"Surface" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... spite of their earnestness, often display a certain ironical waggishness which comes into play on easy provocation, and lends an agreeable charm to life, just as the deep brook greets with its silver curling waves the light breeze that skims its surface. ...
— Weird Tales, Vol. II. • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... distance of more than three miles. Further east, a little north of the intersection of Grand and Division Streets, stood another hill, somewhat lower, where Judge Jones lived, from which opened an extensive view of the East River and harbor. On the west side, on this line, the surface sank from Bayard's mount into a spreading marsh as far as the Hudson, and over which now run portions of Canal and Grand and their cross streets. Where we have the Tombs and surrounding blocks, stood the "Fresh Water" lake or "Collect," ...
— The Campaign of 1776 around New York and Brooklyn • Henry P. Johnston
... passed out of gloom into silver moonlight. Helen's heart bounded. For it was a great frosty-coated bear lumbering along toward the dead horse. Instinctively Helen's hand sought the arm of the hunter. It felt like iron under a rippling surface. The touch eased away the oppression over her lungs, the tightness of her throat. What must have been fear left her, and only a powerful excitement remained. A sharp expulsion of breath from Bo and a violent jerk of her frame were signs that ...
— The Man of the Forest • Zane Grey
... darker tint, and at his feet, cupped out in the smooth greystone, lay a sheet of water. It was dark and evil-looking, and every now and then a puff of wind eddied down from the hills and ruffled the smooth surface. ...
— Mufti • H. C. (Herman Cyril) McNeile
... undoubtedly was, an ascension was undertaken with the misgivings which usually preface an initial stepping from terra firma to the inconstant air. Once aloft, however, with the widespreading splendor and endless immensity of the earth's surface unrolling beneath him, and an exquisite physical exhilaration thrilling along his nerves, Donaldson became heart and soul an aeronaut. The novel and sensational expedients with which he embellished his subsequent ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 26, August, 1880 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... has just been made in Kremusch, near Treplitz, in Bohemia. Some twelve feet below the surface of the earth, a tomb, with six bodies in it, was found. It contained, besides, a gold chain about a yard and a half long, three gold ear-rings, two gold balls of the size of a walnut, a gold medallion with a cameo representing a Roman Emperor, and ...
— International Weekly Miscellany, Vol. 1, No. 2, July 8, 1850 • Various
... average number of letters that must be written every day is, at the least, a dozen. And you could no more know what I was writing to you spiritually, from the perusal of the bodily thirteenth, than you could tell from my hat what was going on in my head, or could read my heart on the surface ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 3 (of 3), 1836-1870 • Charles Dickens
... opinions. But there can be no doubt but that the amount of transportation coastwise by sea, and the transportation inland by railroads and canals, and by steamboats and other modes of conveyance over the surface of our vast rivers and immense lakes, and the value of property carried and interchanged by these means form a general aggregate to which the foreign commerce of the country, large as it is, ...
— State of the Union Addresses of John Tyler • John Tyler
... of light flooding the street and sidewalks shines the clearer. Fewer dots and lumps of man, cab, and cart now cross its surface. The crowd has begun to thin out. The doors of the theatres are deserted; some flaunt signs of "Standing Room Only." The cars still follow their routes, lunging and pausing like huge beetles; but much of the wheel traffic has melted, with only here and there a cab or truck ...
— Felix O'Day • F. Hopkinson Smith
... during his residence among our Indians he had discovered a salt spring, situated fully one hundred leagues from the sea; and the water was so salt that he had himself boiled excellent salt from it. 2. There was also another spring which furnished oil. Oleaginous matter floated on its surface, with which the Indians anointed their heads. 3. There was another spring of hot sulphurous water. If paper and dry materials were thrown into it, they became ignited. Whether all this is true, or a mere Jesuit lie, I will not decide. I mention the ...
— Narrative of New Netherland • J. F. Jameson, Editor
... probably it would not reach Salem, Washington Square was already empty except for a small obscure stir by the scaffolding for the fireworks. A murmur of young voices came from a door on Bath Street. Such minute observations filled her mind; beneath their surface she was conscious of a deep, a fathomless, turmoil. It was a curious sensation, curious because she couldn't tell whether it was happiness or misery. One now exactly resembled the other ...
— Java Head • Joseph Hergesheimer
... guerilla turned to see from what direction the shot had come. Giving him no chance in which to take in the situation, Deck fired a second time, the bullet whistling past the man in gray's shoulder. With a yell the fellow started to retreat from the logs, slipped on the wet and frost-covered surface beneath him, and rolled over and over until he went with a loud splash into the creek, not to reappear upon the surface of the icy current until fifty ...
— An Undivided Union • Oliver Optic
... the eastern point of the cove to that which terminated the Bay of Torwich, embracing what may be almost termed a champaign country, compared with the barren scenery I have described; and displaying the uneven surface of the richly wooded Park of Dovedale, with the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 13, No. 375, June 13, 1829 • Various
... of fading sunlight that plays across the rapids, and down into the shadow of the depths below, lit up with their clouds of spray;—yet farther down, your sight swims upon the black eddying masses, with white ribbons streaming across their glassy surface; and your dizzy eye fastens upon the frail cockle-shells—their stout oarsmen dwindled to pygmies—that dance like atoms upon the vast chasm, or like your own weak resolves upon the whirl ...
— Dream Life - A Fable Of The Seasons • Donald G. Mitchell
... surface features of the land be taken into account in determining the position of the house and barns in ...
— Community Civics and Rural Life • Arthur W. Dunn
... the hue of the water grew more red, almost to blackness, till at last it seemed as though we were travelling through a sea of gore in which dead fish floated by the thousand, or struggled dying on the surface. Also the stench was so dreadful that we must bind linen about our nostrils to strain ...
