"Span" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the thought of being restored to these dear ones, were it only for a short span. They were not going to carry her away from the convent; and, indeed, seeing that she so loved her aunt, the good reverend mother, and that her heart cleaved to those walls and to the holy exercises which filled so great a part of her life, her father, in replying ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... finds the richest compensation in the enormous magnitude and endless variety of all the vast field of interests, present and still more future, that are committed to his temporary charge. Though his charge may be temporary, I should think every Secretary of State remembers that even in that fugitive span he may either do some good or, if he is unhappy, ...
— Indian speeches (1907-1909) • John Morley (AKA Viscount Morley)
... in his hard grip, and holding it out at arm's length he saw that its point was but a span's distance ...
— The Thirsty Sword • Robert Leighton
... was, I would have earnestly besought her, to take away that romance, to step with her to the point but just before them—open the "Book of books," and let her read of Him "who hath measured the waters in the hollow of his hand, and meted out heaven with a span; who hath compassed the waters with bounds until the day and night come to an end; whose way is in the sea, and his path in the great waters. The Lord, whose name alone is excellent, his glory above the earth ...
— Mrs Whittelsey's Magazine for Mothers and Daughters - Volume 3 • Various
... disorderly houses in the old and new Tenderloin. They have almost forgotten the dark tragedies hidden just a fathom underground in their burial lot in Washington Cemetery—the poor murdered women, the infants one span long." ...
— Fighting the Traffic in Young Girls - War on the White Slave Trade • Various
... him to the Watergate{B} Hard bound with hempen span, As though they held a lion there, And not a fenceless man. They set him high upon a cart— The hangman rode below— They drew his hands behind his back, And bared his lordly brow. Then, as a hound is slipp'd from leash, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 347, September, 1844 • Various
... drove into town, behind a span of ancient men, whose knees were sore from falling down and striving to get up again; their poor old ribs were bare of meat, and they had sores upon their necks; there wasn't, on the village street, a tougher looking ...
— Rippling Rhymes • Walt Mason
... up his axe, tried the lower margin of the head, found it was a trifle out of the true—that is, its under curve centred, not on the handle one span down, but half an inch out from the handle. A nail driven into the point of the axe-eye corrected this and the chiefs went forth to select a tree. A White Pine that measured roughly six inches through was soon found, and Sam was allowed to clear away the brush around it. Yan and Guy now took a stout ...
— Two Little Savages • Ernest Thompson Seton
... are grown for flowering in the conservatory, and are usually gay from the first week in November till February. During the remainder of the year, they occupy a three-quarter span-roof house, in which an intermediate temperature is maintained. All our Epiphyllums are grafted on the Pereskia aculeata. We graft a few at intervals of two or three years, so, if any of the older plants become sickly or shabby, ...
— Cactus Culture For Amateurs • W. Watson
... sight of its spick and span newness, its yellow frame shanties and shining shingles, it had carried it off as if it had been a hen coop and set it down somewhere in Texas, a state that had been longer settled and was therefore a better place for houses and ...
— The Way of the Wind • Zoe Anderson Norris
... as far as they went. Everything is good... as long as it is unpossessed. Satiety and possession are Death's horses; they run in span. ...
— When God Laughs and Other Stories • Jack London
... of the year; There are four seasons in the mind of man: He has his lusty Spring, when fancy clear Takes in all beauty with an easy span: ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 1 (of 4) • Various
... a lawyer in Albany, State of New York, and as such had thriven well. He had thriven well as long as thrift and thriving on this earth had been allowed to him. But the Almighty had seen fit to shorten his span. ...
— The Courtship of Susan Bell • Anthony Trollope
... the short fine hair all over the body which gives it the appearance of green velvet. What color is the head? How does the caterpillar feed? Write a brief description of the worm. Do not mistake it for the cabbage span-worm which is also green, but which walks ...
— An Elementary Study of Insects • Leonard Haseman
... since it is not lawful that I should tell it to you, you shall discover. Abi, there shall be a royal marriage in Memphis of such joy and feasting as has not been known in the history of the Northern or the Southern Land, and for your allotted span you shall sit by the side of Egypt's Queen and shine in her light. Have you not earned the place by right of blood, O conqueror of Pharaoh, and did not Pharaoh promise it to you in your sleep? Come, the sun ...
— Morning Star • H. Rider Haggard
... down the street. He had reached the runway by a route known only to himself. He was sure that for a time, at least, he would not be followed. At last he reached the bridge which was coming to harbor many mysteries for him. Halfway across the span he paused, and sinking into the shadow of an iron girder, began watching the surface ...
— Triple Spies • Roy J. Snell
... gray mare was visible at the opening over one of the mangers. She was the sole recognized occupant of the stable. In a dark corner Tunis Latham saw a huge grain box, for once the Ball farm had supported several span of oxen and a considerable dairy herd, its cover raised and its maw gaping wide. There was something moving there in the murk, ...
— Sheila of Big Wreck Cove - A Story of Cape Cod • James A. Cooper
... few leaves; they are such as the tulip, hyacinth, crocus, and others. They are nearly all ornamental and beautiful from the very large size and brilliant color of their flowers. Holland tulips were once so much in demand as to bring almost fabulous prices. A gentleman in Syracuse gave a valuable span of horses, and another exchanged his farm, for a bed ...
— Eric - or, Under the Sea • Mrs. S. B. C. Samuels
... see his kind face more, after I took leave of him in Charlotte Square; yet the certainty that such must be the case is still a painful shock, as I can never hope again to meet, during the remaining span of my own life, a friend in whom high talents for the business of life were more happily mingled with all those affections which form the dearest part of human intercourse. In that respect I believe his like hardly is to be found. I hope Mrs. ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... from leaves on a tree, and read the name on a doorplate where others could see nothing in the darkness. He had no visual idea of distance and would grasp at remote objects as though they were near. He called both men and women Bua and all animals Rosz. His memory span for names was marvelous. Drawing upon the pages of Von Kolb and Stanhope, a writer in The Living Age says that he burned his hand in the first flame that he saw and that he had no fear of being struck with swords, but that the noise of a drum threw him into convulsions. He ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... Inn, for we soon saw that both were far-and-away better than common, and we were selfish. Nor did the man himself seem to care for more patronage. He was always ready when we wished to go, and jumped from his spick-and-span deck to meet us with a smile that started us off in sunshine, no matter what the weather. And with my affection for the lovely, uneven coast and the seas that held it in their flashing fingers, grew my interest in the winning personality ...
