"Translucent" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... out to us, laden with sheep and cattle, which were gradually got on board in exchange for some other cargo. Then, with hardly a ripple, our vessel was again in motion, its bows pointing to the mouth of Loch Salen opposite. By and by, in the dimness of the translucent evening, our vessel stopped once more—I could not tell why or wherefore, till a splash of oars was heard and some bargelike craft was decipherable emerging out of the gloom to meet us. Into this, as though in a dream, ...
— Memoirs of Life and Literature • W. H. Mallock
... glance"; "Grief destroys wisdom, grief destroys scholarship, grief destroys endurance; there is no perturbation of the mind like grief." Often we hardly know whether a psychological observation or a metaphor is given to us. In any case we may appreciate the fineness of a saying like this: "Even a most translucent, beautiful, perfectly round and charming pearl can be strung on a thread as soon as it has been pierced; so a mind which longs for salvation, perfectly pure, free from quarrel with any one and full of goodness, will nevertheless be bound down to the earthly life as soon as it quarrels with itself." ...
— Psychology and Social Sanity • Hugo Muensterberg
... so he painted. As at the beginning of life in a cold world, passively meeting the long trouble of it, he painted her a rapt Presence floating evenly to our earth. A gray, translucent sea laps silently upon a little creek, and in the hush of a still dawn the myrtles and sedges on the water's brim are quiet. It is a dream in halftones that he gives us, gray and green and steely blue; and just that, and some homely magic of his own, hint the commerce of another world with man's ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 6 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Artists • Elbert Hubbard
... with ornamental shrubs and flowers, led to the center pavilion which was roofed by a huge crystal dome. This translucent cover transmitted the light and sunshine necessary for the floricultural display beneath. Stately palms, tall tree ferns in great variety, and gorgeous specimens from the flora of almost every section, formed an immense pyramid of shrubbery. The luxuriously ...
— By Water to the Columbian Exposition • Johanna S. Wisthaler
... surface itself remained as mysterious as before. Of course they did not touch it with bare hands—all wore insulated mittens—but the dazzling stuff was certainly as hard as steel and as highly polished. It was neither transparent nor opaque, but translucent, "like pink mother-of-pearl," ...
— The Lord of Death and the Queen of Life • Homer Eon Flint
... a court-house on Federal Street, built in Webster's time, of hard cold granite in the Grecian fashion of the day, not of the white translucent marble with which the Greeks would have built it. Is it the court-house where Webster made his celebrated argument in the White murder case, or was that court-house torn down and a plough run through the ground where it stood, as Webster affirmed that it ought to be? Salem people ...
— The Life and Genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne • Frank Preston Stearns
... spoke, the sound of a bell broke over the translucent air and the slumbering lake: it was the bell that every eve and morn summoned that innocent and pious family to prayer. The old man's face changed as he heard it—changed from its customary indolent, absent, listless aspect, into an expression ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 4 • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... said. He listened again. 'Crystalline! Like little notes of translucent glass. Like the bells of crystal on the sistrums of Isis at Dendarah Temple,' he added half-dreamily. We gazed intently at the island. Suddenly, on the sea-wall, moving slowly, rhythmically, we saw a little group ...
— The Moon Pool • A. Merritt
... west, for it was past tea-time, slanted from over the roof of the red house, and painted up that small procession—the deep blue frock of little Gyp, the glint of gold in the chestnut of her hair; the daisy-starred grass; the dark birds with translucent red dewlaps, and checkered tails and the tulip background, puce and red and yellow. When she had lured them to the open gate, little Gyp raised herself, ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... larva's skin. Of these two bags without outlet, one of which is enclosed within the other, the outer is transparent, flexible, colourless and extremely delicate; the second is brittle, almost as delicate as the first, but much less translucent because of its yellow colouring, which makes it resemble a thin flake of amber. On this second sac are found the stigmatic warts, the thoracic studs and so forth, which we noted on the pseudochrysalis. Lastly, within its cavity we catch a glimpse of something the shape of which at once recalls ...
— The Glow-Worm and Other Beetles • Jean Henri Fabre
... a point where three major shipping routes of the Federation of the Hub crossed within a few hours' flight of one another, the Seventh Star Hotel had floated in space, a great golden sphere, gleaming softly in the void through its translucent shells of battle plastic. The Star had been designed to be much more than a convenient transfer station for travelers and freight; for some years after it was opened to the public, it retained a high rating among the more ...
— Lion Loose • James H. Schmitz
... health had left her cheek. Its complexion was akin to that of translucent alabaster. The features wore a more fixed and regular aspect, and their play was less buoyant and ...
— A Love Story • A Bushman
... jewels of which the Singhalese are especially proud, from a belief that it is only found in their island; but in this I apprehend they are misinformed, as specimens of equal merit have been brought from Quilon and Cochin on the southern coast of Hindostan. The cat's-eye is a greenish translucent quartz, and when cut en cabochon it presents a moving internal reflection which is ascribed to the presence of filaments of asbestos. Its perfection is estimated by the natives in proportion to the narrowness and sharpness of the ray and the pure olive-tint of the ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent
... and faint, as light is sometimes seen through a translucent substance, but he saw it so plainly that there could be no error. When he looked aloft at the impenetrable gloom, he was sensible of the same dim light upon the water. He tested his accuracy of vision by looking in different ...