— Moon of Israel • H. Rider Haggard
... the passenger, who was a delighted observer of the good feeling existing between the captain and second in command of the vessel in which, like Caesar, he had "embarked himself and all his fortunes," and was now journeying across the surface of the deep—a good feeling that was fairly indicative of everything going well on the voyage—he was so carried away by the spirit of the moment that he felt inclined to ask that the general hand-shaking might be "passed round for the good of the crowd." What is more, ...
— The Wreck of the Nancy Bell - Cast Away on Kerguelen Land • J. C. Hutcheson
... gray eyes searched her dark ones for what seemed an interminable time. Sylvia's hand sought the maple but did not touch it; and the keen eyes of the stranger did not loosen their hold of hers. A breeze blowing across the cornfield swept over them, shaking the maple leaves, and rippled the surface of the lake. The dusk, deepening slowly, seemed to shut ...
— A Hoosier Chronicle • Meredith Nicholson
... speculatively on the darker side of the old religions: hence at length the doctor's story, which he told over the pipes and whisky, leaning his arms upon the table and gazing at it rather than at us, as though drawing his memories out of depths below its polished surface. ...
— The White Wolf and Other Fireside Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... figures, carved in pierced relief, each flanked by colossal bronze Hermes, their arms reaching around the structure and held together by animal forms of reptilian or fishy origin. All these forms and figures surround a globe of enormous size, typifying the Earth, over the surface of which streams of water are thrown from the reptilian ...
— The Art of the Exposition • Eugen Neuhaus
... "Surface work," said Alick, "some of the effects of the literature that paints contradiction as truth. It is only skin deep, and makes me wish all the more to have her with my uncle for a time. I wonder whether Grace would let me in if ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge
... led to believe before coming here that I should not be able to tell that Boston was not an English town. It did not so impress me on a surface-view, but it was not long before I recognized that the warp and woof of the social fabric is that of our looms, though the pattern is a little different,—a good sort of stuff, I think, warranted to wash ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, August, 1885 • Various
... ground. Lead, bullets, slugs, and tools of various kinds were buried or concealed in the forks of trees, high up and out of sight. Where any articles were buried in the earth, a fire was afterwards built on the surface so that no trace of the disturbed ground should be left to show the expected redskins that goods had been there concealed. They lamented that a sack of flour and a keg of molasses could not be put away, and that their supply of side-meat, which had cost them a long journey to Manhattan, must ...
— The Boy Settlers - A Story of Early Times in Kansas • Noah Brooks
... tasting the fearful joys of domestic tobogganing. You know how it is done—with the largest and best tea-tray and the surface of the stair carpet. It is best to do it on the days when the stair rods are being cleaned, and the carpet is only held by the nails at the top. Of course, it is one of the five or six thoroughly tip-top games that grown-up people are so unjust to—and old Nurse, though a brick ...
— The Story of the Amulet • E. Nesbit
... my intolerable Americanism. The two views are less far apart than they seem to be. The fact is that I am superficially so American, in ways of speech and thought, that the foreigner is deceived, whereas the native, more familiar with the true signs, sees that under the surface there is incurable antagonism to most of the ideas that Americans hold to be sound. Thus If all between two stools—but it is more comfortable there on the floor than sitting up tightly. I am wholly devoid of public spirit or moral purpose. This is incomprehensible to many men, and ...
— In Defense of Women • H. L. Mencken
... the primary and normal signification, they may be wanting in others. The first of these facts is a contribution to the laws of language in general; the second shows that a great amount of apparent difference may be exhibited on the surface of a language which disappears ...
— Voyage Of H.M.S. Rattlesnake, Vol. 2 (of 2) • John MacGillivray
... the ground and its tail in the air. [5] There are miniature hills, with old trees upon them; and there are long slopes of green, shadowed by flowering shrubs, like river banks; and there are green knolls like islets. All these verdant elevations rise from spaces of pale yellow sand, smooth as a surface of silk and miming the curves and meanderings of a river course. These sanded spaces are not to be trodden upon; they are much too beautiful for that. The least speck of dirt would mar their effect; and it requires the trained skill of an experienced native gardener—a ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan • Lafcadio Hearn
... to discuss this affliction with the ready sympathy of the poor for the poor. Their passing envy of the Jenkins's good fortune was instantly skimmed from the surface of their friendliness, which had only lain dormant and wanted but the touch of trouble to make them ...
— Amarilly of Clothes-line Alley • Belle K. Maniates
... a man should paint his miniature by looking at a blank tablet, and a multitudinous wilderness of forest foliage or an endless Babel of roofs and spires stamp itself, in a moment, so faithfully and so minutely, that one may creep over the surface of the picture with his microscope and find every leaf perfect, or read the letters of distant signs, and see what was the play at the "Varietes" or the "Victoria," on the evening of the day when it was taken, just as he would sweep the real view with a spy-glass ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 20, June, 1859 • Various
... is lost!" cried Harry. But no. Directly after he was again seen on the surface, working his way up another ...
— Adrift in a Boat • W.H.G. Kingston
... only a state of half-existence,' said Honoria in reference to her country life in Australia. 'Books are so unsatisfying! I read them greedily at first, then throw them aside in disgust. They never take one below the surface.... I want to grow and live.... What is the use of living unless one can gauge one's capacity for sensation?' Gretta Reay, in whom the same discontent is reproduced, exclaims: 'Ah, we Australians are like birds shut up in ...