— The Militants - Stories of Some Parsons, Soldiers, and Other Fighters in the World • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews
... she had named her noble steed. She patted his neck, told him coaxingly he would never again climb the mountain pass with her upon his back; took a last look of her father's splendid saddle horse of dapple grey, and his jet black span of carriage horses, and passed round through the richly cultivated grounds, and gardens where every thing that wealth could procure lay spread out before the eye. She took a hasty look, a hasty leave of all and felt that sense of desolation known to almost every human heart, when called upon ...
— Withered Leaves from Memory's Garland • Abigail Stanley Hanna
... saying to himself, in that joy which was of his venturer's soul and knew not time or place. "Heart of my Life! What a close to a merry span!" ...
— The Maid of the Whispering Hills • Vingie E. Roe
... wisely, consists in form, and not in size: and to the eye of the philosopher, the curve drawn on a paper two inches long, is just as magnificent, just as symbolic of divine mysteries and melodies, as when embodied in the span of some cathedral roof. Have you eyes to see? Then lie down on the grass, and look near enough to see something more of what is to be seen; and you will find tropic jungles in every square foot of turf; mountain cliffs and debacles at the mouth of ...
— MacMillan's Reading Books - Book V • Anonymous
... allusions to Lord Lister's journeyings to France, and the article in Harper's Monthly for April, 1909, were from the pen of the author of Animal Experimentation—a work which is reviewed in the Appendix to the present edition. To his advanced age—now far beyond the allotted span—we may ascribe the inaccuracies which, at an earlier period of his career, ...
— An Ethical Problem - Or, Sidelights upon Scientific Experimentation on Man and Animals • Albert Leffingwell
... a little span of happiness was theirs! Only two brief years, and then the cold hand of death was laid upon the ...
— The Lure of San Francisco - A Romance Amid Old Landmarks • Elizabeth Gray Potter and Mabel Thayer Gray
... a part of Endymion's fastidiousness that the sight of blood— that is, of human blood—turned his stomach. In her distress Dorothea could not help admiring how he conquered this aversion; how he knelt in his spick-and-span evening dress, and, after turning back his ruffles, unlaced the prisoner's soaked shoe and rolled down ...
— The Westcotes • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... cried Polly, after the last scrap of the wonderful cake had disappeared, the dishes were cleared away, and Phronsie put to bed, and everything was spick-span once more, "I've just ...
— The Adventures of Joel Pepper • Margaret Sidney
... related of Galileo, that he once stood watching a swinging lamp, hung from the roof of the cathedral at Pisa, until he convinced himself that it performed its vibratory movement in the same time, whether the vibration was one of wide or of narrow span. This traditionary tale is most probably correct in its main features, for the Newtons and Galileos of all ages do perceive great truths in occurrences that are as commonplace as the fall of an apple, or the disturbance of a hanging lamp. Trifles are full of meaning ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 457 - Volume 18, New Series, October 2, 1852 • Various
... on his feet. Along the broad, white road, with its rows of poplars on either side, came a troop of cent-gardes, spick and span in their brilliant uniforms, their cuirasses blazing in the sunlight, and immediately behind them rode the Emperor, accompanied by his staff, in a wide open space, followed by a ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... to recommence;—the play Will be the last of seven, and spick-span new—' 'Tis usual here that number to present. A dilettante did the piece invent, And dilettanti will enact it too. Excuse me, gentlemen; to me's assign'd As dilettante to uplift ...
— Faust Part 1 • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
... them. I will put the hatchet under this log." He made a motion of dropping the hatchet, closely watching the Indian; then he straightened, for Tegakwita's right hand held the musket, and his left rested lightly on his belt, not a span from his ...
— The Road to Frontenac • Samuel Merwin
... Dan did, and he was not worrying about it a bit, either, as he sauntered under the Brooklyn Bridge span at Dover Street and turned into South, where Christmas Eve is so joyous, in its way. The way on this particular evening was in no place more clearly interpreted than Red Murphy's resort, where the guild of Battery rowboatmen, who meet steamships in their Whitehall boats and carry their hawsers ...
— Dan Merrithew • Lawrence Perry
... and simple and nothing-withholding and free Ye publish yourselves to the sky and offer yourselves to the sea! Tolerant plains, that suffer the sea and the rains and the sun, Ye spread and span like the catholic man who hath mightily won God out of knowledge and good out of infinite pain And sight out of blindness and purity out of ...
— Southern Literature From 1579-1895 • Louise Manly
... was right afar and over the great span. But they would not see in Spain, or not many would see, that the whole span must be taken. But I was not one to chide him, seeing that I, too, saw afar, and they would not see ...
— 1492 • Mary Johnston
... and the mainland of Australia. The island was searched for wreckage with little result. One piece of timber was found which, it was conjectured, might have been deck timber, and a plank was found, three feet long and one span broad. The nails in the wreckage were very rusty. The search for shipwrecked sailors on the adjacent mainland was unsuccessful. On the 20th and on the 31st of December, and on the 1st of January, 1697, ...
— Essays on early ornithology and kindred subjects • James R. McClymont
... that followed was to Cicily the most strenuous and the most exciting that she had ever experienced in the brief span of her years. She steadfastly maintained her pose as a woman who had renounced her husband; yet, she remained in that husband's house, with a sublime disregard for the inconsistency of her conduct. She studiously avoided any discussion, of the status she ...
