"Tapering" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... girl with her skin showing very brown beneath a wonderful silver tiara-like headdress, and in the broad interstices of a cloth-of-silver robe with short, stiffly wired-out skirt. She was seated, an idol, on a glittering black throne, at her feet with their tapering dyed nails a fantastically ...
— Okewood of the Secret Service • Valentine Williams
... fragments of gods and goddesses which are the best testimony of the artistic aspirations of Greece. In the entresol of this house was one of his finest treasures—a carved and floriated base bearing a tapering monolith some four feet high, crowned by the head of a peculiarly goatish Pan, by the side of which were the problematic remains of a lovely nude nymph—just the little feet broken off at the ankles. The base on which the feet of the nymph and the monolith stood was ...
— The Financier • Theodore Dreiser
... came to another building, which was in like manner lighted up, but not so brilliantly as the theater. This time, from the appearance of the building, and from the tall steeple,—so tall that his eye could scarcely reach the tapering spire,—he knew that it must be a church. There was not such a crowd gathered about the door as at the place he had just left, but he saw a few persons entering, and he joined them. The interior of the church was far more gorgeous than the plain village meeting-house ...
— Paul Prescott's Charge • Horatio Alger
... drifts from the mountains, till they are no longer able to support their own weight; and then large pieces break off, which we call ice-islands. Such as have a flat even surface, must be of the ice formed in the bays, and before the flat vallies; the others, which have a tapering unequal surface, must be formed on, or under, the side of a coast composed of pointed rocks and precipices, or some such uneven surface. For we cannot suppose that snow alone, as it falls, can form, on a plain surface, such as the sea, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 15 (of 18) • Robert Kerr
... started for Bahia Blanca, which we reached in two days. Leaving the regular encampment, we passed by the toldos of the Indians. These are round like ovens, and covered with hides; by the mouth of each, a tapering chuzo was stuck in the ground. The toldos were divided into separate groups, which belong to the different caciques' tribes, and the groups were again divided into smaller ones, according to the relationship of the owners. For several miles we travelled along the ...
— The Voyage of the Beagle • Charles Darwin
... organized of the mollusks, started into existence, so far as the record shows, toward, the end of the Cambrian, with the long extinct ORTHOCERAS (STRAIGHTHORN) and the allied genera of its family. The Orthoceras had a long, straight, and tapering shell, divided by cross partitions into chambers. The animal lived in the "body chamber" at the larger end, and walled off the other chambers from it in succession during the growth of the shell. A central tube, the SIPHUNCLE, passed through from the body ...
— The Elements of Geology • William Harmon Norton
... masculine fingers and disproportionately small finger-nails in the hands of Professor Weekes, the sculptor. There is scarcely any perceptible tapering at the third joint, and the fingers all exhibit very little prominence of knuckle or contour. It is anything but an artistic hand, and yet its owner was a man of the ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 27, March 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... streaks, resembling a comet's tail, which extend over the Mare towards its E. border N. of Lubbock, and are crossed obliquely by a narrower streak. Messier and Messier A stand near the S. and narrowest end of a tapering curved light area. There is a number of craterlets and minute pits in the neighbourhood, and under a high light two round dusky spots are traceable in connection with the "comet" marking, one just beyond its northern, and the other beyond its southern ...
— The Moon - A Full Description and Map of its Principal Physical Features • Thomas Gwyn Elger
... have done it before, do it now; or, better, when you are alone by yourselves. It is easy to imagine that a line is straight. But did you ever see the point of a needle under a microscope? However finely it is polished, and apparently tapering regularly, the scrutinising investigation of the microscope shows that it is all rough and irregular. What would a builder do if he had not a T-square and a level? His wall would be ever so far out, whilst he thought it perfectly perpendicular. And remember ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... is only a few acres in extent—not more than six, I fancy, and four-fifths of it are walled about with walls that stand knee-deep in sea-grasses. Along, and above it, are thrust the tapering tops of those highly decorative cypresses without which Italy would not be herself at all. There is such a monastery there—an ideal one, with cloister, and sundial, and marble-curbed well, and all that; at least so I am told; we poor feminine creatures are not permitted to ...
— The Spinner's Book of Fiction • Various
... holes, there is something still more delicate in the processes that produce such fine wire as this. That something is the filing of a long point on the wire to enable the poking of the end of it through the draw plate so that it can be caught by the nippers. Imagine yourself filing a long, tapering point on the end of a wire only one eighteen-hundredths of an inch in diameter, in order to get it through a draw plate that will bring it down to one two-thousandths. My son does that without using a magnifying glass. I cannot say positively ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 458, October 11, 1884 • Various
... was used to keep them in subjection. This was of braided walrus hide an inch thick at its butt and tapering to a thin lash. To the butt was attached a short wooden handle a foot in length, to which was fastened a loop which was hooked over the protruding end of the forward cross-bar and the whip permitted to trail upon the ice when not ...
— Troop One of the Labrador • Dillon Wallace
... river cutting it off from the road, and crossed by two wooden bridges, beside each of which stood a weeping-willow, budding with fresh spring foliage. Opposite were houses of various pretentious, and sheer behind them rose the steep hill, with the church nearly at the summit, the noble spire tapering high above, and the bells ringing out a cheerful chime. The mist had drawn up, and ...
— The Young Step-Mother • Charlotte M. Yonge
... adopted in London for several projects of the same kind. The length of this cylinder from end to end is exactly seventy meters, and its maximum breadth of beam is eight meters. So it isn't quite built on the ten-to-one ratio of your high-speed steamers; but its lines are sufficiently long, and their tapering gradual enough, so that the displaced water easily slips past and poses no obstacle to the ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne
... with head up-stream and belly about two inches from the sandy bottom, gently fanning the water with his party-coloured fins, and opening and closing his rosy gill-fringes as he breathed. In length he was something over twenty inches, with a thick, deep body tapering finely to the powerful tail. Like all the trout of the Clearwater, he was silver-bellied with a light pink flush, the yellow and brown markings on his sides light in tone, and his spots of the most high, intense vermilion. His great lower jaw was thrust forward in ...
— The Watchers of the Trails - A Book of Animal Life • Charles G. D. Roberts
... coronation, when it is carried by the lord mayor as on the occasion narrated above, and at the annual election of the chief magistrate of the city, when it is formally handed by the Chamberlain to the lord mayor elect. The mace consists of a tapering shaft of rock crystal mounted in gold, with a coroneted head also of gold, adorned with pearls and large jewels. Its age is uncertain. Whilst some hazard the conjecture that it may be of Saxon origin, there are others who are ...
— London and the Kingdom - Volume I • Reginald R. Sharpe
... quarter and a schooner on the other, and in disengaging the rigging which had caught in the spars. The sloop had the appearance of a wreck. The laniards of the shrouds had been cut away on both sides, and the tall and tapering mast was quivering and bending like a whipstock, from the action of the wind and the waves. One of the cables, it was supposed, had parted; the sails, not having been properly furled, were fluttering and struggling, not altogether in vain, ...