— Australian Writers • Desmond Byrne
... person will be likely to boast that he can fully explain anything. We have only to scrape the surface of our experiences to find fundamental mystery. And how, indeed, as descendants of an extinct race of primates, with a mind still in the early stages of accumulation, should we be in the way of reaching ultimate truth at any point? One may properly urge, however, that as sharp a distinction ...
— The Mind in the Making - The Relation of Intelligence to Social Reform • James Harvey Robinson
... kept the ship dropping at a steadily decreasing rate. But the tension on the control deck mounted as the surface of ...
— The Space Pioneers • Carey Rockwell
... 1426 sq. km., and their present population is estimated at about 19,000. The majority of these occupy the island of Aland, upon which is situated the town of Mariehamn with a population of 1171. The inhabitants are mostly of Swedish descent, and are hardy seamen and fishermen. The surface of the islands is generally sandy, the soil thin and the climate keen; yet Scotch fir, spruce and birch are grown; and rye, barley, flax and vegetables are produced in sufficient quantity for the wants of the people. Great numbers of cattle are reared; and cheese, butter and hides, ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... of the ghastly stain, and the small wound with its blackened rim lay revealed in all its horrid significance. The girl's eyes fixed themselves on it, and for some seconds she watched the blood as it welled up to the surface. The meaning of the puncture forced itself slowly upon her mind, and she realized that it was no accident which had laid her lover low. Her eyes remained directed towards the crimson flow, but their expression had changed, as had the set of her features. ...
— The Hound From The North • Ridgwell Cullum
... Chairwoman conducts the proceedings with the greatest possible tact and grace, but is slightly hampered by the levity of a crowd composed of factory-girls, semi-imbecile larrikins, and professional laundresses, whose burning anxiety for reform masks itself under a surface frivolity. In the neighbourhood is a lorry decorated with clean shirts, and occupied by young washerwomen fired by an enthusiasm which manifests itself in bursts of shrill cheering and lively interchange of chaff with the spectators. In the meantime, ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, June 27, 1891 • Various
... But, more significantly to her feelings than that, he was also too immersed to offer her, in her ordeal of childbirth, the sympathy and the anxiety that, unengrossed, he would have shown. It was there, profound and loving, beneath the surface; but his work came first. He was a man, capable of detachment, permitted by convention to practise detachment, by gift of, nature not inhibited from detachment. A man, he could put it beneath the surface. A woman, in conflict of her instincts and her ambitions, it was her ambitions ...
— This Freedom • A. S. M. Hutchinson
... When the alarm was given he was in the Athenaeum pool with Mr. Hall Caine, in whose company it has for years been his custom to take a good-night swim. "Imagine my alarm," young Puttins continued, "when I saw emerging from the surface of the waters, and not five yards away from the person of my revered master, a slender object which I at once recognized as a miniature periscope. I shouted to my companion. In vain. Too late. A slim fountain spurted fountain-high above ...
— Modern American Prose Selections • Various
... m., ground surface, lowest surface: acc. sg. one grund-wong (bottom of the sea), 1497; (bottom of the drake's cave), ...
— Beowulf • James A. Harrison and Robert Sharp, eds.
... steamboat and drowned all the pilgrims; I had to keep a lookout for the signs of dead wood we could cut up in the night for next day's steaming. When you have to attend to things of that sort, to the mere incidents of the surface, the reality—the reality, I tell you—fades. The inner truth is hidden—luckily, luckily. But I felt it all the same; I felt often its mysterious stillness watching me at my monkey tricks, just as it watches you fellows performing on your respective tight-ropes ...
— Heart of Darkness • Joseph Conrad
... It is a very brilliant circle. The whole court of Charles Dix can afford none more amusing. For the rest, what matters? One learns to take things as they seem, without peering below the surface. One wearies of impotent Quixotism ...
— John Halifax, Gentleman • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... of this phase of her development, John Boswell kept conversation and life upon the surface, and rarely permitted a letting-down of thought. Cautiously, and not too often, he took his guest on tours of inspection and watched her while she underwent new ordeals or experienced pain from unknown thrills. He had never been more interested or amused in his ...
— The Place Beyond the Winds • Harriet T. Comstock
... interlude of quiet, lasted for several days. It was a curious time, a period of uneasy suspense for me, for I could feel hell simmering beneath the smooth surface of the ship's life, but I could not see it, or guess when or where it ...
— The Blood Ship • Norman Springer
... and the End of Total darkness, are scarce to be observed exactly, even with Glasses (none being able clearly to distinguish between the True Shadow and Penumbra, unless he hath seen, for some time before, the Line, separating them, pass along upon the Surface of the Moon;) and lastly, because in small {389} Partial Eclipses, the Beginning and End, and in Total ones of short continuance in the Shadow, the Beginning and End of Total darkness, are unfit for nice Observations, by reason of the slow ...
— Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society - Vol 1 - 1666 • Various
... little danger of decay. Leaving such a stump endangers the soundness of the whole tree. Fig. 80 shows the results of good and poor pruning on a large tree. When large limbs are removed it is best to paint the cut surface. The paint will ward off fungous disease and thus keep the tree from rotting ...
— Agriculture for Beginners - Revised Edition • Charles William Burkett
... lay becalmed for two days, not moving three miles the whole time, and a part of the second day were almost within sight of the vessels. On the third day, about noon, a cool sea-breeze came rippling and darkening the surface of the water, and by sundown we were off San Juan's, which is about forty miles from San Diego, and is called half way to San Pedro, where we were now bound. Our crew was now considerably weakened. ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... to obey, then came back breathless. Rutter, in the meantime, had turned up enough of Tom's left trousers' leg to bare a spot on the flesh that was red. There were fang marks in the centre of this reddened surface. ...