— Making People Happy • Thompson Buchanan
... thought convinced me that, though there might be a little risk, there was no paralyzing danger. I had forgotten the narrowness of the gully through which alone we could gain the cliffs. From the open span of beach where we were now standing, there was no chance of leaving the caves except as we had come to them, by a boat; for on each side a crag ran like a spur into the water. The comparatively open space permitted the tide to lap in quietly, and steal imperceptibly higher upon ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma • Hesba Stretton
... even more deceptive. Sutton, even when trained to his finest, would have outweighed him twenty pounds. Now that margin was nearer thirty, and added to that, he was inches less in height. He was shorter of neck, blocky, built close to the ground. And the span of his ankle was nearly as great ...
— Once to Every Man • Larry Evans
... California, in those days, was a dolce far niente kind of existence that was most captivating, although ruffled at times by troubles with the many Indians on all sides. The days sped by, each one making but the slightest notch in the span of life. Juana continued her teaching, riding to the mission every day, where she spent the morning. During the rest of the day, after returning home, she busied herself about the house in all domestic duties, or in embroidering, at which she was an adept, ...
— Old Mission Stories of California • Charles Franklin Carter
... such mystery?" he asked as we walked together to the other side of the spick-and-span ...
— The Czar's Spy - The Mystery of a Silent Love • William Le Queux
... their language it was known as Caniboritum. The primeval fortress stood on the left bank of the river, which some called the Granta and some called the Cam; and for reasons best known to themselves, the Romans did not think fit to span that river by a bridge, but they made their great Via Devana pass sheer through the river-as some Dutch or German Irrationalist has pretended that the children of Israel did when they found the Jordan ...
— The Coming of the Friars • Augustus Jessopp
... to span the narrow stretch of water that separated us from our late antagonist; and upon climbing the side we were received at the gangway by an officer of some twenty-five years of age, whose head was swathed in a blood-stained bandage, and who handed ...
— A Middy of the King - A Romance of the Old British Navy • Harry Collingwood
... for London: it is surprising how swiftly they run; their bridles are very light, and their saddles little more than a span over. ...
— Travels in England and Fragmenta Regalia • Paul Hentzner and Sir Robert Naunton
... the last of the steel for Span Number One reached the front, and erection was begun. The men fell to with a vim and an enthusiasm impossible to describe. With incredible rapidity the heavy sections were laid in place; the riveters began their metallic song; the ...
— The Iron Trail • Rex Beach
... elasticity of American democratic life than the fact that within a span of forty years Abraham Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt were Presidents of the United States. Two men more unlike in origin, in training, and in ...
— Theodore Roosevelt; An Intimate Biography, • William Roscoe Thayer
... official had said, given such information that by their means a death-blow was given to the plots to place Charles Edward upon the English throne; and when he was once more about, it was to join his little vessel, with his lieutenant's grade endorsed, and in a span new uniform, of which he was ...
— In the King's Name - The Cruise of the "Kestrel" • George Manville Fenn
... This is Kullerwoinen's answer: "It is best that thou shouldst perish, Let destruction overtake thee, There is ample room in Mana, Room for all the dead in Kalma, There the worthiest must slumber, There must rest the good and evil." Ilmarinen's wife made answer: "Ukko, thou O God in heaven, Span the strongest of thy cross-bows, Test the weapon by thy wisdom, Lay an arrow forged from copper, On the cross-bow of thy forging; Rightly aim thy flaming arrow, With thy magic hurl the missile, Shoot this wizard through the vitals, Pierce the heart ...
— The Kalevala (complete) • John Martin Crawford, trans.
... bridges, newer and stronger far, still remained standing. But even from that distance Stern could quite plainly see, without the telescope, that the Williamsburg Bridge had "buckled" downward and that the farther span of the Blackwell's Island Bridge was in ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... stream, And fishes poising where the waters ran, And lo! upon the glass a golden gleam, And purple as of robes Sidonian, Then, sudden turning, she beheld a man, That knelt beside her; as her own face fair Was his, and o'er his shoulders for a span Fell the bright ...
— Helen of Troy • Andrew Lang
... neat and tidy officers who so love to see a ship kept spick and span clean; who institute vigorous search after the man who chances to drop the crumb of a biscuit on deck, when the ship is rolling in a sea-way; let all such swing their hammocks with the sailors; and they would soon get sick of this daily ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville
... they influence the weather of our earth; in short, he extended the entire field of solar astronomy. But very soon this field became too small for him, and his most important researches carried him out into the regions of space compared with which the span of our solar system is a mere point. With his perfected telescopes he entered abysmal vistas which no human eve ever penetrated before, which no human mind had hitherto more than vaguely imagined. He tells us that his forty-foot reflector will ...
— A History of Science, Volume 3(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... such straits that the prince had to submit to very hard terms, it was arranged that his wages were to be one leaf-plate full of rice a day: and that if he threw up the service he was to lose a piece of his skin a span long. After a short time the prince who had been brought up in luxury found the work so hard and the food so scanty that he resolved to leave the mahajan: but before he went he had to submit to a piece of skin being cut off, in terms of the agreement. ...
— Folklore of the Santal Parganas • Cecil Henry Bompas
... been accustomed to whip his favourite speckle-backed beauties. The painting from which this engraving was taken was the work of Theodore Lane, who, although his work is limited to the short space of five or six years, seems to call for special mention by virtue of his tragic ending, the short span allotted to his life and labours, and the superiority of his talent and genius to those of many of his contemporaries. Lane was literally a comic artist of the nineteenth century, having been born at Isleworth in 1800. He was apprenticed to a colourer of prints at Battle Bridge, named Barrow; and, ...
— English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century. - How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times. • Graham Everitt
... not attempt to interfere. They stood and watched while Diana hauled the little boy up the bank. Perhaps each secretly wished she were capable of such a piece of pluck. Though the tree was tall enough to span the stream, its bole seemed very narrow to form a bridge, and the rounded surface made it all the more slippery; the few branches here and there were of little help. Diana hoisted up her protege, then going in front of him began to crawl across on her hands and knees, ...