— In the Pecos Country • Edward Sylvester Ellis (AKA Lieutenant R.H. Jayne)
... sat beside the empty chair, shading her eyes from the blaze with a translucent hand. But suddenly she stood up, tense and quaking. Her dilated eyes were fixed upon a point in space, from which an overwhelming impression had rushed in upon her—a flood of distant emotion, a sort of voiceless cry, in a flash traversing ...
— Sacrifice • Stephen French Whitman
... Ocean had fallen down upon him. He was quite sure it was the German Ocean, because he had fixed it in his head by repeating "the North Sea or German Ocean." Mixing up delirious dream with fact, he clearly remembered the green waves rearing themselves up first, an immeasurable wall, then spreading a translucent canopy beneath the firmament and then descending in awful deluge. He had a confused memory of morning sunshine, of a cottage, of a hard-featured woman, of sitting before a fire with a blanket round his shoulders, of a toddling child smeared to the eyebrows with dirt and treacle whom he had wanted ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke
... known to be wrong.... By a happy tact, not often so felicitously blended with pure evidence of soul, Abraham Lincoln knew when to speak, and never spoke too early or too late.... The memory of his statesmanship, translucent in the highest degree, and above the average, and openly faithful, more than almost any of this age has witnessed, to fact and right, will live in the hearts and minds of the whole Anglo-Saxon race, as one of the noblest ...
— Our American Holidays: Lincoln's Birthday • Various
... less beautiful than one of its days? Do not believe it, young brother. Men call the shadow, thrown upon the universe where their own dusky souls come between it and the eternal sun, life, and then mourn that it should be less bright than the hopes of their childhood. Keep thou thy soul translucent, that thou mayest never see its shadow; at least never abuse thyself with the philosophy which calls that shadow life. Or, rather would I say, become thou pure in heart, and thou shalt see God, whose vision alone ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald
... through the current of his blood into life's carnation; whilst he dreamed upon her lips, his breath was caught, as though of a sudden she had smiled for him, and for him alone. Near to her was a maiden of Hellas, resting upon a marble seat, her eyes bent towards some AEgean isle; the translucent robe clung about her perfect body; her breast was warm against the white stone; the mazes of her woven hair shone with unguent. The gazer lost himself in memories of epic and idyll, warming through worship to ...
— The Crown of Life • George Gissing
... Assistant Surgeon of the Rattlesnake, and now eminent for the admirable anatomical researches among marine invertebrata which he conducted during the voyage) is very minute, being not more than the 1/24th of an inch in diameter. It is translucent and of a brownish-white hue. Its aspect is that of a Turbo in miniature. The whorls are tumid, the spire prominent; the body whorl is belted by two prominent keels, one of which is continued on the whorls of the spire: between, above, and below these keels are transverse membranous raised ridges, ...
— Voyage Of H.M.S. Rattlesnake, Vol. 2 (of 2) • John MacGillivray
... admirable poem by Emerson expresses, can be found here; and perhaps some stress and strain may be felt in Browning's effort to maintain his position. It is no "vale of years" of which Rabbi Ben Ezra tells; old age is viewed as an apex, a pinnacle, from which in thin translucent air all the efforts and all the errors of the past can be reviewed; the gifts of youth, the gifts of the flesh are not depreciated; but the highest attainment is that of knowledge won by experience—knowledge which can divide good from evil and what is true from what merely ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden
... of the afternoon they paused upon the banks of a stream of considerable size, which was a tributary to the Big Sandy. Though broad, it was not deep, and could be easily forded. The water flowed quite swiftly, and being perfectly translucent, the bottom could be ...
— The Ranger - or The Fugitives of the Border • Edward S. Ellis
... boy you are! Had I been any other woman—but let it go. You are as translucent as a woodland brook, and—at times you babble like one, confident that your music pleases everyone who hears it.... I pray you let me judge whether the errant lady be what a poet's soul would have her.... I am not speaking with any unkind thought or doubt.... But woman must ...
— The Hidden Children • Robert W. Chambers
... everyday practice? It is very easy to see what is meant by the rule if we will take an ordinary negative, such as a landscape with clear sky, and hold it first six inches from a gas-flame and then six feet. It will be found in the first case that the sky portion is translucent while the clear glass will, of course, be clear; in the second the sky will be opaque and the clear glass still clear. The contrasts have been rendered greater by removing the negative further from the light-source. As this is true in the extreme case given, so it is true in a smaller ...
— Bromide Printing and Enlarging • John A. Tennant
... Saint reaches the purity wherein God is seen. Such prayer irradiates the worshipper, and from the mount of such high communion descending to the plains of earth, the very face of flesh shines with supernal glory, translucent to the flame that burns within. Happy they who know the reality which no words may convey to those who know it not. Those whose eyes have seen "the King in His beauty"[306] will remember, and ...