— The Young Engineers in Colorado • H. Irving Hancock
... curious floating nests of dead herbage in reedy marshes. Their logs are placed in such a backward position that they can sit upright in the water and swim as if they were walking, only keeping the tip of the bill above the surface." ...
— Citizen Bird • Mabel Osgood Wright and Elliott Coues
... of prejudice, superstition, pride, vanity, and stupidity. And yet we catch a glimpse here and there that there was some reason in most of that unreason; we see how sense dwindled away into nonsense, custom into ceremony, ceremony into farce. Why then should this surface of savage life represent to us the lowest stratum of human life, the very beginnings of civilization, simply because we cannot dig ...
— India: What can it teach us? - A Course of Lectures Delivered before the University Of Cambridge • F. Max Mueller
... Now we seem hemmed in by those green cliffs, shut out from all the world, with nothing visible but those verdant mounds and the deep blue sky; now by some sudden turn we get a peep at an adjoining meadow, where the sheep are lying, dappling its sloping surface like the small clouds on the summer heaven. Poor harmless, quiet creatures, how still they are! Some socially lying side by side; some grouped in threes and fours; some quite apart. Ah! there are lambs amongst them—pretty, pretty lambs—nestled in by their mothers. Soft, quiet, sleepy things! Not ...
— Our Village • Mary Russell Mitford
... father—who is not only her father, but the "father of the Marshalsea"—the prison blight is on all three. Her father especially is a piece of admirable character-drawing. Dickens has often been accused of only catching the surface peculiarities of his personages, their outward tricks, and obvious habits of speech and of mind. Such a study as Mr. Dorrit would alone be sufficient to rebut the charge. No novelist specially famed for dissecting character ...
— Life of Charles Dickens • Frank Marzials
... The preparations were soon made. The coffin arrived at midday, and was buried in the afternoon, between the church and the Hall. It was sad and beautiful to see the heartfelt grief of the villagers: and it was wonderful to me that at that moment I recovered a kind of serenity on the surface of the grief below, so that in the still afternoon as we walked away from the grave it seemed to me strange rather than sorrowful. With those last letters in mind, it seemed to me almost traitorous to mourn. He at least had his heart's desire, and ...
— Father Payne • Arthur Christopher Benson
... Rhine. He says that this pool, whose depth is unknown, extends six or eight miles under the mountain, and a fairy, half woman half serpent, dwells here. Calm summer nights she glides over the surface of water calling to the shepherds of the mountains, showing them, of course, nothing more than her head with its long locks and her beautiful bare shoulders and arms. The fools, caught by this semblance of a woman, draw nearer, beckoning to her to ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas
... fell; there was a thunderous splash in the water below, and as the men-at-arms came hurrying up and peered with awe-struck faces over the parapet of the bridge, they saw the whirling eddies sweep down with the current of the stream, a few bubbles rise to the surface of the water, and then—nothing; for the smooth river flowed onward as ...
— Otto of the Silver Hand • Howard Pyle
... very hard to put Mr. Gotobed down;—or it might be more correctly said, as there was no effort to put him down,—that it was not often that he failed in coming to the surface. He took Lady Penwether out to dinner and was soon explaining to her that this little experiment of his in regard to Goarly was being tried simply with the view of examining the institutions of the country. "We don't ...
— The American Senator • Anthony Trollope
... the deck again, they were surprised to find that the sun, which had been shining so brightly before, had gone under a cloud, while the smooth surface of the water was stirred into ripples and eddies by ...
— Lucile Triumphant • Elizabeth M. Duffield
... Fifty-third Street? Or Miss Olson, at the Rialto ticket window? Or the Celtic, emotional Miss Ahearn, the manicure? Or Gertie the goof? They knew nothing of mythology; of pointed ears and pug noses and goat's feet. Nick's ears, to their fond gaze, presented an honest red surface protruding from either side of his head. His feet, in tan laced shoes, were ordinary feet, a little more than ordinarily expert, perhaps, in the convolutions of the dance at Englewood Masonic Hall, which is part of ...
— Gigolo • Edna Ferber
... Transcendental metaphysics." His concrete imagination automatically rejected metaphysics. His chief asset is an extraordinary sensitiveness to the sense of touch; it is his distinguishing passion, and tactile images flood his work; this, and an eye that records appearances, the surface of things, and registers in phrases of splendour the picturesque, yet seldom fuses matter and manner into a poetical synthesis. The community of interest between his ideas and images is rather affiliated than cognate. He has ...
— Ivory Apes and Peacocks • James Huneker
... one of the curses of Ireland. To him who knows only a little of Irish life it is easy to see the meaning but superficially concealed by the farcical bustle, the laughter, and the lamentations. But to him who looks but on the surface there is merriness enough and wittiness enough and wisdom enough to make his loss of the deeper meaning, for him, ...
— Irish Plays and Playwrights • Cornelius Weygandt
... pan is half filled with syrup, and a gentle fire is started. As the temperature rises, a thick scum appears on the surface, consisting of such impurities as may have passed through the meshes of the strainer. If proper care has been taken to keep out all forms of dirt in gathering and boiling, and if, after being strained, the syrup was allowed to stand and settle ...
— The New England Magazine Volume 1, No. 3, March, 1886 - Bay State Monthly Volume 4, No. 3, March, 1886 • Various
... across the level surface of New Jersey, past the cornfields and short stretches of green trees and restful cottage towns, he thought of the pleasure in store for him—the meeting with the young person whom he had gradually come to consider ...
— Tales From Bohemia • Robert Neilson Stephens
... and see all that was to be seen. An obsequious waiter—one of the restaurant race that has no native language—relieved them of their coats, and they sat down opposite to each other, mechanically touching their hair to feel if their hats had ruffled its smooth surface. ...