— Jack in the Forecastle • John Sherburne Sleeper
... vessel, huge of beam and length, her superstructure towering proudly aloft, her massive armoured sides sweeping up in noble curves, a Super-Dreadnought complete from trucks to keelson. Yacht-like she sat the water all buoyant grace from lofty prow to tapering counter, and to me there was something sublime in the grim and latent power, the strength and beauty ...
— Great Britain at War • Jeffery Farnol
... built. A foundation piece, broad in the middle and rising considerably at each end, is first laid on blocks and properly shored up. The edges of this are worked true and smooth with the adze, and a plank, properly curved and tapering at each end, is held firmly up against it, while a line is struck along it which allows it to be cut so as to fit exactly. A series of auger holes, about as large as one's finger, are then bored along the opposite edges, and pins of very hard wood are fitted to these, so that the two planks are ...
— The Malay Archipelago - Volume II. (of II.) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... be angry with me for buying a rowboat; but I also knew that the little bowsprit suggesting a jib, and the tapering mast ready for its few square feet of canvas, were trifles not likely to meet his approval. As far as rowing on the river, among the wharves, was concerned, the Captain had long since withdrawn his decided objections, having ...
— The Story of a Bad Boy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... the grub or larva; third, the chrysalis or pupa; fourth, the imago, or perfect insect. The eggs are small, ovate, yellowish white objects, which hatch in about fifteen to thirty days. The larvae are small legless grubs, quite large at the apex of the abdomen and tapering toward the head. Both eggs and pupa are incessantly watched and tended, licked and fed, and carried to a place of safety in time of danger. The larvae are ingeniously sorted as regards age and size, and are never mixed. The larvae period generally ...
— Scientific American Supplement No. 822 - Volume XXXII, Number 822. Issue Date October 3, 1891 • Various
... for personal comfort in a draughty corner of the hotel garden, with Mrs. Callowgas. Affected by the poetic influences of moon, stars, and sea, affected also conceivably by pagan amorous influences, naughtily emanating from the neighbouring Venus Temple—whose elegant tapering columns adorn the facade of the local Mairie—Mrs. Callowgas became extensively reminiscent of her dear dead Lord Bishop. Protracted anecdotes of visitations and confirmation tours, excerpts from his sermons, speeches and charges, arch revelations of his diurnal and ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... enduring an impossible climate because of an idiotic hope. He uttered the word "Arizona." He spoke of hot deserts, solitudes under the stars, mirages less mocking than his aspirations. As he contemplated her delicately fervent face, her tapering, graceful body, wrapped like something very precious in pale gold, his eyes glittered ...
— Sacrifice • Stephen French Whitman
... Sweet gum A E G Irregularly 3-7-lobed, serrate-dentate with equal teeth Mulberry A E H Pointed or bristle-tipped lobes Black oaks A E H Coarse-toothed or pinnate-lobed, short lobes ending in sharp point Sycamore B Outline entire, ovate, veins prominent Flowering dogwood B Outline serrate, apex often tapering Sheep berry B ...
— Handbook of the Trees of New England • Lorin Low Dame
... fair these names, how much unlike they look To all the blurr'd subscriptions in my book! The bridegroom's letters stand in row above, Tapering, yet straight, like pine-trees in his grove; While free and fine the bride's appear below, As light and slender as ...
— Bride of Lammermoor • Sir Walter Scott
... a lump of crumbled earth under his feet—a cool, moist, black path of richness. The furrow-slice was a long, almost unbroken ribbon of turf, each one laid smoothly against the former strand, and under it lay crumpled and crushed the layer of grass and flowers. The plow-point was long and tapering, like the prow of a clipper, and ran far out under the beam, and above it was the rolling colter, a circular blade of steel, which cut the edge of the furrow as cleanly as cheese. The lay of the plow, filed sharp at every ...
— Vandemark's Folly • Herbert Quick
... as he never had seen before. He was trim and slender. He wore a reddish-brown coat with a white waistcoat. But the things that made Peter stare very impolitely were his tail and his legs. His tail was nearly twice as long as his body, slim and tapering, and his hind legs were very long, while his fore legs were short. It took only one glance to convince Peter that here was a born jumper. Any one built ...
— Mother West Wind "Where" Stories • Thornton W. Burgess
... they are out in the blinding sunlight, hurrying through the clear, golden day as though life and death depended upon its speed. On, on, past the green meadows, where the hedgerows were filled with woodbines and wild roses, and the clover filled the air with fragrance; past gray old churches whose tapering spires pointed to heaven; past quiet homesteads sleeping in the sunshine; past silent, quaint villages and towns; past broad rivers and dark woods. Yet never once did the silent woman raise her eyes, never once did she look from the windows at the glowing landscape that lay ...
— Marion Arleigh's Penance - Everyday Life Library No. 5 • Charlotte M. Braeme
... made a fine expedition to the woods—the whole party, the donkey-cart, and one of the keepers to choose the Tree—a most important performance, as we wanted the real pyramid "sapin," tapering off to a fine point at the top. Labbey (keeper) told us his young son and the coachman's son had been all the morning in the woods getting enormous branches of pine, holly, and ivy, which we would find at the church. We came across various old ...
— Chateau and Country Life in France • Mary King Waddington
... drummers beat the long roll for the muster of winter days; past gates letting into fields, clamped and chained to their posts as if jealous of the plenty which they guarded; past farmsteads set in dark forests of orchard trees and tall windbreaks of tapering poplar, where never a light gleamed from a pane, where sons and daughters, worn husbandmen and weary wives, lay soothed in honest slumber; past barn-yards, where cattle sighed as they lay in the moonshine champing upon their cuds; down into swales, where the air was damp and cold, like ...
— The Bondboy • George W. (George Washington) Ogden
... flight of perhaps one hundred stone steps, and find at their summit a second torii, from whose lower cross-beam hangs festooned the mystic shimenawa. It is in this case a hempen rope of perhaps two inches in diameter through its greater length, but tapering off at either end like a snake. Sometimes the shimenawa is made of bronze, when the torii itself is of bronze; but according to tradition it should be made of straw, and most commonly is. For it represents the straw rope which the deity Futo-tama-no-mikoto stretched behind the Sun-goddess, ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan - First Series • Lafcadio Hearn
... strings, and bent the dizzy, tapering masts till they threatened to snap. But the bark bore bravely through it, while the huge waves seemed bearing her down to those coral labyrinths, where ...
— Daisy's Necklace - And What Came of It • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... orange, to pale yellow and dull grey—harmonises with the brilliant greenery of Lombard vegetation and with the deep azure of the distant Alpine range. Reared aloft above the flat expanse of plain, those square torroni, tapering into octagons and crowned with slender cones, break the long sweeping lines and infinite horizons with a contrast that affords relief, and yields a resting-place to tired eyes; while, far away, seen ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds
... far as I could ascertain it, was revealed by his mouth and chin, and by a certain nervousness of his hands, hands where a square, practical palm was belied by the slight tapering of his fingers, the mark of the dreamer. His mouth was unquestionably sensuous, with the lips full and now and then revealing out of the studied practiced calm of his face an almost imperceptible twitching, ...