— Esoteric Christianity, or The Lesser Mysteries • Annie Besant
... that, so do we stand towards Deity, being the utterance and embodiment of the divine thought and will. As all our doings are but exhibitions of our minds, so ourselves are manifestations of God. Through all things shines the eternal soul. The more perfect the embodiment, the more translucent is the soul; and when this is most transparent, making the body luminous with the fullness of its presence, there is beauty, which may be said to be the most intense and refined incarnation and exhibition ...
— Essays AEsthetical • George Calvert
... faded in a feather edge of dull red. But beautiful and impressive as was this painting on the sky, the most novel and exciting effect was in the body of the atmosphere itself, which, laden with moisture, became one mass of color—a fine translucent purple haze in which the islands with softened outlines seemed to float, while a dense red ring lay around the base of each of them as a fitting border. The peaks, too, in the distance, and the snow-fields ...
— Travels in Alaska • John Muir
... able to catch numbers of the chickens and turkeys and other birds who incessantly alighted on the head of the Rhinoceros for the purpose of gathering the seeds of the rhododendron-plants which grew there; and these creatures they cooked in the most translucent and satisfactory manner by means of a fire lighted on the end of the Rhinoceros's back. A crowd of Kangaroos and gigantic Cranes accompanied them, from feelings of curiosity and complacency; so that they were never at a loss for company, and went onward, as it were, in a ...
— Nonsense Books • Edward Lear
... and below, in the mazes of the wood, at the margins of the water. Verdant spears and blades expanded; fair fans opened and tendrils twined; simultaneous showers of heart-shaped, arrow-shaped, flame-shaped foliage, all pure emerald and translucent beryl, made opulent outpouring of that new life which now pulsed through the Mother's million veins. Diaphanous mist wreaths and tender showers wooed the Spring; under silver gauze of vernal rain rang wild rapture of thrushes, laughter of woodpeckers, chime and chatter of jackdaws from the rock, ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts
... The windows claim, therefore, to be the most splendid colour decoration the world ever saw, since no other material, neither silk nor gold, and no opaque colour laid on with a brush, can compare with translucent glass, and even the Ravenna mosaics or Chinese ...
— Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres • Henry Adams
... translucent varieties of maize known as "pop corn," possessed the property, when gently roasted, of bursting open, or turning inside out, a process which is owing to the following facts: Corn contains an excess of fatty matter. By proper ...
— Science in the Kitchen. • Mrs. E. E. Kellogg
... unless a "sou'-easter" is tearing over it, lies glowing in tranquil richness. This afternoon it is colored like an Italian lake. Here are lines of chrysoprase, green-fringed, white with little waves, and beyond lie dark, translucent, purple depths, which change with every passing cloud. Beyond these amethystic shoals again stretches the deep blue water, and again beyond, and bluer still, rise the five ranges of "Hottentots' Holland," which encircle and complete the landscape, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - February, 1876, Vol. XVII, No. 98. • Various
... by the summer dust; the cool shadows thrown by the elms and limes just moving as the wind stirred the wide branches; altogether a world of soft, clear, sunny green, unbroken except by here and there a small copper beech with its bronze leaves become translucent in the hot light. It is true that the browsing sheep were abnormally black; and the yellow-billed starlings had perhaps less sheen on their feathers than they would have had in the country; nevertheless, ...
— Prince Fortunatus • William Black
... that, if it succeeds regularly, the skin will become red, then a pimple will form, and on the pimple a little vesicle or blister which may be plainly seen on the fifth or sixth day. On the eighth day the blister (vesicle) is, or should be, plump, round, translucent, pearly white, with a clearly marked edge and a depression in the center; the skin around it for about half an inch is red and swollen. This vesicle and the red, inflamed circle about it (called the areola) are the two points which prove the vaccination ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter
... was back as if his throat were open to the stroke of her words, but there was that growing in his face which was enormous, translucent, even apogean. ...
— Defenders of Democracy • Militia of Mercy
... those so far mentioned, which is sometimes called the "lesser house fly."[7] This insect is distinguished from the ordinary house fly by its paler and more pointed body. The male, which is commoner than the female, has large pale patches at the base of the abdomen, which are translucent when the fly is seen on the window pane. These little flies are not the young of the larger flies. Flies do not grow after the wings ...
— The House Fly and How to Suppress It - U. S. Department of Agriculture Farmers' Bulletin No. 1408 • L. O. Howard and F. C. Bishopp
... where thou art sitting 860 Under the glassy, cool, translucent wave, In twisted braids of lilies knitting The loose train of thy amber-dropping hair; Listen for dear honour's sake, Goddess of the silver lake, ...
— Milton's Comus • John Milton
... eat his favourite experiment?" asked Jerry, squelching his way diligently through a bunch of long, slender grapes of a translucent ...
— The Happy Adventurers • Lydia Miller Middleton
... designation on a keyboard; instantly, it appeared on a translucent screen in front of him. He punched another combination, and, at the top of the screen, under the number, ...