— The Green Carnation • Robert Smythe Hichens
... good metaphor for your own case," said Marian, interrupting him. "Your ordinary manner is all ice, hard and chilling. One may suspect that there are depths beneath, but that is only an additional inducement to keep on the surface." ...
— The Irrational Knot - Being the Second Novel of His Nonage • George Bernard Shaw
... analysis is by no means always necessary. People with troublesome nervous symptoms, and even those who have had a serious breakdown, are constantly being cured by a kind of re-education which breaks up subconscious complexes without trying to bring them to the surface. If the dead past can be let alone, so much the better. Sometimes a bullet buried in the flesh sends up a constant stream of discomfort until it is dug out and removed; but if it has carried in no infection and the body ...
— Outwitting Our Nerves - A Primer of Psychotherapy • Josephine A. Jackson and Helen M. Salisbury
... Shropshire there were hardly any sheep; in his own part of Norfolk the usual rotation was three white straw crops and then broadcast turnips.[501] This Coke changed to two white crops and two years pasture, and he dug up and brought to the surface the rich marl which lay under the flint and sand, so that clover and grasses began to grow. So successful was he in this that in 1796 he cut nearly 400 tons of sainfoin from 104 acres of land previously valued ...
— A Short History of English Agriculture • W. H. R. Curtler
... here that ain't showin' on the surface—somethin' that's hidden an' sneakin'. You heard some of them guys in Lamo gassin' about the 'Chief' bein' one of the three that sent your dad ...
— 'Drag' Harlan • Charles Alden Seltzer
... works, Luca sought to find a way of painting figures and scenes on a level surface of terra-cotta, in order to give long life to pictures, and made an experiment in a medallion which is above the shrine of the four saints without Orsanmichele, on the level surface of which, in five parts, ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol 2, Berna to Michelozzo Michelozzi • Giorgio Vasari
... has dotted over the surface of the whole globe with her possessions and military posts, whose morning drum-beat, following the sun, and keeping company with the hours, circles the earth with one continuous and unbroken strain of the martial ...
— Familiar Quotations • John Bartlett
... This is a very ornamental tree. The leaves on the under surface are of a fine white, and on the reverse of a very dark green; and when growing on large trees are truly beautiful, as every breath of air changes the colour as the leaves move. The wood of all the species of poplar is useful for boards, or any other purposes if kept dry. ...
— The Botanist's Companion, Vol. II • William Salisbury
... and, as for coming where I was not bidden, had I known who it was down there I would have stayed where I was. But, being there, might I help him, I asked, at the work? He answered angrily, "No," and bade me begone. Whereupon I returned to my case, and waited till he should come up to the earth's surface. ...
— Sir Ludar - A Story of the Days of the Great Queen Bess • Talbot Baines Reed
... completed, the effect will be still better. The granite monoliths which have been used, and which are to be used, in this building are very massive. As one enters by the steps to the south there are two flat stones, one on each side of the ascent, the surface of each of which is about twenty feet by eighteen. The columns are, I think, all monoliths. Of those which are still to be erected, and which now lie about in the neighboring streets, I measured one or two—one which was still in the rough ...
— Volume 2 • Anthony Trollope
... but I knew he worried much inwardly. But now all would be over very soon. I half sat upon the little stand near the head of the bed. Wallace was somewhat restless. I placed my hand lightly on his forehead and face, just sliding it over the surface. In a moment or so he fell into a calm, regular-breathing lethargy or sleep, and remain'd so while I sat there. It was dark, and the lights were lit. I hardly know why (death seem'd hovering near,) but I stay'd nearly ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... first tongue of flame licked through a crevice in the roof and showed that the fire had gained a foothold. Soon a hole appeared, close to the eaves, which gradually enlarged towards the centre of the roof and along the surface of the earth. With blankets the fire was beaten out on the sides, but it crept insidiously along between the ...
— Captured by the Navajos • Charles A. Curtis
... ocean. Following the shoreline of Queensland, at a distance of from ten to one hundred and fifty miles, and stretching for twelve hundred and fifty miles, is the Great Barrier Reef of Australia, one of the wonders of the world. The shelving floor of the ocean rises nearly to the surface along this line, and vast colonies of coral building creatures have formed their reefs up to the water's edge along the ridge. The turbulent waves scouring over this living mass have carved and moulded it into millions ...
— Thomas Henry Huxley; A Sketch Of His Life And Work • P. Chalmers Mitchell
... store of knowledge to his offspring; then, crawling beneath a stone, or into some tangled corner of the jungle, dies and disappears. We look again. A thousand centuries have flashed and faded. The surface of the earth is flecked with strange quivering patches: here, where the sun shines on the wood and sea, close together, almost touching one another; there, among the shadows, far apart. The Tribe ...
— Tea-table Talk • Jerome K. Jerome
... of the baobab grove. Instantly Aziel and Metem sprang up and rushed forward, drawing their bronze swords as they ran. As it chanced, however, the Israelite caught his foot in one of the numerous tree-roots, which stood above the surface of the ground and fell heavily upon his face. In a few seconds, twenty perhaps, he found his breath and feet again, to see that Metem had come up with the black giant who, hearing his approach, suddenly wheeled round to meet him, still ...
