"Skimming" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... "Our test subject read it carefully, scanning rather than skimming. Cameras recorded the movements of his eyes in order for us to tell just what he was reading at any given moment, in order to correlate what was going on in his mind with the reactions of the machine's indicators, if you ...
— That Sweet Little Old Lady • Gordon Randall Garrett (AKA Mark Phillips)
... they normally winter in the West Indies and in Central and South America;[5] but every little while Mrs. Thaxter wrote, "The killdeers are still here!" and on the 21st of December, as I approached Marblehead Neck, I saw a bird skimming over the ice that covered the small pond back of the beach. I put up my glass and said to myself, "A killdeer plover!" There proved to be two birds. They would not suffer me within gunshot,—though I ...
— The Foot-path Way • Bradford Torrey
... (especially Penrod), and of adolescence (especially Seventeen and Clarence). Judged by your own experience and observation, are they presented with true knowledge and humor, or are they a farcical skimming of surface eccentricities? Compare them with Mark Twain's books about boys ...
— Contemporary American Literature - Bibliographies and Study Outlines • John Matthews Manly and Edith Rickert
... marines also shot an albatross or man-of-war bird, so called from its manner of skimming through the air after other birds, which the seamen compare to sailing. It measured seven feet from pinion to pinion. On the fifth week of our separation from the fleet we made the Island of San Domingo, and on the day after anchored with the squadron ...
— A Sailor of King George • Frederick Hoffman
... best of friends. Johnny used to delight in watching Skimmer dart out from beneath the branches of the trees and wheel and turn and glide, now sometimes high in the blue, blue sky, and again just skimming the tops of the grass, on wings which seemed never to tire. But he liked still better the bits of gossip when Skimmer would sit in his doorway and chat about his neighbors of the Old Orchard and his adventures out in the Great ...
— The Burgess Bird Book for Children • Thornton W. Burgess
... some playing with the bright-coloured berries of a prickly dwarf-plant which grew upon those sands; some watching the waves as they ran up and then fell back again on that shore; some running after the sea-birds, which ran with quick light feet along the wet sand, and ever flew off, skimming just along the wave-top, and uttering a quick sharp note as the children came close upon them:—so some sported in one way, and some in another, but all were busily at play. Now I wondered in my dream to see these children ...
— The Rocky Island - and Other Similitudes • Samuel Wilberforce
... wide and scour the country off to the right of him till they appeared as swift-skimming dots in the distance. Then one of them lined out with increased speed as he topped a ridge. One after another Breed saw them flash over the ...
— The Yellow Horde • Hal G. Evarts
... in the air, Pegasus seemed hardly to be a creature of the earth. Whenever he was seen up very high above people's heads, with the sunshine on his silvery wings, you would have thought that he belonged to the sky, and that, skimming a little too low, he had got astray among our mists and vapors and was seeking his way back again. It was very pretty to behold him plunge into the fleecy bosom of a bright cloud and be lost in it for a moment or two, and then break ...
— Journeys Through Bookland V2 • Charles H. Sylvester
... know the E major Scherzo, Op. 54, with its skimming, swallowlike flight, its delicate figuration, its evanescent hintings at a serious something in the major trio? Have you ever heard Pachmann purl through this exquisitely conceived, contrived and balanced composition, truly a classic? Whaur is your Willy Mendelssohn ...
— Old Fogy - His Musical Opinions and Grotesques • James Huneker
... at last my dear we come to Sens, a pretty little town with a great two-towered cathedral and the rooks flying in and out of the loopholes and another tower atop of one of the towers like a sort of a stone pulpit. In which pulpit with the birds skimming below him if you'll believe me, I saw a speck while I was resting at the inn before dinner which they made signs to me was Jemmy and which really was. I had been a fancying as I sat in the balcony of the hotel that an Angel might light there and call down to the people to be good, ...
— Mrs. Lirriper's Legacy • Charles Dickens
... skimming along just under the surface, difficult to see. After one try at him we ...
— Tales of Fishes • Zane Grey
... though to the south stretching out into gloomy, faintly-seen woods. We can distinguish the distant yellow sand and the white surf breaking furiously over the bar. The day is gloomy but not cold. A slight rain accompanies the light north wind. Sea-gulls are flying in circles round the ship and skimming the surface of the waves. The master looks impatient and anxious, and prognosticates another week of northers. Vessels, they say, have been detained here thirty days, and some even three months! No notice is taken of our signal—a sign ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon De La Barca
... wit in the season; and up to St. Thomas's eve, when it first started to freeze, the folk were thinking that summer meant to run straight into spring. I mind the ash being in leaf on Advent Sunday, and a crowd of martins skimming round the church windows during sermon-time. Each morning brought blue sky, warm mists, and a dew that hung on the brambles till ten o'clock. The frogs were spawning in the pools; primroses were out by scores, and monthly roses blooming still; and Master ...
— Noughts and Crosses • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... style of oratory somewhat illogical, but always convincing at the moment. There were a good many trifling objections to our leaving Miss Van Tyck and the hotel, but we scarcely remembered them until we and our luggage were skimming across the space of water that divides Venice from ...
— Penelope's Postscripts • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... the spectators, watching Larry whirl, turn turtle, and perform all the aviation agonies so fascinating to the untutored. When he shut off the engine and swung down, skimming the ground for a way and stopping gently, she was ...
— Penny of Top Hill Trail • Belle Kanaris Maniates
... courtesy, but this is a proper place to warn the student against skimming the prefaces and introductions of works for mottoes and embellishments to his thesis. He cannot learn anatomy by thrusting an exploring needle into the body. He will be very liable to misquote his author's meaning while he ...