— Police Operation • H. Beam Piper
... exposures and this demand could not be realized as long as the pictures were taken on glass plates. But in that period experiments were undertaken on many sides to substitute a more flexible transparent material for the glass. Translucent papers, gelatine, celluloid, and other substances were tried. It is well known that the invention which was decisive was the film which Eastman in Rochester produced. With it came the great mechanical improvement, the use of the two rollers. One roller holds the long strip of film ...
— The Photoplay - A Psychological Study • Hugo Muensterberg
... The splendor of the trees, which were now in full autumnal glory, gave Hilda a sort of rapture as she approached them. What had she ever seen so beautiful as this,—the shifting, twinkling myriads of leaves, blazing with every imaginable shade of color above the black, straight trunks; the deep, translucent blue of the sky bending above; the golden light which transfused the whole scene; the crisp freshness of the afternoon air? She wanted to sing, to dance, to do everything that was joyous and free. But now she had work to do. She visited all ...
— Queen Hildegarde • Laura Elizabeth Howe Richards
... the second act are vastly increased by the storm of thunder and lightning that rages while Siegmund and Hunding fight. A great part of the effect of the third act is due to the storm that howls and shrieks at the beginning and gradually subsides, giving way to the soft translucent twilight, that in turn gives way to the clear spring night with the dark blue sky through which the yellow flames presently shoot, cutting off Bruennhilde from the busy world. The same pictorial device is used throughout "Siegfried" with results just as ...
— Old Scores and New Readings • John F. Runciman
... and street and square Lay mine, as much at my beck and call, Through the live translucent bath of air, As the sights in a magic crystal-ball. And of all I saw and of all I praised, The most to praise and the best to see Was the startling bell-tower Giotto raised: But why did it more ...
— Introduction to Robert Browning • Hiram Corson
... mountains; but that would be scarcely reverent to St. Elizabeth, nor to the numberless pretty chatelaines of towers, and princesses of park and glen, who have made German domestic manners sweet and exemplary, and have led their lightly rippling and translucent lives down the glens of ages, until enchantment becomes, perhaps, too canonical ...
— Our Fathers Have Told Us - Part I. The Bible of Amiens • John Ruskin
... shoulders of the bearers was rich with the painted papier-mache of Cashmere. The shoulder-pads were of yellow silk. The panels of the litter itself were ablaze with the loves of all the gods and goddesses of the Hindu Pantheon—lacquer on cedar. The cedar sliding doors were fitted with hasps of translucent Jaipur enamel and ran in grooves shod with silver. The cushions were of brocaded Delhi silk, and the curtains which once hid any glimpse of the beauty of the king's palace were stiff with gold. Closer investigation ...
— Indian Tales • Rudyard Kipling
... was reducing the gloom of the sylvan tunnel to a translucent twilight, we floated down the ...
— Tales of the Malayan Coast - From Penang to the Philippines • Rounsevelle Wildman
... May, and my heart bled at the thought of the tulips I had put in in November, and that I had never seen since. The whole of the rest of the garden was on fire with tulips; behind me, on the other side of the wall, were rows and rows of them,—cups of translucent loveliness, a jewelled ring flung right round the lawn. But what was there not on the other side of that wall? Things came up there and grew and flowered exactly as my gardening books said they should do; and in front ...
— Elizabeth and her German Garden • "Elizabeth", AKA Marie Annette Beauchamp
... were several buildings: a few small stone houses suggesting workmen's dwellings; an oblong stone structure with smoke funnels which looked like a smelter; a huge domelike spread of translucent glass over what might have been the top of a mineshaft. It looked more like the dome of an observatory—an inverted bowl fully a hundred feet wide and equally as high, set upon the ground. ...
— Beyond the Vanishing Point • Raymond King Cummings
... town, grave on its hill-top, broke the level lines—"A rose-red city, half as old as time." Or, again, it was the sea in some glow of sunset, the white reflections of the sails slipping down and down through the translucent pinks and blues, till the eye lost itself in the infinity of shades and tints, which the breeze—oh, the freshness of it!—was painting each moment anew at its caprice—painting and blotting, over and over again, as the water swung under ...
— Sir George Tressady, Vol. II • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... Further, you learnt - you know you did - in the same visit, how the beautiful sculptures in the delicate new material called Parian, are all constructed in moulds; how, into that material, animal bones are ground up, because the phosphate of lime contained in bones makes it translucent; how everything is moulded, before going into the fire, one-fourth larger than it is intended to come out of the fire, because it shrinks in that proportion in the intense heat; how, when a figure shrinks unequally, it is spoiled - emerging from the furnace a misshapen ...
— Reprinted Pieces • Charles Dickens
... midnight, but the sky, where the sun had dipped below the mountain rim, was a sea of translucent green, weirdly and wildly harmonious with the desolation of the land. On the bleak lake one could hear the lap of waves, while the high, rocky shore to the left was a black wall of shadow. I stood ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service
... to the grim recesses where living, breathing men were buried. Clear as the waters were, the eye could not reach the depth to which the huge living cemetery had descended; a recoiling feeling, which made the heart leap, followed the effort to trace the chain down, down through the translucent sea. The red sun, struggling through the mist, was reflected in a lurid glow from the surface of the deep. As the air-pump ceased for short intervals, and absolute silence reigned around, a clang, unlike any sounds of earth, came ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume III • Various
... baskets and arranging some rugs and mats under the shade of the wicker screen. Behind that, to the stem, the boat was filled with the rich yellow of the bananas, the ruddy pink of the plantains, and mellow, translucent orange of the mangoes. They lay there in great heaps, leaving only just space enough for the ...