— A harum-scarum schoolgirl • Angela Brazil
... had retained for himself was a span of old horses, a mountain buckboard, and his one room in the crowded house. Further, having affirmed that he would be beholden to none of them, he got the contract to carry the United States mail, twice a week, from Kelterville up over Tarwater Mountain ...
— The Red One • Jack London
... in the span of a few brief seconds, the hopes of both these men were shattered. The one forgot even his greed in the panic of terror—the other was plunged into total forgetfulness of the past by a jagged fragment of rock which gashed a deep ...
— Tarzan and the Jewels of Opar • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... it seems but a span to the modern scientific point of view; for that, however, neither Schiller nor Kant was ripe, since both thought it necessary to assume that human history began about six thousand years ago and began substantially as reported in Genesis, ...
— The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller • Calvin Thomas
... impalpable dust. Crowns to-day, coffins to-morrow, with monuments Mossed over, letter-cracked, undecipherable As the mummied remains of Egyptian Kings. Vain, vain, are all the monuments of man, The greatest only live a little span; We strut and shine our passing day, and then— Depart from all the haunts of living men, With only Hope to light us on the way Where billions passed beneath the silent clay; And, none have yet returned to tell us ...
— Shakspere, Personal Recollections • John A. Joyce
... lunch Frank had Toots harness a span of fast steppers, attach them to the double-seated surrey and bring the team round to the ...
— Frank Merriwell's Son - A Chip Off the Old Block • Burt L. Standish
... at the end of that time his father, as one means of adding something to his scanty resources, obtained the job of hauling a quantity of iron ore from the ore beds near Little York to a forge and furnace at Fullerville. Willard with an ox-team and his uncle Henry with a span of fine horses, were employed for the most part ...
— Sword and Pen - Ventures and Adventures of Willard Glazier • John Algernon Owens
... perceived that he was no longer held. He turned about and came full into a man in black. One of the green weapons cracked close to him, a drift of pungent smoke came into his face, and a steel blade flashed. The huge chamber span ...
— When the Sleeper Wakes • Herbert George Wells
... stretchings of Mr Holroyd's thumb across rather slack surfaces of cheek and chin. In the interval between the hair and the face, Mr Holroyd should have a good supper downstairs with Foljambe and the cook. And tomorrow morning, when he met Hermy and Ursy, Georgie would be just as spick and span and young as ...
— Queen Lucia • E. F. Benson
... Something about the church? I should ha' thought the church was all spick and span by ...
— The Seaboard Parish Vol. 2 • George MacDonald
... the ravine; here it was choked with brambles; and there, in fairy haughs, it lay for a few paces evenly on the green turf. Like a sponge, the hillside oozed with well-water. The burn kept growing both in force and volume; at every leap it fell with heavier plunges and span more widely in the pool. Great had been the labours of that stream, and great and agreeable the changes it had wrought. It had cut through dykes of stubborn rock, and now, like a blowing dolphin, spouted through the orifice; along all its humble ...
— Prince Otto • Robert Louis Stevenson
... back, one of these vehicles, drawn by a span of twelve oxen, was seen slowly wending its way to the south-west, in the direction of Natal. It was a loosely yet strongly built machine on four wheels, fourteen feet long and four wide, formed of well-seasoned stink wood, the joints and bolts working ...
— Hendricks the Hunter - The Border Farm, a Tale of Zululand • W.H.G. Kingston
... a couple of merchant captains, one asleep with his head on the table and little rings shining in his great red ears; the other very spick and span—of what they called the new school then. His name was Williams—Captain Williams of the Lion, which he part owned; a man of some note for the dinners he gave on board his ship. His eyes sparkled blue and very round in a round rosy face, and he clawed effusively ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... of fressche water, that is in the world. For there, as it is most narow, it is more than a myle of brede. And thanne entren men azen into the lond of the grete Chane. That ryvere gothe thorghe the lond of Pigmaus: where that the folk ben of litylle stature, that ben but 3 span long: and thei ben right faire and gentylle, aftre here quantytees, bothe the men and the wommen. And thei maryen hem, whan thei ben half zere of age, and geten children. And thei lyven not, but 6 zeer or 7 at the moste. And he that lyvethe 8 zeer men holden him there righte passynge old. Theise ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries - of the English Nation. v. 8 - Asia, Part I. • Richard Hakluyt
... beyond, and see The far horizon's beckoning span! Faith in your God-known destiny! We are a part of ...
— Fifty years & Other Poems • James Weldon Johnson
... are still towns on rivers, but the Ouse is no more an image or forecast of the Hudson than Old York is of New York. For that reason, the bridge over it is not to be compared to our Brooklyn Bridge, or even to any bridge which is yet to span the Hudson. The difference is so greatly in our favor that we may well yield our city's mother the primacy in her city wall. We have ourselves as yet no Plantagenet wall, and we have not yet got a mediaeval gate through which the traveller passes in returning from the Flatiron ...
— Seven English Cities • W. D. Howells
... of all: An old and widowed man, Whose years had reached life's farthest, frailest span, And o'er whose head, as every moment flew, Eternity its dark'ning twilight threw, Lay in his silent chamber, dull and lone, Watching the midnight stars, as one by one They as slow, voiceless spirits glided past ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume XXIV. • Revised by Alexander Leighton
... the doctor, waiting for the explanation of the heavy, increasing roar which came from somewhere behind the vast curtain of mist which lay drifting to the north-west, a couple of hundred yards on the starboard bow, and rising up to the skies, now one glorious span of silver and gold. ...
— Steve Young • George Manville Fenn
... baggage. Although I found the journey exceedingly interesting, as we met with no exciting adventure I will pass over it rapidly. The road for some miles led along the banks of the rapid and turbulent Mahawelliganga. We crossed it by a bridge of a single arch, 90 feet high, with a span of 200 feet. We were told that during the rains of the monsoons the water has been known to rise 60 feet in its bed, carrying carcasses of elephants and huge trees in its current. By the side of the road were numerous shops or bazaars, kept by low country Singhalese, for the sale of all sorts ...