— Medical Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... consciousness is a rapid, shallow river which we can only rarely dam up deep enough to go swimming and take our ease, it is his positive need (unless he is a genius who can afford to let drift away much of his only source of gold) to keep a note-book handy for the sieving and skimming of this running stream. Samuel Butler has good advice on this topic. Of ideas, he says, you must throw salt on their tails or they fly away and you never see their bright plumage again. Poems, stories, epigrams, all the happiest freaks of the mind, flit by on wings and at ...
— Plum Pudding - Of Divers Ingredients, Discreetly Blended & Seasoned • Christopher Morley
... They were skimming along over a beautiful bit of road with a thick fir wood upon one side and open fields upon the other. The road was level as a floor, and no turn would be made for fully half a mile. Horses know so well the difference between their own driver's touch and a stranger's ...
— Caps and Capers - A Story of Boarding-School Life • Gabrielle E. Jackson
... the coast of Georgia, and which are devoted to the cultivation of "sea-island cotton." The water teemed with fish, and birds innumerable came flying round us. The most remarkable of the latter were the scissor-bills, with black plumage, which went skimming along the surface, scooping up with their long lower mandible any unwary mollusc or fish of small size which came within their reach, and uttering every instant loud and discordant cries. Lejoillie told us that they ...
— In the Wilds of Florida - A Tale of Warfare and Hunting • W.H.G. Kingston
... grub-worm. 'Some day,' he would say, 'I'll come and ask a bed in your garret.' And I would laugh at him and talk of the time when we—I always said 'we'—when we should have a pair of fine trotters, and should go skimming over the country together instead of crawling along behind our blind mare." Rufus Blight paused. The whimsical smile was gone and he was looking at me through narrowed eyes. "Then the break came." And quickly, as he said it, he turned ...
— David Malcolm • Nelson Lloyd
... of May brought widely different experiences to the various girls, and went on its way, giving them into the keeping of the Rose Moon. On one of the rarest of rare days that ever a poet dreamed of as belonging to June, the Winnebagos found themselves skimming over the country roads on a Saturday afternoon's frolic. There were three automobile loads altogether, for all the mothers were along, besides Aunt Phoebe and Dr. Hoffman. It was a double occasion for celebration, for besides being the Rose Moon Ceremonial Meeting, it ...
— The Camp Fire Girls at School • Hildegard G. Frey
... letter, and Paul watched the white hand skimming over the paper. When it was written she read it out to him. It was really an excellent letter of introduction, business-like and cordial. Paul received it with devout thanksgiving. Then Claudia gave him the address of the ...
— Despair's Last Journey • David Christie Murray
... I slide, I gloom, I glance, Among my skimming swallows; I make the netted sunbeam ...
— Journeys Through Bookland - Volume Four • Charles H. Sylvester
... close, and dark, And flanked with antique masonry, The shelving eaves left for an ark But one long strip of summer sky. But one long line to bless the eye— The thin white cloud lay not so high, Only some brown bird, skimming nigh, From wings whence all the dew was dry Shook down a dream of forest scents, Of odorous blooms and sweet ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 43, May, 1861 • Various
... skimming, after the milk has stood usually for twenty-four hours? this is known as "gravity cream." (2) By an apparatus known as a separator; this is known as "centrifugal cream"; most of the cream now sold in cities is of this kind. The richness of any ...
— The Care and Feeding of Children - A Catechism for the Use of Mothers and Children's Nurses • L. Emmett Holt
... the greater celandine, meaning a swallow, was given it because it begins to bloom when the first returning swallows are seen skimming over the water and freshly ploughed fields in a perfect ecstasy of flight, and continues in flower among its erect seed capsules until the first cool days of autumn kill the gnats and small winged insects not driven to cover. Then the swallows, ...
— Wild Flowers, An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and - Their Insect Visitors - - Title: Nature's Garden • Neltje Blanchan
... while the Bounty was skimming gently over the starlit sea before a light breeze, the three officers, Heywood, Stewart, and Young, leaned over the weather side of the quarter-deck, and ...
— The Lonely Island - The Refuge of the Mutineers • R.M. Ballantyne
... squall had passed, and it lightened up a little. There lay the felucca, waiting for the boat; and the men were reluctantly going into the latter again, when the commander of the felucca waved his hand to us, his craft fell off and filled, wing-and-wing, skimming away towards the coast, like a duck. We stood gaping and staring at her, not knowing what to make of this manoeuvre, when "bang!" went a heavy gun, a little on our weather quarter. The shot passed our wake, for we had filled our topsail, and it went skipping ...
— Ned Myers • James Fenimore Cooper
... part, lashed them firmly together with deerskin, thus producing a joint or hinge. Eager to try this new invention, he fastened on his own "sliders" first, and, running down to the lake, made a rush at the ice and sent himself off with all his force. Never was boy more taken by surprise; he went skimming over the surface like a stone from a sling. The other side of the lake seemed to be the only termination of his journey. "What if it should not be bearing in the middle!" His delight was evinced by a cheer. It was echoed, with the ...
— Silver Lake • R.M. Ballantyne
... state of mind, by the side of Archibald, who himself managed the helm.—"are you not afeard of these wild men with their naked knees, and of this nut-shell of a thing, that seems bobbing up and down like a skimming-dish in a milk-pail?" ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... the Holms, for it was a bright calm day; and when we got out into the breezy bay the mast was stepped, the little lug sail hoisted, and then we went speeding over to Graemsay island like a sheer water skimming the waves. Graemsay was our imagined El Dorado, and on the voyage we fancied ourselves encountering many surprising adventures. Shipwrecks and sea fights were by no means uncommon events. We threw spars of wood over the stern, and at the cry of "Man overboard!" the ship was put about to pick ...