— Five Nights • Victoria Cross
... ethical, psychological, and biological studies. The great point about the position in which Eliza and Lucy had placed themselves was simply this. They stood full against the light, so that we could see right through their translucent bodies, which were almost liquid to look upon, and beautifully dappled with dark spots on a grey ground in a very pretty and effective pattern. So favourable was the opportunity for observation, indeed, that ...
— Science in Arcady • Grant Allen
... And this time her face was as white as her gown. Her bosom was heaving. Her skin was translucent. To Trennahan's suffused vision she ...
— The Californians • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... great Apache nation are distinguished—"Mezcaleros" (eaters of the mezcal-plant). They bake it in ground-ovens of heated stones, along with the flesh of the wild-horse. It is firm when cooked, with a translucent appearance like candied fruits. I have eaten it; it is palatable—I might say delicious. The mastication of it is accompanied by a prinkling sensation upon the tongue, singular to one unaccustomed to it. It is a gift of nature to the ...
— The War Trail - The Hunt of the Wild Horse • Mayne Reid
... but why? Why? Because, my dear Sir Patrick, though the germ is there, it's invisible. Nature has given it no danger signal for us. These germs—these bacilli—are translucent bodies, like glass, like water. To make them visible you must stain them. Well, my dear Paddy, do what you will, some of them wont stain. They wont take cochineal: they wont take methylene blue; ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma • George Bernard Shaw
... the simplest, prettiest thing a man could have seen. Her life had left her nature as pure and translucent as the clearest brook. She had had no one to compare herself with or to be made ashamed or timid by. She knew only her own heart and Tom's love, and she smiled as radiantly into the lighting face before ...
— In Connection with the De Willoughby Claim • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... great height. Far as the eye could reach, in the circle in the centre of which we floated, there was the same shining, unbroken surface; except when here and there some flying-fish leaped out of the translucent sea, or the fin of some monster of the deep appeared as he ...
— In the Eastern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston
... wants. It is a sorry day for a young man who cannot see any opportunities where he is, but thinks he can do better somewhere else. Some Brazilian shepherds organized a party to go to California to dig gold, and took along a handful of translucent pebbles to play checkers with on the voyage. After arriving in San Francisco, and after they had thrown most of the pebbles away, they discovered that they were diamonds. They hastened back to Brazil, only to ...
— Architects of Fate - or, Steps to Success and Power • Orison Swett Marden
... never for one moment thought of phantasms; I fell asleep. I awoke; the hot floodgates of the cloudless heaven were still open, the air translucent over and around me, when straight in front of me, on a gloriously gilded patch of grass, there fell a shadow—a shadow from no apparent substance, for both air and ground were void of obstacles, and, apart from myself, there was no living object in ...
— Byways of Ghost-Land • Elliott O'Donnell
... the sunset was past. In about a quarter of an hour, however, commences the most beautiful transformation of all, and one which I think is peculiar to the Nile Valley, for a second glow, more beautiful and more ethereal than the first, overspreads the hills, which shine like things translucent against the purple earth-shadow which slowly mounts in the eastern sky. The sails of the boats on the river meanwhile have taken on a tint like old ivory, while perhaps a full moon appears above the hill-tops, and in twisting bars of silver is reflected in the ...
— Peeps at Many Lands: Egypt • R. Talbot Kelly
... philosophical, and take another. For my part, when I'm bogging about these dark woods, far away in the silent, somber shadows, I rejoice in sunshine; and would prefer it of choice, rather than all other celestial and translucent luminaries: but when the gentle fanning zephyrs of the shadowy night breathe soft among the trembling leaves and sprays of the darkening forests, then I rejoice in moonshine: and when the moonshine dims and pales away, with the waning silvery queen of heaven in her azure zone, I look up to ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VII. (of X.) • Various
... smooth, massed, and in a sort massive; Dolly's clustered or was knotted about her head, without the least disorder, but with a wilfulness of elegant play most harmonious with all the rest of her appearance. To characterise the two in a word, Christina was a beautiful pearl, and Dolly was a translucent opal. ...
— The End of a Coil • Susan Warner
... "In painted lodges Berries we have dried and meat; Come again! e'er comes the winter, Let us hear your horses' feet." And they sprang into their saddles, Swept, white-splashing, through a stream Red and saffron hued, the pageant Crossed the blue translucent gleam. Then unwilling, as they vanished, "Star-Child" slow to camp returned; Told the council of the Blackfeet All the marvels he had learned; Dressed him in his chief's apparel, Rode to where, within the glen, Lay the trail that led him onward ...