— My First Voyage to Southern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston
... Such is the complication of human destiny, that the same cruelties which tarnished the conquest of America have been re-enacted before our own eyes in times which we suppose to be characterized by vast progress, information and general refinement of manners. Within the interval embraced by the span of one life we have seen the reign of terror in France, the expedition to St. Domingo,* (* The North American Review for 1821 Number 30 contains the following passage: Conflicts with slaves fighting ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America V3 • Alexander von Humboldt
... party after breakfast, and was handed round. Mary introduced him. He was spick-and-span, with shining cheeks and a damp and glossy top-knot, and his blue eyes stared at the strange crowd stolidly for several minutes before he suddenly crumpled up his face and uttered a howl ...
— Sisters • Ada Cambridge
... of Jesus Christ may be, we ought to approach our study of his teachings with a sense of reverence. With the slenderest human means at his disposal, within a brief span of time, he raised our understanding of God and of human life to new levels forever, and set forces in ...
— The Social Principles of Jesus • Walter Rauschenbusch
... upon a ma'sh. But the critter I'm onto a'n't no dog-hoss, you may believe; he don't 'throw off' nor nothin', he don't. Him and his mate here a'n't easy matched. I fetched 'em up from below on spec, and you can hev the span for ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 41, March, 1861 • Various
... Edith, spick, span and debonair as always (although during the war he had discarded his buttonhole). He was occupied, as he usually was in his leisure time, not in playing the piano or composing, but—in making photograph frames! This was his hobby, and people often said that he took more pleasure in the carving, ...
— Love at Second Sight • Ada Leverson
... rapid evolutions among the flowers, despite her rubbing against the walls of the galleries when she enters to take shelter and, above all, despite the brushing which she must often give herself with her feet to dust herself and keep spick and span. Hence no doubt the need for that curious apparatus which no standing or moving upon ordinary surfaces could explain, as was said above, when we were wondering what the shifting, swaying, dangerous body might be on which the larva would have ...
— The Glow-Worm and Other Beetles • Jean Henri Fabre
... lines on the map with the point of his finger, "are the only two made ones that lead in and out of the district. Here is the Valserine," he went on, pointing to a blue line, "which flows from north to south, and both the roads wind over bridges that span the river close to our frontier. The French customs stations are on our side of those bridges. But, besides those two roads, the frontier can, of course, be crossed by one or other of the innumerable mountain tracks which are only accessible to pedestrians or mules. That is where our customs ...
— Castles in the Air • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... span of Zeno, the founder of Stoicism, was from B.C. 347 to 275. He did not begin teaching till 315, at the mature age of forty. Aristotle had passed away in 322, and with him closed the great constructive era of Greek thought. The Ionian philosophers had speculated on the physical ...
— A Little Book of Stoicism • St George Stock
... singular in our opportunity of viewing this, among the very few "most magnificent of modern times." The tail, broadening towards the end, with a curve like that of a scimitar, was in length nearly a fourth of the span of the heavens, and its brightness that of a full moon. My memory retains the image with all ...
— From Sail to Steam, Recollections of Naval Life • Captain A. T. Mahan
... original book had a side note stating the time span treated on that page. Those side notes ...
— A Student's History of England, v. 1 (of 3) - From the earliest times to the Death of King Edward VII • Samuel Rawson Gardiner
... affiliated to Durham University. There are several fine libraries, theatres, hospitals, and charitable institutions, and the city is especially well off in the matter of public parks and pleasure grounds. Three bridges (including Robert Stephenson's famous High Level Bridge) span the river and connect Newcastle with Gateshead. It is the chief centre of the English coal trade, and is a busy hive of all kinds of metallic, chemical, machinery, and kindred works, which give rise to an immense and ever-increasing shipping ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... habitation. The road was a deep, red sand, and our mules toiled along slowly and painfully, urged by the incessant cries of the mayoral, or conductor, and his mozo. As the mayoral's whip could only reach the second span, the business of the latter was to jump down every ten minutes, run ahead and belabor the flanks of the foremost mules, uttering at the same time a series of sharp howls, which seemed to strike the poor ...
— The Lands of the Saracen - Pictures of Palestine, Asia Minor, Sicily, and Spain • Bayard Taylor
... peculiarly American. The plan still followed in Europe is that of using rivets, which makes the erection of a bridge take much more time, and cost, consequently, much more. A riveted lattice bridge one hundred and sixty feet in span would require ten or twelve days for its erection, while one of the Phoenixville bridges of this size has been erected in eight and a ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 11, - No. 22, January, 1873 • Various
... minor longs to be of age, then to be a man of business, then to make up an estate, then to arrive at honours, then to retire. Thus, although the whole of life is allowed by every one to be short, the several divisions of it appear long and tedious. We are for lengthening our span in general, but would fain contract the parts of which it is composed. The usurer would be very well satisfied to have all the time annihilated that lies between the present moment and next quarter-day. The politician ...
— Essays and Tales • Joseph Addison
... from setting out late in life to a fresh region of discovery. It has left the remainder of his life, and his yet undiminished powers, to illustrate and explain what he has already seen. To do that, was enough for the ordinary span of human life. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various
... a'thegether sae great as they feared, and other folk thought for. The Whigs made an unco crawing what they wad do with their auld enemies, and in special wi' Sir Robert Redgauntlet. But there were ower mony great folks dipped in the same doings, to mak a spick and span new warld. So Parliament passed it a' ower easy; and Sir Robert, bating that he was held to hunting foxes instead of Covenanters, remained just the man he was. His revel was as loud, and his hall as weel lighted, as ever it had been, though maybe he lacked the fines of the nonconformists, ...