— The Pilots of Pomona • Robert Leighton
... preferred to that of her aunt. She was a better souffre-douleur, was less of a restraint, and was besides his regular reader and amanuensis, so that as the force of the attack abated, he kept her a good deal in his room during the latter part of the day, imparting scraps of intelligence, skimming the papers for ...
— Nuttie's Father • Charlotte M. Yonge
... stretch of smooth level road now lay before them. It required the merest touch on the treadles to send them skimming along like skaters on smooth ice, or swallows flying low. Like gentle ghosts they fleeted along with little more than a muffled sound, for their axles turned in ball-sockets and their warning bells were silent ...
— Dusty Diamonds Cut and Polished - A Tale of City Arab Life and Adventure • R.M. Ballantyne
... a large and merry band of all sizes and colors; and the child-larks joined them, skimming the air as lightly and joyously as any of their new friends. It did not take them long to reach a sparkling brook that wound its way through the forest, and all the feathered people drank their fill standing ...
— Policeman Bluejay • L. Frank Baum
... carefully to avoid falling to pieces). Skim off every particle of fat from the jelly and melt slowly. Add one teaspoon of sugar and the whipped whites of three eggs, and boil very fast for about fifteen minutes, skimming well. Taste, and if not tart enough, add a dash of vinegar. Strain through a flannel bag, do not squeeze or shake it until the jelly ceases to run freely. Remove the bowl and put another under, into which you may press out what remains in the bag (this will not be as clear, but ...
— The International Jewish Cook Book • Florence Kreisler Greenbaum
... sprung up, causing a rough, chopping sea; and we leaked badly in the bow-planks; but, notwithstanding the roughness of the sea, we went with incredible swiftness. "Hoorah!" burst from every lip. We exultingly took off our hats, and gave three hearty cheers; but while we were skimming along so gallantly, the whale suddenly turned, and pitched the boat on her beam-ends. Every one who could grasp a thwart hung on to it, and we were all fortunate enough to keep our seats. For as much ...
— The World of Waters - A Peaceful Progress o'er the Unpathed Sea • Mrs. David Osborne
... we began; and long before we were through with the tussle, peculiar shrilling cries caught our attention, and, turning to face down stream, we saw a dense cloud approaching—skimming along and above the river: a shrilling, moving cloud, keeping all the while to the river, but reaching right across it, and away ...
— We of the Never-Never • Jeanie "Mrs. Aeneas" Gunn
... contrast of that even plain of life whereon he journeys with the bold, ideal bearing of the wanton—the artist who invented and portrayed this had not merely read Bunyan, he had also thoughtfully lived. The Delectable Mountains—I continue skimming the first part—are not on the whole happily rendered. Once, and once only, the note is struck, when Christian and Hopeful are seen coming, shoulder-high, through a thicket of green shrubs—box, perhaps, or perfumed nutmeg; while behind them, domed or pointed, the hills stand ranged against ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XXII (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... of any bone of the beef, by putting it into cold water, adding a little salt, and skimming it well just before it boils. If a vegetable flavor be desired, celery, carrots, onions, turnips, cabbage, or potatoes, may be added, in sufficient ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce
... was skimming along the streets, he happened to see a great number of these very Birds, imprisoned in a cage, on the shoulders of a bird-catcher. "Unhappy wretches!" said he, "you now feel the punishment of your former neglect. But those who, having no foresight of their own, despise the wholesome ...
— Favourite Fables in Prose and Verse • Various
... Now, Blue Lightning! all you know! And that was much,—for with the little chip hat and fluttering ribbons well bent down over the bluish mane, and the streaming gauze of her mantle almost level with the horse's back, she swept down across the long tableland like a skimming blue-jay. A few more bird-like dips up and down the undulations, and then came the long, cruel ascent of ...
— Colonel Starbottle's Client and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... beach on which the furious sea was breaking in mountain-like billows; cloud and rack deformed the firmament, which wore a dull and leaden-like hue; gulls and other aquatic fowls were toppling upon the blast, or skimming over the tops of the maddening waves—"Mercy upon him! he must be drowned!" I exclaimed, as my eyes fell upon a poor wretch who appeared to be striving to reach the shore; he was upon his legs but was evidently half-smothered with the brine; high above his head ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... as though something had been cast upon the surface of the water, and a moment later, a small Indian canoe, in which was seated a single person, shot from beneath the shrubbery, skimming over the river like a swallow, and headed directly toward the spot where the Riflemen were standing. Dick raised his rifle, but instantly lowered ...
— The Riflemen of the Miami • Edward S. Ellis
... public library's Internet use logs, to determine whether any of those URLs would be blocked by a particular software filter as falling within a particular category. Alternatively, library staff can review the Internet use logs by hand, skimming the list of URLs for those that are likely to correspond to Web pages containing obscenity or child pornography, as is the practice of Tacoma's David Biek, who testified as a government witness. Under either method, public libraries can assure patrons of their privacy by tracing a given ...
— Children's Internet Protection Act (CIPA) Ruling • United States District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania
... as we bound over the lea, out across the wold, anon skimming the outskirts of the moor and going home with a stellated fracture of the dura mater through which ...
— Nye and Riley's Wit and Humor (Poems and Yarns) • Bill Nye
... raised his arbalest to his shoulder and was about to pull the trigger, when a large gray stork flapped heavily into view skimming over the brow of the hill, and then soaring up into the air to pass the valley. Its shrill and piercing cries drew all eyes upon it, and, as it came nearer, a dark spot which circled above it resolved itself into a peregrine falcon, which hovered over its head, ...