— Elissa • H. Rider Haggard
... such can ne'er be all his own; Too timid in his woes to share, Too meek to meet, or brave despair; And sterner hearts alone may feel 920 The wound that Time can never heal. The rugged metal of the mine Must burn before its surface shine,[dz][112] But plunged within the furnace-flame, It bends and melts—though still the same; Then tempered to thy want, or will, 'Twill serve thee to defend or kill— A breast-plate for thine hour of need, Or blade to bid thy foeman bleed; But if a dagger's ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Vol. 3 (of 7) • Lord Byron
... Spirit of Good,[135:1] 110 Forces to unchain the foodful progeny Of the Ocean stream;—thence thro' the realm of Souls, Where live the Innocent, as far from cares As from the storms and overwhelming waves That tumble on the surface of the Deep, 115 Returns with far-heard pant, hotly pursued By the fierce Warders of the Sea, once more, Ere by the frost foreclosed, to repossess His fleshly mansion, that had staid the while In the dark tent within a cow'ring group 120 Untenanted.—Wild ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... even the train of thought. No benumbed and self-centered trees holding out pathetic frozen branches for sympathy. Impossible to be introspective here. Fall into a brown or blue study and you are likely to be run over. Thought is brought to the surface by mental massage. No time to dwell upon your beloved self. So many more interesting things to think about. And the changing scenes unfold more rapidly than a ...
— The Hills of Hingham • Dallas Lore Sharp
... rusty mail and flashed back from many a dinted head-piece and broad spear-head; and upon the air was the sound of noisy talk and boisterous laughter. Through the midst of this great green hollow a stream wound that broadened out in one place into a still and sleepy pool upon whose placid surface stars seemed to float, a deep pool whereby was a tall tree. Now beneath this tree, far removed from the fire, sat a great swarthy fellow, chin on fist, scowling down at that which lay at his feet, and of a sudden he spurned this still and ...
— Beltane The Smith • Jeffery Farnol
... of Mr. EDMUND HARVEY. His latest discovery is that they are allowed the use of writing-paper not more than once a month; and for the rest of the time have to entrust their literary compositions to the unsympathetic surface of a slate, with the aid of a probably squeaky slate-pencil. Could JOHN BUNYAN have written The Pilgrim's Progress under such conditions? The question opens up a vista of speculation as to the influence of environment upon the creative faculty; and it is not surprising that Mr. BRACE was unable ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, May 23, 1917 • Various
... braces. The bridge is in two spans, and has a double track, and consequently three trusses. There are two timber arches to each truss, and the truss is supported on them by connecting them to the verticals by short cross pieces notched into the posts, and resting on the upper surface of the arches. It is a very stiff bridge, and similar to the one at Bellows Falls, both having their axis oblique to the channel of the stream they cross. The timbers could hardly be procured now, except at ...
— Instructions on Modern American Bridge Building • G. B. N. Tower
... United States of America. Much is written and said about the State, but little genuine enthusiasm for the whole country is displayed. A general spirit of distrust of the Federal Government is constantly coming to the surface. Newspapers and men talk as if they were constantly afraid the government would overstep its bounds and encroach upon the rights of the States. The Southern press is ever complaining of the sectionalism of the North. And when confronted with the necessity of teaching ...
— The American Missionary, Volume 43, No. 6, June, 1889 • Various
... it, and a little groove appears, running around the whole mass. He seems to be wasting considerable time in playing with it, but all the while he is making sure that the clay is perfectly uniform and that there are no bubbles of air in it. He holds a piece of leather against the outside surface and a wet sponge against the inside, to make them perfectly smooth; and in a moment he has made a bowl. He holds his bent finger against the top of the bowl, and it becomes a vase. With another touch of his magical finger the top of the vase rolls over ...
— Makers of Many Things • Eva March Tappan
... glassy swells extending to the horizon all round, glinting in the sun. The heat was oppressive until the sun dropped to the sea's rim, when dark wind patches made their appearance to the southward on the surface of the ocean. But ...
— Isle o' Dreams • Frederick F. Moore
... jewel; you are the joy of my heart," he observed thoughtfully, as Nanna placed his portion before him, covered it with oil, and scattered some chopped basil on the surface. ...
— Whosoever Shall Offend • F. Marion Crawford
... were needed for nothing else in present literary life, it would be needed for the deepening of literary currents. The vast flood of flotsam and jetsam which pours from the presses seldom floats on a deep current. It is surface matter for the most part. It does not take itself seriously, and it is quite impossible to take it seriously. It does not deal with great themes, or when it touches upon them it deals with them in a trifling way. To men interested ...
— The Greatest English Classic A Study of the King James Version of • Cleland Boyd McAfee
... winter grew cold, very cold! The Duckling was forced to swim about in the water, to prevent the surface from freezing entirely; but every night the hole in which it swam about became smaller and smaller. It froze so hard that the icy covering crackled again; and the Duckling was obliged to use its legs continually ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes
... soft things of life, the luxuries, the pleasures: she turned toward them as naturally as a flower turns to the sun. This tendency had earned for her the reputation of "toady" by those who did not understand her, or were inclined to judge from the surface. She gave—was in a position to give—- as much as she got, always, and her affections were ...
— Blue Bonnet in Boston - or, Boarding-School Days at Miss North's • Caroline E. Jacobs
... differently now that it enabled him to give his talk rein, and was partly the source in her of these responsive grateful looks which became her so well. After all perhaps her Puritan stiffness was only on the surface. How much it had yielded already to Eleanor's lessons! He really felt inclined to continue them on his own account; to test for himself this far famed pliancy ...
— Eleanor • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... the reef. On the western side there are two narrow ship passages, both exceedingly dangerous on account of their being studded with numerous coral "mushrooms"—i.e., enormous boulders of coral rock, which, resembling a mushroom in shape, come to within a few feet of the surface of the water. Through these passages, the tide, especially the ebb, rushes with great velocity—six or seven knots at least—and vessels when leaving the lagoon, generally waited till slack water, or the first ...