— The Film Mystery • Arthur B. Reeve
... therefore appear, after all, that the cathedral of Angers, built during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, is a sufficiently honorable church; the more that its high west front, adorned with a very primitive Gothic portal, supports two elegant tapering spires, between which, unfortunately, an ugly modern pavilion ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James
... "eccentricity" or "throw" of an eccentric is the distance between C^2, the centre of the shaft, and C^1, the centre of the sheave. The throw must equal half of the distance which the slide-valve has to travel over the steam ports. A tapering steel wedge or key, K, sunk half in the eccentric and half in a slot in the shaft, holds the eccentric steady and prevents it slipping. Some eccentric sheaves are made in two parts, bolted together, so that they may be removed ...
— How it Works • Archibald Williams
... the wealthy condition of the natives; and the huts scattered over a large area are entirely concealed by fruit-trees. A separate race-course is laid out; here is a court-house, there a store; farther on a mill on a mill pond; and high above the luxuriant fruit-trees rise the tapering spires of the Catholic and Protestant churches.[12] I was surprised in entering the latter sanctuary at beholding a beautifully painted glass window reflecting its mellow tints ...
— A History of the English Church in New Zealand • Henry Thomas Purchas
... me the truth, the truth, Have I merited woe at your tapering hands, Have you wilfully burst love's twining strands, And cast to the winds ...
— Armenian Literature • Anonymous
... of these gins when set produced a vivid impression that it was endowed with life. It exhibited the combined aspects of a shark, a crocodile, and a scorpion. Each tooth was in the form of a tapering spine, two and a quarter inches long, which, when the jaws were closed, stood in alternation from this side and from that. When they were open, the two halves formed a complete circle between two and three feet in ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... meditation, he did as follows. He took the rotundity of the moon, and the curves of creepers, and the clinging of tendrils, and the trembling of grass, and the slenderness of the reed, and the bloom of flowers, and the lightness of leaves, and the tapering of the elephant's trunk, and the glances of deer, and the clustering of rows of bees, and the joyous gaiety of sunbeams, and the weeping of clouds, and the fickleness of the winds, and the timidity of the hare, and the vanity of the peacock, and the softness of the parrot's bosom, and ...
— Folklore as an Historical Science • George Laurence Gomme
... soldierly kind of a man I had seen in many days, save the Brigadier—so white and fat was Chautonville, the top of his head small, his legs short and thick, hands fat and white and tapering, a huge neck and chin with folds of white fat under it—a sort of a perfect bird dressed for present to the Emperor. Chautonville was big-eyed with all this—large, innocent brown eyes—innocent to me, but it was the superb health of the creature, ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1915 - And the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... sole is very like any other fish-baby; but from now onwards it enters on a most remarkable career. At six days old he shows all the promise of a well-grown fish; that is to say, his body is round and tapering, he has an eye in each side of his head, and both sides of the body are alike in colour—in other words, he ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various
... Of these four stripes the posterior one was very minute and faint; the anterior one, on the other hand, was long and broad, but interrupted in the middle, and truncated at its lower extremity, with the anterior angle produced into a long tapering point. I mention this latter fact because the shoulder-stripe of the ass occasionally presents exactly the same appearance. I have had an outline and description sent to me of a small, purely-bred, light ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication - Volume I • Charles Darwin
... lazily overside, ready to drop. The watchers on the quay could note the gentle rise and fall of the crack little vessel as the tide lifted her from behind. She seemed to be dancing to her home like a maiden back from school. The swing of her tapering masts spoke of the heaving seas she had ...
— The Last Hope • Henry Seton Merriman
... me gravely and I contemplated her, waiting till she should choose to speak. At length, having examined me inch by inch, she saluted by raising her rounded arm and tapering hand, and remarked in ...
— Finished • H. Rider Haggard
... apparently composed of a mosaic of rare Chinese enamels, cunningly put together by the deft and patient fingers of the oriental craftsmen. Extending from the widely curving bowl below was an extremely long, narrow, tapering neck. ...
— The Romance of Elaine • Arthur B. Reeve
... she observed scornfully to the empty air, her chin propped on her hand, that hand never extended to any man, that no one had ever grasped—for I had only grasped her shoulder once—that generous, fine, somewhat masculine hand. I knew well the peculiarly efficient shape—broad at the base, tapering at the fingers—of that hand, for which there was nothing in the world to lay hold of. ...
— 'Twixt Land & Sea • Joseph Conrad
... fascination about it, but many inappropriate things were done in its name. The furniture of the time was firmly placed upon the ground, the arm-chairs had strong straining-rails, square or curved backs, scroll arms carved and partly upholstered and stuffed seats and backs. The legs of chairs were usually tapering in form and ornamented with gilding, or marquetry, or richly carved, and later the feet ended in a carved leaf design. Some of the straining-rails were in the shape of the letter X, with an ornament at the intersection, ...
— Furnishing the Home of Good Taste • Lucy Abbot Throop
... common insects so familiar to all, with strongly veined white wings, bearing three black spots, two on the upper and one on the lower wing, and dark coloring on the corner of the upper wings. The antennae, as with all butterflies, are clubbed at the extremity—unlike moths', which are tapering—and the large black staring eyes are the optical apparatus, containing, we are told, thousands of lenses, each a perfect, ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 508, September 26, 1885 • Various
... those round, pot-bellied towers, like tuns of wine stood upon end?" he said—"those donjons at the corners, tapering at the top, and presenting the very image of noble bottles? There needs nothing but that palace to convince you that you have arrived in ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 30. September, 1873 • Various
... the sandy bank, and saw that a little mossy ride ran straight in among the trees. He put his horse at the gap, and was soon cantering happily through the wood. Thus he came short upon an adventure. The path ran ahead of him in a tapering vista, but just where it should meet in a point it broadened out suddenly so as to make a double bay. The light fell splashing upon this cleared space, and he saw what ...
— The Forest Lovers • Maurice Hewlett
... oblong metal box, tapering toward the ends, with the greatest width forward of the middle. Twin tubes projected from the end of it, lenses in them glistening like eyes. Just below them sprang out steely, glistening tentacles several ...
— Astounding Stories, July, 1931 • Various
... into a sleep from which it would seem she could never waken. We sent Matthias back to tell mother, and say that we should both stay all night if necessary. This girl could not be more than twenty, we thought. Her fingers were small and tapering, and on her right hand she wore a ring set with several diamond stones. Her dress was of silk, and her shawl fine but thin. Her head covering had doubtless fallen off and then been carried by the wind, for we saw nothing of it. She was a beautiful picture as she lay there, for the blood had ...