— The Haunters & The Haunted - Ghost Stories And Tales Of The Supernatural • Various
... such deviation was advisable. Now at Beauvais and at Bourges the exact, proportions have been abandoned. For instance, at Bourges, to be exact, each of the two side aisles should have been half the width of the nave. But the architect was perhaps afraid of the great span, perhaps he dreaded too great formality, and he made the aisle next to the nave about 2 ft. 3 in. less than the width it ought to have had, if in exact proportion. The outer aisle was given almost, but not quite, the ...
— In Troubadour-Land - A Ramble in Provence and Languedoc • S. Baring-Gould
... they hurried on to the six-span bridge that crossed the ice-laden river. As they stood silent, awed and shivering on the middle span, staring down into the black water with its navy of swirling ice-chunks, even the heart of Anderson Crow ...
— The Daughter of Anderson Crow • George Barr McCutcheon
... otherwise. Many vehicles came dashing down Tinplate Street: carriages, public and private, of every variety, from the rattletrap cab hired off the stand, or the decent coach from the livery stable, to the smart spick-and-span brougham, with its well-appointed horses and servants in neat livery. They all set down at the same door, and took up from it at any hour between midnight and dawn, waiting patiently in file in the wide street round the corner, till the summons came ...
— The Thin Red Line; and Blue Blood • Arthur Griffiths
... The span from Thales to Galen has compassed about eight hundred years—let us say thirty generations. Throughout this period there is scarcely a generation that has not produced great scientific thinkers—men who have put their mark upon the progress of civilization; but we shall ...
— A History of Science, Volume 1(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... in me. I can transport thee, O, to a paradise To which this Canaan is a darksome span. Beings shall welcome, serve thee, lovely as angels; The elemental powers shall stoop, the sea Disclose her wonders, and receive thy feet Into her sapphire chambers; orbed clouds Shall chariot thee from zone to zone, while earth, A dwindled, islet, floats beneath thee. ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... the radioactive carbon fourteen that is formed in the upper atmosphere by cosmic radiation. Then it begins to decay and we can measure very accurately the amount, which gives us an absolute time span." ...
— The House from Nowhere • Arthur G. Stangland
... and eighteen feet in girth. "But this is a walking-stick compared with another at Bodega, as described to Sir George by Governor Etholine, of Sitka." It is thirty-six Russian fathoms (seven feet each) in span, and seventy-five in height; so that, if tapered into a perfect cone, it would contain nearly twenty-two thousand tons of bark and timber. In addition, the valley contains immense herds of wild horses, in ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 380, June, 1847 • Various
... {222} the supposition being, that the monks of Croyland and other southern monasteries, on their way to Kirkstead, and their more northern brethren, “baited” at the rectory hard by, where there are still traces of a large refectory in the presence of an arch of wide span, which runs through the oldest part of the house, from top to bottom. In the east and west walls, on either side of this tower arch, is a sex-foiled, circular window; that on the east being in the west wall ...
— Records of Woodhall Spa and Neighbourhood - Historical, Anecdotal, Physiographical, and Archaeological, with Other Matter • J. Conway Walter
... a village three miles away, where several hundred cavalry were stationed. Advancing boldly, he drove in the pickets, and coming across a span of mules hitched to a cart, he tied the rope of the howitzer to the rear, lashed the animals to a gallop and went clattering into the village to the loud shouts of ...
— Dewey and Other Naval Commanders • Edward S. Ellis
... on it or read was always to have the same precious sense of exaltation and restful inebriety. Life no doubt had moments with that quality of beauty, of unbidden flying rapture, but the trouble was, they lasted no longer than the span of a cloud's flight over the sun; impossible to keep them with you, as Art caught beauty and held it fast. They were fleeting as one of the glimmering or golden visions one had of the soul in nature, glimpses of its remote and brooding ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... save the flowing water's peaceful voice, Sound there was none—but, lo! an uncouth shape, Shown by a sudden turning of the road, So near that, slipping back into the shade Of a thick hawthorn, I could mark him well, Myself unseen. He was of stature tall, A span above man's common measure, tall, Stiff, land, and upright; a more meager man Was never seen before by night or day. Long were his arms, pallid his hands; his mouth Looked ghastly in the moonlight: from behind, A mile-stone propped him; I could also ken That he ...
— The International Weekly Miscellany, Vol. 1, No. 7 - Of Literature, Art, and Science, August 12, 1850 • Various
... agriculture are making increasing use of radioisotopes to improve manufacturing, testing, and crop-raising. Atomic energy has improved the ability of the healing professions to combat disease, and holds promise for an eventual increase in man's life span. ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... down the Thames in May, the adventurers must have relaxed with the satisfaction that comes from real achievement. Twice now, within the span of two years, they had raised a great fund with which they sent each time nine vessels and 600 colonists to Virginia. Indeed, they had done even more. Counting Argall's ship, which sailed ahead of Somers ...
— The Virginia Company Of London, 1606-1624 • Wesley Frank Craven
... years now as secretary of the society indicates that a life membership in the society is almost an assurance that you will prolong your days. A list of deaths in the life membership roll published year by year would indicate that our life members are going to be with us far beyond the average span of human life. Since publishing a list of new life members in the February Horticulturist, there have been added to this life list five names: Tosten E. Dybdal, Elbow Lake, Minn.; Gust Carlson, Excelsior; A.N. Gray, Deerwood; A.M. ...
— Trees, Fruits and Flowers of Minnesota, 1916 • Various
... impressed with the native pecan that she sent nuts to her friends in Maryland for planting. This must have happened about 1850 since the oldest trees at Brookfield are estimated to be about 100 years old and Mrs. Johnson was a friend of John C. Duvall's grandmother. In terms of the human life span the trees are thus three generations removed from the time of planting, a time period which fits fairly well the estimated age of 100 years based upon ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the 43rd Annual Meeting - Rockport, Indiana, August 25, 26 and 27, 1952 • Various
... great success. For a year and a half, for even more than that, he had lived the fullest and most consistent life of which he was capable; what proportion of the sons of men can look back on an equal span of time in their own existence and say the same ...