— The White Company • Arthur Conan Doyle
... some respects," I answered; "but if you hear it well read, or sung, there is much more pathos and softness about it than one is able to discern when simply skimming it over to oneself. Some of Goethe's little ballads, for instance, such as 'The Erl King,' and others that Walter Scott has translated, are wonderfully beautiful; not to speak of Uhland's poetry, and La Motte Fouque's charming Undine, ...
— She and I, Volume 1 • John Conroy Hutcheson
... Skimming the ground with hungry noses, the dogs answered each cry with a single keen yap of preoccupied affirmation. Almost at once Charmer came to the spot pointed out to me, reared her full length upon the rails and let out a new note; long, musical, fretful, overjoyed. Hardy ...
— The Flower of the Chapdelaines • George W. Cable
... I sent a beautiful flat one skimming along with nearly a dozen hops in the brilliant track of the moon on the water. She did not pay any attention to me at first, and I kept skipping away, just as if I did not see her mopping her eyes. By-and-by a stroke worthy of myself sent a pebble spinning through ...
— The Making of Mary • Jean Forsyth
... have observed for yourself, and I know that it is merely skimming about your question, not answering it. But I humbly confess, though it cost me your confidence in my 'keen insight' forever, that I cannot answer it. So far, Mrs. Colquhoun has appealed to me merely as a text upon which to hang conclusions. I do not in ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... while to incur the expense and delay of a chase. The Sumter was now terribly in need of an excitement. Not a living thing was in sight, but the glittering schools of flying fish which ever and anon darted into view, and skimming rapidly over their surface sank again beneath the waves, only to be once more driven for a brief refuge to the upper air by their unseen but relentless enemies below. Drill and exercise were now the order of the day during the ...
— The Cruise of the Alabama and the Sumter • Raphael Semmes
... is no illusion—a slight rolling proves to me, beyond a doubt, that I am not on land. We are evidently moving, but the motion is scarcely perceptible. It is not a jerky, but rather a gliding movement, as though we were skimming through the water without ...
— Facing the Flag • Jules Verne
... skimming past her and leaping from ripple to ripple like, a living thing caught her attention. She turned sharply, and the next ...
— The Way of an Eagle • Ethel M. Dell
... maidens four have ranged them in a row, Between each lovely couple a stately rowan stem; And away in mazes wavy, like skimming birds, they go— Oh, never carroled ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf (Vol 2 of 17) - Folk-Lore, Fables, And Fairy Tales • Various
... mechanically clutching at the snow, and bounding from it as they swept on, they sometimes lost breath, and even consciousness. At times they were half suffocated in rolling masses of drift, and again free and skimming over its arrested surface, but always falling, as it seemed to them, almost perpendicularly. In one of these shocks they seemed to be going through a thicket of underbrush; but Provy Smith knew that they were the tops of pine-trees. At last ...
— Tales of Trail and Town • Bret Harte
... stooped lower, just skimming the tops of strange trees, the most horrible vegetable forms that I have ever beheld. And then, without warning, we were seized and pushed overboard, while the vessel, making a broad swoop, quickly disappeared. Henry alone uttered a loud cry as ...
— A Columbus of Space • Garrett P. Serviss
... Clouds adance, adance; Snow of night, Fleecy white, Silver ice agleam, aglance. High, hey, high, hey, Skimming the smooth, bright way, High, hey, high, hey, Over the ...
— Cap and Gown - A Treasury of College Verse • Selected by Frederic Knowles
... ground with his feet, and blew a speck of dust off his barrels, and the smell of the oil sent a delicious tremor darting through him. Everything, even Helen Bellew, was forgotten. Then in the silence rose a far-off clamour; a cock pheasant, skimming low, his plumage silken in the sun, dived out of the green and golden spinney, curled to the right, and was lost in undergrowth. Some pigeons passed over at a great height. The tap-tap of sticks beating against trees began; then with a fitful ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... she reentered the hotel, her cheeks glowing. Jock was not yet down. So she ordered and ate her wise and cautious breakfast of fruit and cereal and toast and coffee, skimming over her morning paper as she ate. At 7:30 she was back in the lobby, newspaper in hand. The Bisons were already astir. She seated herself in a deep chair in a quiet corner, her eyes glancing up over the top of her ...
— Americans All - Stories of American Life of To-Day • Various
... chill. He was not a little ridiculed by his acquaintances for sending such merchandise where it could not possibly be needed, but it is said that he made considerable money out of his enterprise. With the covers removed, the long-handled, shallow basins proved admirably adapted for use in skimming the sugar in the boiling-pans. But the old-fashioned method would be ...
— Cuba, Old and New • Albert Gardner Robinson
... "Merely skimming the surface of life, I know nothing, by my own experience, of its deep and warm realities. I have achieved none of those objects which the instinct of mankind especially prompts them to pursue, and the accomplishment ...
— Fragments From The Journal of a Solitary Man - (From: "The Doliver Romance and Other Pieces: Tales and Sketches") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... His eyes, skimming the ceiling, dropped to the shelves of books which ran about the room and rose almost to meet it. They came to a startled halt on a vase of ferns on a high shelf. A vase of ferns. There must have been water ...
— Play the Game! • Ruth Comfort Mitchell
... after we had finished. In some places the banks of the canals are so high that only our heads appear level with the fields, and it is, as Minora noted in her book, a curious sight to see three female heads skimming along apparently by themselves, and enjoying it tremendously. When the banks are low, we appear to be gliding deliciously over the roughest ploughed fields, with or without legs according to circumstances. Before we start, I fix on the place where tea ...
— Elizabeth and her German Garden • "Elizabeth", AKA Marie Annette Beauchamp
... was skimming swiftly over the water. For perhaps three hundred yards Frank kept the craft on the water; then sent it soaring into ...