— The Harvest of Years • Martha Lewis Beckwith Ewell
... his soul. His chin was pointed but firm, and his lips were set; around his mouth were marked the tiny, almost imperceptible lines which mean cruelty. His nose was aquiline, his ears large at the top, tapering almost to a point at the lobe, and his forehead unusually high and broad. His hair was soft, and his skin, although ...
— Threads of Grey and Gold • Myrtle Reed
... projections, bends downwards a little from the centre towards the head and stern, giving it the appearance of what is in ships called “broken-backed.” The gunwales are of fir, in some instances of one piece, three or four inches broad in the centre and tapering gradually away towards the ends. The timbers, as well as the fore-and-aft connecting pieces, are of the same material, the former being an inch square, and sometimes so close together as to require between forty and fifty of them in one ...
— Journal of the Third Voyage for the Discovery of a North-West Passage • William Edward Parry
... at the compact clusters of nuts, nestling beneath the graceful tufts of long leaves that crowned each straight and tapering trunk; but he had so recently learned from experience, the hopelessness of undertaking to climb a cocoa-nut tree, that he was not at present disposed to renew the attempt. Max, however, who greatly valued himself upon his agility, and professed ...
— The Island Home • Richard Archer
... quieter now. She lay, looking at him, drinking in his dark hair, blue eyes, handsome face, the shape of his intelligent head, the slope of his neck and shoulders, the tapering waist, all the masculine grace and beauty. She pressed her closed fist into her mouth. All the beauty she might never see again, feel enfolded around ...
— Eight Keys to Eden • Mark Irvin Clifton
... nought cares he For number or proportion. Mockingly, On coop or kennel he hangs Parian wreaths; A swan-like form invests the hidden thorn; Fills up the farmer's lane from wall to wall, Maugre the farmer's sighs; and at the gate A tapering turret overtops the work. And when his hours are numbered, and the world Is all his own, retiring, as he were not, Leaves, when the sun appears, astonished Art To mimic in slow structures, stone by stone, Built ...
— Poems - Household Edition • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... is the mast, rising thirty feet or more, and the long yard, suspended by ropes, large at the lower part, but tapering toward the extreme point, where floats the pennant which you ...
— Harper's Young People, January 20, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... and watched him as he lay on his back, dreaming of days at home with his work. As he lay there, she studied his hands. They were practically healed, and she noticed they were well-shaped, the fingers long and tapering, yet with an appearance of unusual strength. She knew already that they were sensitive; when he had cut out a piece of wood to heat water in, she had seen that. So they were sculptor's hands. What a revelation, and what a pity that he was blind! She fell to wondering if ...
— Claire - The Blind Love of a Blind Hero, By a Blind Author • Leslie Burton Blades
... friend, who had gone off for an early walk in the woods. He expected that a renewal of the attack would be necessary before the sacrifice of the yellow locks could be accomplished, and he stood on the steps of the hotel, clad in the most exquisite of grays, tapering down to the most brilliant of boots. He had a white rose in his buttonhole, and his great black dog was lying at his feet, having for a wonder found his master, for the beast was given to roaming, or to the plebeian society of Barker's servant. The American's ...
— Doctor Claudius, A True Story • F. Marion Crawford
... and sky. To the captain's merry challenge to find anything so grand as the ocean, she replied, "Yes, these mighty forces in nature do indeed fill me with awe; but this vessel, with deep-buried fires, powerful machinery, spacious decks, and tapering masts, walking the waves like a thing of life, and all the work of man, impresses one still more deeply. Lo! in man's divine creative power is fulfilled the prophecy, 'Ye shall be ...
— Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... of the most delicate whiteness. Although it was so hot, he did not perspire visibly, while I had to keep mopping my face. His hands are large and massive, but in perfect proportion to the arms; the fingers long, strong, white, and tapering to a blunt end. His nails are square, showing about an eighth of an inch separate from the flesh, and I noticed that there was not a particle of impurity beneath any of them. But his majesty is concentrated in his head, which is set with leonine grace and dignity upon his broad, square shoulders; ...
— Whitman - A Study • John Burroughs
... about an hundred of them in all, squatting over the ground, and along the parapet of the new-made dam. They were of a dark-brown, or rather a chestnut colour; and reminded me of so many gigantic rats— except that their tails were pot elongated and tapering like these. Their backs, however, were arched, and their bodies of a thick rounded shape, similar to animals of the rat kind. Moreover, I could perceive that they were armed with the cutting teeth, which distinguish the family of the rodentia, ...
— The Desert Home - The Adventures of a Lost Family in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... been added to the number of spectators. This was a young man, dressed in the height of the fashion, that is to say, in a be-frogged and be-laced frock coat with a standing collar, a pair of cossack pantaloons tapering down to the foot with a notch cut in the front for the instep, and a hat about twice as large at the crown as at the rim, much resembling in shape an inverted sugar-loaf, with the smaller end cut away. He had a reckless, dare-devil, good humored look, and very ...
— Ups and Downs in the Life of a Distressed Gentleman • William L. Stone
... These fenders standing on claw feet were afterwards fitted with bottom plates of iron, on which was a ridge or rest against which the fire brasses were prevented from slipping. Then came iron or steel scroll-shaped fenders, tapering down from a few inches in height at the ends to centres almost level with the ground. To obviate the inconvenience of there being no resting-place for the fireirons loose supports were fitted into sockets at the ends, and these ...
— Chats on Household Curios • Fred W. Burgess
... toothed; head smooth, high on the side; mouth large; eyes convex, swollen above, tympanum scarcely visible; back rather convex, high on the sides; skin smooth, not porous; limbs rather short; toes 4.5, tapering to a point, nearly free, the palms with roundish tubercles beneath; the fourth hind toe elongate, the rest rather short; the ankle with an oblong, compressed, horny, sharp-edged tubercle on the inner side at the base of the inner ...
— Journals Of Expeditions Of Discovery Into Central • Edward John Eyre
... Cathedral Mountain—both on Wellington Island—specially attracted our attention to-day. The first-named presents a wonderful appearance, from whichever side you view it; the second reminds one of the beautiful double spires at Tours; while the last resembles the tapering spire of a cathedral, rising from a long roof, covered with delicate towers, fret-work, and angles. In Wide Channel we felt really compelled to stop again to admire some of the unnamed mountains. One we christened Spire Mountain, to distinguish ...
— A Voyage in the 'Sunbeam' • Annie Allnut Brassey
... for an instant, the Cepheid's bright wink was dulled; eclipsed. A tapering streamlined shape slipped silently across it, and then was gone in the blackness, and the white dwarf resumed ...