— The Emancipated • George Gissing
... in each wagon, and as they successively reached the other side of the channel the mules were unhitched, the pole of each wagon run under the hind axle of the one just in front, and the tailboards used so as to span the slight space between them. The plan worked well as long as the material lasted, but no other wagons than my twenty-five coming on the ground, the work stopped when the bridge was only half constructed. Informed ...
— The Memoirs of General Philip H. Sheridan, Vol. I., Part 3 • P. H. Sheridan
... single life is seldom sufficient to allow within its span the full development of any new departure in art or science, and it cannot, therefore, be wondered at if Charles Green, though reviving and re-modelling the art of ballooning in our own country, even after an exceptionally long and successful ...
— The Dominion of the Air • J. M. Bacon
... the choir was reduced, the transepts demolished, new and wider aisles built on each side of the nave, while the outer walls of the aisles were carried to such a height that the whole nave could be covered with a roof of one span, "thus totally eclipsing the beautiful windows in the nave, and covering up the handsome carved cornice of the nail-head quatrefoil description which ran under the eaves of the nave."[153] The cathedral was thus sadly deformed, but plans of restoration ...
— Scottish Cathedrals and Abbeys • Dugald Butler and Herbert Story
... the United States has heard the song about the star-span-gled banner. Nearly everybody has sung it. It was written by Francis ...
— Stories of Great Americans for Little Americans • Edward Eggleston
... peaceful convents; her harmless antique cannon on the parapets and her sweet-toned bells in the spires; her towering chateau on the heights and her long, low, queer-smelling warehouses in the lower town; her spick-and-span caleches and her dingy trolley-cars; her sprinkling of soldiers and sailors with Scotch accent and Irish brogue and Cockney twang, on a background of petite bourgeoisie speaking the quaintest of French dialects; her memories ...
— Days Off - And Other Digressions • Henry Van Dyke
... light of happiness. Never could she know joy if she forswore nobility. Never could she be at peace with the love within her—love of something that was not self, of something that seemed vaguer than God, as if it had entered into God and made him Love—unless she mounted upwards during her little span of life. Again, as before in this land, in the first sunset, on the tower, on the minaret of the mosque of Sidi-Zerzour, Nature spoke to her intimate words of inspiration, laid upon her the hands of healing, giving her powers she surely had not known or conceived of till now. And the passion ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens
... and this curbing of his affections added to my already high esteem. The effort was doubly wise in Brandon's case. Should love with his intense nature reach its height, his recklessness would in turn assert itself, and these two would inevitably try to span the impassable gulf between them, when Brandon, at least, would go down in the attempt. His trouble, however, did not make a mope of him, and he retained a great deal of his brightness and sparkle undimmed by what must have been an ache in his heart. Though he tried, without making it ...
— When Knighthood Was in Flower • Charles Major
... and ridges were not all Dan had to show us. Twice in our thirty-five miles of the Roper—about ten miles apart—wide-spreading rocky arches completely span the river a foot or so beneath its surface, forming natural crossing-places; for at them the full volume of water takes what Dan called a "duck-under," leaving only smoothly flowing shallow streams, a couple of hundred yards wide, running over the rocky bridgeways. ...
— We of the Never-Never • Jeanie "Mrs. Aeneas" Gunn
... found it very pleasant. One afternoon late in March, Mr. Reed came home quite early, and carried his wife down into the dining-room. He had asked the Deans over to tea, and Doctor Joe. And there was the table, spick and span, the silver shining, the windows so clean you couldn't see there was any glass in them, the curtains fresh, the tablecloth ironed so that every flower and leaf in it stood out. There wasn't a ...
— A Little Girl of Long Ago • Amanda Millie Douglas
... the Wilderness. Thick, thick grew the trees and the all-entangling underbrush. Stuart and Stonewall Jackson, staff behind them, pursued a span-wide bridle path, overarched by dogwood and Judas tree. It led at last to a rise of ground, covered by matted growth, towered above by a few pines. Four guns of the Horse Artillery strove, too, to reach the place. They made it at last, over and through the wild tangle, but so narrow was ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston
... Longfellow, for instance. This is the sonnet of a realist. So, also, is this one, which does not seem to me to deserve oblivion, and certainly so long as my memory retains its power will have that little span of immortality: ...
— Penguin Persons & Peppermints • Walter Prichard Eaton
... some two moons prior when one of 'em, which we'll call him the 'Astor Injun,' takes a heavy fall out of the opp'sition by goin' over to Cherryvale an' buyin' a sooperannuated two-seat Rockaway buggy. To this he hooks up a span of ponies, loads in his squaws, an' p'rades 'round from Pawhusky to Greyhoss—the same bein' a couple of Osage camps—an' tharby redooces the enemy— what we'll name the 'Vanderbilt Injuns'—to desp'ration. The Astor savage shorely has the ...
— Wolfville Days • Alfred Henry Lewis
... Italy of the Renaissance from the Italy of modern times with the abruptness of an Alpine watershed. Yet Michelangelo, aged fifty-one in 1526, was destined to live on another thirty-eight years, and, after the death of Clement, to witness the election of five successive Popes. The span of his life was not only extraordinary in its length, but also in the events it comprehended. Born in the mediaeval pontificate of Sixtus IV., brought up in the golden days of Lorenzo de' Medici, he survived ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds
... both boys were busy with their thoughts and walked along in silence for some distance. Presently the steel span of the great bridge across the Molton River loomed ahead of them ...
— Bob Cook and the German Spy • Tomlinson, Paul Greene
... beautiful! that rainbow span, O'er dim Crane-neck was bended; One bright foot touched the eastern hills, ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... that she whose thread first snapped, should go down the well. So they span away; but just as they were hard at it, the man's daughter's thread broke, and she had to go down the well. But when she got to the bottom she saw far and wide around her a fair green mead, and she hadn't hurt herself ...