— Memories of Canada and Scotland - Speeches and Verses • John Douglas Sutherland Campbell
... Listen where thou art sitting Under the glassie, cool, translucent wave, In twisted braids of Lillies knitting The loose train of thy amber-dropping hair, Listen for dear honour's sake, Goddess of the silver lake, ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... the warm breath of life. If I put my hand on that firm, round throat I shall find it cold as marble. No, no, my friend, blood does not run beneath that ivory skin; the purple tide of life does not swell those veins, nor stir those fibres which interlace like net-work below the translucent amber of the brow and breast. This part palpitates with life, but that other part is not living; life and death jostle each other in every detail. Here, you have a woman; there, a statue; here again, a dead body. ...
— The Hidden Masterpiece • Honore de Balzac
... grew pale, and for a while the horsemen rode into a wall of blackness, conscious of progress only by the sound of hoof-beats which they were relentlessly urging forward. Then dawn flashed up over the chaos of rocks, pursuing night with the sweep of its broadening, translucent wings across the valley to the other range. The tops of the cotton-woods rose out of the sparkling sea, floating free of any visible support of trunks, and the rescuers saw that they were near the end ...
— Over the Pass • Frederick Palmer
... 56. To show the action of saliva on starch. Saliva for experiment may be obtained by chewing a piece of India rubber and collecting the saliva in a test tube. Observe that it is colorless and either transparent or translucent, and when poured from one vessel to another is glairy and more or less adhesive. Its reaction is alkaline to ...
— A Practical Physiology • Albert F. Blaisdell
... mineral usually found as cleavable or columnar, and compact masses; it is translucent and has a vitreous lustre, and the colour varies from white to pale shades of violet, grey, green or yellow. There are good cleavages in two directions. The hardness is 6 and the specific gravity 3.0. The mineral is thus not unlike felspar in ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... timid spirits haunted Of hermit thrushes,—tranced is the air, Ever in doubt when they shall sing or where; The mountains may with ice and avalanche wrestle, Far down their rugged steeps dimple and nestle The still, translucent, turquoise-hearted tarns. ...
— Lundy's Lane and Other Poems • Duncan Campbell Scott
... to couple each remark with some allusion to his love or some deduction which heightened compliment into poetry. He bade her mark the light gossamer as it floated on the air; now soaring high—high into the translucent atmosphere; now suddenly stooping, and sailing away beneath the boughs, which ever and anon it hung with a silken web, that by the next morn, would glitter with a thousand dew drops. "And, so," said he fancifully, "does ...
— Eugene Aram, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... full fork, the saturated straw. What longest binds the closest, forms secure The shapely side, that as it rises takes By just degrees an overhanging breadth, Sheltering the base with its projected eaves. The uplifted frame compact at every joint, And overlaid with clear translucent glass, He settles next upon the sloping mount, Whose sharp declivity shoots off secure From the dashed pane the deluge as it falls. He shuts it close, and the first labour ends. Thrice must the voluble and restless earth Spin round upon her axle, ere the warmth Slow gathering in the midst, ...
— The Task and Other Poems • William Cowper
... sun, the splendour which appears to us would be invisible, since it contains, as it were, an earth for its central mass, with a circumferential envelope of light and heat, and between the two an atmosphere of water and clouds and translucent air." The luminary of Herschel's fancy could scarcely be more clearly portrayed; some added words, however, betray the origin of the Cardinal's idea. "The earth also," he says, "would appear as a shining star to any one outside the fiery element." It was, in fact, an extension ...
— A Popular History of Astronomy During the Nineteenth Century - Fourth Edition • Agnes M. (Agnes Mary) Clerke
... behind a thin layer of crystal. Where the sun shone through a low white cloud upon a distant slope there might have been a great globe of iridescent glass illuminated within. The water was a light, soft, filmy yet translucent blue. Concha gazed ...
— Rezanov • Gertrude Atherton
... color are rare enough, save the faint hues of the flowerets,—almost as indistinguishable in the general effect as their fairy fragrance on the air. Aloft, the sky is all one blaze of sunshine, that seems to bleach it into palest, most translucent blue. Far to the west some fleecy clouds are rolling up from the horizon, wafted from the peaks of the hidden Rockies. Down in the "swale," the wooden barracks, stables, quarters, and storehouses are all ...
— Marion's Faith. • Charles King
... great, translucent star of evening, at that hushed moment of twilight, before any other of ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp
... paring of silver light, the coronet of the rising moon. But the glory of the full orb was in the retrospect; for, closing the savage vista of the ravine, stood up far away a cluster of jagged pinnacles—opal, translucent, lustrous as the peaks of icebergs that are the ...
— At a Winter's Fire • Bernard Edward J. Capes
... next day the sea was smoother; we had changed our direction somewhat and were going before the wind, the Florida reefs full in sight, with their long streak of white surf, beyond which, along the line of the shore, lay a belt of water, of bright translucent green, and in front the waves wore an amethystine tint. We sat the greater part of the day under an awning. A long line, with a baited hook at the end, was let down into the water from the stern of our vessel, and after being dragged ...
— Letters of a Traveller - Notes of Things Seen in Europe and America • William Cullen Bryant
... chapel window presently, and Chris noticed with an odd sensation of pleasure the little translucent patch of colour between the slender mullions thrown by the lamp within—a kind of reflex or anti-type of the broad ...
— The King's Achievement • Robert Hugh Benson
... lymphocytes (Purves Stewart). The detection of the tubercle bacillus is confirmatory of a diagnosis of tuberculous meningitis, but, as it is often difficult to find, its absence does not negative this diagnosis. In tuberculous meningitis the clot which forms floats in the centre of the fluid, and is translucent, grey, and flaky; in the pyogenic forms it is yellow, and sticks to the side ...
— Manual of Surgery Volume Second: Extremities—Head—Neck. Sixth Edition. • Alexander Miles
... caused by retention of the secretions from the mucous glands, sometimes develop in the mouth, nose, pharynx, and vulva of cattle. They are called "mucous cysts." These are of sizes varying from peas to pigeon eggs, are roundish and translucent, and surrounded by a delicate, vascular membrane. They contain a siruplike substance more or less thick and transparent and whitish yellow ...
— Special Report on Diseases of Cattle • U.S. Department of Agriculture
... calm the air—so calm and still the flood, That low down in its blue translucent glass We saw the great fierce fish, that thirst for blood, ...
— Successful Recitations • Various
... strangle all black dreams, Our life's dim vapors and ill-working demons! But nourish all things good and beautiful Like sunbeams playing and like nightingales! And thou, O moon, spread over savage Night A veil translucent of heart-felt sympathy! Wave everywhere, O Beauty's purple robe! Let the great world be love ...
— Life Immovable - First Part • Kostes Palamas
... since the English is only a translucent, and not a transparent medium to Sorel, this is made clear. Still ...
— In Madeira Place - 1887 • Heman White Chaplin
... it seemed intolerable that he should be there. It was better to shut my eyes; for then Rima's arms would be round my neck; the silky mist of her hair against my face, her flowery breath mixing with my breath. What a luminous face was hers! Even with closeshut eyes I could see it vividly, the translucent skin showing the radiant rose beneath, the lustrous eyes, spiritual and passionate, dark as purple wine under their dark lashes. Then my eyes would open wide. No Rima in my arms! But over there, a little way back from the fire, just beyond ...
— Green Mansions - A Romance of the Tropical Forest • W. H. Hudson
... bright,—but there was the sad fire in them that flames up from the soul of one who looks on the beauty of woman without hope, but, alas! not without emotion. To him it seemed as if those amber gates had been translucent as the brown water of a mountain-brook, and through them he had seen dimly into a virgin wilderness, only waiting for the sunrise of a great passion for all its buds to blow and all its bowers to ring ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 18, April, 1859 - [Date last updated: August 7, 2005] • Various
... sea, and twice a day, under the influence of the seemingly-mysterious systole and diastole of the tides, spread out into a wide-glittering lake and anon crept back again into its sinuous bed. This water was as fickle and wanton and many-mooded as a coquettish girl. Now its translucent glassy surface is unruffled by a single wrinkle, and in its brilliant depths every minutest feature of yonder drifting hay-barge is weirdly mirrored. I look out again, and the face of the water is working with rage under the lashing of the wind: at the same time its face seems ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, September 1880 • Various
... above lines are a version of Pope's verses on his own grotto, which begin, "Thou, who shall stop where Thames' translucent wave." ...
— Dr. Johnson's Works: Life, Poems, and Tales, Volume 1 - The Works Of Samuel Johnson, Ll.D., In Nine Volumes • Samuel Johnson
... his seat, familiar, to her side; Far from the suitor-train, a brutal crowd, With insolence, and wine, elate and loud: Where the free guest, unnoted, might relate, If haply conscious, of his father's fate. The golden ewer a maid obsequious brings, Replenish'd from the cool, translucent springs; With copious water the bright vase supplies A silver laver of capacious size; They wash. The tables in fair order spread, They heap the glittering canisters with bread: Viands of various kinds allure the taste, ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer, translated by Alexander Pope
... decomposition product of copper ores. It is never found as crystals, but always as encrusting and botryoidal masses with a microcrystalline structure. It is green or bluish-green in colour, and often has the appearance of opal or enamel, being translucent and having a conchoidal fracture with vitreous lustre; sometimes it is earthy in texture. Not being a definite crystallized substance, it varies widely in chemical composition, the copper oxide (CuO), for example, varying in different analyses from 17 to 67%; the formula is usually ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 3 - "Chitral" to "Cincinnati" • Various
... intaglio is not very deep but all the details are beautifully sharp and distinct, while they are on so small a scale that it requires a magnifying glass to distinguish them. The material of the cylinder is translucent green felspar, or amazon-stone, one of the hardest substances ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 2. (of 7): Assyria • George Rawlinson
... minutely. Granting its marvellous perfection, he recognized no more its beauty, dispassionately reviewed in turn each stone of matchless loveliness, no more susceptible to their seductive purity, perceiving in them nothing but hard, bright, translucent ...
— The False Faces • Vance, Louis Joseph
... that such a result might well be possible. They were silent until they halted where the hillside fell sharply to the verge of a cliff. Far down below Thurston could see the white pebbles shine through translucent water, and with professional instincts aroused, he dubiously surveyed the slope to the ...