— The Women-Stealers of Thrayx • Fox B. Holden
... proceeded, making a deep vertical line between the eyes, and that the fingers of the hand nearest me closed on the chair-arm firmly. The hand attracted me. It was long, the fingers were shapely, but not markedly tapering, and suggested firmness. I remarked afterward, when I chanced to shake hands with her, that her fingers enclosed one's hand; it was not a mere touch or pressure, but an unemotional and possessive clasp. I felt sure that ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... terminate quite bluntly! Albert Duerer's "Cannon" furnishes a very peculiar and curious example of this entirely equal line, even to the extreme distance; being in that respect opposed to nearly all his other work, which is wrought mostly by tapering lines; and his work in general, and Holbein's, which appear to me entirely typical of rightness in use of the graver and pen, are to be considered carefully in their relation to Rembrandt's loose etching, as in the ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... well-closed harbour amidst a fleet of some hundred and fifty sail, of all sizes and of every variety of rig, from the simple two-sailed heavy sloop to that perfection of naval architecture, the Clipper schooner of Baltimore, with her long tapering masts raking over her taffrail, and her symmetrical hull fairly leaping out of water, as though she moved from wave to wave by a succession of graceful bounds rather than held her course by cleaving a pathway through them, as did ...
— Impressions of America - During the years 1833, 1834 and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Tyrone Power
... twenty and more cells wide, and several hundred cell rows in height, which amount commonly to one or more inches. These large rays are conspicuous on all sections. They appear as long, sharp, grayish lines on the cross-sections; as short, thick lines, tapering at each end, on the tangential or "bastard" face, and as broad, shiny bands, "the mirrors," on the radial section. In addition to these coarse rays, there is also a large number of small pith rays, which can be seen only when magnified. On the whole, the pith rays form a much larger part of ...
— Seasoning of Wood • Joseph B. Wagner
... with mine, and whose wicked plans have proved the master influence of my life. It was a strong, cruel, wolfish face—the face of a man near sixty, with a fierce yellow-gray mustache and imperial—a face broad at the temples and tapering down into a firm, unyielding jaw, and marked then with all the lines of rage, hatred, and chagrin at the ...
— Blindfolded • Earle Ashley Walcott
... of the piano-notes, and sat expectant. With a sharp click at the end of ten seconds a sliding shutter flew open, and a small tray protruded bearing two long tapering ...
— The Doings Of Raffles Haw • Arthur Conan Doyle
... yet had reach'd the other bank, We enter'd on a forest, where no track Of steps had worn a way. Not verdant there The foliage, but of dusky hue; not light The boughs and tapering, but with knares deform'd And matted thick: fruits there were none, but thorns Instead, with venom fill'd. Less sharp than these, Less intricate the brakes, wherein abide Those animals, that hate the cultur'd fields, Betwixt Corneto and Cecina's stream. Here the brute Harpies make their nest, ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante
... yet," said Nariaki, raising a long, bony, tapering hand. "There are a few formalities which our guests have to ...
— Unwise Child • Gordon Randall Garrett
... about three feet in length, covered with bull's hide, having the hair outward and studded with nails. The shape of the bow was not essentially different from that used in Europe in the Middle Ages, being about five feet and a half long, round, and tapering at the ends; the bowstring was of hide or catgut. The arrows of the archers averaged about thirty inches in length, and were made of wood or reeds, tipped with a metal point, or flint, and winged with feathers. ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume III • John Lord
... Mueller girl—what a wonderful woman she is. George, do you suppose—" Fenn caught Grant's eyes wandering toward them. The name of Margaret Mueller had reached his ears. But Fenn went on, lowering his voice: "I honestly believe she could, if any one could." Fenn put his lean, tapering hand upon Brotherton's broad fat paw, and smiled a quaint, appreciative smile, frank and gentle. It was one of those smiles that carried agreement with what had been said, and with everything that might be said. Brotherton took up the hallelujah chorus for Margaret with: "Fine girl—bright, ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White
... canvas, or of a twilled sacking, and, when spread out, measure 4-1/2 feet by 3-1/2; but when lashed up, and ready for stowing away in the netting, they form long sacks, about as big as a man's body, but not tapering to ...
— The Lieutenant and Commander - Being Autobigraphical Sketches of His Own Career, from - Fragments of Voyages and Travels • Basil Hall
... could fail to see that the slight girlish figure was of ravishing perfection. The waist was slender, the partly revealed arms were as delicate as lilies, the tiny hands with their tapering fingers were like those of a fairy, while the countenance was one of the fairest that ever sun ...
— The Land of Mystery • Edward S. Ellis
... turned from the sun, was towards them and in darkness, they waited. "In this blaze of sunlight," said Cortlandt, "I am afraid we can see nothing." Fortunately, at this moment the Callisto entered the moon's tapering shadow. "This," said Ayrault, "is good luck. We could of course have gone into the shadow; but to change our course would have delayed us, and we might have lost part of the chance of increasing our speed." "There will be no danger from, meteors or sub-satellites here," ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds • J. J. Astor
... "A-chee-o! Ah-chee! boo-ooh-oo-ooh!" tapering off with divers curses and threats, upon Old Tantabolus and his villanous habits of arousing "the whole community" in "the dead watches and middle of the night," with heat and smoke, no flesh and blood but ...
— The Humors of Falconbridge - A Collection of Humorous and Every Day Scenes • Jonathan F. Kelley
... tangle (ore-weed, as they call it in the south), and the delicate green ribbons of the Zostera (the only English flowering plant which grows beneath the sea). What are they all? What are the long white razors? What are the delicate green-grey scimitars? What are the tapering brown spires? What the tufts of delicate yellow plants like squirrels' tails, and lobsters' horns, and tamarisks, and fir-trees, and all other finely cut animal and vegetable forms? What are the groups of grey bladders, with something like a little bud at ...
— Glaucus; or The Wonders of the Shore • Charles Kingsley
... myself among some bales and contemplated the town's frontage. Over one end of it rose, tapering like a walking-stick, a factory chimney, while at the other end, as well as in the middle, rose belfries, one of which had a gilded steeple, and the other one a steeple either green or blue, but looking black in the moonlight, and shaped ...
— Through Russia • Maxim Gorky
... that a chiromantist might have set me down as rude or doltish: indeed, should such an one examine my hand, he would be ashamed to say what he thought. In it the line of life is short, and that named after Saturn long and well marked. My left hand, however, is seemly, with fingers long, tapering, and well-set, and shining nails. My neck is longer and thinner than the rule, my chin is divided, my lower lip thick and pendulous, my eyes are very small, and it is my wont to keep them half-closed, peradventure lest I should discern things ...
— Jerome Cardan - A Biographical Study • William George Waters
... The fingers are extremely slender and tapering. The wrists are round and almost as innocent of sinews as the wrists of a woman, save when he grips something, and then how they stand out. But, most remarkable of all, the skin of the palms of those hands is amazingly soft. ...
— Ronicky Doone • Max Brand
... alternately from one pole and from the other. In the south, a clump of ice-bound land, well within the Antarctic Circle, surrounds the pole. All else is a wide domain of ocean broken only where tapering and isolated tongues of land, South America, the Cape, Australia, lean down from the great land masses of the north. On the other hand, all the great land masses expand in the Northern Hemisphere, and shoulder one another round the North Pole. America is separated from Asia ...