— "Pig-Headed" Sailor Men - From "The Strange Adventure Of James Shervinton and Other - Stories" - 1902 • Louis Becke
... which suggested that nothing would have pleased her more than having this audacious Texan there in place of the innocent animals. For whatever of inherited savagery lay latent in her blood had been flogged to the surface by the circumstances into which she had been thrust. Never in all her placid life had she known the tug of passion any closer than from across ...
— A Texas Ranger • William MacLeod Raine
... matted hair,—most of which, on examination, I concluded to be those of men. Three hundred and fifty yards further on another assembly of human remains was found, which, by all appearance, had been left to decay upon the surface; skulls and bones, most of which I believed to be those of women, some also of children, probably ranging from six to twelve years of age. Here, too, were found masses of women's hair, children's bonnets, such as ...
— The Story of the Mormons: • William Alexander Linn
... Clawbonny, which some said was good Dutch others bad Dutch; and, now and then, a person ventured a conjecture that it might be Indian. Bonny it was, in one sense at least, for a lovelier farm there is not on the whole of the wide surface of the Empire State. What does not always happen in this wicked, world, it was as good as it was handsome. It consisted of three hundred and seventy-two acres of first-rate land, either arable, or of rich river bottom in meadows, and of more than ...
— Afloat And Ashore • James Fenimore Cooper
... climbing up and down the wall at the side, and he watched them. One of the small creatures, heavily laden with a seed of some sort, and toiling painfully under the burden, had been separated from the rest, and clambered over the edge of the window-sill. On reaching the level surface it paused, as though very weary, and looked about, moving its tiny horns. Benoni looked at it a moment, and then with one finger he suddenly whisked the poor little thing into space. It hurt me to see it, and I knew he must be cruel, for he laughed aloud. Somehow it would have seemed ...
— A Roman Singer • F. Marion Crawford
... intolerable to the sole of the foot, while the air was pregnant with fire, so that it was almost impossible to breathe in it. Not a drop of water, not a tree, not a blade of grass, was to be found through this vast surface. It was here that Cambyses, engaged in an impious expedition to demolish the temple, is said to have lost an army of fifty thousand men, buried in the sands. When you arrived however, you were presented with a wood of great circumference, the foliage of which was so thick that the ...
— Lives of the Necromancers • William Godwin
... for her in this fair fabric clad. (Light of my life, O thou my Genevieve!) In surface dull or glazed it may be had— In plain or grained, moired or ...
— Something Else Again • Franklin P. Adams
... but force and slavery. Always and eternally, obedience; never to have your own way, but ever, day after day, to bow to an iron discipline. Always the same still, cold forms, with your own feelings never allowed to come to the surface—I cannot bear it longer! Everything within me strives for freedom, for light and life. Let me leave it, father; do not confine me longer in such chains. I ...
— The Northern Light • E. Werner
... near the surface, just as it might naturally have fallen amid the ruins of an old building, covered merely by the fallen leaves; the inscription is in an excellent state of preservation and, without abbreviation, reads ...
— Glimpses of the Past - History of the River St. John, A.D. 1604-1784 • W. O. Raymond
... "Then what is his name?" "A1- Bundukani," they replied. So she said to herself, "He is naught but a Robber and Captain of thieves." Then the masons divided and marked out the ground, and each found that each and every had to pave and slab a surface of a cubit or less. Such was their case; but as concerneth the Caliph, he turned him to the chief Carpenter, and looking at him keenly said, "Go thou likewise and assemble all thy fellows in the capital: then do thou repair to the dwelling of Such-an-one and make the doors and so forth, in fact ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... peaceful months, on the surface. Washington was taking stock quietly of national resources and watching for Germany's next move. The winter impasse in Europe gave way to the first fighting of spring, raids and sorties mostly, since the ground was still too ...
— Dangerous Days • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... the passing heat of temper, are but surface-gusts that do not stir the brooding love of hearts ...
— The Secret of a Happy Home (1896) • Marion Harland
... simples.—Ver. 522. The first cultivators of the medical art pretended to nothing beyond an acquaintance with the medicinal qualities of herbs and simples; it is not improbable that inasmuch as the vegetable world is nourished and raised to the surface of the earth in a great degree by the heat of the sun, a ground was thereby afforded for allegorically saying that Apollo, or the Sun, was the discoverer of the ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Vol. I, Books I-VII • Publius Ovidius Naso
... a term applied to surfaces that are parallel to that of still water, or perpendicular to the direction of the plumb-line; and when it is desired to ascertain the altitude of any specified locality, the level of the ocean's surface is always taken as the standard from which such ...
— Golden Days for Boys and Girls - Volume VIII, No 25: May 21, 1887 • Various
... order to be discerned. But I think this much at least is deserving of our notice, as confirmatory of foregone conclusions, that the forms which in other things are produced by slow increase, or gradual abrasion of surface, are here produced by rough fracture, when rough fracture is to be the law of existence. A rose is rounded by its own soft ways of growth, a reed is bowed into tender curvature by the pressure of the breeze; but we could not, from these, have proved any resolved preference, by Nature, ...
— Modern Painters, Volume IV (of V) • John Ruskin
... there was no stirring any part of it I then spread it over with small lop wood, on which I raised a ridge of dried grass and weeds, very thick, and thatched over the whole with the leaves of a tree very much resembling those of a palm, but much thicker, and not quite so broad; the entire surface, I might say, was as smooth as a die, and so ordered, by a gentle declivity every way, as to ...
— Life And Adventures Of Peter Wilkins, Vol. I. (of II.) • Robert Paltock
... the student, who knew that the doctor would not rise to the surface for hours unless pulled at once from his favorite depths. "Mynheer, you have other engagements today, three legs in Amsterdam, you remember, and an eye in Broek, and that tumor ...