— The Boy Allies at Jutland • Robert L. Drake
... a widespread cataract. The water below was lashed into fury, in the midst of which a mighty death agony beat back the troubled waves of the trade wind. Only then did the muffled double boom of the explosion reach the ears of the spectators, presently to be followed by a whispering, swift-skimming wavelet that swept irresistibly across the bigger surges and lapped the ship's side, as for a message that the work ...
— The Mystery • Stewart Edward White and Samuel Hopkins Adams
... which took the trail of Satan and they were chosen specimens of their kind. Up the slope they stormed and there went Satan skimming across the hollow beneath them. Their blood was his blood, their courage his courage, their endurance his endurance. The difference between them was the difference between the factory machine and the hand made work of art. From ...
— The Seventh Man • Max Brand
... gum, which is obtained from the vesicles upon the bark, and also by skimming it from the surface of the water in which the crushed bark is boiled, is carried in small vessels and taken internally as a remedy for gonorrhoea and for soreness of the chest ...
— The Mide'wiwin or "Grand Medicine Society" of the Ojibwa • Walter James Hoffman
... more mutton cutlets. 2 eggs, white bread-crumbs. 3oz. Parmesan cheese, grated. A little boiled macaroni. pint brown sauce. Some mashed potatoes. 2oz. clarified butter, or the fat skimming of ...
— The Skilful Cook - A Practical Manual of Modern Experience • Mary Harrison
... just been skimming through an illustrated book called "Noa Noa," by a Frenchman, which describes, or pretends to describe, a visit to Tahiti. There is not much fault to be found with it as a narrative, but the pictures of the natives are atrocious. Many ...
— The Last Harvest • John Burroughs
... any fine gradations of expression. It indicated an elementary rage or a sluggish placidity. He had a ragged beard of a reddish hue, and hair a shade lighter. He wore blue jeans trousers and an unbleached cotton shirt, and the whole system depended on one suspender. He was engaged in skimming a great kettle of boiling sorghum with a perforated gourd, which caught the scum and strained the liquor. The process was primitive; instead of the usual sorghum boiler and furnace, the kettle was propped upon stones ...
— The Riddle Of The Rocks - 1895 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... with Laura, to the Lago d'Agnano, about a mile and a half beyond Pausilippo. This lovely fair lake is not more than two miles in circuit; and embosomed in romantic woody hills: innumerable flocks of wild fowl were skimming over its surface, and gave life and motion to the beautiful but quiet landscape. While we were wandering here, enjoying the stillness and solitude, so delightfully contrasted with the unceasing noise, bustle, and crowd of the city, the charm was rudely ...
— The Diary of an Ennuyee • Anna Brownell Jameson
... philosophizing with the lesson that it taught, John turned to dreaming of Consuello as the one he loved. His imagination, from which he slipped the leash of worry and care, pictured for him gloriously delightful, utterly impossible scenes—Consuello and he on a yacht skimming the rolling waves of the ocean off Catalina, leisurely inspecting some "gabled foreign town"; she another Princess Patricia with "silken gowns" and "jewels for her hair," loving and wedding him, a "commoner" ...
— Spring Street - A Story of Los Angeles • James H. Richardson
... repulsive and pitiable; on the other, she saw the terrible indifference of the lady patronesses who came in carriages and gowns worth thousands. Life became to her more and more unbearable. She yearned for something real, for life itself—not this playing at living, not this skimming life of its cream. Of real life there was none. The best of her memories was her love for the little cadet Koko. That had been a good, honest, straight-forward impulse, and now there was nothing like it. There could ...
— The Forged Coupon and Other Stories • Leo Tolstoy
... and thrush and nightingale shall sip, And skimming swallows dip, And strange shy wanderers fold their lustrous plumes Fragrant from bowers that lent their sweet perfumes Where Paestum's rose or Persia's lilac blooms; Here from his cloud the eagle stoop to drink At the full basin's brink, And whet his beak against ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... that Susy coloured a little, and drew herself up more defiantly than usual as she sent a pebble skimming across the dying ripples ...
— The Glimpses of the Moon • Edith Wharton
... was eating his breakfast when he chanced upon this announcement. He was late that morning, and, contrary to custom, was skimming through the paper at the same time. But the paragraph brought both occupations to an abrupt standstill. He stared at the sheet for a few moments as if he thought it was bewitched. His brown face reddened, and he looked as if he were about to say something. ...
— The Odds - And Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... table, skimming busily through the paper with blue pencil and scissors, looked up with ...
— Queed • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... thumbling tit and perky wren Popped through the tiny doors of cosy balls And the blackbird lined with moss his high-built walls; A round mud cottage held the thrush's young, And straws from the untidy sparrow's hung. And, skimming forktailed in the evening air, When man first was were not the martens there? Did not those birds some human shelter crave, And stow beneath the cornice of his cave Their dry tight cups of clay? And from each door Peeped on a morning wiseheads three ...
— Georgian Poetry 1918-19 • Various
... breeze did not belie his confidence, for in ten minutes more the sail began to flap, and then to fill. The boat instantly responded, and Archie took the helm. The breeze steadily freshened, and in two minutes more the Gentle Jane was skimming along like a bird. And so, not long after six, they ...
— Cricket at the Seashore • Elizabeth Westyn Timlow
... are usually worthless for my purposes, and yet occasionally they print something I wouldn't miss. I'm the best friend the 'buy your home paper' man has," he ran on musingly, skimming the page and ignoring Deering, who continued to stare in stupefied ...
— The Madness of May • Meredith Nicholson
... be too strongly impressed upon the cook, as the contrary, renders it hard and of a bad color; the average time of boiling for fresh meat is half an hour to every pound, salt meat requires half as long again, and smoked meat still longer; the lid of the saucepan should only be removed for skimming, which is an ...