— Thomas Henry Huxley; A Sketch Of His Life And Work • P. Chalmers Mitchell
... perceived a patch of somewhat yellow, which had greatly the appearance of a corn field, yet was probably nothing more than some dead flags, which are not uncommon in swampy places:[52] At some distance we saw groves of trees, which appeared high and tapering, and being not above two leagues from the south-west cod of the great bay, in which we had been coasting for the two last days, I hoisted out the pinnace and long-boat to search for fresh water; but just as they were about to put off, we saw several boats full ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 13 • Robert Kerr
... to lose. As a result of this passion for gambling, the city is full of pawnshops, some streets containing scarcely anything else. At the far end of one of the bazaar streets is the largest idol manufactory in Siam, for the temples whose graceful, tapering towers dot the landscape are filled with images of Buddha, in all sizes and of all materials from wood to gold set with jewels, most of them donated by the devout in order to "make merit" for themselves. ...
— Where the Strange Trails Go Down • E. Alexander Powell
... six inches upwards, why has it not also extended two inches downwards so as to narrow the broadened end? The narrowness seems to be a mainly relative or negative effect produced by the broadening out of a long tapering feather at its end under the influence of sexual selection. Several other birds have similarly narrowed or spoon-shaped feathers and do not bite them. Is it not more feasible to suppose that this attractive peculiarity first suggested its artificial intensification, ...
— Are the Effects of Use and Disuse Inherited? - An Examination of the View Held by Spencer and Darwin • William Platt Ball
... Rings tapering 3/4 in. and 1-1/2 in. in width were used for changes in alignment and grade, the former being used approximately at every fourth ring on the 1 deg. 30' curves. The 1-1/2-in. tapers were largely used for changes in grade where it was desired to free the iron from binding on the ...
— Transactions of the American Society of Civil Engineers, vol. LXVIII, Sept. 1910 • James H. Brace, Francis Mason and S. H. Woodard
... Mehemet Ali, with its tapering minarets overlooking all Cairo, was found to be quite a modern edifice, scarcely more than half a century in age, but it is a very remarkable and beautiful structure, and of great cost. The spacious ...
— Due West - or Round the World in Ten Months • Maturin Murray Ballou
... fortunately, the very interesting story of the starfish is easily learned from the geological chronicle. Reflect on the flower-like expansion of its arms, and then imagine it mounted on a stalk, mouth side upward, with those arms—more tapering than they now are—waving round the mouth. That, apparently, was the past of the starfish and its cousins. We shall see that the earliest Echinoderms we know are cup-shaped structures on stalks, with a stiff, limy frame ...
— The Story of Evolution • Joseph McCabe
... I. four outer perigone leaves (sepals) (F), small, green, pointed leaves traversed by three simple veins, and together forming the calyx; II. four larger, white, inner perigone leaves (petals) (G), broad and slightly notched at the end, and tapering to the point of attachment. The petals collectively are known as the "corolla." The veins of the petals fork once; III. and IV. two sets of stamens (E), the outer containing two short, and the inner, four longer ones arranged in pairs. Each stamen ...
— Elements of Structural and Systematic Botany - For High Schools and Elementary College Courses • Douglas Houghton Campbell
... was held high in regal pride, but her eyes were the wide dark eyes of a fawn, fear-haunted, at the gaze. Her throat and shoulders gleamed white as starlight while her tapering arms would have urged an envious sigh from a Phidias or a David. Her gown of silk was snow white; the light clung to its watered woof waving and trembling in its folds as though upon a frosted glass. Diagonally from right to left across ...
— Trusia - A Princess of Krovitch • Davis Brinton
... by an exaggeration of the infantile type of larynx. The epiglottis will be found long and tapering, its lateral margins rolled backward so as to meet and form a cylinder above. The upper edges of the aryepiglottic folds are approximated, leaving a narrow chink. The lack of firmness in these folds and the loose tissue in the posterior portion of the larynx, favors the drawing ...
— Bronchoscopy and Esophagoscopy - A Manual of Peroral Endoscopy and Laryngeal Surgery • Chevalier Jackson
... ship sailed along the western shore, the expectations which had been formed of a strait leading through the continent to the Gulf of Carpentaria faded away. The coast lost its boldness, the water became more and more shallow, and the opposite shore began to show itself. The gulf was clearly tapering to an end. "Our prospects of a channel or strait cutting off some considerable portion of Terra Australis grew less, for it now appeared that the ship was entering into a gulph." On the 10th, the Investigator having passed Point Lowly, and having on the previous day suddenly come into two-and-a-half ...
— The Life of Captain Matthew Flinders • Ernest Scott
... clear and serene, canopied the city of smoke and toil; in all directions rose the columns of the factories, dark and defined in the purple sky; a glittering star sometimes hovering by the crest of their tall and tapering forms. ...
— Sybil - or the Two Nations • Benjamin Disraeli
... command, Nor seeking higher, led them till the day Of triumph and the nation's jubilee. Among the first that answered to my call The hero came whose story you shall hear. 'Tis better I describe him: He was young— Near two and twenty—neither short nor tall— A slender student, and his tapering hands Had better graced a maiden than a man: Sad, thoughtful face—a wealth of raven hair Brushed back in waves from forehead prominent; A classic nose—half Roman and half Greek; Dark, lustrous eyes beneath dark, jutting brows, Wearing a shade of sorrow, yet so keen, ...
— The Feast of the Virgins and Other Poems • H. L. Gordon
... in the pie crust. Aunt Hannah now always will cut the leaves all the way of a size, as if any one with half an eye couldn't see that it isn't the way they grow by nature, but broad at the bottom and tapering off like an Injun arrow at the top. Besides, Mary, it's between us, you know, aunt Hannah never does make her thumb-marks even about the edges, but Nathan, now I dare say, don't know the difference between her work, and a ...
— The Old Homestead • Ann S. Stephens
... Shoulders very Small in proportion to the other parts. It was hair lipt, and the Head and Ears were most like a Hare's of any Animal I know; the Tail was nearly as long as the body, thick next the Rump, and Tapering towards the End; the fore Legs were 8 Inches long, and the Hind 22. Its progression is by Hopping or Jumping 7 or 8 feet at each hop upon its hind Legs only, for in this it makes no use of the Fore, which seem to be only design'd for Scratching in the ground, ...
— Captain Cook's Journal During the First Voyage Round the World • James Cook
... flew English colors and was a veritable floating palace. There are few crafts afloat even at this day that equal it in elegance. It had been built by the most skilful carpenters in the world at that time, and the long, tapering masts, the deck and bows were more of the modern style than ...
— The Real America in Romance, Volume 6; A Century Too Soon (A Story - of Bacon's Rebellion) • John R. Musick
... but little and the petiole not at all; nor do the internodes revolve; so that here we have the tendril alone moving. On the other hand, with most of the species of Bignonia and the Eccremocarpus, the internodes, tendrils, and petioles all revolved. The long, straight, tapering main stem of the tendril of the Cobaea bears alternate branches; and each branch is several times divided, with the finer branches as thin as very thin bristles and extremely flexible, so that they are blown about ...