— Thurston of Orchard Valley • Harold Bindloss
... reddish cast of cedar, are due to pigments, while the deeper shade of the summer-wood bands in pine, cedar, oak, or walnut is due to the fact that the wood being denser, more of the colored wood substance occurs on a given space, i.e., there is more colored matter per square inch. Wood is translucent, a thin disk of pine permitting light to pass through quite freely. This translucency affects the luster and ...
— Seasoning of Wood • Joseph B. Wagner
... two dollars a head was exorbitant! What Mrs. Hume charged us I know not, but it is only just to admit that it must have been a good deal less than one hundred dollars a week; though, again, it must not be forgotten that translucent bread-and-butter is not expensive. We were sent there, I suppose, in order to remind us that this was still the world that we were living in, after all, and not yet Paradise. We came out from her sobered and chastened, but cheerful still; and ...
— Hawthorne and His Circle • Julian Hawthorne
... crystal gulfs were gleaming Ocean depths, with wonders teeming; Shapes of terror, huge, unsightly, Loom'd thro' vaulted roof translucent." J.C. JONES, Valhalla. ...
— Legends of the Middle Ages - Narrated with Special Reference to Literature and Art • H.A. Guerber
... yet able to follow its descent through the waves. The powerful light it gave forth lighted up the translucent water, while the cavern became gradually obscure. At length this vast effusion of electric light faded away, and soon after the "Nautilus," now the tomb of Captain Nemo, reposed in its ...
— The Mysterious Island • Jules Verne
... and shimmering presences stood grouped all round that bed. She saw their outline underneath the ceiling, the green, spread bulk of them, their vague extension over walls and furniture. They shifted to and fro, massed yet translucent, mild yet thick, moving and turning within themselves to a hushed noise of multitudinous soft rustling. In their sound was something very sweet and sinning that fell into her with a spell of horrible enchantment. They were so mild, each one alone, yet so terrific in their ...
— The Man Whom the Trees Loved • Algernon Blackwood
... friendly and companionable before. We walked under the elms, talked about books, and our absent friends, gazed at the mountains, and admired the sunsets which just at that time were remarkably brilliant. There was one, I remember, composed largely of luminous clouds, and a general translucent effect of the atmosphere, which Whittier could not remember he had ever seen the like of. He said, "I don't believe Emerson loves Nature any better than I do, though he has written more about it." There was a delightful lady ...
— Sketches from Concord and Appledore • Frank Preston Stearns
... picturesquely enough, and, resuming our course, soon emerged from the hilly labyrinth on a series of terraces, falling off like steps to the river on our left. They had been burned over, and the young grass was sprouting up, under the freshening influence of the early rain, in a carpet of translucent green. At a distance of four leagues from San Juan, after descending from terrace to terrace, we again reached the river, now flowing through a valley three hundred yards broad, and about fifty feet below the general level of the adjacent plateau. Here ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 6, No. 33, July, 1860 • Various
... at her nod the Nymphs attendant bring Translucent water from the bubbling spring; In crystal cups the waves salubrious shine, Unstain'd untainted with immodest wine. Next, where emerging from its ancient roots Its widening boughs the Tree of Knowledge shoots; 440 Pluck'd with nice choice before ...
— The Temple of Nature; or, the Origin of Society - A Poem, with Philosophical Notes • Erasmus Darwin
... of the lowest range of unregenerate human nature; and yet it is incompatible with hereditary monarchy, because the latter is based on uninspired or mechanical selection. The writings of Cotton Mather exhibit the peculiarities and inconsistencies of Puritanism in the most favorable and translucent light, for Mather was himself wedded to them, and of a most inexhaustible ...
— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne
... the late New England spring, but huge clumps that two men could not enclose with linked hands; great masses of scarlet and purple, and—mostly—of a waxy white, with something deathlike in their translucent beauty. There, also, he would wade into the swamps around a certain little creek, lured by a hope of the jack-in-the-pulpit, to find only the odorous and disappointing skunk-cabbage. And there the woods were full of the aroma of sassafras, ...
— The Story of a New York House • Henry Cuyler Bunner
... sign of life from the people of the wilderness, and Willet sat silent a long time. Dawn came, intense and brilliant. He had hoped the day would be cloudy, and he would have welcomed rain, despite its discomfort, but the sun was in its greatest splendor, and the air was absolutely translucent. The lake and the mountains sprang out, sharp and clear. Far to the south the hunter saw a smudge upon the water which he knew to be Indian canoes. They were miles away, but it was evident that the French and Indians ...
— The Lords of the Wild - A Story of the Old New York Border • Joseph A. Altsheler
... of 500 lbs. each are mixed in a blending machine, in order to obtain greater uniformity. The colour of the W.A. powder is very light grey, the grains are very uniform in size, dry and hard. The powder for larger guns is of a yellowish colour, almost translucent, and almost as hard as vulcanite. The powder is said to be unaffected by atmospheric or climatic conditions, to be stable, and to have given excellent ballistic results; it is not sensitive to ...
— Nitro-Explosives: A Practical Treatise • P. Gerald Sanford |