— Hans Brinker - or The Silver Skates • Mary Mapes Dodge
... it, 600 feet above Atlantic level, 900 feet in depth-one vast spring of purest crystal water, so cold, that during summer months its waters are like ice itself, and so clear, that hundreds of feet below the surface the rocks stand out as distinctly as though seen through plate-glass. Follow in fancy the outpourings of this wonderful basin; seek its future course in Huron, Erie, and Ontario, in that wild leap from the rocky ledge which makes Niagara famous through the world. Seek it farther still, ...
— The Great Lone Land - A Narrative of Travel and Adventure in the North-West of America • W. F. Butler
... limits of governmental policy, of never again being drawn into war with America, not because of fear, but because of important trade relations and also because of essential liking and admiration, in spite of surface antagonisms, was not appreciated in America. Lord Aberdeen indeed, and others in governmental circles, pleaded that the support of Texan independence was in reality perfectly in harmony with the best interests of the United States, since it would have tended toward the limitation ...
— Great Britain and the American Civil War • Ephraim Douglass Adams
... 4).—These thin, flat flasks (to contain agar or gelatine, which is allowed to solidify in a layer on one side) are extremely useful on account of the large nutrient surface available for growth. A surface cultivation in one of these will yield as much growth as ten or twelve "oblique" tube cultures. The wide mouth, however, is a disadvantage, and for many purposes ...
— The Elements of Bacteriological Technique • John William Henry Eyre
... been fascinated by the spectacle which she so glowingly describes, the interest of her children soon opened her eyes to the yawning gulf at the brink of the flowery surface. ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume I (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz
... the name originated in a public-house kept by a Mr. Bays, where horses were given water, hence the more ancient rendering "Bayswatering." Lysons says of it, "The springs at this place lie near the surface, and the water is very fine." He adds, "The conduit at Bayswater belongs to the City of London, and, being conveyed by brick drains, supplies the houses in and about Bond Street, which stand ...
— Mayfair, Belgravia, and Bayswater - The Fascination of London • Geraldine Edith Mitton
... the dominant industrial and maritime power of the nineteenth century, played a leading role in developing parliamentary democracy and in advancing literature and science. The British Empire covered approximately one-fourth of the earth's surface at its zenith. In the first half of the twentieth century its strength was seriously depleted by two world wars. Since the end of World War II, the British Empire has been dismantled, and Britain has rebuilt itself into a ...
— The 1999 CIA Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... seriously in the great Fenian movement. An upheaval this, from the lowest stratum of society, with no gentlemen, or eloquent orators, for leaders, but all the more appalling for that. These rough, desperate men meant, as they said, "business." This movement <was suppressed, driven under the surface, but only to break out more appallingly than ever some ten or twelve years later, in brutal assassinations, which have curdled the blood of the world. Ah, must it always be so? Will this tiresome old Celtic Enceladus never lie quiet, and be dead, though the mountain sit upon him ...
— Queen Victoria, her girlhood and womanhood • Grace Greenwood
... planting offsets it is a good practice to put them in rather deeply; not only are the new roots emitted from above the old ones, but the heart of the offset seems to be sustained during the warm and, perhaps, dry weather, by being set a trifle below the surface. This I have ever proved to be a sure and quick method ...
— Hardy Perennials and Old Fashioned Flowers - Describing the Most Desirable Plants, for Borders, - Rockeries, and Shrubberies. • John Wood
... burning—that was something that could have been guaranteed, had the idea of the original toppling been considered. Especially after the gigantic wooden life-thing had smashed across the double-ply fence, thereby adding man-made energy to its already powerful bulk and blazing surface. ...
— Cum Grano Salis • Gordon Randall Garrett
... Tartars, the conception of such an undertaking, and the manner in which it is executed, imply a degree of science and ingenuity beyond what I suspect we should now find in the country, either in one or the other of these people. The general surface of the country and other favourable circumstances have contributed very materially to assist the projector, but a great deal of skill and management, as well as of immense labour, are conspicuous throughout ...
— Travels in China, Containing Descriptions, Observations, and Comparisons, Made and Collected in the Course of a Short Residence at the Imperial Palace of Yuen-Min-Yuen, and on a Subsequent Journey thr • John Barrow
... Religion, deep piety, these I name last, because they are the greatest, indeed, the only effectual solace, for the trials of woman. "Those wells of feeling," says a female writer, "hidden in the soul, upon whose surface the slightest smile of affection falls, like sunlight, but whose very depths are stirred by the breath of unkindness, are too often unvisited by the kindly influence of kindred sympathies, and go wearing ...
— The Young Maiden • A. B. (Artemas Bowers) Muzzey
... and straightest bone in the earth's skeleton. The skeleton consists of six great bones, which may be said to form a spheroidal tetrahedron, or pyramid with a triangular base, for when a globe with a fairly rigid surface collapses because of shrinkage, it tends to assume this form. That is what has happened to the earth. Geologists tell us that during the thousand million years, more or less, since geological history began, the earth has grown cooler and hence has ...
— The Red Man's Continent - A Chronicle of Aboriginal America, Volume 1 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Ellsworth Huntington
... surrender of wealth, and disables serious persons from enjoying it if they would; a religion, the doctrines of which, be they good or bad, are to the generality of men unknown; which is considered to bear on its very surface signs of folly and falsehood so distinct that a glance suffices to judge of it, and that careful examination is preposterous; which is felt to be so simply bad that it may be calumniated at hazard and at pleasure, it being nothing but absurdity to stand upon the accurate distribution ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 03 • Various |