— The Movements and Habits of Climbing Plants • Charles Darwin
... a finely cut face, and deep black eyes looked innocently from underneath long eyelashes. The fingers which played on the instrument were long and tapering, and every movement of the body ...
— The Son of Monte-Cristo, Volume II (of 2) • Alexandre Dumas pere
... cold or tawdry or washed out. His canvas, with its superbly vigorous drawing, at once became the sensation of the exhibition. Sunday supplements reproduced it with a photograph of Querida looking amiably at a statuette of Venus which he held in his long, tapering fingers; magazines tried to print it in two colours, in three, in dozens, and made fireworks of it to Querida's inwardly suppressed agony, and their own satisfaction. Serious young men wrote "appreciations" about it; serious young ...
— The Common Law • Robert W. Chambers
... royally with breaks and dashes, like the waters of that royal river, and antique, quaint, and Gothic times, be reflected in it. Alas! this evening my style flows not at all. Flow, then, into this smoke-colored goblet, thou blood of the Rhine! out of thy prison-house,—out of thy long-necked, tapering flask, in shape not unlike a church-spire among thy native hills; and, from the crystal belfry, loud ring the merry tinkling bells, while I drink a health to my hero, in whose heart is sadness, and in whose ears the bells ...
— Hyperion • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... further brought us to a tree which Dr. Treub said had no special characteristics, but was a perfect natural specimen of the palm family. It stood about forty feet in height, and was furnished with foliage which hung gracefully suspended from a straight tapering stem. Then at the next corner, where its beauty showed to advantage, we came upon a group of red-stemmed palms from the little island of Banka. A fortnight later I was anchored off Mentok, the capital of that island, in a Dutch mail boat; but at this time I had no knowledge ...
— A Visit to Java - With an Account of the Founding of Singapore • W. Basil Worsfold
... and drive My blood from hands and face back to the heart. Cry over ridges and down tapering coombs, Carry the flying dapple of the clouds Over the grass, over the soft-grained plough, Stroke with ungentle hand the hill's rough hair Against its usual set. Snatch at the reins in my dead hands and push me Out of ...
— Georgian Poetry 1920-22 • Various
... looking through the arched opening, one could see the dirty town, straggling along the canal or harbour, which runs parallel with the sea. A black stain was the hull of a great steamer lying on her side in the mud, but the tapering masts of yachts were beautiful on the sky, and at the end of a row of slatternly houses there were sometimes spars and rigging so strange and bygone that they suggested Drake and the ...
— Spring Days • George Moore
... great voice, at whose behests Trembled a hundred martial breasts, Be heard without a smile Urging astonished Cingalese To tap the tapering rubber trees Upon their ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Feb. 5, 1919 • Various
... beam of the vessel. Every eye looked over the gunnel to witness what had occasioned such exclamations. Philip, Schriften, and the captain, were side by side. On the beam of the ship, not more than two cables' length distant, they beheld slowly rising out of the water the tapering masthead and spars of another vessel. She rose, and rose, gradually; her topmasts and topsail yards, with the sails set, next made their appearance; higher and higher she rose up from the element. Her lower masts and rigging, and, lastly, ...
— The Phantom Ship • Frederick Marryat
... on very sharp stakes. The soldiers called these "cippi." Before these, which were arranged in oblique rows in the form of a quincunx, pits three feet deep were dug, which gradually diminished in depth to the bottom. In these pits tapering stakes, of the thickness of a man's thigh, sharpened at the top and hardened in the fire, were sunk in such a manner as to project from the ground not more than four inches; at the same time for the purpose of giving them strength and stability, ...
— "De Bello Gallico" and Other Commentaries • Caius Julius Caesar
... and one-third along the slope. This part had been chipped ready for grinding, and the article was evidently unfinished; one side still wanted polishing, and the part opposite the bevel showed signs of tapering, as if a point instead of an edge had been intended. At Axim I split off by gads and wedges a large slice of the grooved rocks described by Burton; it came home with me, and is now ...
— To The Gold Coast for Gold, Vol. II - A Personal Narrative • Richard Francis Burton and Verney Lovett Cameron
... with the readiest market, and is easiest procurable. But even in that there is the most unjustifiable wastefulness practised. I was among the lumberers once, and saw the way they square the white pine. You know that every tree is of course tapering in the trunk, narrower at the top than at the base; now, to square the log, the best timber of the lower part must be hewn away, to make it of equal dimensions with the upper part. I am not above the mark when I say that millions of excellent boards ...
— Cedar Creek - From the Shanty to the Settlement • Elizabeth Hely Walshe
... deal of laughter, they dressed themselves in their new garb. Hil had neglected nothing, and had even provided two pairs of specially-made corsets which enabled the waist to appear even with the hips, instead of tapering. Loose flannel shirts, with collars attached, obviated all differences of appearance about the bust. Padded boots, two sizes too large for them, met the difficulty ...
— Australia Revenged • Boomerang
... there are good points," says Roth, "such as the blending of the two bell forms into the common handle, the happy tapering of the ornamentation into the Normian bird's beak; the increasing size of the side cups as they rise to correspond to the enlarged opening of the bell form; the truthfulness to nature in an essential like the ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 6, 1921 • Various
... beard. His shoulders were two ells broad; his arms were as thick as the trunk of a tree and as hard as a stone. He had strong, well-proportioned hands. The middle of his body was of a graceful tapering shape, but his loins and hips were wondrously strong; his feet beautiful and well-proportioned; his thighs of enormous bigness. His strength was much beyond the ordinary strength of men. The size of Theodoric's body was equalled by the qualities ...
— Theodoric the Goth - Barbarian Champion of Civilisation • Thomas Hodgkin
... returned to where he could see the hurtling object before him, he saw that it was a ship. A tapering ...
— Salvage in Space • John Stewart Williamson
... inches in circumference at the ground and tapering toward the upper end. Paint a black or white 2-inch band around the pole 6 feet above the ground. Draw a circle about the pole on the ground having a 3-foot radius. A 20-foot line must bisect the circle. Use a tennis ball having a netted or tightly fitting linen cover. The ball is fastened ...
— Camping For Boys • H.W. Gibson
... round, many oval, others elongated, others thin and pointed, like a pencil; others oblong—while on Clyde, some are round, one is coffin-shaped, others are palette-shaped, others are pear- shaped (the oval tapering to one extremity), one is triangular, one is oblong. {77} In Australia, as on Clyde, the stones bear some of the archaic markings common on the rock faces both in Scotland and in Central Australia: on large rocks they are painted, in ...
— The Clyde Mystery - a Study in Forgeries and Folklore • Andrew Lang
... gelatinous bodies glowing with pale and ever-changing opalescence. The things were roughly pear-shaped, with the large end upward. Deep within this globular portion glowed a large nucleus spot of red. From the tapering lower part of each slug's body there sprouted scores of long slender tendrils like the gelatinous fringe of ...
— The Cavern of the Shining Ones • Hal K. Wells
... for children. Then there are the different kinds of baskets (ki khoh) which are carried on the back, slung across the forehead by a cane head-strap. These, again, are of different sizes. They are, however, always of the same conical shape, being round and broad-mouthed at the top and gradually tapering to a point at the bottom. A bamboo cover is used to protect the contents of the basket from rain. There is a special kind of basket made of cane or bamboo with a cover, which is used for carrying articles on a journey. These baskets, ...
— The Khasis • P. R. T. Gurdon
... excavation ran shining steel rails upon which were mounted tapering structures of steel, from which cables crossed the gorge, carrying great buckets of concrete for the work below. Heavy walls were growing out ...
— Boy Scouts in the Canal Zone - The Plot Against Uncle Sam • G. Harvey Ralphson
... mile from shore. They had, of course, no objection to going farther out, but neither had they any object in doing so, since the fish-life on which they fed as they journeyed was the more abundant where the sea began to shoal. With their slim, sleek, rounded bodies, thickest at the fore flippers and tapering finely to tail and muzzle, each a lithe and close-knit structure of muscle and nerve-energy, they could swim with astounding speed; and therefore, although there was no hurry whatever, they went along at the ...
— Kings in Exile • Sir Charles George Douglas Roberts
... of the true Parisian woman,—self-willed, merry, well-informed, but inaccessible to vulgar seductions. Her hands, which were almost transparent, were hanging down at the end of each arm of her chair; the tapering fingers, slightly turned up at their points, showed nails like almonds, which caught the light. Adam smiled at his wife's impatience, and looked at her with a glance which two years of married life had not yet chilled. Already the little countess ...
— Paz - (La Fausse Maitresse) • Honore de Balzac
... rubbed to a gradually tapering point, to the thick, knobby end of which a string of human hair, plaited, was cemented, the other end of a length of several yards being similarly cemented to the interior of a hollow bone, also human. When the stiletto-shaped bone is directed ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield
... became occupied with Kate's beauty. He thought he had never seen her so bewitching or in such good spirits. From his six feet and an inch of vantage his eyes followed her sloping shoulders and tapering arms and rested on her laughing, happy face—rose-colored in the soft light of the candles—a film of lace looped at her elbows, her wonderful hair caught in a coil at the back: not the prevailing fashion but one most becoming to her. ...
— Kennedy Square • F. Hopkinson Smith
... colliers—all crowded together, and among them but one single sailing vessel—a Liverpool barque of 1,000 tons, loading wool. She looked lost, abandoned, out of place, and my heart went out to her as my eyes travelled from her shapely lines and graceful sheer, to her lofty spars, tapering yards, and curving jibboom, the end of the latter almost touching the stern rail of an ugly bloated-looking German tramp steamer of 8,000 tons. On that very spot where I stood I, when a boy, had played at the foot of lofty trees—now ...
— The Call Of The South - 1908 • Louis Becke
... beneath the Incense-Burner Peak, I was enamoured by the unequalled prospect of cloud-girt waters and spray-clad rocks. Unable to leave this place, I built a cottage here. Before it stand ten tall pines and a thousand tapering bamboos. With green creepers I fenced my garden; with white stones I made bridge and path. Flowing waters encircle my home; flying spray falls between the eaves. Red pomegranate and white lotus cluster on the steps of the pond. All is after this pattern, though ...
— More Translations from the Chinese • Various
... of the field before he opened up the cannonade of questions that was to follow. We in turn were just as busily engaged in taking a mental sketch of his most prominent physical characteristics. His face was distinctly oval, tapering from a very broad forehead to a sharp pointed chin, half-obscured by his thin, gray "goatee." The crown of his head was shaven in the usual Tsing fashion, leaving a tuft of hair for a queue, which in the viceroy's case was short and very thin. ...
— Across Asia on a Bicycle • Thomas Gaskell Allen and William Lewis Sachtleben
... on this. Mix quickly and thoroughly. Have a tin mould similar to the border moulds shown in the chapter on Kitchen Furnishing, but of oval shape, higher and plain. It should be about four inches high, and six wide and eight long, top measurement—the mould tapering. The space between the outer and inner walls should be an inch and a half. Butter this mould and pour the cake mixture into it. Bake slowly for forty-five minutes. Let it stand in the mould until nearly cold. Turn on a flat ...
— Miss Parloa's New Cook Book • Maria Parloa
... No one in the crowd noticed that this hand of unwonted delicacy and whiteness did not seem to comport well with the dress of a vender of vegetables from the market; no one noticed that on one of the tapering fingers a jewel ...
— Marie Antoinette And Her Son • Louise Muhlbach
... a striking fact in urban landscape, for the most part stout iron erections rather like tapering trestles, and painted a bright bluish green. One, it happened, bestrode Tom's house, which looked still more retiring and apologetic beneath its immensity; and another giant stood just inside the corner of his garden, which was still not built upon and unchanged, ...
— The War in the Air • Herbert George Wells
... that the slender, tapering hand had almost a man's strength of grip. "You needn't tell me anything about yourself," she added, "for I already know a lot—all I need to know: about you—and about Maggie Carlisle. You see an hour ago a messenger brought me a long letter he'd written ...
— Children of the Whirlwind • Leroy Scott
... currents will be congregated more in the equatorial regions of the earth than in any other part of the earth's surface. The further also they extend into space the less depth they will have, gradually tapering off, as shown in the illustration, where E represents the earth and B C ...
— Aether and Gravitation • William George Hooper
... he pointed, I saw, above the adjacent headland, the tapering spars of a ship. Slowly she hove into view, boltsprit, forecastle, waist and poop, until she was plain to view, and I knew her for that same black ship that fouled us in Deptford Pool. She was standing in for the ...
— Black Bartlemy's Treasure • Jeffrey Farnol
... front door is precisely in the middle of the front of the house, inwards it faces the chimney. In fact, the opposite wall of the landing-place is formed solely by the chimney; and hence-owing to the gradual tapering of the chimney—is a little less than twelve feet in width. Climbing the chimney in this part, is the principal staircase—which, by three abrupt turns, and three minor landing-places, mounts to the second floor, where, over the front door, runs a ...
— I and My Chimney • Herman Melville
... There are a few lofty fan-palms here too, great rarities in this soil and elevation: one, about eighty feet high, towered above some wretched hovels, displaying the curious proportions of this tribe of palms: first, a short cone, tapering to one-third the height of the stem, the trunk then swelling to two-thirds, and again tapering to the crown. Beyond this, the country again ascends to Burree (alt. 1169 feet), another dawk bungalow, a barren place, which we left ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker
... air, and almost filling the glade from end to end with her enormous length, was an object measuring no fewer than six hundred feet long, of cylindrical shape, sixty feet in diameter at her so-called "midship" section, and tapering away fore and aft by a series of finely curved lines, to the pointed extremities of the bow and stern. The bow portion of the structure was considerably longer and more sharply pointed than the after extremity, to which ...
— With Airship and Submarine - A Tale of Adventure • Harry Collingwood |
