys on the Flying Rings • Edgar B. P. Darlington
... hard mixture of chalk and red earth. The following day I went again, and there were more bones, and every day after that the number increased until it seemed to me that he had brought out the entire skeleton, minus the skull, which I had been curious to see. Then the bones disappeared. The man who looked after the game had seen them, and recognizing that they were human remains had judiciously taken them away to destroy or stow them away ...
— A Shepherd's Life • W. H. Hudson
... byroad. To these fields a small door in the wall, which was used by the gardeners in passing to and from their work, gave communication. This door was usually kept locked; but the lock was of the rude and simple description common to such entrances, and easily opened by a skeleton key. So far there was no obstacle which Peschiera's experience in conspiracy and gallantry did not disdain as trivial. But the count was not disposed to abrupt and violent means in the first instance. He had a confidence ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... to do all the work. Get down there now behind that rock and make a fire, while we go out and kill a deer. You must build a wigwam, too, by the time we get back. Hear me? I'm a big chief! 'I am Famine—Buckadawin!' and I'll make a living skeleton of you if you ...
— Two Little Knights of Kentucky • Annie Fellows Johnston
... them carefully—offered to help me to such information as I should require, and even mentioned a subject in which he thought I could appear to advantage. "If you try your hand on a story," he observed, "I would advise you to prepare a kind of skeleton, and when you have pleased yourself with the line of narrative, you may then leisurely clothe it with flesh and blood." Some years afterwards, I reminded him of this advice. "Did you follow it?" he ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 470 - Volume XVII, No. 470, Saturday, January 8, 1831 • Various
... size of a wolf, and three species of deer. The smaller animals included the rabbit, water-rat, mouse, raven, pigeon, lark and a small type of duck. Everything was broken into small pieces so that no single skull was found entire and it was, of course, impossible to obtain anything like a complete skeleton. From the fact that the bones of the hyaenas themselves had suffered the same treatment as the rest we may infer that these ferocious lovers of putrid flesh were in the habit of devouring those of their own species that died a natural death, or that possibly under pressure of hunger were ...
— The Evolution Of An English Town • Gordon Home
... Chunky is a walking skeleton by this time," smiled Tad, as the thought of his companion's appetite came ...
— The Pony Rider Boys in the Ozarks • Frank Gee Patchin
... infirm old man. This last night of passion had rendered him imbecile; he was entering on his second childhood; and, his speech failing him, he remained in an attitude of flight, half-paralyzed, stammering, shivering, his nightshirt half up his skeleton shape, and one leg outside the clothes, a livid leg, covered with gray hair. Despite her vexation Nana could not ...
— Nana, The Miller's Daughter, Captain Burle, Death of Olivier Becaille • Emile Zola
... I'll work you to day, {you} skeleton,[71] as you deserve. AEschinus loiters intolerably; the breakfast's spoiling; and as for Ctesipho, he's head and ears in love.[72] I shall now think of myself, for I'll be off at once, and pick out the very nicest bit, and, leisurely sipping my cups,[73] ...
— The Comedies of Terence - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Notes • Publius Terentius Afer, (AKA) Terence
... paradox and bestial sophism is a pattern of the many, with the mask thrown off. He seems to be inwardly musing whether it can after all be true, that if one draws aside a fold of the gracious outer robe of conformity, there is no comeliness of life shining underneath, but only this horror of the skeleton and the worm. He restrains exasperation at the brilliant effrontery of his man, precisely as an anatomist would suppress disgust at a pathological monstrosity, or an astonishing variation in which he hoped to surprise some vital secret. Rameau is not crudely analysed as a vile ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists (Vol 1 of 2) • John Morley
... thousand pounds a year derived from speculations of her late husband conducted during the war with Germany in 1870, yet was never known to give a sou to charity; her hands were all but the hands of a skeleton and covered with jewels, she smoked cigarettes incessantly. She was one of those old women whose energy seems to increase with age, tireless as a gnat she was always the last in bed and the first on deck, though lying in her bunk half the night reading French novels of which she had a trunkful ...
— The Beach of Dreams • H. De Vere Stacpoole
... its thaws, there was no suggestion of spring in the landscape. From the white, monotonous expanse of snow rose bleak, skeleton shapes of trees lifting bare, black boughs to the snow-sodden clouds. Upon either side of the road lay a forest of desolation—varied only by the sad, dull green of the wind-blown pines—which stretched ...
— The Black Pearl • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow
... time, Bultitude," said the latter, after a long minute, in which a little skeleton clock on the mantelpiece ticked loudly—"there's no ...
— Vice Versa - or A Lesson to Fathers • F. Anstey
... thousand soldiers that were marshalled round Neerwinden, under all the standards of Western Europe, the two feeblest in body were the hunchbacked dwarf, who urged forward the fiery onset of France, and the asthmatic skeleton who covered ...
— The Principles of Success in Literature • George Henry Lewes
... cheek-bone, sank into the depths of the hollow cheek, notched across the lower jaw, and plunged to disappearance among the prodigious skin-folds of the neck. The withered lobes of both ears were perforated by tiny gypsy-like circles of gold. On the skeleton fingers of his right hand were no less than five rings—not men's rings, nor women's, but foppish rings—"that would fetch a price," Daughtry adjudged. On the left hand were no rings, for there were no fingers to wear them. Only was there a thumb; and, for ...
— Michael, Brother of Jerry • Jack London
... that those who are best fitted to appreciate the economic problems and science of the modern world are, either by race or religion, or both, cut off from the mediaeval system, and even when they are acquainted with the skeleton, as it were, of that body of Christian Europe, are none the less out of sympathy with, or even ignorant of, its living form ...
— The Historic Thames • Hilaire Belloc
... day, as the troops were passing over a plain of sand which stretched away to the horizon all round, without a shrub to break the monotony, only here and there a block of rock, or the skeleton of a camel, showing where some wretched overtried animal had sunk under the too great presumption upon his wonderful powers of endurance, the scouts gave notice of Arab approach, and a figure could be seen coming over the summit of a sand-hill, thus proving ...
— For Fortune and Glory - A Story of the Soudan War • Lewis Hough
... necessary for weaving the given words into some kind of unity. The child must pass from what is given to what is not given but merely suggested. This requires a certain amount of invention. Scattered fragments must be conceived as the skeleton of a thought, and this skeleton, or partial skeleton, must be assembled and made whole. The task is analogous to that which confronts the palaeontologist, who is able to reconstruct, with a high degree of certainty, the entire ...
— The Measurement of Intelligence • Lewis Madison Terman
... to our pre-historic menagerie, including the rare find of a bird that looks uncommonly like the penguin. Mind, by the way, that you do not fall into that round hole in the floor. It is enormously deep; and more than forty cave-bears have left their skeletons at the bottom, amongst which your skeleton would be a ...
— Anthropology • Robert Marett
... came up it was a sight to make angels weep. For yards at a stretch the hooks were bare or bitten off. Then came "dogs" of all sizes from "garter-dogs," or "shoe-strings," a foot long, to full-grown ten-pounders of about a yard. Mingled with them was an occasional lonesome skeleton of a ...
— Jim Spurling, Fisherman - or Making Good • Albert Walter Tolman
... of all because of that title of "Bailli," which seemed to belong to another world, or at all events to a harlequinade, and then on account of the extraordinary appearance of the man—he looked like a skeleton in powder. We were quite ignorant in those days, it is needless to remark, of the fact that this cool, proper-looking Bailli was a great musician, a first-class performer of the STABAT MATER, whose ...
— Memoirs • Prince De Joinville
... pleasant, though the wind is high from N.W. We now packed up in different boxes a variety of articles for the president, which we shall send in the barge. They consisted of a stuffed male and female antelope with their skeletons, a weasel, three squirrels from the Rocky mountains, the skeleton of the prairie wolf, those of the white and gray hare, a male and female blaireau, or burrowing dog of the prairie, with a skeleton of the female, two burrowing squirrels, a white weasel, and the skin of the louservia, the horns of the mountain ram, or big-horn, ...
— History of the Expedition under the Command of Captains Lewis and Clark, Vol. I. • Meriwether Lewis and William Clark
... having received the favours, or suffered the repulses, of all the coquettes in England, pays his addresses to the maids of honour, one after the other, and at present places his whole ambition and desires in the conquest of that ugly skeleton, Churchill? What! Madam, must then your prime of life be spent in a sort of widowhood in deploring your misfortunes, without ever being permitted to make use of any remedy that may offer? A woman must be endowed with insuperable patience, or with an inexhaustible ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... are laying before him to the best of our powers what we take to be the definite scheme of events undoubtedly present in our author's mind, but never as a whole expressed by him. It is frequently necessary to infer from what he states, the precise curve of his thought: this skeleton of history is deduced ...
— Hilaire Belloc - The Man and His Work • C. Creighton Mandell
... Was it another move in her perpetual game? Was she on the track of someone's secret? Was her scheming mind now following some new clew that must lead to the discovery of a hidden or forgotten crime—the burial place of some well entombed family skeleton? He shivered. ...
— Out of the Ashes • Ethel Watts Mumford
... muttered the young lady, as the remains of what had been a carry-all were pulled up beside the platform by the skinny skeleton of what might once have been ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, July 1878, No. 9 • Various
... who already meditates his coup-d'etat,[51116] be willing to stand sentry for four petty lawyers or litterateurs without any titles and for Barras, a street-general, who never saw a regular battle? Moreover on this skeleton of France, desiccated by five years of spoliation, how can the armed swarm be fed even provisionally, the swarm, which, for two years past, subsists only through devouring neighboring nations? Afterwards, ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 4 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 3 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... harped on the cruelty of my resolution to discomfit him. He afterwards went to another part of the country to reside with his relations; and the last notice I had of him was, that he was seen bending his skeleton body over the blackened corpses of several individuals who had been burnt to death in the conflagration of a large dwelling-house in the town ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume III • Various
... civilization. It gathered round the great cities like York and Chester and London; for the cities are older than the counties, and indeed older even than the countries. These were connected by a skeleton of great roads which were and are the bones of Britain. But with the weakening of Rome the bones began to break under barbarian pressure, coming at first from the north; from the Picts who lay beyond Agricola's ...
— A Short History of England • G. K. Chesterton |