— The Jewish Manual • Judith Cohen Montefiore
... After skimming the pot that the bacon has been boiled in, put in cabbage sprouts, and let them boil till the stalks are tender; all greens are best boiled in a net. Spinach cooks in a few minutes; some persons prefer it when boiled in salt and water; you should have drawn butter or hard eggs to eat with ...
— Domestic Cookery, Useful Receipts, and Hints to Young Housekeepers • Elizabeth E. Lea
... Quill round, none of them will enter into a controversy with him. This fellow, who had excellent natural parts, but wanted a small foundation of learning, is a lively instance of those Wits who, as an ingenious author says, "will endure but one skimming"[!]. ...
— An English Garner - Critical Essays & Literary Fragments • Edited by Professor Arber and Thomas Seccombe
... of common Sugar and one pint of water over a slow fire for half an hour without skimming. When boiled enough take it off, rub your hands over with butter; take that which is a little cooled and pull it as you would molasses candy, until it is white; then twist or braid it and cut ...
— One Thousand Secrets of Wise and Rich Men Revealed • C. A. Bogardus
... stern, facing Josephine, and Jean gave the canoe a shove that sent it skimming like a swallow on the smooth surface of the lake. For a moment Philip did not dip his paddle. He looked at the girl who sat so near to him, her head bent over in pretence of seeing that all was right, the sun melting away into ...
— God's Country—And the Woman • James Oliver Curwood
... delicium. What a revolution has my opinions undergone respecting water since I have travelled in The Thirsty Desert! Never was such an enthusiastic conversion! But were all conversions so harmless, how happy for mankind! Some thirty swallows are skimming its gaseous-bubble surface, playing off their wing-darting delights. The Spring or Well is perennial, as old as the foundation of the city, and may have ran for ages before the palms were planted around it by the ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... 'All right!' by the first pigeon post of the Folkestone Pigeon Club. Wind w.s.-w. Captain Boyton hoists sail again at twenty-five minutes to ten and now scuds along beautifully, like some large sea-bird skimming over the blue waves. A critical time for him approaches. Captain Dane relieves the mate as pilot. When he is pulled out to Boyton, the daring voyager is paddling mechanically. He is very drowsy. Captain Dane's quiet, calm encouragement ...
— The Story of Paul Boyton - Voyages on All the Great Rivers of the World • Paul Boyton
... channel, and the ever-present danger of encountering snags. The intense darkness and fog of the first night compelled tying up for several hours. The banks were low, densely covered with shrubbery, and nothing broke the sameness of the river scene, except the occasional sight of an Indian canoe skimming across its surface. Towns there were none, and seldom even a sign of a settlement greeted the eye on either shore. The only landings were made at Yellow Banks, where there was a squalid group of log huts, and Fort Madison, where I spent a pleasant hour with the ...
— The Devil's Own - A Romance of the Black Hawk War • Randall Parrish
... through the silence came the throbbing notes of the nightingale, followed by its jubilant burst of glee, and the sweet distant chime of the cathedral bells rose and fell upon the wind. What peace and repose there was in all the air, even in the gentle breeze, and the floating motions of the swallows skimming past. ...
— Love and Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... little that is stirring about it. But my belief is that it can be the most lively, sensitive, fruitful, and enjoyable programme in the world, because the enjoyment of it depends upon the very stuff of life itself, and not upon skimming the cream off and throwing away ...
— At Large • Arthur Christopher Benson
... swear you were skimming the surface of the sea; and the delusion is more complete as the white foam of the "tenth wave" skims in beneath wheel and hoof, and you urge on with the treacherous element gliding away ...
— Initial Studies in American Letters • Henry A. Beers
... began to read as intently as her companion, who leaned against the boulder slowly turning his pages, with leafy shadows flickering over his uncovered head and touching it with alternate sun and shade. The book proved interesting, and Sylvia was rapidly skimming into the heart of the story, when an unguarded motion caused her swing to slope perilously to one side, and in saving herself she lost her book. This produced a predicament, for being helped into a hammock and getting out alone are two very different things. She eyed the distance ...
— Moods • Louisa May Alcott
... with France when it could and left England in the lurch. SIR EDWARD HOWARD, a bold admiral, son of the Earl of Surrey, distinguished himself by his bravery against the French in this business; but, unfortunately, he was more brave than wise, for, skimming into the French harbour of Brest with only a few row-boats, he attempted (in revenge for the defeat and death of SIR THOMAS KNYVETT, another bold English admiral) to take some strong French ships, well defended with batteries of cannon. The upshot was, that ...
— A Child's History of England • Charles Dickens
... surprised her at first. But being patient and docile she proved amenable to instruction, and as she unhesitatingly and at once yielded up every point which her instructress told her was wrong, there was nothing to hinder progress—if this rapid skimming along over the surface of a subject can be so described. And as the lesson progressed it seemed to Mrs. Churton that her pupil took an ever-increasing interest in it, that her mind became more and more receptive ...
— Fan • Henry Harford
... sun shines; Wild with the beauty of riotous nature, Thick with the tangles of fruit-laden vines.[A] From fragrant clusters, grown purple with ripeness, Rare, spicy odors float out to the sea,[B] Where the gray gulls flit with restless endeavor, Skimming the waves in their ...
— The White Doe - The Fate of Virginia Dare • Sallie Southall Cotten
... make as hard as a bone as dry as a stone it's all in the wind that blows from behind and all in the river that flows for ever and all in the grasses and the white daisies and the merry sheep awake or asleep and the happy swallows skimming the shallows and it's all in the ...