— Popular Tales from the Norse • Sir George Webbe Dasent
... me the canakin clink, clink, And let me the canakin clink. A soldier's a man; A life's but a span; Why, then, ...
— The Spy • James Fenimore Cooper
... Edgar[q], near a century before the conquest, an injunction that the one measure, which was kept at Winchester, should be observed throughout the realm. Most nations have regulated the standard of measures of length by comparison with the parts of the human body; as the palm, the hand, the span, the foot, the cubit, the ell, (ulna, or arm) the pace, and the fathom. But, as these are of different dimensions in men of different proportions, our antient historians[r] inform us, that a new standard of longitudinal measure was ascertained by king Henry the ...
— Commentaries on the Laws of England - Book the First • William Blackstone
... The allotted span of mortal life was quadrupled in that benign climate. Laudonniere's lieutenant, Ottigny, ranging the neighboring forest with a party of soldiers, met a troop of Indians who invited him to their dwellings. Mounted on the back of a stout savage, who plunged with him through the deep marshes, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, August, 1863, No. 70 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... Hincot of Hancot, Span of Mancot, Leech and Leach, and Cumberbeach. Peet and Pate, with Corbin of the gate, Milling and ...
— The Hawarden Visitors' Hand-Book - Revised Edition, 1890 • William Henry Gladstone
... could easily disembark. A landing-place was found near the town; the men disembarked, and set out on foot in search of the Moros. The latter appeared in a broad plain, covered with grass about a hand-span high. The men were divided into two troops, in order to attack the Moros, who were shooting arrows as rapidly as they could, and wildly shouting. The Moros waited until the Spaniards began to hit their flanks with arquebuse bullets; ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1803 - Volume III, 1569-1576 • E.H. Blair
... and passing to the bow of his embarkation, looked for the first time up the river. He started. Only a few hundred yards above another houseboat lay moored among the willows. It was very spick-and-span, an elegant canoe hung at the stern, the windows were concealed by snowy curtains, a flag floated from a staff. The more Gideon looked at it, the more there mingled with his disgust a sense of impotent surprise. It was very like his uncle's ...
— The Wrong Box • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... seen the 'Home for Girls,' you will wish me to describe Anne's new abode. Let me see. I have said that the house was square and brown, haven't I? with many green-shuttered windows. The grounds were large and well-kept—almost too spick and span, for one expects twenty-six children to leave behind them such marks of good times as paper dolls and picture-books, croquet-mallets and ...
— Honey-Sweet • Edna Turpin
... capital, indeed, was superimposed; one felt that always at this time, when the glow came and stood in the air among the tamarinds, and there was nothing anywhere but luminous space and indolent stillness, and the wrangling and winging of crows. What persisted, then, under the span of the sky was the old India of rich traditions, and a thinking bullock beneath the yoke, jogging through the evening to his own place where the blue haze hid the little huts on the rim of the city, the real India, and the rest was fiction ...
— Hilda - A Story of Calcutta • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... Lanier might have done with fewer limitations and with a longer span of years inevitably arise in the mind of any one who studies his life. If, like the late Theodore Thomas, he had at an early age been able to develop his talent for music in the musical circles of New York; if, like Longfellow, he ...
— Sidney Lanier • Edwin Mims
... moustaches and hair growing thin in places, with the cares of a future command already on the brow; those of his own age, easy-going and assuming nonchalant airs; and the youngest of all very spick and span and extremely correct. Just as of old the three brothers-in-law stood close together (two of them had in the meantime become fathers, and the wife of Keyl II., nee Moeller, was in an interesting condition), and chatted about their various uncles and aunts. As of yore, the singing, ...
— 'Jena' or 'Sedan'? • Franz Beyerlein
... Gride and matrimony is a most anomalous conjunction of words; old Arthur Gride and dark eyes and eyelashes, and lips that to look at is to long to kiss, and clustering hair that he wants to play with, and waists that he wants to span, and little feet that don't tread upon anything—old Arthur Gride and such things as these is more monstrous still; but old Arthur Gride marrying the daughter of a ruined "dashing man" in the Rules of the Bench, is ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... might also get a visit from friend fire-bug," cautioned Grace. "And I don't know whether our cottage is insured or not. But I do know it has lovely furniture and mother says it's a perfect joy to come into a house, all spick and span without having to do the spicking. No, Cleo, please don't invite ...
— The Girl Scouts at Sea Crest - The Wig Wag Rescue • Lillian Garis
... the heart alone a God proclaim! Blot revelation from the mind of man! Yea, let him not e'en Nature's features scan; There is within him a low voice, the same Throughout the varied scenes of being's span, That whispers, God. And doth not conscience speak Though sin its wildest force upon it wreak! Born with us—never dying—ever preaching Of right and wrong, with reference aye to Him— And doth not ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... brought together in this volume have, in a general way, been arranged in chronological sequence. They span a period of twenty-nine years of Muir's life, during which they appeared as letters and articles, for the most part in publications of limited and local circulation. The Utah and Nevada sketches, and the two San Gabriel papers, were contributed, in the form of letters, to the San Francisco Evening ...
— Steep Trails • John Muir
... that," Cumshaw said, between puffs at his pipe. It was one of those neat little affairs with a round bowl, a spick-and-span pipe that had burnt an even color and that shone as brightly as the day he bought it. My pipe was a sorrier article; it was battered and blackened, and one side of the bowl was down beneath the level of the other, showing ...
— The Lost Valley • J. M. Walsh
... became as periodic as an astronomical recurrence. Twice a week he came—all through that winter, all through the spring following, through the summer, through the autumn, the next winter, the next year, and the next, till an appreciable span of human life had ...
— A Changed Man and Other Tales • Thomas Hardy
... span through the streets of London, Morris sought to rally the forces of his mind. The water-butt with the dead body had miscarried, and it was essential to recover it. So much was clear; and if, by some blest good fortune, it was still at the station, all might be well. If it had been sent out, ...
— The Wrong Box • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne |
