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More "Discernible" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... fatigue (which was by no means imaginary) as the reason for this unwonted haste. So smartly was the retirement effected, that no one was aware of their return to their house until half an hour later. When the dormitory filled up, their five noses were discernible ...
— The Cock-House at Fellsgarth • Talbot Baines Reed
... either hand was discernible during this period; indeed, the neutrality was as complete as if it had been arranged beforehand, or had ...
— The Story of the Mind • James Mark Baldwin
... is to mark more plainly than it could be seen at the moment the divine help which has filled our lives. Like some track on a mountain side, it is less discernible to us, when treading it, than when we look at it from the other side of the glen. Many parts of our lives, that seemed unmarked by any consciousness of God's help while they were present, flash up into clearness when seen through the revealing light of memory, and gleam purple in it, while they ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... then, is not this real? I say unto you, Yea, because it is light; and whatsoever is light, is good, because it is discernible, therefore ye must know that it is good; and now behold, after ye have tasted this ...
— The Book Of Mormon - An Account Written By The Hand Of Mormon Upon Plates Taken - From The Plates Of Nephi • Anonymous
... was nearly, but not quite, dark, for a lamp, closely shaded, cast a dim light on a Prayer-book, placed on a small table, behind which stood poor Mr. Greaves—a black spectre, whose white bands were just discernible below a face whose nervous, disturbed expression was lost in the general gloom. He carefully avoided looking at the bride, fearing perhaps some appeal on her part such as would make his situation perplexing. Contempt and poverty had brought his stamp of ...
— Love and Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... person who prefers two lumps of sugar rather than one lump in his coffee; the sweet is of the same quality in either case, but differs in intensity. In every field of sensation, the intensity may proceed from the smallest amount to the greatest amount discernible. In general, the intensity of the sensation depends on the intensity of the stimulus, though the condition of the sense-organ as regards fatigue or adaptation to the stimulus has its effect. It is obvious that a stimulus may be too weak to produce any sensation; as, for example, ...
— The Mind and Its Education • George Herbert Betts
... so dark, that the figures on the dial-plate were scarcely discernible; but there the two old gentlemen continued to sit, in silence, with ...
— Oliver Twist • Charles Dickens
... ill spent it often was, but not with company; it was spent in retirement. The Lord did not leave me so far as to give up the Sabbath to the world. Though my heart was incrusted, and spiritual life scarcely discernible, sometimes the Lord met me, and strange to tell, not with threatenings causing terror, but with compunction, melting, turning, and ere the day was over, manifestations of pardon, though not joy; for I ...
— The Power of Faith - Exemplified In The Life And Writings Of The Late Mrs. Isabella Graham. • Isabella Graham
... by him. The two middle movements, a Menuetto and a Larghetto—although in the latter the self-imposed fetters of the 5-4 time prevent the composer from feeling quite at his ease—are more attractive than the rest. In them are discernible an approach to freedom and something like a breath of life, whereas in the first and the last movement there is almost nothing but painful labour and dull monotony. The most curious thing, however, about this work is the lumbering passage-writing ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... Mediterranean Sea, which, with the Arabian Gulf, was seen to separate Africa from Europe and Asia, was full in our view. The political divisions of these quarters of the world were, of course, undistinguishable; and few of the natural were discernible by the naked eye. The Alps were marked by a white streak, though less bright than the water. By the aid of our glass, we could just discern the Danube, the Nile, and a river which empties itself into the Gulf of Guinea, and which I took to be the Niger: but the other streams were not perceptible. ...
— A Voyage to the Moon • George Tucker
... the adjacent house, and the lesser strains of the fiddler, reached the spot as an accompaniment to the surging hiss of the flying rain on the sod, its louder beating on the cabbage-leaves of the garden, on the eight or ten beehives just discernible by the path, and its dripping from the eaves into a row of buckets and pans that had been placed under the walls of the cottage. For at Higher Crowstairs, as at all such elevated domiciles, the grand difficulty ...
— Wessex Tales • Thomas Hardy
... said Miss Sylvette de Long, in a tone not part of her role. "When the traffic policeman sticks up his mitt it's time to halt, see?" Lines not before discernible in Miss De Long's face had long since begun to creep out, smoky shadows beneath her eyes and a sunburst of fine lines showing through ...
— Humoresque - A Laugh On Life With A Tear Behind It • Fannie Hurst
... he laid his head back and closed his eyes. An expression of disgust was discernible in his companion's countenance, but it passed like the shadow of a summer cloud, and she sat down at the opposite side of the fireplace, with her eyes bent upon the hearth, and the long silky lashes ...
— Macaria • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... change the thing which changes: it is always provisionally, and in order to satisfy our imagination, that we attach the movement to a mobile. The mobile flies for ever before the pursuit of science, which is concerned with mobility alone. In the smallest discernible fraction of a second, in the almost instantaneous perception of a sensible quality, there may be trillions of oscillations which repeat themselves. The permanence of a sensible quality consists in this repetition of movements, ...
— Creative Evolution • Henri Bergson
... experienced is in connection with the bathroom. Elegantly appointed and spacious as this room is, commodious as we find the actual bath itself, yet we feel that in the matter of the waste-pipe the high standard of efficiency so discernible elsewhere is sadly lacking. Were I alone I should not complain; but unfortunately there are two of us; and, for the second one, the weariness of waiting while the waters of the first bath exude drop by drop is almost more than can be borne. I ...
— Once a Week • Alan Alexander Milne
... the south, and after alternately shining out and disappearing in the mazes of the vast landscape, was finally lost in a horizon of mountains. The day was calm and cloudless, and the atmosphere so pure that objects were discernible at an astonishing distance. The whole of this immense area was inclosed by an outer range of shadowy peaks, some of them faintly marked on the horizon, which seemed to wall it in from the ...
— The Adventures of Captain Bonneville - Digested From His Journal • Washington Irving
... had seen better days; even a landsman could tell that. But from the blunt bows to the weather-scarred stern, on which the name was faintly discernible, the hulk had an air about it, the air of something that has lived; it was eloquent of a ...
— The Cruise of the Jasper B. • Don Marquis
... painted hawking scenes, and his horses, though well designed, were not equal to those of Philips. The latter is represented in the National Gallery by a landscape in which the spirit of Wynant's, rather than that of Philips's, is discernible. ...
— Six Centuries of Painting • Randall Davies
... character and manners which arose from the combined and progressive influence of chivalry, of commerce, of learning, and of religion. Nor must we omit the similarity of those political institutions which, in every country that had been over-run by the Gothic conquerors, bore discernible marks (which the revolutions of succeeding ages had obscured, but not obliterated) of the rude but bold and noble outline of liberty that was originally sketched by the hand of these generous barbarians. These and many other causes conspired to unite the nations of Europe ...
— A Discourse on the Study of the Law of Nature and Nations • James Mackintosh
... bench which was but dimly discernible in the dark hall, lighted only by a thin wick floating in a small pan of oil, and bid Ned seat himself, while he drew a mugful of ale from the barrel, which was supposed to keep up the porter's strength ...
— Penshurst Castle - In the Days of Sir Philip Sidney • Emma Marshall
... massive stone culverts, iron bridges, and heavy steel rails. The first and second class coaches are not attractive in appearance, and though the fare for the former is double that of the latter, the chief discernible difference is that in the first class compartment, which is usually in one end of a second- class car, the seats are curved and the passengers fewer in number, while in the second-class the seats are straight boards and are apt ...
— An Inevitable Awakening • ARTHUR JUDSON BROWN
... it rose before them. The road ran gradually upward, a shallow sheet of running water covering it, but firm, hard roadway discernible nevertheless. Rachael stopped the car, and Ruddy came again and put his face close to hers, ...
— The Heart of Rachael • Kathleen Norris
... miles came down again into the valley, which one of our party called the "Valley of desolation." Taking the trail upon the left, we followed it until it led us to the mouth of a canon, through which ran an old Indian or game trail, which was hardly discernible, and had evidently been long abandoned. Retracing our steps for a quarter of a mile, and taking a cut-off through the sage brush, we followed another trail upon our right up through a steep, dry coulee. ...
— The Discovery of Yellowstone Park • Nathaniel Pitt Langford
... enthusiastic patriots of Florence, in his History, inscribed to one of the most amiable and estimable of the Popes, in his public despatches, in his private memoranda, the same obliquity of moral principle for which The Prince is so severely censured is more or less discernible. We doubt whether it would be possible to find, in all the many volumes of his compositions, a single expression indicating that dissimulation and treachery had ever struck him ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... of a steep hill Mary looked back to see if Chicopee were yet, visible, but nothing was to be seen except the spire of the Unitarian Meeting-House. About a quarter of a mile to the west, however, the graveyard was plainly discernible, and she looked until her eyes were dim with tears at the spot where she knew her parents and brother were lying. By this time Alice was asleep, and though the little arms which held her ached sadly, there was no complaint, but she wished Mr. Knight would speak to her once, if it were ...
— The English Orphans • Mary Jane Holmes
... of lightning, some having stated that they discerned the discharge to take place upward—that is, from the earth toward the cloud. I will not venture so far as to say whether or not the direction of the discharge is discernible; possibly the flash may sometimes be long enough to enable one to tell; but I have never so seen it, and have always looked upon the eye as a deceitful member—very. "The lightning flash itself never lasts more than 1/100000 of a second." It is, ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 455, September 20, 1884 • Various
... that they were digging a post-hole when the last discovery was made, and at that of the head they were digging the foundation of the house. The bones did not adhere together, though the shape of a man was plainly discernible. There were no ...
— Memories of Hawthorne • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop
... somewhere out in the storm. A wilder day would be hard to imagine; a hurricane was raging, the rain was whirled ahead of it like charges of shot. The mountains behind Kyak were invisible, and to seaward was nothing but a dimly discernible smother of foam and spray, for the crests of the breakers were snatched up and carried by the wind. The town was sodden; the streets were running mud. Stove-pipes were down, tents lay flattened in the mire, and the board houses were shaking ...
— The Iron Trail • Rex Beach
... passionate and bold element of the Sinfonia Eroica was distinctly discernible, especially in the first movement. The slow movement, on the contrary, contained reminiscences of my former musical mysticism. A kind of repeated interrogative exclamation of the minor third merging into the fifth connected in my mind this work (which I had finished with the utmost effort ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... this was added the fact that fires and lights were not permitted on account of the enemy aeroplanes. The next day, however, was fine and everyone quickly dried. Of the village scarcely a vestige remained. Here and there the foundation of a wall was discernible in the mud. French villages are usually well wooded, but of all the trees in Bullecourt there was only one standing, and that had died from the effects of shell fire. The Battalion marched off next day and entrained ...
— The Story of the "9th King's" in France • Enos Herbert Glynne Roberts
... amusement, he went to his room before the half-hour bell had rung, he began to think of it with some speculation on the sort of influence her marriage with Grandcourt would have on her, and on the probability that there would be some discernible shades of change in her manner since he saw her at Diplow, just as there had been since his first vision of ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... a couple of miles Hilario reined in and the others crowded close. Ahead, dimly discernible against the night sky, there appeared to be a thinning of the woods. After listening for a moment or two, Hilario dismounted and slipped away; the three riders sat their saddles with ears strained. Once more the myriad ...
— Rainbow's End • Rex Beach
... purpose than the world has generally been inclined to give him credit for. To read Montezuma's character rightly, at this distance of time, and amidst such a wild perplexity of facts, would be very difficult, and is not very important. But one thing, {180} I think, is discernible, and that is, that his manners were very gracious and graceful. I dwell upon this, because I conceive it was a characteristic of the race; and no one will estimate this characteristic lightly, who has observed how very rare, even in the centres of civilized ...
— South American Fights and Fighters - And Other Tales of Adventure • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... is already discernible a tendency to diarrhoea and dysentery. The men are living principally upon salt meat, and there is a lack of vegetables. I have been here since Sunday and have tasted fresh meat but once since that time. I am only one of the many. Of course ...
— The Johnstown Horror • James Herbert Walker
... of the whole. We acquire a lively and accurate impression of the general character—of the thoughts, and the manners, and the men of the age and the land. It is so also with legends, sparingly used, and of which the nature is discernible from fact by the most superficial gaze; we more sensibly feel that it was the Greeks who were engaged at Marathon when we read of the dream of Hippias or the apparition of Theseus. Finally, an historian of Greece will, almost without an effort, convey ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... formality in the proceedings so far, and there was less still in the supper-room. Bhme resumed his repast with appetite, and the rest of us sat down apparently at random, though an underlying method was discernible. As it worked out, Dollmann was at one end of the small table, with Davies on his right and Bhme on his left; Frau Dollmann at the other, with me on her right and von Brning on her left. The seventh personage, ...
— Riddle of the Sands • Erskine Childers
... Buddhism of the invaders tended to be a compound of Indian, Greek and Persian ideas in which Sun worship played a large part, for not only Indian myths, but Apollo and Helios and the Persian Mithra all entered into it. Persian influence in art is discernible as early as the architecture of Asoka: in doctrine it has something to do with such figures as Vairocana and Amitabha. Graeco-Roman influence also was powerful in art and through art affected religion. In Asoka's time likenesses of the Buddha were unknown and the adoration of images, if ...
— Hinduism And Buddhism, Volume II. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... stand nearer in the scale of evolution to our common ape-like ancestors than do the white people does not seem to be warranted by facts. Careful investigations by trained observers all over the world have shown that the various simian features discernible in the anatomy of modern man are found fairly evenly distributed amongst ...
— The Black Man's Place in South Africa • Peter Nielsen
... a few shades lighter than that of his gold-brown beard—a beard scrupulously groomed, trimmed to a nicety and by no means deforming the lower part of the face since the line of jaw and chin remained clearly discernible. ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... wickedness. He is called in one book the most notorious of profligates; in another, the brand plucked from the burning. Many excellent persons, whose moral character from boyhood to old age has been free from any stain discernible to their fellow-creatures, have, in their autobiographies and diaries, applied to themselves, and doubtless with sincerity, epithets as severe as could be applied to Titus Oates or Mrs Brownrigg. It is quite certain that Bunyan ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... where she had been confined for nearly twenty years; her deliverer Roger de Lauria, without whose resourcefulness and audacity it might have gone ill with Aragon; Popes and Palaso-logus—brilliant colour effects; the king of England and Saint Louis of France; in the background, dimly discernible, the colossal shades of Frederick and Innocent, looked in deadly embrace; and the whole congress of figures enlivened and interpenetrated as by some electric fluid—the personality of John of Procida. That the element of farce ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas
... to meet Mr. Germaine's wife, and had (evidently) accepted the invitation without reserve. What discoveries had taken place between the giving of the invitation and the giving of the dinner it was impossible to say. The one thing plainly discernible was, that in the interval the three wives had agreed in the resolution to leave their husbands to represent them at Mrs. Germaine's table; and, more amazing still, the husbands had so far approved of the grossly discourteous ...
— The Two Destinies • Wilkie Collins
... personal sin can be atoned for by vicarious suffering, that national guilt can be expiated and national punishment averted by animal sacrifices, or even by human sacrifices, is repugnant to rather than conformable with natural reason. There exists no discernible connection between the one and the other. We may suppose that eucharistic, penitential, and even deprecatory sacrifices may have originated in the light of nature and reason, but we are unable to account for the practice of piacular sacrifices for substitutional atonement, on the same principle. ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... Harvester, with feet planted firmly, and tightly folded arms, his head tipped slightly to one side, braced himself as he sent his keen gray eyes searching the crowd. Far away he selected his man. He was young, strong, criminally handsome, clean and alert; there was discernible anxiety on his face, and it touched the Harvester's soul that he was coming just as swiftly as he could force his way. As he passed the gates the Harvester reached ...
— The Harvester • Gene Stratton Porter
... ever accumulating strength. At any moment the faint and sickly sunshine in which poor exhausted Humanity was essaying a feeble twitter of hope as it plumed itself for a peaceful flight might be again obscured. To us of a remote posterity the momentary division of epochs seems hardly discernible. So rapidly did that fight of Demons which we call the Thirty Years' War tread on the heels of the forty years' struggle for Dutch Independence which had just been suspended that we are accustomed to think and speak of the Eighty Years' War as ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... and the low sands exceedingly dangerous, as at times it is difficult to discern them. A most wretched village, and a miserable lighthouse, represent this terror of the ancient Greek mariners. A few Indian figs and stunted olive trees are almost the only symptoms of vegetation discernible; and two fat priests, who were basking in the sun, upon the sand, ...
— Journal of a Visit to Constantinople and Some of the Greek Islands in the Spring and Summer of 1833 • John Auldjo
... inexplicable little shake of her head, which said a great many things; and then she and her aunt were left alone. Mrs. Rossitur drew her to her bosom, with a look so exceeding fond that its sadness was hardly discernible. It was mingled, however, with an expression ...
— Queechy, Volume II • Elizabeth Wetherell
... another criterion discernible by the touch of an experienced finger; and that is, the coat of the artery in inflammatory fevers, both those attended with strength of pulsation, and these with weak pulsation, feels harder, or more like a cord; for the coats of the arteries in these fevers are themselves inflamed, and are consequently ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. II - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... his watch. It was ten-thirty. After a wait of what seemed at least half an hour, he looked again. Ten minutes only had passed. No discernible movement had taken place in the room. Yet he felt perfectly, and very unpleasantly, certain that it was occupied—that something was proceeding within it which, had the blind not intervened, would have revealed the secret of the house. Of what it might be he could form no idea—but, ...
— The Crooked House • Brandon Fleming
... him at this absurd suggestion that any one could harbor a doubt of Sally's perfection. Her modesty, the tone of her voice called for some more concrete expression of his understanding than he could put into words. Her hand, dimly discernible in the dusk of the June stars, was invitingly near. He clasped and held it, warm and yielding. She drew it away in a moment but not rebukingly. The contact with her hand had been inexpressibly thrilling. Not since his prep school days had he held a girl's hand, and the brook and the stars ...
— Blacksheep! Blacksheep! • Meredith Nicholson
... artificial, and copious than the most perfect of the western languages; in its origin, the parent from which the older Greek, the Latin and the Teutonic tongues seem to branch out and develop themselves upon distinct and discernible principles. ...
— Nala and Damayanti and Other Poems • Henry Hart Milman
... wide and open corridor of a disorderly house. On such evenings as the pair came home without having had any success they used to wrangle together. The Rue Notre Dame de la Lorette stretched dark and deserted in front of them. Here and there the crawling shadow of a woman was discernible, for the Quarter was going home and going home late, and poor creatures, exasperated at a night of fruitless loitering, were unwilling to give up the chase and would still stand, disputing in hoarse voices with any strayed reveler they could catch at the corner ...
— Nana, The Miller's Daughter, Captain Burle, Death of Olivier Becaille • Emile Zola
... of adroit but hardly distinguishable figures, I found myself stumbling over the boulders of which the pier was constructed, and realized that a battered wagonette, called "the machine," was awaiting me. A long drive among masses of mountain followed. At last a gleam of waters was once again discernible. The road, rough and sandy, ran close to little breaking waves, and then, in the shadow of woods and overhanging rocks, numerous lights all of a sudden showed themselves. The machine with a lurch entered something in ...
— Memoirs of Life and Literature • W. H. Mallock
... a footman to walk behind them: and so got a pedestrian airing genteelly in that way. In other places, the obtrusive spirit of the brick boxes rode about, thinly disguised, in children's carriages, drawn by nursery-maids; or fluttered aloft, delicately discernible at angles of view, in the shape of a lace pocket-handkerchief or a fine-worked chemisette, drying modestly at home in retired corners of back gardens. Generally, however, the hostile influences of the large incomes and the small mingled together on the ...
— Hide and Seek • Wilkie Collins
... after having paid a most exorbitant sum for slight accommodation, I started from Arroyolos, which is a town or large village situated on very elevated ground, and discernible afar off. It can boast of the remains of a large ancient and seemingly Moorish castle, which stands on a hill on the left as you take the ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... between them. Faintly and fitfully the moon had shone through one of the long, narrow windows of the aisles, shedding its cold spectral light for a brief space, then passing into darkness. Heavy masses of clouds sailed slowly in the heavens, dimly discernible through the unpainted panes; the oppression of the atmosphere increasing as the night approached her zenith, and ever and anon a low, long peal of distant thunder, each succeeding one becoming longer and louder than the last, and heralded by the blue flash ...
— The Days of Bruce Vol 1 - A Story from Scottish History • Grace Aguilar
... G.F. very plainly avows his conviction that they were trees, which on a prodigious tall stem had short and slender branches, not discernible at a distance. Captain Cook, it is very evident, uses the language of banter, not quite consistent with either the dignity of his own character, or the respect due to even the mistaken ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 14 • Robert Kerr
... crest barely discernible; supraorbital notches even with, or posterior to, posterior notch of zygomatic plate; baculum with distinct keel on dorsal surface of tip which curves upward; pelage silky; ears long ...
— Genera and Subgenera of Chipmunks • John A. White
... difficult to say which are his own independent conceptions, and which the suggestions of Eastern poets. Where he has borrowed images or phrases, (as sometimes from the Koran,) they are woven, without any discernible seam, into the texture ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 105, July 1866 • Various
... should be such who never intend to visit England, upon pain of being ridiculous; for I do not remember to have heard of any one man that spoke Irish, who had not the accent upon his tongue easily discernible to ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Vol. VII - Historical and Political Tracts—Irish • Jonathan Swift
... to inquire what discernible effect the Catholic Revival and the Counter-Reformation had upon the manners and morals of the Italians as a nation. Much has been said about the contrast between intellectual refinement and almost savage license ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... us (vol. v., p. 726) that the water of the Caribbean sea is so transparent, that corals and fish are discernible at a depth of sixty fathoms. The ship seemed to float in the air, the navigator became giddy as his eye penetrated through the crystal flood, and beheld submarine gardens, or beds of shells, or gilded fishes gliding among tufts and ...
— American Institutions and Their Influence • Alexis de Tocqueville et al
... enough, its placid surface was churned up, as if from an explosion or some desperate conflict that had been lately waged. It had been tossed up and thrown down. What caused him to stare was the fact that no footprints were discernible—nothing except queer, wavering parallel streaks that led downward from the snowy turmoil to the level ground below. They resembled the tracks ...
— The Winds of Chance • Rex Beach
... young, not more than twenty-eight, with clean-shaven, pleasant, open face—a handsome face, marred only to the close observer by the wrinkles beginning to pucker around his eyes, and a slight, scarcely discernible puffiness in his skin—"Doc" Madison, gentleman crook and high-class, polished con-man, who had lifted his profession to an art, was still too young to be indelibly stamped ...
— The Miracle Man • Frank L. Packard
... which seemed to render such a support necessary. I was dumb, immovable, but far enough from a state of tranquility; agitation, joy, gratitude, ardent indefinite wishes, restrained by the fear of giving displeasure, which my unpractised heart too much dreaded, were sufficiently discernible. She neither appeared more tranquil, nor less intimidated than myself—uneasy at my present situation; confounded at having brought me there, beginning to tremble for the effects of a sign which she had made without reflecting on the consequences, neither giving ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... lightning were at work in the heavens in the direction of the adjacent continent: the air was full of wild, unnatural lucidity, as if the frequent flashes left a sort of twilight behind them; and objects were discernible at a distance of two or three leagues. We had been busy in the first watch, as the omens denoted easterly weather; the English bark was struggling along the troubled waters, already quite a league on ...
— Recollections of Europe • J. Fenimore Cooper
... is thirty good miles off, horrible dull grumble was heard from the southern quarter ("still better, if you put a staff in the ground, and set your ear to it"); and from the steeple-tops, there was dim cloudland of powder-smoke discernible in the horizon there. "At Liegnitz," which is twice the distance, "the earth sensibly shook," [Helden-Geschichte; and Jordan's Letter, infra.]—at least the air did, and the ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... nearly ceased; a cloudy, greyish horizon became visible, and the dim light spreading from a watery sky made objects dimly discernible out ...
— The Hidden Children • Robert W. Chambers
... be sure, was barely discernible, still it was sufficiently so for a detective to found on. His dress, too, was brown tweed, not grey; but of course dresses can be changed; and as to his manner, there could not be two ...
— Blue Lights - Hot Work in the Soudan • R.M. Ballantyne
... covered with exquisite carving at the sides, representing roses among thorns, the flowers having evidently at one time been centred with gems and which even now bore traces of gold. Round the lid there was some dim lettering which was scarcely discernible,—the lid itself was firmly closed and ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli
... looked; scanning the edge of the forest, that came down within a hundred yards of the shore— the strip of sand on which they had beached their boat trending along between the woods and the tide-water as far as the eye could trace it. A short distance off, however, a break was discernible in the line of the sand-strip—which they supposed must be either a little inlet of the sea itself, or the outflow of a stream. If the latter, then were they ...
— The Castaways • Captain Mayne Reid
... Paphian temple. I take no antiquarian interest in ruins, and care little about them, unless they are either striking in themselves, or else serve to mark some spot on which my fancy loves to dwell. I knew that the ruins of Paphos were scarcely, if at all, discernible, but there was a will and a longing more imperious than mere curiosity ...
— Eothen • A. W. Kinglake
... "snake rail" fence was already discernible in the lighter opening of the woods, not far from where he had halted. As he stood there in hesitation, the pretty figure and bright gown of Cressy McKinstry suddenly emerged from a more secluded trail that intersected his own at an acute angle a few rods ...
— Cressy • Bret Harte
... never forget. The starless night, all round the land lying enshrouded in impenetrable darkness, the low voice of the Montenegrin which rose with his excitement, but sank again immediately to a hoarse whisper, and on the barely discernible roof of the hut a black figure, with rifle ...
— The Land of the Black Mountain - The Adventures of Two Englishmen in Montenegro • Reginald Wyon
... are many peculiarities of action occasionally found, and the causes of such actions are not always discernible. In practice, I have been accustomed to find the peculiarities and weaknesses of each cell by trial, developing its strongest properties and avoiding its weaknesses, until, when the cell is finished, it has a definite and known character, and is fitted for certain uses and a certain ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 492, June 6, 1885 • Various
... disgusting manreuvre. Undulations of livid color flow over him as he lengthens and shortens;—while running his shape is but half apparent; it is only as he makes a half pause in doubling round and under the coat that the panic of his legs becomes discernible. When he is fully exposed they move with invisible rapidity,—like a vibration;—you can see only a sort of pink haze extending about him,—something to which you would no more dare advance your finger than to the vapory halo edging a circular saw in motion. Twice more I turn ...
— Two Years in the French West Indies • Lafcadio Hearn
... finished, leaned against them, on the floor. Several, in different stages of progress, stood upon easels. But all spoke the cruel bent of the artist's genius. In one corner a lay figure was extended on a couch, covered with a pall of black velvet. Through its folds, the form beneath was easily discernible; and one hand and forearm protruded from beneath it, at right angles to the rest of the frame. Lottchen could not help shuddering when he saw it. Although he overcame the feeling in a moment, he felt a great repugnance to seating himself ...
— The Portent & Other Stories • George MacDonald
... for the modern mind to understand Erasmus's positive importance: first that his influence was extensive rather than intensive, and therefore less historically discernible at definite points, and second, that his influence has ceased. He has done his work and will speak to the world no more. Like Saint Jerome, his revered model, and Voltaire, with whom he has been occasionally compared, 'he has his reward'. But like ...
— Erasmus and the Age of Reformation • Johan Huizinga
... among authors is discernible in the unconscionable way they misquote from the writings of others. I find whole passages in my works wrongly quoted, and it is only in my appendix, which is absolutely lucid, that an exception is made. The misquotation is frequently due to carelessness, ...
— Essays of Schopenhauer • Arthur Schopenhauer
... at once yields for our apprehension two factors, which I will name, the 'discerned' and the 'discernible.' The discerned is comprised of those elements of the general fact which are discriminated with their own individual peculiarities. It is the field directly perceived. But the entities of this field have relations ...
— The Concept of Nature - The Tarner Lectures Delivered in Trinity College, November 1919 • Alfred North Whitehead
... the deepest things! The poem is full of the elements of the finest mystical metaphysics, and yet there is no effort in their expression. The tendency to find God beyond, rather than in our daily human conditions, is discernible; ...
— England's Antiphon • George MacDonald
... off at the faint outlines which one moment seemed discernible in the mist and the next seemed but a phantom of the imagination, as the truth which is to stand out bold and incontestable may at first suggest itself so faintly through the dream as to be called a phantom of the ...
— The Visioning • Susan Glaspell
... spindle was used by an alleged "spectre" to torture a "sufferer," the said iron spindle not being discernible by the by-standers until it became visible by being snatched by the sufferer from the spectre's hand, was there any self-delusion there? Was it not merely wicked ...
— Dulcibel - A Tale of Old Salem • Henry Peterson
... fidgety, Steve turned to lean over the stern and take hold of the rope which held the beluga. The great fish-like creature yielded to the drag and came close up, but its head was hardly discernible, and it looked so weird and strange that the boy loosed his hold with a shudder, expecting that it would float away. But it remained stationary for a few moments, and then, urged by the current, rubbed heavily against the boat's side, imperceptibly altering ...
— Steve Young • George Manville Fenn
... largest head that the Indian youth, in all his wilderness life, had ever seen—and it occurred to him that if this head could be preserved and taken back to civilization it would be worth a hundred dollars or more. That the old bull had put up a magnificent fight was easily discernible. Fifty feet away were the bones of a wolf, and almost under the skeleton of the moose were those of another. The heads of both still remained, and Wabi, after taking their scalps, hurried ...
— The Wolf Hunters - A Tale of Adventure in the Wilderness • James Oliver Curwood
... suspicions of a while ago, and accordingly drew Clarissa among some bushes, and, stick in hand, awaited the approach of the shadow which he was sure still hung upon their trail. Distant objects were dimly discernible, and Markham had almost decided that he had been mistaken when the crackling of a twig at no great distance advised him that in the shadow of the hedge someone was approaching. He remained quiet until a man slowly emerged from the shadows, when he ...
— Madcap • George Gibbs
... be like the attempt to destroy (if it were in our competence to destroy) the expansive force of fixed air in nitre, or the power of steam, or of electricity, or of magnetism. These energies always existed in Nature, and they were always discernible. They seemed, some of them unserviceable, some noxious, some no better than a sport to children,—until contemplative ability, combining with practic skill, tamed their wild nature, subdued them to use, and rendered them at once the most powerful ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. III. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... been extinguished, it seemed less dark out of doors, and Sanine's figure was clearly discernible, his features appearing blueish in the moonlight. He stood in the ...
— Sanine • Michael Artzibashef
... along Prairie Avenue. This was a sharply cold night, and very dark, but equally still. It was between twelve and one o'clock—nearer one than twelve—as he climbed the hill on his homeward way, and, instead of taking the short cut, turned northward and struck for the gloomy mass of sheds dimly discernible some forty yards from the crest. He had heard other officers speak of the fact that Mr. Hayne's lights were burning until long after midnight, and that, dropping in there, they had found him seated at his desk with a green shade over ...
— The Deserter • Charles King
... nerves of the prejudiced, if there should be such among our readers, they will doubtless deem it quite intolerable to be introduced, not as hitherto to a family in whose faces the lineaments and the complexion of the white man are discernible, relieving the ebon hue, but to a household of genuine unadulterated negroes. We cordially accepted an invitation to breakfast with Mr. London Bourne. If the reader's horror of amalgamation does not allow him to join us at the table, perhaps he will consent to retire ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... established upon an immense multitude of direct observations, that every living thing is evolved from a particle of matter in which no trace of the distinctive characters of the adult form of that living thing is discernible. This particle is termed a germ. Harvey [Footnote: Execitationes de Generatione. Ex. 62, "Ovum esse primordium commune omnibus ...
— Darwiniana • Thomas Henry Huxley
... Parliament in person, dressed in white satin, decorated with gold and jewels, wearing the Order of the Garter and a rich diadem and necklace of diamonds. She bore the function remarkably well, although one evening paper said that "Her emotion was plainly discernible in the rapid heaving of her bosom, and the brilliancy of her diamond stomacher, which sparkled out occasionally from the dark recess in which the throne was placed, like the sun on the swell of the smooth ocean, as the billows rise and fall"! On the 19th July ...
— Gossip in the First Decade of Victoria's Reign • John Ashton
... impulse, veered slowly around and a dark object loomed up before him. A gentle eddy carried the boat further in shore, until at last it was completely embayed under the lee of a rocky point now faintly discernible through the fog. He looked around him in the vain hope of recognizing some familiar headland. The tops of the high hills which rose on either side were hidden in the fog. As the boat swung around, he succeeded in fastening a line to the rocks, and ...
— Legends and Tales • Bret Harte
... of the man prevailed over the interest of the pope; and he sharpened those weapons which were soon pointed against the Roman church. [111] He had been the friend of the most eminent scholars of the age: he became their patron; and such was the humility of his manners, that the change was scarcely discernible either to them or to himself. If he pressed the acceptance of a liberal gift, it was not as the measure of desert, but as the proof of benevolence; and when modest merit declined his bounty, "Accept it," ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon
... him in the previous dialogues, but nowhere has the spirit of modern inductive philosophy been more happily indicated than in the words of the Statesman:—'If you think more about things, and less about words, you will be richer in wisdom as you grow older.' A similar spirit is discernible in the remarkable expressions, 'the long and difficult language of facts;' and 'the interrogation of every nature, in order to obtain the particular contribution of each to the store of knowledge.' Who has described ...
— Statesman • Plato
... Horn, and was finally wrecked on the north Pacific coast. At the time of the Columbian Exposition, a large passenger-carrying whaleback, the "Christopher Columbus," was built, which still plies on Lake Michigan, though there is nothing discernible in the way of practical advantage in this design for passenger vessels. For cargo carrying there would seem to be much in the claims of their inventor, Alexander McDougall, for their superior capacity and stability, yet they have not been generally adopted. The largest whaleback now on the ...
— American Merchant Ships and Sailors • Willis J. Abbot
... guided by the Delaware, whose habits best fitted him to take the lead. Still it was no easy matter to wade amid the roaring element at that hour, and retain a clear recollection of the localities. By the time they believed themselves to be in the centre of the stream, the two shores were discernible merely by masses of obscurity denser than common, the outlines against the clouds being barely distinguishable by the ragged tops of the trees. Once or twice the wanderers altered their course, in consequence of unexpectedly stepping into deep water; for they knew that the boat had lodged ...
— The Pathfinder - The Inland Sea • James Fenimore Cooper
... two hours later a vague semicircular line that curves outward is discernible about eight miles off. As the schooner approaches it becomes more distinct. It is a mountain, or at all events very high ground, and from its summit ...
— Facing the Flag • Jules Verne
... deserted. The churches of Ani were built with lava, and crosses of black lava were let in very curiously into the red lava. With the exception of the churches and the king's palace, the city is level with the ground, the foundations of the houses being alone discernible. These churches were covered with Armenian ...
— The Life of Gordon, Volume I • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... in July 2007, the government established the "National Coordinating Committee to Combat and Prevent Trafficking in Persons," which improved inter-governmental coordination on anti-trafficking initiatives; Egypt made no discernible efforts to punish trafficking crimes in 2007 and the Egyptian penal code does not prohibit all forms of trafficking; Egypt did not increase its services to trafficking victims during the ...
— The 2008 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... that anthracite offers any discernible trace of organization. Preparations made from fragments of Sable and Lamore coal could not be made sufficiently thin to be transparent; the mass remained very opaque, and the clearest parts exhibited merely amorphous, irregular granulations. ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 481, March 21, 1885 • Various
... the northern mouth of the watercourse, so Richborough protected the south, and here traces of a chapel in the form of a cross are plainly discernible amongst ruins known to be of Roman workmanship. The old church at Lyminge in the same county is thus described by Canon Jenkyns, in his "History of Lyminge":—"The Roman foundations discoverable at the south-east ...
— Our Homeland Churches and How to Study Them • Sidney Heath
... clouds came again overhead, and it grew dark very fast." "Nor was the darkness of the night less uncommon and terrifying than that of the day; notwithstanding there was almost a full moon, no object was discernible but by the help of some artificial light, which, when seen from the neighboring houses and other places at a distance, appeared through a kind of Egyptian darkness which seemed almost impervious to the rays."(487) Said an eye-witness ...
— The Great Controversy Between Christ and Satan • Ellen G. White
... the village in the gathering gloom and was soon out on the heather. Away on the left, but scarcely discernible, was Swart Houe Cross, on Egton Low Moor, and straight in front lay the Skelder Inn. A light gleamed from one of the lower windows, and by it I guided my steps, being determined to partake of tea before turning ...
— Yorkshire Painted And Described • Gordon Home
... flaming suns that make up our galaxy. To the contemporaries of Copernicus the new theory seemed to strike at the very foundations of Christian theology. In a universe where so much had been made without discernible reference to Man, what became of that elaborate scheme of salvation which seemed to rest upon the assumption that the career of Humanity was the sole object of God's creative forethought and fostering care? When we bear this in mind, we see how natural and inevitable it was that the ...
— The Destiny of Man - Viewed in the Light of His Origin • John Fiske
... Robertson there was a strange peace. Being human, he naturally resented the discernible thoughts in the minds of his comrades of many a hard-fought battle. But a calmness made him forgetful of all this for he knew that at last, in a moment of the supreme test, he had conquered that which had been his master throughout all of his life—his temper. All the slurs ...
— The Upward Path - A Reader For Colored Children • Various
... they appear to the average intellect. The fundamental and innate spiritual feelings of man's better nature have been so covered over by the energy of this brush that, for the most part, they are only rarely and intermittently discernible. ...
— Heart and Soul • Victor Mapes (AKA Maveric Post)
... indescribable in its filthiness. The only household furniture discernible (for the contractor and his family lived in the rooms), were a bedstead and a child's crib in one of the two dark, so-called bedrooms. Bedding and overcoats were piled up together. The floors were four inches deep with dirt and cotton battings and scraps ...
— White Slaves • Louis A Banks
... comparison with the enumeration of intellectual causes stated in the previous lecture, we find only the adumbration of some of the forms there named. The attack from physical science, so prevalent since the era of modern discovery, is barely discernible in the passing remarks on the Mosaic cosmogony in Celsus and Julian.(246) The attack from criticism is seen in a trifling form in Celsus; in a superior manner in the perception which Porphyry exhibits ...
— History of Free Thought in Reference to The Christian Religion • Adam Storey Farrar
... barely discernible after long examination, arose a tall, stiff figure, a bald, shining head, two dark, deep-sunk eyes, a hooked nose, and a pair of immense streaming whiskers. That was the Hon. Thomas Elgin, ...
— The Clique of Gold • Emile Gaboriau
... lately published a species under the name of P. Ellisii, in which the gelatinous element is scarcely discernible till the plant is moistened. There are two septa in this species, and another species or form has lately been received from Mr. Ellis which has much shorter pedicels, and resembles more closely Puccinia, from which it is chiefly ...
— Fungi: Their Nature and Uses • Mordecai Cubitt Cooke
... woolen wheel, being taken very strangely out of an house at Salem Village, was used by a spectre as an instrument of torture to a sufferer, not being discernible to the standers by until it was by the said sufferer snatched out of the spectre's hand, and then it did immediately appear to the persons present to be really ...
— My Native Land • James Cox
... furnished chamber overlooking the street a dim light was burning; so dimly, in fact, that the emaciated form of Mr. Stevens was scarcely discernible amidst the pillows and covering of the bed on which he was lying. Above him a brass head of curious workmanship held in its clenched teeth the canopy that overshadowed the bed; and as the light occasionally flickered and brightened, ...
— The Garies and Their Friends • Frank J. Webb
... his temperament that made his playfulness delicious. Setchell was the mental descendant of Burton, as Burton was of Reeve and as Reeve was of Liston. Actors illustrate a kind of heredity. Each species is distinct and discernible. Lester Wallack maintained the lineage of Charles Kemble, William Lewis, Elliston, and Mountfort—a line in which John Drew has gained auspicious distinction. John Gilbert's artistic ancestry could be traced back through Farren ...
— Shadows of the Stage • William Winter
... before me now, and even at this day, when I scan again the plan of march, I do not see how it could be improved. I admit that there are others who know much more of the art of war than I, and to them defects in the system may be at once discernible. But at the time, these orders gave us all a most exalted opinion of our general's ability, and I remembered with a smile the gloomy prophecies of Colonel Washington. Surely, against such a force, so ably handled, no army the ...
— A Soldier of Virginia • Burton Egbert Stevenson
... in 1650, of respectable parents, and was page of honor to the Duke of York, afterwards James II. While a mere boy, his bent of mind was discernible, and he solicited and obtained from the duke an ensign's commission, and rapidly passed through the military grades of lieutenant, captain, major, and colonel. During the infamous alliance between Louis XIV. and Charles ...
— A Modern History, From the Time of Luther to the Fall of Napoleon - For the Use of Schools and Colleges • John Lord
... the essential substances of which the copy was made up. But this plastic entity (sattva) which is so predominant in thought is at its lowest limit of subordination in matter. Similarly mass is not noticed in thought, but some such notions as are associated with mass may be discernible in ...
— A History of Indian Philosophy, Vol. 1 • Surendranath Dasgupta
... people of New England, abandoning the study of the occult sciences, turned their attention to the more profitable hocus pocus of trade, and soon became expert in the legerdemain art of turning a penny. Still, however, a tinge of the old leaven is discernible, even unto this day, in their characters; witches occasionally start up among them in different disguises, as physicians, civilians and divines. The people at large show a keenness, a cleverness and a profundity of wisdom, that savors strongly of witchcraft; ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... by placing them a little way up the stream, we were able to conduct the water so as to fall over a rock directly into the casks. While the boys were filling them, I climbed to a height at the mouth of the harbour. There the masts of the French ship were plainly discernible. This did not give me much concern, but directly afterwards I perceived, through my glass, a party of men coming along the ...
— Peter Biddulph - The Story of an Australian Settler • W.H.G. Kingston
... lying is falsification entirely disproportionate to any discernible end in view, engaged in by a person who, at the time of observation, cannot definitely be declared insane, feebleminded, or epileptic. Such lying rarely, if ever, centers about a single event; although exhibited in very occasional cases for a short time, it manifests itself most frequently ...
— Pathology of Lying, Etc. • William and Mary Healy
... and white face were discernible against the direct flare of an arc light. He seemed a part of the bumpers of two cars. Bart flared a match once, ...
— Bart Stirling's Road to Success - Or; The Young Express Agent • Allen Chapman
... in the air;... but spiritually were they created and made according" to the word of God. In this second or "natural" creation all things were clothed upon by earthly element, or in other words, the spiritual was materialized so that it became discernible to the natural senses. The spiritual and the natural are, therefore, but different states of the same forms of life. In the natural world there are men, women, beasts of the field, fowls of the air, and ...
— Added Upon - A Story • Nephi Anderson
... at him at too great a range, and then both, realizing that they were dropping altitude too quickly and that soon Joe would be on their level, turned away and sought a new updraft. As they banked, their faces were clearly discernible. One raised a ...
— Frigid Fracas • Dallas McCord Reynolds
... in spirit. The sages of old veiled indeed the highest truths in allegorical forms, in symbols, and finally in a beautiful and richly-colored mythos, but they brought them near to the multitude shrouded it is true but still discernible." ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... her marriages in her teens to her tomb in Cheshire, whither he made a pilgrimage and whence returned in triumph with a picture of her statue, and the news that he was convinced she was a dark lady by traces of paint still discernible. ...
— Dark Lady of the Sonnets • George Bernard Shaw
... leak, which by increasing upon you may grow to present danger, then you shall shoot off two pieces of ordnance, the one a good while after the other, and hang out two lights on the main shrouds, the one a man's height over the other, so as they may be discernible. ...
— Fighting Instructions, 1530-1816 - Publications Of The Navy Records Society Vol. XXIX. • Julian S. Corbett
... the religious and educational establishments of American citizens in Turkey has of late called for a more than usual share of attention. A tendency to curtail the toleration which has so beneficially prevailed is discernible and has called forth the earnest remonstrance of this Government. Harassing regulations in regard to schools and churches have been attempted in certain localities, but not without due protest and the assertion of the inherent ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... and hilly, her new horse and vehicle in keeping with the rudeness of the route—by far the most difficult of her whole journey. The rare wagon tracks that indicated her road were often scarcely discernible; at times they led her through openings in the half-cleared woods, skirted suspicious morasses, painfully climbed the smooth, domelike hills, or wound along perilous slopes at a dangerous angle. Twice she had to alight and cling to the sliding wheels on one of those treacherous inclines, ...
— Frontier Stories • Bret Harte
... a very regular and artificial manner, which seem like so many instruments in the hand of nature that, being hid as it were behind the scenes, have a secret operation in producing those appearances which are seen on the theatre of the world, being themselves discernible only to the curious eye of the philosopher. But, since one idea cannot be the cause of another, to what purpose is that connexion? And, since those instruments, being barely inefficacious perceptions in the mind, are not ...
— A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge • George Berkeley
... complexion, indeed, but only to put on a new beauty in the contrast between her olive skin and her silvering or silver hair. This contrast may almost be called the characteristic feature of the specially American type, which is much more clearly discernible in middle-aged and old than ...
— America To-day, Observations and Reflections • William Archer
... his pocket, took out a key, and opened the door. It creaked unpleasantly and breathed out cold, dampness, and fear. A long dark passage became discernible. Kirsha pressed a spot near the door. The dark passage became lit up as though by electric light, but the lights themselves ...
— The Created Legend • Feodor Sologub
... the daylight, the shore, very narrow but sufficient for escape. The distant quays, Paris, that gulf in which one so easily hides oneself, the broad horizon, liberty. On the right, down stream, the bridge of Jena was discernible, on the left, upstream, the bridge of the Invalides; the place would have been a propitious one in which to await the night and to escape. It was one of the most solitary points in Paris; the shore which faces the Grand-Caillou. Flies were entering ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... in young apothecia, but in mature apothecia they are usually more or less gelatinized and coherent. In some of the species, they become so gelatinized that they form a homogeneous mass about the asci, in which the individual paraphyses are no longer discernible. When distinct, the paraphyses are sometimes branched, most commonly toward their ...
— Ohio Biological Survey, Bull. 10, Vol. 11, No. 6 - The Ascomycetes of Ohio IV and V • Bruce Fink and Leafy J. Corrington
... were there paragraphs in all the society papers—here Barry's hand was discernible—but there were even portraits of the rising young author and his wife, taken together in the garden of their whitewashed villa outside Naples; and it was decided, finally, that Mrs. Rose's hasty departure had been, after all, a ...
— The Making of a Soul • Kathlyn Rhodes
... minute details of past facts known only to yourself, why should he not foresee the events to be produced by existing causes? The world of ideas is cut out, so to speak, on the pattern of the physical world; the same phenomena should be discernible in both, allowing for the difference of the medium. As, for instance, a corporeal body actually projects an image upon the atmosphere—a spectral double detected and recorded by the daguerreotype; so also ideas, having a real and effective ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... the sitter, but the painter, is master here. Nay, though I hate to say it, there is in the portrayal of the Duke's attitude and expression a hint of something like mockery—unintentional, I am sure, but to a sensitive eye discernible. And—but it is clumsy of me to be reminding you of the very picture I ...
— Zuleika Dobson - or, An Oxford Love Story • Max Beerbohm
... kept his promise, we fall to pitying Shakespeare, the bestower of immortality. In the great temple raised by his genius to his own undying glory, one narrow door opens into a secret, silent crypt, where his image, blurred and indistinct, is hardly discernible through the gloomy atmosphere, heavy and dim as if with sighs and tears. Here is no clew, no issue, and we return to the shrine filled with light and life and warmth and melody; with knowledge and love of man, and worship of God and nature. ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... unique. The performer is very careful not to reveal himself in the mean time; yet there is a conscious air about the strain that impresses one with the idea that his presence is understood and his attention courted. A tone of pride and glee, and, occasionally, of bantering jocoseness, is discernible. I believe it is only rarely, and when he is sure of his audience, that he displays his parts in this manner. You are to look for him, not in tall trees or deep forests, but in low, dense shrubbery about wet places, where there are ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 91, May, 1865 • Various
... other sort it was well understood that Will Cummins was a good shot, and would fight to a finish. He was a man of medium height, possessed of clear gray eyes and an open countenance. The outlines of a six-shooter were clearly discernible under his duster. ...
— Forty-one Thieves - A Tale of California • Angelo Hall
... upon the attention of any one present (chanting them aloud), and would bring down the volume of Burns, and open it, in order that the page might be impressed on the hearer's memory. Sometimes—in a way scarcely discernible—he would kiss the volume; as he would also a book by Chapman or Sir Philip Sidney, or any other which he particularly valued. I have seen him read out a passage from the Holy Dying and the Urn Burial, and express in the same way ...
— Charles Lamb • Barry Cornwall
... of the Spirit more distinctly manifest itself than in the fine discernment of revealed truth which it imparts. As in service, the contrast between working in the power of the Spirit and in the energy of the flesh is easily discernible, even more clearly in knowledge and teaching is the contrast between the tuition of learning and the intuition of the Spirit. While we should not undervalue the former, it is striking to note how the Bible puts the weightier emphasis on the latter; so ...
— The Ministry of the Spirit • A. J. Gordon
... her company. She sees nothing shallow or specious in his dazzling attainments; they rekindle the old ambitions in her that Bonaventure lighted; and although Mr. Tarbox's modest loveliness is not visible, yet a certain fundamental rectitude, discernible behind all his nebulous gaudiness, confirms her liking. Then, too, he has earned her gratitude. She has inherited not only her father's small fortune, but his thrift as well. She can see the sagacity of Mr. Tarbox's advice in pecuniary ...
— Bonaventure - A Prose Pastoral of Acadian Louisiana • George Washington Cable
... looking at the mast sticking out of water more than at the ground at his feet when suddenly Jack noticed that he was right on the edge of a hole just discernible in ...
— The Hilltop Boys on Lost Island • Cyril Burleigh
... purpose. The most vivid of finite objects, the dramatic episodes of Dutch history, the brilliant personalities which had found their parts to play in them, that golden art, surrounding one with an ideal world, beyond which the real world was discernible indeed, but etherealised by the medium through which it came to one; all this, for most men so powerful a link to existence, only set him on the thought of escape—into a formless and nameless infinite world, evenly grey.... Actually proud, at times, of his curious, well-reasoned nihilism, ...
— Prose Fancies (Second Series) • Richard Le Gallienne
... beside the canoe, and a face appeared—a monstrous, complacent face, such as Bocklin would love—a face inhuman in possessing the quality of supreme contentment. Framed in the brown waters, the head of the great, grinning catfish rose, and slowly sank, leaving outlines discernible in ripples and bubbles with almost Cheshire persistency. One of my Indians, passing in his dugout, smiled at my peering down after ...
— Edge of the Jungle • William Beebe
... at it, for Osborne had risen suddenly. Slowly it moved. It was gradually gliding along the floor, with a sound like paper being pushed along a carpet. Whence it came, where it began and where it ended, we could not see, for the shadow it was in was very deep. Nor was its colour in the least discernible. ...
— The Four Faces - A Mystery • William le Queux
... looked! She was either a Spaniard or an Indian, and rode astride. A bunch of red berries adorned her heavy black hair which fell in masses about her shoulders, accentuating the curve of her throat and well-formed, clear-cut features just discernible in the waning light as she sat motionless and erect on her horse, gazing at him in silence and evidently as much surprised as he was by their sudden encounter. Then with a smile and a nod of the head by way of acknowledgment, ...
— When Dreams Come True • Ritter Brown
... open for a handy weapon with which to jab Cappy through that same old rift in his armor—his passion for a large profit through an adroit and ingenious deal in a commodity where even a very modest profit was not discernible to ordinary mortals. ...
— Cappy Ricks Retires • Peter B. Kyne
... formed in America for the same object. These thoughts almost overpowered me. My mind was overwhelmed by the thought, that I had been providentially directed to this house; the finger of Providence was beginning to be discernible, and that the day-star of ...
— Autographs for Freedom, Volume 2 (of 2) (1854) • Various
... enthusiastic imagination which threw a magnificence over his whole course of thought. Herrera intimates that he had a talent for poetry, and some slight traces of it are on record in the book of prophecies which he presented to the Catholic sovereigns. But his poetical temperament is discernible throughout all his writings and in all his actions. It spread a golden and glorious world around him, and tinged every thing with its own gorgeous colors. It betrayed him into visionary speculations, which subjected him to the sneers and cavilings of men of cooler and safer but more ...
— The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus (Vol. II) • Washington Irving
... drew Abdul with a blooming handmaiden. One of his feet is resting on her lap, and she is drying the ankle with a saffron robe, of which the greater part is fallen in doing it. That she is a bondmaid is discernible, not only by her occupation, but by her humility and patience, by her loose and flowing brown hair, and by her eyes expressing the timidity at once of servitude and of fondness. The countenance was taken from fancy, and was the loveliest I could imagine: of the figure I had some idea, having seen ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor
... the door slammed in his face and began a parley that continued for several minutes with rising heat on the part of the caretaker. The man's rage at being unable to close the door was not without its humor; but Dan now saw, beyond the German's broad shoulders, a figure lurking within, faintly discernible from the electric lamps in a bronze sconce on ...
— A Hoosier Chronicle • Meredith Nicholson
... infinitesimal creature, upon whom some score of others, as minute as he, are gazing in open-mouthed admiration, is a famous philosopher, expounding to a select audience their capacity for the Infinite. That scarce discernible pufflet of smoke and dust is a revolution. That speck there is a reformer, just arranging the lever with which he is to move the world. And lo, there creeps forward the shadow of a skeleton that blows one breath between its grinning ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... been difficult, indeed, to discover that the dark object just discernible upon the edge of the blackened mass of smoking cinders really was a human being, so shapeless was the form, so strangely was it crouched down before the spot where the pile had been consumed. From time to time only an upward-flung ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 347, September, 1844 • Various
... she said, with a pout and a blush—her blushes were discernible now, for the last vestige of the scalding had gone—"but I mean to wear a veil from this on. I had one in ...
— The Wreck of the Titan - or, Futility • Morgan Robertson
... looked like the smoke of some conflagration, and such we all believed was the case, as the Turkish soldiery had been employed in ravaging the country, and carrying away the inhabitants. An encampment of tents lay near, close to the castle, and large bodies of soldiers were easily discernible crowding on the batteries as we approached. We were about five hundred yards distant from the castle. The breadth of the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 13, No. 356, Saturday, February 14, 1829 • Various
... darted forward, and is kneeling over something that even now is only barely discernible to the others as they come nearer to it. It looks like a bundle of clothes, but, as they stoop over it, they, too, can see that it is in reality a human body, and ...
— The Haunted Chamber - A Novel • "The Duchess"
... the principal features of the Portuguese and Spanish discoveries in Papuas and New Guinea, up to the year 1545, are clearly discernible.* ...
— The First Discovery of Australia and New Guinea • George Collingridge
... "As found in suspension in a freshly nitrified solution, it consists largely of nearly spherical corpuscles, varying extremely in size. The largest of these corpuscles barely reaches a diameter of 1/1000th of a millimeter; and some are so minute as to be hardly discernible in photographs, although shown there with a surface one million times greater than their own. The larger ones are frequently not strictly circular. These forms are universally present in nitrifying cultures. The larger organisms are sometimes seen ...
— Manures and the principles of manuring • Charles Morton Aikman
... if any of the vessel's crew had seen our boat, as it was scarcely daylight and such a small object lying close to the water would not be readily discernible. I had thought, a few hours before, that my strength was entirely exhausted, but the sight of the vessel called out a reserve sufficient for the ...
— Out of the Fog • C. K. Ober
... distinct currents discernible in this dramatic revelation of progress from spiritual chaos to spiritual order— for to order the play must be said to lead, and progress is implied in its onward movement, if there be anything at all ...
— Plays by August Strindberg, Second series • August Strindberg
... Thus, when two men did witness that our Lord affirmed, he "could demolish the Temple, and rear it again in three days"—although he did, indeed, speak words to that purpose, meaning them in a figurative sense, discernible enough to those who would candidly have minded his drift and way of speaking:—yet they who crudely alleged them against him are called false witnesses. "At last," saith the Gospel, "came two false witnesses, and said, This fellow said, I am able to ...
— The World's Best Orations, Vol. 1 (of 10) • Various
... dungeon where she had been confined for nearly twenty years; her deliverer Roger de Lauria, without whose resourcefulness and audacity it might have gone ill with Aragon; Popes and Palaso-logus—brilliant colour effects; the king of England and Saint Louis of France; in the background, dimly discernible, the colossal shades of Frederick and Innocent, looked in deadly embrace; and the whole congress of figures enlivened and interpenetrated as by some electric fluid—the personality of John of Procida. That the element of farce might not be lacking, Fate contrived ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas
... reply. Wheeling about, he was returning to the road when an idea seemed to come to him, for, altering direction, he pulled on his bridle, and turned his horse into the garden, now one dense overgrowth. Guiding him along one of the scarcely discernible paths, he checked him at a garden seat, and leaning in his saddle plucked half a dozen sprays of honeysuckle from the vine which surmounted it. He touched them to his lips, and gave his horse the spur. He held the sprays in his hand as he rode, occasionally raising ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford
... in 1578, the third and most complete was published, in twelve volumes, in 1615. That he frequently shows too much credulity, and betrays a want of taste, must be admitted; but his works are allowed to breathe a spirit of piety; his candor, and desire to be accurate, are discernible in every part of his writings; and his learning, for the age in which he lived, was considerable. In Ribadeneira the line ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... no discernible reason why the little town should have been called Tyre, and yet its name was as characteristically American as its architecture. It had the usual main street lined with low brick or wooden stores—a street which ...
— Other Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland
... from the mountain, and at one and a half miles came down again into the valley, which one of our party called the "Valley of desolation." Taking the trail upon the left, we followed it until it led us to the mouth of a canon, through which ran an old Indian or game trail, which was hardly discernible, and had evidently been long abandoned. Retracing our steps for a quarter of a mile, and taking a cut-off through the sage brush, we followed another trail upon our right up through a steep, dry coulee. From the head of the coulee we went through fallen timber ...
— The Discovery of Yellowstone Park • Nathaniel Pitt Langford
... her soreness, if not of the effort of her conscience, did something quite visible to my eyes, and also quite unprecedented, for the beauty of her face. She got a real lift from it—such a momentary discernible sublimity that I recollect coming out on the spot with a queer crude amused "Do you know I believe I ...
— The Beldonald Holbein • Henry James
... the dark abysm of things gone by, many places that seemed at first indistinct, grow clearer; but many more must remain impenetrable. Upon the whole, however, I am surprised to find how much is still discernible. Nearly a score of years ago I published, in the shape of a formal biography of Hawthorne and his wife, the consecutive facts of their lives, and numerous passages from their journals and correspondence. My aim is different now; I wish to indite an informal ...
— Hawthorne and His Circle • Julian Hawthorne
... ineradicable defects,' said Knight, there being a faint ghastliness discernible in his laugh. 'They are much worse in a lady's eye than being thought ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy
... that view is entirely obliterated by a brace of shelves built across the corresponding window and brilliantly stacked with ribbons of a score of colors and as many widths. A considerable flow of daylight thus diverted, The Convenience Merchandise Corner, even of early afternoon, fades out into half-discernible corners; a rear-wall display of overalls and striped denim coats crowded back into indefinitude, the haberdashery counter, with a giant gilt shirt-stud suspended above, hardly ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... mannerism of his age to a more genuine tragic style. When we compare it with the Phaedra of Pradon, which was so well received by his contemporaries for no other reason than because no trace whatever of antiquity was discernible in it, but every thing reduced to the scale of a modern miniature portrait for a toilette, we must entertain a higher admiration of the poet who had so strong a feeling for the excellence of the ancient ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... the hillside made them a compact mass of invincible strength. There were probably about three thousand men, all united and carried away by the same storm of indignation. The strange details of the scene were not discernible amidst the shadows cast over the highway by the lofty slopes. At five or six feet from the brushwood, however, where Miette and Silvere were sheltered, the left-hand embankment gave place to a little ...
— The Fortune of the Rougons • Emile Zola
... exactly followed by the airy figure. We then collected together, and stood as close to one another as possible, when each could see three shadows in the disc; his own, as distinctly as before, while those of his two companions were but faintly discernible."[7] ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, No. 382, October 1847 • Various
... in pleasure. Men have been said to be sincere in their pleasures; but this is only that the taste and habits of men are more easily discernible in pleasure than in business. The want of truth is as great a hindrance to the one as to the other. Indeed, there is so much insincerity and formality in the pleasurable department of human life, especially in social pleasures, that ...
— Friends in Council (First Series) • Sir Arthur Helps
... food for her husband, that she may attend to her child. They are cleanly, hospitable, and generous, and passionately fond of their children. They seldom talk above a whisper among themselves, and however intoxicated—which they sometimes become—never quarrel; nay, more, an angry look is never discernible. They use tobacco; not chewing it, however, but simply keeping it between the lips, for the purpose of appeasing hunger and preserving their teeth. They live towards the head-waters of the Essequibo. On the whole, a more orderly and peaceably-disposed people can scarcely ...
— The Western World - Picturesque Sketches of Nature and Natural History in North - and South America • W.H.G. Kingston
... offers every convenience for the careening of vessels. The surveyor thought it in every way a superior harbour. "Neither," he writes, "will so many die there as there daily doe in Nombre de Dios." By the middle of the seventeenth century the ruins of the old town were barely discernible; but all traces of them have long since disappeared. Dampier (writing of the year 1682) says that: "I have lain ashore in the place where that City stood; but it is all overgrown with Wood; so as toe ...
— On the Spanish Main - Or, Some English forays on the Isthmus of Darien. • John Masefield
... romance, and during the slow and colourless days he had to sit and behold the mournful departure of his Well-Beloved from the form he had lately cherished, till she had almost vanished away. The exact moment of her complete withdrawal Pierston knew not, but not many lines of her were longer discernible in Marcia's remembered contours, nor many sounds of her in Marcia's recalled accents. Their acquaintance, though so fervid, had been too ...
— The Well-Beloved • Thomas Hardy
... contended that if any previous excavation had been made here and filled up afterwards the mixed earth would be easily distinguished from that which was not removed, and that the line of demarcation would be easily discernible. ...
— Archeological Investigations - Bureau of American Ethnology, Bulletin 76 • Gerard Fowke
... covered a couple of miles Hilario reined in and the others crowded close. Ahead, dimly discernible against the night sky, there appeared to be a thinning of the woods. After listening for a moment or two, Hilario dismounted and slipped away; the three riders sat their saddles with ears strained. Once more the myriad voices of the night became audible—the chirping ...
— Rainbow's End • Rex Beach
... negroes about anything relating to geography, their weak brains give way, and they can answer no questions, or they become so evasive in their replies, or so rambling, that you can make nothing out of them. It is easily discernible at what time you should cease to ask any further questions; for their heads then roll about like a ball upon a wire, and their eyes glass over and look vacantly about as though vitality had fled from their bodies altogether. Bombay, though, is a singular exception to ...
— What Led To The Discovery of the Source Of The Nile • John Hanning Speke
... not seem competent to answer. That personal sin can be atoned for by vicarious suffering, that national guilt can be expiated and national punishment averted by animal sacrifices, or even by human sacrifices, is repugnant to rather than conformable with natural reason. There exists no discernible connection between the one and the other. We may suppose that eucharistic, penitential, and even deprecatory sacrifices may have originated in the light of nature and reason, but we are unable to account for the practice of piacular sacrifices for ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... these scenes in their right order. But dark and broken as they are, they yet trail an epic splendour, they bear the whole phantasmagoria of ancestral and of racial memories, of "old, unhappy, far-off things, and battles long ago". These songs and ballads, strung on no discernible thread, are the voice of an enchanted spirit, recalling the long roll of its secular existences; in whom nothing lives but that mysterious, ...
— The Three Brontes • May Sinclair
... found good fortune in the terrible basement kitchen where Mrs. Banks moved mournfully and had her disconsolate being. The gas was always lighted in that cavernous kitchen, but it remained dark, mercifully leaving the dirt half unseen. A joint of mutton, cold and mangled, was discernible, however, when Henrietta descended to put her impecunious case before the landlady and, gazing at it, the girl saw also her opportunity. Mrs. Banks had no culinary imagination, but Henrietta found it rising in herself to an inspired degree and there and then she offered herself ...
— THE MISSES MALLETT • E. H. YOUNG
... servant, unacquainted though he was with seamanship, to be the third man in the boat; but the latter, anticipating his intention, had made haste to betake himself away. To venture out into this roaring darkness, with no beacon to guide them, and scarcely a landmark discernible, was indeed to ...
— Boyhood in Norway • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... stood a figure enveloped in a dark robe. Pale, deadly pale, were the features, though scarcely discernible in their form and outline. The lamp burnt dimly; but with the quickened apprehension of guilt he recognised the wan ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... among the northern hills of Scotland, elements of more ancient architectural interest are equally absent. The solitary peel- house is hardly discernible by the windings of the stream; the roofless aisle of the priory is lost among the enclosures of the village; and the capital city of the Highlands, Inverness, placed where it might ennoble one of the sweetest landscapes, ...
— The Two Paths • John Ruskin
... an echo of the smile with which he greeted death. There was a gleam of teeth from under the lip. The eyes had closed peacefully; the lids lay light upon their secrets as if they might flutter and open again. On cheek and chin was a discernible growth of dark beard; the hair above the brow was black and abundant. It was a kingly face, a face of command, though benign. It was all too easy to believe that a crown had become it well. And there had been no weakening at the end, no sunken cheeks nor hollowed ...
— Bunker Bean • Harry Leon Wilson
... like the forest of life, the grey and sombre labyrinth where wandered the poet of Hell and Death. The tall trees rose straight and slender, like the barren masts of sailing ships; the gentle aromatic odour, the light subdued; the purple mist, so faint as to be scarcely discernible, a mere tinge of warmth in the day—all gave him an exquisite sense of rest. Here he could forget his trouble, and give himself over to the love which seemed his real life; here the recollection of Mrs. Wallace gained flesh and blood, seeming so real that he almost stretched out his ...
— The Hero • William Somerset Maugham
... tended to be a compound of Indian, Greek and Persian ideas in which Sun worship played a large part, for not only Indian myths, but Apollo and Helios and the Persian Mithra all entered into it. Persian influence in art is discernible as early as the architecture of Asoka: in doctrine it has something to do with such figures as Vairocana and Amitabha. Graeco-Roman influence also was powerful in art and through art affected religion. In Asoka's time likenesses of the Buddha were unknown and the adoration ...
— Hinduism And Buddhism, Volume II. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... the lower rooms, now gleaming, now intercepted, as the walls or the windows intervened, and suddenly disappeared. Alonzo gazed earnestly a few moments, and hastily returned back. No noise was to be heard, no new objects were discernible.—He clambered over the garden wall, and went around to the back side of the house. Here all was solemn and silent as in front. Immediately a faint light appeared through one of the chamber windows; it grew brighter; a candle entered the chamber; the ...
— Alonzo and Melissa - The Unfeeling Father • Daniel Jackson, Jr.
... critical juncture should be safely passed, we have need to guard against others, and these truths should be universally recognized as elements of our national preservation. We may profit by the shipwreck of others, to avoid the rock on which they split. There are causes clearly discernible in the history of Europe, for the divisions of that continent, which do not now, and never have obtained here. Her political institutions were developed out of the chaos of barbarism, and she had to unite smaller jurisdictions into larger ones; and she did this as ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3 No 2, February 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... out his glasses, with which he inspected her finger; and gravely announced to the company: "The laceration is, in fact, discernible. May I be permitted, madam," added he, "to kiss this fair hand, which I should never have suspected of having ever made itself half ...
— Peg Woffington • Charles Reade
... instruments about which information has been secured, a correlation is discernible between the apparent manual compass and the pitch C string lengths. Sixteen of the instruments ascend to f'''. For these, the length of the pitch C string varies from 10-1/4" to 13-3/4". The remaining instruments, with either a'' or c''' ...
— Italian Harpsichord-Building in the 16th and 17th Centuries • John D. Shortridge
... the very highly educated men whose lives are devoted either to scientific investigation and education or to the mitigation or the removal of the sufferings of their fellow-creatures; though differences of degree in regard to its practical application will be easily discernible by those who study the evidence as it has been ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume II • Francis Darwin
... time took care to keep a fast hold of the iron railings at top, in order to secure himself from falling; till Dashall drew from his pocket a telescope, and directed his attention to Greenwich Hospital, Shooter's Hill, and the public buildings at a distance, where they were scarcely discernible by the naked eye. Bob was delighted with the view of Greenwich Hospital, and the account which his Cousin gave him of the establishment; and upon descending they took a complete walk round this celebrated pillar, marking its ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... has not the least regard to. These are the absurdities which even men of capacity run into when they have occasion to belie their nature, and will perversely disclaim that image of God which was originally stamped upon it, the traces of which, however faint, are plainly discernible upon ...
— Human Nature - and Other Sermons • Joseph Butler
... were discernible through the approaching cloud of dust. The robbers were galloping along in no regular order with intervals of from ten to twenty yards ...
— The Poor Plutocrats • Maurus Jokai
... up terrible shouts, which was answered alternately by sounding all their military instruments of music. The whole of these people were almost naked, having targets of various colours, and made a very gallant appearance. On the approach of this prodigious fleet, our caravel and boats were hardly discernible, so completely did the enemy cover the face of the water. Terrified by so prodigious a multitude, the naires of Cochin all ran away, only Grandagora and Frangora remaining, who were on board the caravel, or they would have done like the rest. Indeed their presence was ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. II • Robert Kerr
... leagues from Sheerauz there was a lofty mountain discernible from the large square before the palace, where the emperor, his court, and a great concourse of people, then were. "Do you see that mountain?" said the emperor, pointing to it; "it is not a great distance from hence, but it is far enough to judge of the speed you can make ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous
... be seen through at one view; and though it was constructed by means of fifteen different pitshafts sunk to the same line along the length of the tunnel, the workmanship is so perfect that the joinings of the various lengths of brickwork are scarcely discernible. The convenience afforded by the new tunnel was very great, and Telford mentions that, on surveying it in 1829, he asked a boatman coming; out of it how he liked it? "I only wish," he replied, "that it reached ...
— The Life of Thomas Telford by Smiles • Samuel Smiles
... followed his guide to the outskirts of the village, where it was pitch dark. But soon here, too, rays of light, streaming through the mist from the lamps in the front of the halting station, became discernible through the darkness. The reddish spots of light grew bigger and bigger; at last the stakes of the palisade, the moving figure of the sentinel, a post painted with white and black stripes and the sentinel's ...
— Resurrection • Count Leo Tolstoy
... an extensive view from Asolo. Venice, with its cupolas and steeples, is seen to the east. Ottima detects the belfry of the Church of St. Mark. The towns of Vicenza and Padua are also discernible. ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning
... hall, making the vast place seem more vast and ghostly. The east window was discernible only as a vague oblong patch of grey against ...
— The Keeper of the Door • Ethel M. Dell
... exactly as I spoke, strive as I might to believe the man in jest. Too much solemnity and sorrow both were discernible in his worn and rugged features, hewn grandly as if from granite, to admit of a hope like this. His words were earnest, and some great calamity was in store, I could not doubt, or at least he apprehended such. For some time he replied not, then, slowing pointing to the base of the stricken mainmast, ...
— Sea and Shore - A Sequel to "Miriam's Memoirs" • Mrs. Catharine A. Warfield
... of walls and houses. This, I knew, was the situation of Catanzaro, but one could not easily imagine by what sort of approach the city would be gained; in the thickening twilight, no trace of a road was discernible, and the flanks of the mountain, a ravine yawning on either hand, looked even more abrupt than the ...
— By the Ionian Sea - Notes of a Ramble in Southern Italy • George Gissing
... disappeared to one side. Returning on tiptoe, excited for the first time, he beckoned Grancey to accompany him and led the way with the greatest precaution to a long crack in the side of a hill, scarcely discernible without the closest scrutiny, through which the accents came quite audibly, and they caught sight of the objects below in a grey light. They made out a narrow, oblique cavern, formed by the widening of what geologists call a "fault" in the ...
— The False Chevalier - or, The Lifeguard of Marie Antoinette • William Douw Lighthall
... steered to the westward. The boat was now close hauled. If not seen by the frigate, it was scarcely to be hoped that she would cut her off on the other tack. The gloom of evening was coming on also, causing the small sails of the boat to be less discernible. ...
— Ronald Morton, or the Fire Ships - A Story of the Last Naval War • W.H.G. Kingston
... Edward Bean Underhill's "Historical Introduction" to the Reprint of Old Tracts on Liberty of Conscience by the "Hanserd Knollys Society" (1846). Mr. Underhill writes as a zealous Baptist, but with judgment and research.] Little wonder, either, that the principle of Toleration should be discernible in the writings of Robert Brown, the father of the crude English Independency of Elizabeth's reign. [Footnote: Baillie (Dissuasive, Part I. 31) expressly makes it a reproach against Brown that ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson
... unquestionably the equivalents of cells—true morphological units—may be mere masses of protoplasm, devoid alike of cell-wall or nucleus. For the whole living world, then, the primary and a mental form of life is merely an individual mass of protoplasm in which no further structure is discernible. Well, then, has protoplasm been called the "universal concomitant of every phenomena of life." Life is inseparable from this substance, but is dormant unless excited by some external stimulant, such as heat, light, ...
— Was Man Created? • Henry A. Mott
... amidst the group of venerable trees which surrounded it. Time, since he last quitted it, had seared the freshness of their foliage, and the golden tints of autumn had succeeded the verdure of summer. A little farther on, the house of Mad. Rossville was just discernible; and Arthur's heart bounded with transport, as he thought how soon he should again embrace those whom he most loved on earth! But a different fate awaited him, and tidings, which withered every hope he had so long and fondly cherished. The ecclesiastical tyranny, which had exiled ...
— The Rivals of Acadia - An Old Story of the New World • Harriet Vaughan Cheney
... have been recently collected. That the influence of the German population, with whom they live intermingled, has been very great, even in these songs, cannot be matter of surprise. It is, however, chiefly discernible in the melodies they sing; which are said to be the same familiar to the German mountaineers of Styria and Tyrol. Several narrative ballads of some length are still extant among them, similar to the Servian, but rhymed. These have been communicated to ...
— Historical View of the Languages and Literature of the Slavic - Nations • Therese Albertine Louise von Jacob Robinson
... proximity of some fur-coated burrower in the ground. High above this animal life, remoter even than the tops of my beloved trees or the mountain-ranges, etched on the dark firmament, shone multitudinous stars, even the rings round Saturn being plainly discernible. From the Milky Way my eyes at length wandered to the pines, and a puff of air laden with the odour of their resin and decaying brushwood decided me. I took a few preliminary sips of whisky, stretched my rusty limbs, and, placing one foot in a jagged crevice of the wall, swarmed painfully up. ...
— Scottish Ghost Stories • Elliott O'Donnell
... against the wall of rotten wood as far as possible. The snake stopped and from its mouth came a hiss that sounded like a jet of escaping steam and lasted fully half a minute. Still the eyes came no nearer but motion was discernible in the darkened corner from which the reptile had appeared. The boa constrictor, for such it was, was noiselessly drawing foot after foot of its thick body into the chamber in preparation for a quick lunge at its victim. In a flash the ...
— The Black Phantom • Leo Edward Miller
... such a mass of heads before. It was like a black, gently swelling sea. The swaying motion of the crowd, in the dim uncertain light, was like the rising and falling of billows—like the ebb and flow of the tide upon the stranded shore of the ocean. Close to the house the faces were plainly discernible, but they faded into mere ghostly outlines on the outskirts of the assembly; and what added to the weird, spectral beauty of the scene, was the confused hum of voices that rose above the sea of forms, sounding like the subdued, sullen roar of an ocean ...
— Behind the Scenes - or, Thirty years a slave, and Four Years in the White House • Elizabeth Keckley
... being thrust through them. The whole forms a very light and graceful fabric. Within this nest were four beautiful and highly polished eggs of a deep brick-red colour, darkest at the larger end, faint specks and blotches of a deeper colour being indistinctly discernible beneath the surface of the shell, which shines as if it had been varnished. The nest is not closed above, but is open and deeply cup-shaped. This was taken in the Dhoon on the ...
— The Nests and Eggs of Indian Birds, Volume 1 • Allan O. Hume
... inquiring historian, although the extra-legal character of the settlement seriously reduced the public record. Nevertheless, the broad scope of ethnography provides the kind of study for which the data supply a rather full picture of life on this frontier. Political, economic, and social patterns are discernible, although no day-by-day account for any ...
— The Fair Play Settlers of the West Branch Valley, 1769-1784 - A Study of Frontier Ethnography • George D. Wolf
... access to the rock dwellings honeycombing the mountains, the sculptured entrances to which were clearly discernible through the variegated colours that splashed the slopes, these variegated colours being due to the fact that the mountain slopes had been terraced from base to summit, filled with earth where required, and converted into ...
— Through Veld and Forest - An African Story • Harry Collingwood
... in the far distant depths of space as a faint and scarcely discernible speck. It draws nearer and nearer with continually increasing velocity, growing continually larger and brighter. Faster and faster it rushes on until it makes its nearest approach to our sun, and then, sweeping round ...
— The Astronomy of the Bible - An Elementary Commentary on the Astronomical References - of Holy Scripture • E. Walter Maunder
... in the great mass of existing savage humanity we find social and religious customs so definite that we are forced to suppose a long preceding period of development. It has even been held that traces of religious conceptions are discernible in the first surviving records of "prehistoric" man, the contemporary of the cave bear—a period separated from the earliest clear historical records by many millenniums;[14] but, though the existence of such conceptions is by no means improbable, the alleged traces are too dim to build a theory ...
— Introduction to the History of Religions - Handbooks on the History of Religions, Volume IV • Crawford Howell Toy
... being much less dense than that of Interest, will allow of imperfect views of the obscured postulate; but the radiance of the latter will not be completely restored until the arrival of Misery, whose chastening colors invariably permit all truths to be discernible, although through a ...
— The Monikins • J. Fenimore Cooper
... shabby stage, to let her have the soul of her part. Her attitude was graceful, but though she appeared to listen with all her faculties her face remained perfectly blank; a fact, however, not discouraging to Wayworth, who liked her better for not being premature. Her companions gave discernible signs of recognising the passages of comedy; yet Wayworth forgave her even then for being inexpressive. She evidently wished before everything else to be simply sure of what ...
— Nona Vincent • Henry James
... them. The road ran gradually upward, a shallow sheet of running water covering it, but firm, hard roadway discernible nevertheless. Rachael stopped the car, and Ruddy came again and put his face close to hers, through ...
— The Heart of Rachael • Kathleen Norris
... Scioto River, from whence they appear to have been brought. The summit of this tumulus was nearly 30 feet in diameter, and there was a raised way to it, leading from the east, like a modern turnpike. The summit was level. The outline of the semicircular pavement and the walk is still discernible. The earth composing this mound was entirely removed several years since. The writer was present at its removal and carefully examined the contents. ...
— An introduction to the mortuary customs of the North American Indians • H. C. Yarrow
... years and nine months of life that remained to Caesar, much the greater portion was spent at the head of his army. He, therefore, had not time to give any complete organization to his new government. But his intentions are clearly discernible in outline. Supreme power, legislative as well as executive, was to be vested in a single ruler, governing not by divine right, but as the representative of the community, and in its interest. This was ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 1 of 8 • Various
... age, and learning that the rebels under the Earl of Mar had met with the royal forces under the Duke of Argyle in the neighbourhood, on the morning of Sunday the 12th November, while it was still dusk, he went to the top of a neighbouring hill named Glentye, from which the whole of the moor was discernible, and on which a number of country people were stationed, attracted to the spot, like himself, by curiosity. Being at no great distance from both armies, he could see them distinctly. The Highlanders, who observed no regular order, he compared to a large, dark, ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 424, New Series, February 14, 1852 • Various
... moved as if that winter excursion and adventure had never been. Even the memory of it must have faded into a haze that scarce left discernible any semblance of reality, for I was once again Boccadoro, the golden-mouthed Fool, whose sayings were echoed by every jester throughout Italy. My shame that for a brief season had risen up in arms seemed to be laid to rest ...
— The Shame of Motley • Raphael Sabatini
... render her brother's course an object of any other feeling than incurious, indignant contempt. Yet the lovingness of Romola's soul had clung to that image in the past, and while she stood rigidly aloof, there was a yearning search in her eyes for something too faintly discernible. ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... the Gallic youths, having served in the armies, either a few years ago under the requisition, or more recently under the conscription, have acquired a martial air, which is very discernible, in spite of their habit bourgeois. The brown coat cannot disguise the soldier. I have met with several young merchants of the first respectability in Paris, who had served, some two, others four years in the ranks, and constantly refused ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon
... horse under Captain McCoy, and they swing to the left. Scott moves briskly forward with the main body for the villages of the Weas, at the mouth of Wea creek. The smoke of the camp fires is plainly discernible. ...
— The Land of the Miamis • Elmore Barce
... shivering, slid back under the warmth of the covers. She drew them close up over her shoulders, so far that only a heavy mass of golden hair remained visible above the old crimson brocade of which the counterpane was made. The room was still darkened so that the objects in it were barely discernible, but presently one of the high, carved doors opened and a maid entered, carrying a breakfast tray. Setting the tray down, she crossed quickly to the windows and drew ...
— The Title Market • Emily Post
... saw a brightly lighted, uncurtained window, beyond which were figures, plainly discernible. The figures were moving, one bringing a pail, another stooping—the scene was not one of still waiting but of tense action. She caught a glimpse of Doctor Brainard's tall form bending above something at one side, then she saw Brown ...
— The Brown Study • Grace S. Richmond
... definitely classed by holding the opinion that this work was inferior to its immediate predecessor. Was it worse because she had been keeping worse company? If her secret was, as she had told me, her life—a fact discernible in her increasing bloom, an air of conscious privilege that, cleverly corrected by pretty charities, gave distinction to her appearance—it had yet not a direct influence on her work. That only made—everything only made—one yearn the more for it, rounded it off ...
— Embarrassments • Henry James
... and Loring smiled in a grim way only discernible to Delaven, who had grown so accustomed to his sardonic comments on things in general that ...
— The Bondwoman • Marah Ellis Ryan
... development of naval power as was the fostering of a class of seamen. In this respect, therefore, the ship-building of America was detrimental to the objects of the Navigation Act; and the evil threatened to increase, because of a discernible approaching shortness of suitable timber in ...
— Sea Power in its Relations to the War of 1812 - Volume 1 • Alfred Thayer Mahan
... some mysterious impulse, veered slowly around and a dark object loomed up before him. A gentle eddy carried the boat further in shore, until at last it was completely embayed under the lee of a rocky point now faintly discernible through the fog. He looked around him in the vain hope of recognizing some familiar headland. The tops of the high hills which rose on either side were hidden in the fog. As the boat swung around, he succeeded in fastening a line to the ...
— Legends and Tales • Bret Harte
... with cropped hair and dressed like a man, as well as the two small sons of Kanine. We made acquaintance with all of them. The tall stranger called himself Gorokoff, a Russian colonist from Samgaltai, and presented the short-haired girl as his sister. Kanine's wife looked at us with plainly discernible fear and said nothing, evidently displeased over our being there. However, we had no choice and consequently began drinking tea and eating our bread ...
— Beasts, Men and Gods • Ferdinand Ossendowski
... luminous, transparent, or delicate about dust. Dust would not remain in the atmosphere for months, it would settle in a very short time, and if thick enough in the atmosphere to obstruct the light of the sun it would be visible, discernible, to the eye, and manifest on the face of nature. Years ago, before the age of the weather map, we might have thought that the atmosphere followed the surface of the earth like the water on a grindstone, but it does not. As already seen, the wind is from the area of high ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 433, April 19, 1884 • Various
... English the good appearance and convenient smallness of Mary's house; said her own was the same size. That person with whom she sometimes passed "of a Sundeh"—yes, and moonlight evenings—that was her husband. He was "ferst ingineeur" on a steam-boat. There was a little, just discernible waggle in her head as she stated things. It gave ...
— Dr. Sevier • George W. Cable
... setting, and shone, with half his disk visible, in that dim and cheerless splendor which produces almost in every temperament a feeling of melancholy. His house which, in happier days, formed so beautiful and conspicuous an object in the view, was now, from the darkness of its walls, scarcely discernible. The position of the sun, too, rendered it more difficult to be seen; and Owen, for it was he, shaded his eyes with his hand, to survey it more distinctly. Many a harrowing thought and remembrance passed through his mind, as his eye traced ...
— Phelim O'toole's Courtship and Other Stories • William Carleton
... shall have put on the fleecy garb of her winter's wear. The cloud-spirits are slowly weaving her white mantle. As yet, indeed, there is barely a rime like hoarfrost over the brown surface of the street; the withered green of the grass-plat is still discernible; and the slated roofs of the houses do but begin to look gray, instead of black. All the snow that has yet fallen within the circumference of my view, were it heaped up together, would hardly equal the hillock of a grave. Thus gradually, by silent and stealthy ...
— Snow Flakes (From "Twice Told Tales") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... and lock, should be covered with a composition, to render them as dull, and as little discernible, as possible. The locks should always be in the very best firing order, and constructed to give fire as easily as the nature of the service will admit. Oil, for the inside of the rifle, should be regularly served; and the flints should be of a much better quality ...
— Travels in the United States of America • William Priest
... their ears as they tramped silently on towards the boat; but not a sound was heard suggesting that the enemy grasped the fact that the strategy had been cleverly carried out. The dull reflection of the fires had from time to time been faintly discernible upon the low-hanging mist; but this soon died out, and fortune seemed to be smiling ...
— Fitz the Filibuster • George Manville Fenn
... possession, which I publish because it is history, and descends to the list of those humble beings who builded so well for us the institutions which we now enjoy in this country. It is yellow with age, and much frayed out at the foldings, being in those spots no longer discernible. It runs: ...
— Crooked Trails • Frederic Remington
... The superstitious notions current among the lower orders were, that at about the hour of eight on every evening, a female was seen in a small vessel sailing from Hereford to Northbrigg, a little village then distant about three miles from the city, of which not even the site is now discernible; that the vessel sailed with the utmost rapidity in a dead calm and even against the wind; that to encounter it was fatal; that the voyager landed from it on the eastern bank of the river, a little beyond ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, - Issue 284, November 24, 1827 • Various
... costume is maintained with much precision; he has a pride in having his clothes of excellent materials, and, notwithstanding the seeming grossness of his appearance, there is still discernible that neatness and propriety of person which is almost inherent in an Englishman. He enjoys great consequence and consideration along the road; has frequent conferences with the village housewives, who look upon him as a man of great trust and dependence; and he seems to have a good understanding ...
— The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. • Washington Irving
... 26. Then will I sprinkle clean water upon you, and ye shall be clean, from all your filthiness, &c. Here he was led out in such a melting strain, that, by the down-pouring of the Spirit from on high, a most discernible change was wrought upon about 500 of the hearers, who could either date their conversion or some remarkable confirmation from that day forward[148]. Some little of that stamp, he says, remained on him the Thursday after, when he preached at Kilmarnock; but on the Monday following, preaching at ...
— Biographia Scoticana (Scots Worthies) • John Howie
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