— At the Back of the North Wind • George MacDonald
... (the life) wonderfully quickly; completely sunk the lady and become sort of maids-of-all-work. Our day begins soon after 6 o'clock by laying the breakfast, skimming the cream, whilst our woman is frying bacon and making the porridge for the breakfast at 6.30. Mr. B—— and A—— are out by 5 o'clock, in order to water, feed, and harness their horses all ready to go out at 7 o'clock, when we get rid of all the men. We then make the beds, help in the ...
— A Lady's Life on a Farm in Manitoba • Mrs. Cecil Hall
... easier to read something new than to meditate fruitfully upon what one has read, to pass from picture to picture in a gallery and win no genuine insight from any. A single great book thoroughly mastered-the Bible, Homer, Shakespeare-were better for a man than the superficial skimming of many, one beautiful picture well loved than a hundred idly glanced at and labeled with some trite comment. Too many of the upper class, for whom limitless cultural opportunities are open, dabble in everything, know names and schools, repeat glibly ...
— Problems of Conduct • Durant Drake
... was skimming beneath the surface of a sea of clouds: now the black billows had silver crests: now an incandescent buoy bobbed among them. O for ...
— Dead Men Tell No Tales • E. W. Hornung
... lawyer succeeded in proving, if the statement of the overseer proved it, that the brewer was quite ignorant that the milk sold in the "district" was what had been unsalable the day before to better customers, and that the skimming and doctoring of it was unknown to him. So an attempt to punish the rich man as a criminal was futile. He could afford to pay ...
— The Honorable Peter Stirling and What People Thought of Him • Paul Leicester Ford
... The syrup needs skimming. "Leave it to the women?" Ah, comrade, it never will do! They may mind the straining without much complaining, Yet think it is quite enough, too. Now eventide, and frost beside, Bid us our labor cease; For home we'll make, and syrup take To them, ...
— The Emigrant Mechanic and Other Tales In Verse - Together With Numerous Songs Upon Canadian Subjects • Thomas Cowherd
... please. If you stone them be careful to save all the juice. Put the sugar and water in the preserving kettle and stir over the fire until the sugar is dissolved. Put in the cherries and heat slowly to the boiling point. Boil ten minutes, skimming carefully. ...
— Canned Fruit, Preserves, and Jellies: Household Methods of Preparation - U.S. Department of Agriculture Farmers' Bulletin No. 203 • Maria Parloa
... stroke the creature of the palace sent the boat skimming far out from the bund, and, ...
— The Bronze Bell • Louis Joseph Vance
... frying, and only makes the stock greasy; always cover the bones with cold water, but regulate the quantity by the material used. Put in cold water with a teaspoonful of salt, and when it boils up, skim well; when skimming, take an iron spoon and a basin of water, and dip the spoon in the water each time the scum is removed; then put in the peppercorns and vegetables. In very hot weather put peppercorns and a fagot of herbs only, as the vegetables ...
— The Art of Living in Australia • Philip E. Muskett (?-1909)
... straggling street, the mothers knitting at the open doors, the fathers standing about in long white blouses, chatting or smoking; the great tower of the ruined castle rising high into the rosy air, with a whole troop of swallows—by distance made as small as gnats—skimming about its rents and fissures;—when I first beheld all this, I felt instinctively that my knapsack might be taken off my shoulders, that my tired feet might wander no more, that at last, on the planet, I had found a home. From that evening ...
— Dreamthorp - A Book of Essays Written in the Country • Alexander Smith
... spendthrift, had run through all his patrimony and had but one good cloak left. One day he happened to see a Swallow, which had appeared before its season, skimming along a pool and twittering gaily. He supposed that summer had come, and went and sold his cloak. Not many days later, winter set in again with renewed frost and cold. When he found the unfortunate ...
— Aesop's Fables • Aesop
... then it hasn't been so much what you had on your feet that has made you the swift hockey player you are, but coolness of judgment, ability to anticipate the moves of the enemy, and a clever stroke that can send the puck skimming over the ...
— The Chums of Scranton High at Ice Hockey • Donald Ferguson
... his keen sight, old Whitetail had failed to see some one else who was sitting right in plain sight. He had failed because his mind was so full of Grandfather Frog and Longlegs that he forgot to look around, as he usually does. Just skimming the tops of the bulrushes he sailed swiftly out over the Smiling Pool and reached down with his great, cruel claws to clutch Grandfather Frog, who sat there pretending to be asleep, but all the time watching Longlegs ...
— The Adventures of Grandfather Frog • Thornton W. Burgess
... gallant manner in which he stumped from one part of the brook to another, waving his rod in the air to keep the line from dragging on the ground or catching among the bushes, and the adroitness with which he would throw his fly to any particular place, sometimes skimming it lightly along a little rapid, sometimes casting it into one of those dark holes made by a twisted root or overhanging bank in which the large trout are apt to lurk. In the meanwhile he was giving instructions to his two disciples, showing them the manner in which they ...
— The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. • Washington Irving
... went down again for a few minutes to wait in the breakfast-room, where he saw the 'Times' lying casually on the little table by the front window. He took it up, half dreamily, by way of having something to do, and was skimming the telegrams in an unconcerned manner, when his attention was suddenly arrested by the name Le Breton, printed in conspicuous type near the bottom of the third column. He looked closer at the paragraph, and saw that it was headed 'Accident to British Tourists in Switzerland.' A strange tremor seized ...
— Philistia • Grant Allen
... the wicked after death, but in the case of some they do not tarry until death; they leap forward to him whom it is decreed must die, forcing attention with their eager, craving hands, with their obscure and ominous voices. . . . About him the sweet breath of the summer afternoon, the skimming swallows, the meadows starred with flowers; within him every hell at which the imagination can so ...
— Lysbeth - A Tale Of The Dutch • H. Rider Haggard
... fondly musing. 'She is well, she is well. Roving from parlour to bedroom, Mr Jonas, like a bee, skimming from post to pillar, like the butterfly; dipping her young beak into our currant wine, like the humming-bird! Ah! were she a little less giddy than she is; and had she but the sterling qualities of Cherry, my ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... find it is, Mauser." The former marshal allowed himself a grimace. "Besides, I owe you something for that spectacular scene when you came skimming over the treetops, the two enemy gliders right behind you, then stalling your craft and crashing into that tree not thirty feet from my open air headquarters. Admittedly, in forty years of fracases, I've never seen ...
— Frigid Fracas • Dallas McCord Reynolds
... (Pontchartrain), as the tow-line was cast off, he hoisted sail, and, skimming out by lighthouse and breakwater, tripped away toward Pointe-aux-Herbes and the eastern skyline beyond, he and Sweetheart alone, his hand clasping hers—the tiller, that is—hour by hour, and the small waves tiptoeing to kiss her southern cheek as she leaned the other away ...
— Strong Hearts • George W. Cable
... her place in the Virginia reel, watched the dance begin, watched her full, womanly figure, in its soft white draperies, glide between the lines, with her head held high, her hand in George Bolingbroke's, her white slippers skimming the polished floor. Then turning away, I walked slowly down the length of the two drawing-rooms, and said "Good-night" to Miss Mitty and Miss Matoaca near the door. As I passed into the hall, I heard a woman's ...
— The Romance of a Plain Man • Ellen Glasgow
... o'clock in the afternoon when the trio of fortune-seekers reached the door that had been designated by the advertisement as No. — Prince Street; and the fiery heat that had been pouring down during all the earlier part of the day was somewhat moderated by heavy clouds rising in the West and skimming half the upper sky, indicating a thunder-storm rapidly approaching. Perhaps Tom Leslie thought, as he approached the door sacred to the sublime mysteries of humbug, of the appropriateness of thunder in the heavens ...
— Shoulder-Straps - A Novel of New York and the Army, 1862 • Henry Morford
... stewpan; pound the trimmings and bones in a mortar, and put them into a stewpan with two shallots, a clove, a bouquet of herbs, and half a pint of claret; let this simmer until reduced to one half. Then add three quarters of a pint of Spanish sauce. Let these very gently simmer for half an hour, skimming frequently; strain through a fine sieve, and return to the stewpan. If it is not thick enough to coat the spoon, reduce a little more. Pour this sauce over the snipe in the saute pan, and let it get hot without boiling; pile the pieces in a pyramid; ...
— Choice Cookery • Catherine Owen
... of the air was tempered now by a sun that topped the wooded ridges and blazed with a luxurious warmth upon the world of lake and forest below; loons flew skimming through the sparkling spray that the wind lifted; divers shook their dripping heads to the sun and popped smartly out of sight again; and as far as eye could reach rose the leagues of endless, crowding Bush, ...
— The Wendigo • Algernon Blackwood
... landed—indeed, before we landed—while the boat was still skimming over the purple waters, the green mountains appearing to mingle and change places every moment as we were borne along, I felt conquered, if I may so express it, by the enchantment of my situation. I gave in my allegiance to the spirit of the scene, I abandoned all thoughts of being able to describe ...
— Our Home in the Silver West - A Story of Struggle and Adventure • Gordon Stables
... of clothes I remember having, she cut and made. Then the quilts and coverlids she pieced and quilted! We used, too, in my boyhood to make over two tons of butter annually, the care of which devolved mainly upon her, from the skimming of the pans to the packing of the butter in the tubs and firkins, though the churning was commonly done by a sheep or a dog. We made our own cheese, also. As a boy I used to help do the wheying, and I took ...
— Our Friend John Burroughs • Clara Barrus
... to be and calmly sit down once more and look at them. Caleb was becoming more and more incensed, but he would not show it to the dog; he still hoped against hope; and then a curious thing happened. A swallow came skimming along close to the earth and passed within a yard of Tory, when up jumped the dog and gave chase, darting across the field with such speed that he kept very near the bird until it rose and passed over the hedge at the farther side. The joyous ...
— A Shepherd's Life • W. H. Hudson
... translucent clay, whose air was almost musical with the clear, glittering cold. On our starboard beam, like a pile of glaciers in Switzerland, lay this Staten Land, gleaming in snow-white barrenness and solitude. Unnumbered white albatross were skimming the sea near by, and clouds of smaller white wings fell through the air like snow-flakes. High, towering in their own turbaned snows, the far-inland pinnacles loomed up, like the border of some other world. Flashing ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville
... excitement the other words which his godmother had told him to use had slipped his memory, and the cloak only went faster and faster, skimming on ...
— The Little Lame Prince - Rewritten for Young Readers by Margaret Waters • Dinah Maria Mulock
... heads—he forgot his danger. Before the others realized it, he had killed two. Maisanguaq's harpoon went wild. He jealously watched Ootah and struck without skill, carried away by chagrin and rage. Ere made valiant attacks for he, too, thought of Annadoah, but the walrus invariably went skimming from under his blows. Papik's harpoon glanced the backs of half a dozen. Finally it landed. He shouted with glee. The inflated floats attached to the harpoon lines bobbed crazily on the surface of the ensanguined waters as the animals tossed in ...
— The Eternal Maiden • T. Everett Harre
... in a frail way. She wore a pea green skirt and a waist of filmy, feminine texture. We instantly took to each other. She was always up and off, skimming swallow-like in all directions, now this way, now that, as if seeking for some new flavour in life, some excitement that had not ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp |
