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More "Placid" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... garden-porch, and here she hesitated again, apparently waiting for a sign from the house. She glanced timidly about her, as though in fear of marauders that might spring out upon her from the shadow. Just over the boundary wall the placid flame of a gas-lamp peeped. Then, feeling with her feet for the steps, she ascended into the shelter of the porch. Almost at the same moment there was another flare behind the glass of the door; she heard ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett
... be fine over the British Islands. The anti-cyclone has not yet passed away from the Bay of Biscay...." He read the jargon through to the end. But it seemed as if it were not he who was reading, but someone else—a quiet, placid gentleman, deeply versed in the harmless science of meteorology. Where his real self was he did not know, so he ...
— Viviette • William J. Locke
... lake where land is unseen, or paddle through mud and swamp or reedy shallows; sitting in it, he gathers his harvest of wild rice and catches his fish or shoots his game; it will dash down a foaming rapid, brave a fiercely-rushing torrent, or lie like a sea-bird on the placid water. ...
— The Great Lone Land - A Narrative of Travel and Adventure in the North-West of America • W. F. Butler
... copses, and hedge-row trees are interspersed very happily, and meadow, pasture, and grain-fields seen through them, with villages, hamlets, farm-houses, and isolated cottages, make up a landscape that grows more and more interesting as you contemplate it. And this placid locality, with its peaceful river seemingly sleeping in the bosom of its long and level meadows, was the scene of Oliver Cromwell's young, fiery manhood. Here, where Nature invites to tranquil occupations and even exercises ...
— A Walk from London to John O'Groat's • Elihu Burritt
... scene portrayed. No. 250, 'A Twilight in the Adirondacs,' glows with an intensity of light suggestive of some secret art, and not of ordinary paint and canvas. A few brilliant cloud-specks float in a golden sky, which is reflected from the surface of a placid lake, high up among the hills, whose haze-flooded and light-crowned tops fade away into the far distance. To many this picture will prove more attractive than the view from the South Mountain: perhaps it is our familiarity with and love for the original of the last-mentioned view, which induce ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 5, No. 6, June, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... penniless professor, succeeded at length in fastening a respectable widower. She trots him out regularly every Sunday with that ineffable smirk of satisfaction that only an old maid can assume. Then there was Miss Anthon, a demure little body, who wore her gray hair brushed back from her placid face, without resort to hair dyes, cosmetics, or other rejuvenating articles of the toilet. She kept her eyes open, though, and in her unobtrusive way, after lying in wait for her victim all these long and weary years, she suddenly pounced upon a fortune to reward ...
— Clemence - The Schoolmistress of Waveland • Retta Babcock
... bully, just going right ahead like this after all the terrible things that happened in the night!" exclaimed Harry, as the Bolo cut along through the placid waters. ...
— The Boy Aviators' Treasure Quest • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... at Ghent, rather wild, disheveled weeks of clutching at work. They had one objective: the battlefield; one purpose: to make a series of rescues under fire. Cramped in a placid land, smothered by peace-loving folk, they had been set quivering by the war. The time had come to throw themselves at the Continent, and do or die where action was thick. Nothing was quainter, even in a land of astounding spectacles, than the sight of the rescuing ambulances rolling ...
— Young Hilda at the Wars • Arthur Gleason
... professional relish, coolly telling us, that "the operation is unattended with cruelty;" yet we must be content to refer our readers to the passage (vol. ii. p. 96) as an illustration of his skill in this interesting branch of farm-surgery. He is really an amiable sheep-operator, our author—what placid benevolence and hatred of quackery appear in his instructions— "Learn to slaughter gently, dress the carcass neatly and cleanly, in as plain a manner as possible, and without ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - April 1843 • Various
... we came in sight of the Mahakam River. At this point it is only forty to fifty metres wide, and the placid stream presented a fine view, with surrounding hills in the distance. In the region of the Upper Mahakam River, above the rapids, where we had now arrived, it is estimated there are living nearly 10,000 Dayaks of various tribes, recognised under the general name Bahau, which they also employ ...
— Through Central Borneo: - An Account of Two Years' Travel in the Land of Head-Hunters - Between the Years 1913 and 1917 • Carl Lumholtz
... present, and in the memory of other men—a death which caused to be loved the passage from this life to the other by those whose existence upon this earth leads them not to dread the last judgment. Athos, preserved, even in the eternal sleep, that placid and sincere smile—an ornament which was to accompany him to the tomb. The quietude of his features, the calm of his nothingness, made his servants for a long time doubt whether he had really quitted life. The comte's people wished to remove Grimaud, who from a distance devoured the ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas
... down the trenches, pausing at the entrances to dugouts to smile and talk with the men. Once, where a grassy ridge hid the trench from the enemy snipers, they were permitted to peep over, but there was no look of war in the grassy, placid meadow full of flowers that men called "No Man's Land." It seemed hard to believe, that sunny, flower-starred morning, that Sin and Hate had the upper hand and Death was abroad stalking ...
— The War Romance of the Salvation Army • Evangeline Booth and Grace Livingston Hill
... from the church the great placid eye of the lighthouse at the Beal Point was open, and he moved thitherward a few steps to escape Nichola, or her double, and the rest of the congregation. Turning at length, he hastened homeward along the now deserted trackway, intending to overtake the revitalized Avice. But he could see ...
— The Well-Beloved • Thomas Hardy
... neck are full upon you as you stare into the picture. And what a jolly back and innocent neck it is! Enough to make every right-minded woman cry out with pleasure. Then there is the highly respectable father stirring his cup and watching with placid content a gentleman in lace and ruffles attending to the wife, whilst the two elder children play ...
— In the Name of the Bodleian and Other Essays • Augustine Birrell
... through, Looked at each other as yellow and blue, As any electioneering crew Wearing the colours of Whigs and Tories. Ah! well the Poet said, in sooth, That "whispering tongues can poison Truth," - Yes, like a dose of oxalic acid, Wrench and convulse poor Peace, the placid, And rack dear Love with internal fuel, Like arsenic pastry, or what is as cruel, Sugar of lead, that sweetens gruel, - At least such torments began to wring 'em From the very morn When that mischievous Horn Caught the whisper ...
— Playful Poems • Henry Morley
... ingenious manoeuvres by which the promising couple of conspirators averted, upon the eve of the sister's bridal, the threatened expose of their machinations to entrap the wealthy lover. Suffice it to say that the duped husband (by brevet) lived for a decade and a half in the placid enjoyment of the ignorance which my sagacious sister here is disposed to confound with rational bliss—nor is he quite sure, to this day, whether spouse No. 1 of the partner of his bosom still lives, or by clearance in what court of infamy or justice she ...
— At Last • Marion Harland
... by the calm banks of the placid lake, amidst the fairest landscapes of the Island Garden, the youngest born of Catherine passed his tranquil days. The monotony of the retreat did not fatigue a spirit which, as he grew up, found occupation in books, music, poetry, and the elegances of the cultivated, if ...
— Night and Morning, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... little past twilight, and the western sky presented an unusual, if not an ominous, appearance. A sharp and melancholy breeze was abroad, and the sun, which had set among a mass of red clouds, half placid, and half angry in appearance, had for some brief space gone down. Over from the north, however, glided by imperceptible degrees a long black bar, right across the place of his disappearance, and nothing could be more striking than the wild and ...
— Willy Reilly - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... his window and begged the placid sky for information. He looked through the lilacs and the locusts and all the green wilderness where beauty beat and throbbed like a heart in bliss. It was the Sabbath, and he was not sure. But he was sure of a melting tenderness in his heart for Irene Straley, and he felt that ...
— In a Little Town • Rupert Hughes
... building, on a smooth gliding elevator, up seventeen stories, down a low-ceilinged corridor, past fireproof doors labeled: "Clerk's Office," "Judge's Chambers," "Witness Room," we find the typical modern court. The old idea of a very pseudo-classic courthouse on a placid village green to which the neighboring county squires have ridden, and where the jail is in the cellar and the town recorder in the attic, is fast disappearing. The old courthouse in the city, of red sandstone with battlements and turrets, minarets, and ...
— The Man in Court • Frederic DeWitt Wells
... on the Banks. It would be difficult to imagine a more placid and lovely scene. Everything perfectly calm, all sail set, and the heavens becoming gradually sprinkled with silver stars. The sky blue, and without a cloud, except where the sun has just set, the last crimson point sinking in the calm sea and leaving a long ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon De La Barca
... was in motion. The inhabitants are for the most part extremely ignorant and poor; they take no part in the business of the country, and they are frequently oppressed by the government; yet their countenances are generally placid, and their spirits light. In America I saw the freest and most enlightened men, placed in the happiest circumstances which the world affords: it seemed to me as if a cloud habitually hung upon their brow, and I thought them serious and almost sad even in their pleasures. The ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 2 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville
... we won't," said Anna-Felicitas again, an almost placid quality in her determination, it was so final and ...
— Christopher and Columbus • Countess Elizabeth Von Arnim
... no reason that he could discover, something sharp and icy in her would momentarily make itself felt, and he would find himself driven back within bounds that he had perhaps been tempted to transgress. And the result of it all was that he fell day by day more tormentingly in love with her. Those placid matrimonial ambitions with which he had left England had been all swept away; and as he followed her—she on pony-back, he on foot—along the mountain trails, watching the lightness of her small figure against the splendid background of peak and pine, he became a troubled, introspective ...
— Lady Merton, Colonist • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... Though placid, this early Lincoln was not resigned. He differed from the boors of Pigeon Creek in wanting some other sort of life. What it was he wanted, he did not know. His reading had not as yet given him definite ambitions. It may well be that New Orleans was the clue to ...
— Lincoln • Nathaniel Wright Stephenson
... to speak to him, I finished my splint till tea-time. But I couldn't bring myself to sit down to it, for fear that the too placid resumption of my duties should outrage ...
— A Diary Without Dates • Enid Bagnold
... are, though you compress, With even your most impenetrable fears, A placid and a proper consciousness Of anxious ...
— The Man Against the Sky • Edwin Arlington Robinson
... of this century, nor the prophetic light that shone in the faces of Coleridge, Shelley, and Keats; if he apprehended the stir of the new spirit he still, by mental affiliation, belonged rather to the age of Addison than to that of Macaulay. And his placid, retrospective, optimistic strain pleased a public that were excited and harrowed by the mocking and lamenting of Lord Byron, and, singularly enough, pleased ...
— Washington Irving • Charles Dudley Warner
... he suggests the cosmic and the elemental, and this is one of the dominant thoughts that run through my dissertation. Scenes of power and savagery in nature were more welcome to him, probably more stimulating to him, than the scenes of the pretty and placid, and he cherished the hope that he had put into his "Leaves" some of the tonic and fortifying quality of Nature in her more ...
— Whitman - A Study • John Burroughs
... smiling approval, and the brightest charm of our intercourse had departed forever. The last time in which it still remained unbroken—the last sweet time that I could call her wholly mine, was on a placid autumn evening. We had strolled farther than usual, tempted by the tranquil beauty around us, and during that walk I had been strangely, wonderfully happy. Many times, as we walked silently side by side, a strong, an almost irresistible impulse seemed to force me ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No 3, September 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... d'O's confidence had raised my spirits lasted until one of the narrow streets by the Louvre brought me suddenly within sight of the river. Here faint moonlight bursting momentarily through the clouds was shining on the placid surface of the water. The fresh air played upon, and cooled my temples. And this with the quiet scene so abruptly presented to me, gave check to my thoughts, and ...
— The House of the Wolf - A Romance • Stanley Weyman
... borrow trouble, therefore unqualified personally to oversee the actual management of a cow herd. In repose, Don Lovell was slow, almost dull, but in an emergency was astonishingly quick-witted and alert. He never insisted on temperance among his men, and though usually of a placid temperament, when ...
— The Log of a Cowboy - A Narrative of the Old Trail Days • Andy Adams
... of the tales of our youth. Nothing was wanting; the shaggy, mouse-colored donkey, nosing the turf with his mild and huge proboscis, the geese, the old woman—the old woman, in person, with her red cloak and black bonnet, frilled about the face and double-frilled beside her decent, placid cheeks—the towering plowman with his white smock-frock, puckered on chest and back, his short corduroys, his mighty calves, his big, red, rural face. We greeted these things as children greet the loved pictures in a story book, ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. X (of X) - America - II, Index • Various
... The placid voice, flowing on in gentle great content of itself (while all the boarders gallantly refrained from eating), was checked by an interruption which united into one shattering impact the effects ...
— Harlequin and Columbine • Booth Tarkington
... they sped right under the guns of the shore batteries, which could no longer resist the temptation to see what they could do. Puffs of white smoke dotted the landscape on the far shore, and dull booms echoed over the placid water. Around the ships fountains of water sprang up into the air. The enemy had been drawn, but his marksmanship was obviously very bad. I think I am right in saying that not a single shot directed against the ships came within a hundred ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... of that organ and of the men by whom it was conducted. He distrusted that quiet-faced, thoughtful, and laborious young man, whom they so loved and reverenced—the founder, the soul, and the centre of their party. To the keen glance of the aged leader it appeared that for all that placid brow, those calm grey eyes and softly curving lip of his, the man had no horror of blood-spilling in a righteous cause, and was capable not only of deliberately inciting his countrymen to rise in arms against English rule, but ...
— Speeches from the Dock, Part I • Various
... something eatable floating upon the tide, scattered and then joined up into a joyous chorus of association with gentle twittering cries. Watching them, dreaming, standing now and again looking out over the sweet wonder of the placid sea, sometimes wading ankle deep, sometimes walking on the firm floor of uncovered sand, Damaris passed onward ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... spirit exhibits itself at every turn. In place of the placid millers and quaint refugees of the last century at their doors, we see the shops, the storehouses of manufacturers' supplies, the hotel and the theatre; and, pervading all, the vast throng of artisans, providing such problems of local government and ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Volume 11, No. 26, May, 1873 • Various
... death has taken it from your midst forever. It is such a beautiful day! The air is so soft, the grass so green, and the birds singing so joyously! The day and the event have become so interwoven with each other, that I cannot separate them. I think of his placid face, sleeping its last still sleep; and through the open window, I see the springing grass and the bursting buds. My ears are filled with bird-music, and all other sounds are hushed in this Sabbath ...
— Isaac T. Hopper • L. Maria Child
... children should Be placid, mildly good And blandly meek: Whereat the broad smile rushes Full on your lips, and flushes ...
— Studies in Song, A Century of Roundels, Sonnets on English Dramatic Poets, The Heptalogia, Etc - From Swinburne's Poems Volume V. • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... little dorg off you?" said a Sergeant acquaintance in the D.A.C. "I couldn't, Corp'l. Why, I don't even know how I'm goin' to take the foal yonder"—he glared reproachfully at a placid Clydesdale mare and her tottering one-day-old; "and 'ow I'm goin' to take ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, August 1, 1917. • Various
... our first sight of the mountain meadows. From time to time we found others, sometimes a half dozen in a day. The rough country came down close about them, edging to the very hair-line of the magic circle, which seemed to assure their placid sunny peace. An upheaval of splintered granite often tossed and tumbled in the abandon of an unrestrained passion that seemed irresistibly to overwhelm the sanities of a whole region; but somewhere, in the very forefront of turmoil, ...
— The Mountains • Stewart Edward White
... muzzle fine and encircled with a light stripe, the nostril high and open; the horns smooth, crumpled, but not very thick at the base, tapering and tipped with black; ears small and thin, deep orange color inside; eyes full and placid; neck straight and fine; chest broad and deep; barrel hoofed, broad and deep, well ribbed up; back straight from the withers to the hip, and from the top of the hip to the setting of the tail; tail fine, at right angles with the back, and hanging down to the ...
— Cattle and Their Diseases • Robert Jennings
... "laudanum or opium", but at eight o'clock, unable to bear the stomach uneasiness and achings of my limbs, I took two large tea-spoons full of Ether in a wine glass of camphorated gum-water, and a third teaspoon full at ten o'clock, and I received complete relief; my body calmed; my sleep placid; but when I awoke in the morning, my right hand, with three of the fingers, was swollen and inflamed. The swelling in the hand is gone down, and of two of the fingers somewhat abated, but the middle ...
— Biographia Epistolaris, Volume 1. • Coleridge, ed. Turnbull
... its close as Mr. Heard, in a placid, contemplative frame of mind, once more drew nigh the pink ramparts of the Old Town, purposing to find his way ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... guardian's chair. That had not been my usual place before the letter, but it was now. I looked up to Ada, who was sitting opposite, and I saw, as she looked at me, that her eyes were filled with tears and that tears were falling down her face. I felt that I had only to be placid and merry once for all to undeceive my dear and set her loving heart at rest. I really was so, and I had nothing to do but to ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... pilot-house forthwith, closing the door securely after them—the air-pump was stopped, the sea-cock communicating with the water-chambers was opened, and the Flying Fish, with an easy imperceptible motion, sank gently beneath the placid waters, to rest, a minute or two later, on a bed of gravel at the ...
— The Log of the Flying Fish - A Story of Aerial and Submarine Peril and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... almost as soon as he was up. Kennedy was always a straight hitter, and now a combination of good cause and bad temper—for the thought of the foul in the first round had stirred what was normally a more or less placid nature into extreme viciousness—lent a vigour to his left arm to which he had hitherto been a stranger. He did not use his right again. It was ...
— The Head of Kay's • P. G. Wodehouse
... expression of sarcastic humor passed over the placid countenance of Miss Incledon, but she ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... shipmate out of countenance, for he's a bashful man, though a brave one," cried Frank, who fancied that his friend did not like the scrutiny he was undergoing. Frank produced the effect he wished, and Moggy at once resumed the placid manner ...
— Mountain Moggy - The Stoning of the Witch • William H. G. Kingston
... middle of the back wall is the sideboard, parallel to the table. The rest of the furniture is mostly dining-room chairs, ranged against the walls, and including a baby rocking-chair on the lady's side of the room. The lady is a placid person. Her husband, Mr Robin Gilbey, not at all placid, bursts violently into the room with a letter ...
— Fanny's First Play • George Bernard Shaw
... it was lighter, and upon the placid waters of Snake River, only fifteen feet away, lay quiet shadows cast from the opposite side, clearly and beautifully reflected. A few small steamers lay further down stream near the river's mouth, row boats were tied along the edge of the water, and on the Sandspit below us was ...
— A Woman who went to Alaska • May Kellogg Sullivan
... and varying of color, in the ordinarily placid Clara, which prevented a display of her usual manner; while Jane walked gracefully, and with a tincture of her mother's manner, by her side. She stole one hastily withdrawn glance to the deanery pew ere she kneeled, and then, on rising, handed ...
— Precaution • James Fenimore Cooper
... gaunt, straddling, gallows-like structures emerging, a wheel spinning at the top, and ropes travelling into the abyss; heaps of grey debris, interspersed with stunted grass, huge excavations, ugly ravines with a spout of grim stone at the seaward opening, like the burrowings of some huge mole. The placid green slopes of the fort give an impression of secret strength, even grandeur. Otherwise it is but a ragged, splashed aquarelle of grey and green. Over the debris appear at a distance the blunt ominous chimneys of the convict prison, which seems to put the finishing touch on the forbidding character ...
— The Thread of Gold • Arthur Christopher Benson
... saved it he is entitled to fling it away; trooper George, with the Bagnets and their household, where the most ludicrous points are more forcible for the pathetic touches underlying them; the Jellyby interior, and its philanthropic strong-minded mistress, placid and smiling amid a household muddle outmuddling Chancery itself; the model of deportment, Turveydrop the elder, whose relations to the young people, whom he so superbly patronizes by being dependent on them for everything, touch delightfully ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... sensible nun, and ceased to look for supernatural demonstrations in the neighborhood of the chapel. She grew hearty, and was cheerful, and sang at her work, and prayed with more honesty and less sentiment. Her life was as placid as a river whose waters are untroubled by tempestuous winds, and upon her bosom light cares, like passing barges, left but ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 29. August, 1873. • Various
... Rutherford's bete noir, albeit his own was not of the most placid type, and that it was liable to be roused to what he called "just indignation," on that which to others appeared small provocation. The flash was always momentary, but it was severe while it lasted; and ...
— Uncle Rutherford's Nieces - A Story for Girls • Joanna H. Mathews
... be desirous of seeing any more specimens of rustic happiness; but could not believe that all the accounts of primeval pleasures were fabulous, and was in doubt whether life had anything that could be justly preferred to the placid gratification of fields and woods. She hoped that the time would come when, with a few virtuous and elegant companions, she should gather flowers planted by her own hands, fondle the lambs of her own ewe, and listen without care, among brooks and breezes, to one of ...
— Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia • Samuel Johnson
... child in his arms, he suddenly let out a frightened yell. "I sees smoke—oh, my Lawd! I sees smoke an' fire an' brimstone comin' out'n dat cabin!" he gasped, and fled, clutching the placid Kitty. ...
— Kildares of Storm • Eleanor Mercein Kelly
... walked out to the confines of the town and up by the River Dodder. There are exquisitely beautiful places along the side of the Dodder: shy little harbors and backwaters, and now and then a miniature waterfall or a broad placid reach upon which the sun beats down like silver. Along the river bank the grass grows rank and wildly luxurious, and at this season, warmed by the sun, it was a splendid place to sit. She thought she could sit there forever watching ...
— Mary, Mary • James Stephens
... he sang and sewed from morning to night; his hot goose no longer burned him, for his heart was as hot as his goose; the vibrations of his head, at each successive stitch, were no longer sad and melancholy. There was a buoyant shake of exultation in them which showed that his soul was placid and happy within him. ...
— Phelim O'toole's Courtship and Other Stories • William Carleton
... Presidential Parlementary experience the stream of things shall soon leave stranded. A Petion has left his gown and briefs at Chartres for a stormier sort of pleading; has not forgotten his violin, being fond of music. His hair is grizzled, though he is still young: convictions, beliefs, placid-unalterable are in that man; not hindmost of them, belief in himself. A Protestant-clerical Rabaut-St.-Etienne, a slender young eloquent and vehement Barnave, will help to regenerate France. There are so many of them young. Till thirty the Spartans did not suffer a man to marry: ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... the time we write of. True, the pernicious practice of smoking tobacco had not yet been introduced among them, so that the social pipe was neither offered, desired, nor missed! but the Indian accepted a birch-bark basket of soup with placid satisfaction, and consumed it with slow felicity. Then, being offered a formidable venison steak, he looked calmly at his host, blinked his thanks—or whatever he ...
— The Crew of the Water Wagtail • R.M. Ballantyne
... strictly called by the name directly implying a complacent self-estimate unwarranted by performance. Nay, the total privacy in which he enjoyed his consciousness of inspiration was the very condition of its undisturbed placid nourishment and gigantic growth. Your audibly arrogant man exposes himself to tests: in attempting to make an impression on others he may possibly (not always) be made to feel his own lack of definiteness; and the demand for definiteness is to all of us a needful check on vague depreciation of ...
— Impressions of Theophrastus Such • George Eliot
... and serious studies. India is governed bureaucratically, but this bureaucracy differs in more than one respect from ours in Europe. To the public servant in Europe one day is like another; some great revolution, some European war, is needed to disturb the placid monotony of his existence. In India it is not so. The variety of his duties enlarges and fashions the mind of the Anglo-Indian official; and the dangers to which he is occasionally exposed serve to strengthen and give energy to ...
— The Quarterly Review, Volume 162, No. 324, April, 1886 • Various
... guide-book maps various spots of historic or picturesque interest which we should see en route, especially Menthon, the birthplace of St. Bernard. Now, here we were at Annecy, and in all the world there could not be a town more charming. By the placid blue lake—whose water, I am convinced, would still be the colour of melted turquoises if you corked it up in a bottle—you could wander along shadowed paths, strewn with the gold coin of sunshine, through a park of dells as bosky-green as the fair forest of Arden. In the quaint, old-fashioned ...
— The Princess Passes • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson
... a snug ship, well found, well manned, and, as the times go, well officered. The captain, indeed, is not over-alert or fitted for high emergencies; but what emergencies can belong to so placid a voyage? For a week after the headlands of Tarifa and Spartel have sunk under the eastern horizon, the vessel is kept every day upon her course,—her top-gallant and studding sails all distent with the wind blowing freely from over Biscay. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 104, June, 1866 • Various
... when North Island was given over to the gulls and long-billed pelicans, and San Diego valued it chiefly as a natural bulkhead that made the bay a placid harbor where the great combing rollers could not ride. But other birds came; great, roaring, man-made birds, that rose whirring from its barrenness and startled the gulls until they grew accustomed to the sight and sound of them. Low ...
— The Thunder Bird • B. M. Bower
... And in the second Worcester fight 1651 Cromwell for good asserts his might. And there are those who love to tell About that day at Boscobel When Charles the Second's Majestye Found itself doubly 'up a tree.' And now we meet that quiet man Known as the early Puritan; Mild and placid in his talk, Calm and ...
— A Humorous History of England • C. Harrison
... fitness of things generally. The Parthenon was designed to be made in stone, as much for the construction as for the light color effect of the marble. Only the light color play of its exterior would do against a placid blue sky to relieve the otherwise exceedingly simple rigidity of its massive forms of construction. To make an imitation of this great building in uncouth, somber, almost black pine logs of dubious proportions is hardly an artistically ...
— The Art of the Exposition • Eugen Neuhaus
... The girl drooped in the saddle from sheer exhaustion. The past few days had been hard ones, and last night she had lost most of her sleep. She had ridden far on rough trails, had been subjected to a stress of emotion to which her placid maiden life had been unused. But she made no complaint. It was part of the creed she had unconsciously learned from her father to game out ...
— Brand Blotters • William MacLeod Raine
... a little cloud upon Anne Dorset's placid face, for she too, like Mr. Beecham, had a brother whose wife it was not agreeable to think of as mistress in the old house. She went on quickly after that looking in at no more shops. Perhaps she who could buy everything she wanted (as Ursula thought) ...
— Phoebe, Junior • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... dizzily, and his hand sought the support of the wall. To him Foyle's voice sounded unreal. He stared at the detective as though doubtful of his sanity. His life had been hitherto ordered, placid. That there were such things as crimes, murders, detectives, he knew. He had read of them in the newspapers. But hitherto they had only been names to him—something to make the ...
— The Grell Mystery • Frank Froest
... such a piece of quicksilver as you in a state of placid stodge!" she murmured. "I suppose I ought to have forbidden you to talk. But how could I dream that—all this would come of it? You must lie absolutely quiet and see no one for the rest of the evening. I will send at once for Dr Mackay; and, ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver
... temper was more placid but who had an enquiring mind, said, 'You do not know my friend Trottman yet, Mr. Trevor. He cares but little who has the most reason, so that he may have the ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... if thou chuse it not, No man in all Phaeacia shall by force Detain thee. Jupiter himself forbid! For proof, I will appoint thee convoy hence To-morrow; and while thou by sleep subdued Shalt on thy bed repose, they with their oars Shall brush the placid flood, till thou arrive At home, or at what place soe'er thou would'st, Though far more distant than Euboea lies, 400 Remotest isle from us, by the report Of ours, who saw it when they thither bore Golden-hair'd ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer
... rhymes—anything to keep my thoughts quite underneath—but I—hated John before you came! We had been married nearly a year then. I never loved him. Of course you are going to say, 'Why did you marry him?'" She looked drearily over the placid sea. "Why did I marry him? I don't know; for the reason that hundreds of ignorant, inexperienced girls marry, I suppose. My home wasn't a happy one. I was miserable, and oh—restless. I wonder if men know what it feels like to be restless? Sometimes I think they can't even ...
— Stories by English Authors: Orient • Various
... Gauthier arrived, placid and cool as though everything were normal. "Paris is calm; calm as Paris always is ...
— My Home In The Field of Honor • Frances Wilson Huard
... undertone; the look that went with them the doctor never forgot as long as he lived. His questions about the festivities she had answered with a placid, pleased face; pleased that he should ask her; but a soft irradiation of joy had beamed upon the fact that the poor cripple was making a great step upwards in the scale of human life. The doctor had not forgotten his share in the permission Daisy had received, which he thought he saw she ...
— Melbourne House, Volume 2 • Susan Warner
... Lake Erie. On the upper deck our Kentucky friends were waving their handkerchiefs to Frank, who stood upon the wharf as long as one bright-haired girl could be distinguished by the light of the harvest moon, whose rays fell calmly upon the placid waters. ...
— Tempest and Sunshine • Mary J. Holmes
... accordance with his own canons of taste. He retained the Greek cross; but the dome, as he conceived it, and the details designed for each section of the building, differed essentially from what the earlier master would have sanctioned. Not the placid and pure taste of Bramante, but the masterful and fiery genius of Buonarroti, is responsible for the colossal scale of the subordinate parts and variously broken lineaments of the existing church. In spite of all changes of direction, the fabric of S. Peter's had been steadily ...
— Renaissance in Italy Vol. 3 - The Fine Arts • John Addington Symonds
... proved a failure. The despondent Verdi resolved to give up his career altogether, and only by the insistence of the manager, Merelli, was he finally persuaded to resume his occupation. In later life he married again, passing a placid existence on his ...
— Woman's Work in Music • Arthur Elson
... not shake the professor in his conviction that Indians had led a quiet, placid existence and ...
— The Merriweather Girls in Quest of Treasure • Lizette M. Edholm
... the deck admiring the different points as they went by, and delighting in the glorious pace at which they were going; a great contrast to their sluggish progress earlier in the day, when the river was broad, placid, and leisurely, and there was hardly a breath of wind ...
— For Fortune and Glory - A Story of the Soudan War • Lewis Hough
... days passed with so ordered a calm that little would any but a profound thinker have fancied tragedy to lurk so near their placid surface. Mrs. Effie and Mrs. Belknap-Jackson continued to plan the approaching social campaign at Red Gap. Cousin Egbert and the Mixer continued their card game for the trifling stake of a shilling a game, or "two bits," as it is known ...
— Ruggles of Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... subjected—first, the removal of the tongue, which is a most delicate morsel; then the head, then the bones, before placing them in the reservoir, where they receive their first salting. Whatever their work was, Erik did his part not only conscientiously, but eagerly. He astonished the placid Otto by his extreme application to the smallest details ...
— The Waif of the "Cynthia" • Andre Laurie and Jules Verne
... eye down the road and over the Random River, flowing smooth and peaceful through its great ox-bow. He recognized Dannie Snow, scuffling through the dust with his bare feet, as he drove home his father's great, placid, full-uddered cow. The comfort of the scene, the cosy pleasantness of the place among the close-coming hills, struck him, in his relieved mood, as it had never done before. Even though disappointed in political ambition, a man might live there in ...
— The Calico Cat • Charles Miner Thompson
... Altair officers were already there, a score of correct young men in white dress uniforms. Short, squat, and placid looking, Jimmy Chung stood making polite conversation. "Ah, there," he said, "Lieutenant Ziska and gentlemen, my partner, Michael Blades, Mike, ...
— Industrial Revolution • Poul William Anderson
... unconcerned air, no one who saw him could have conceived that he had been engaged the moment before in so fierce though short a struggle. There was none of the heat of the combatant or the triumph of the victor in his air or countenance, and his placid and equable expression of face contrasted strongly with the cloud which sat upon the brow of ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 3, February, 1851 • Various
... speech, something more than the indefinable aversion of incompatible tempers, a very personal and present dislike. Had things passed between them, things of which she was ignorant? Was the sentiment, then, reciprocal? She hardly believed it: Rainham's placid temper gave to his largest hostilities the character merely of languid contempt; it was not worth the trouble to hate anyone, he had said to her so often—neither to hate nor to love. She could imagine him with infidelities on occasion to the last part of his ...
— A Comedy of Masks - A Novel • Ernest Dowson and Arthur Moore
... huge Reuton station. In the half-light on the platform Mr. Magee encountered the mayor of Reuton. Above the lessening roar of the train there sounded ahead of them the voices of men in turmoil and riot. Mr. Cargan turned upon Magee a face as placid and dispassionate as that of one who enters an ...
— Seven Keys to Baldpate • Earl Derr Biggers
... windows sends his rays To light the darkest, warm the coldest heart. Sweet infancy! life's solace and its rest, Driving away the loneliness of age, Wreathing in smiles the wrinkled brow of care, Nectar to joyful, balm to troubled hearts, Joyful once more is King Suddhodana; A placid joy beams from that mother's face; Joy lit the palace, flew from street to street, And from the ...
— The Dawn and the Day • Henry Thayer Niles
... in his office, and Jadwin was admitted at once. He sat down in a chair by the broker's desk, and for the moment the two talked of trivialities. Gretry was a large, placid, smooth-faced man, stolid as an ox; inevitably dressed in blue serge, a quill tooth-pick behind his ear, a Grand Army button in his lapel. He and Jadwin were intimates. The two had come to Chicago almost simultaneously, and had risen ...
— The Pit • Frank Norris
... stood; so he went to knock at the door, and again Gaelic was given in answer. But this time the door was opened by a woman who had only taken time to put on a short petticoat, and to throw a small shawl over her head; her feet, legs, and arms were bare, and she looked strong and placid; her English was scanty, but she understood pretty well what we wanted, and declared herself willing to row our party to the other side if any one could steer, for her "man" was asleep in bed and too tired for work; so my husband took a pair of oars, the woman another, ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... shallow breathing. The boys and girls need to be, first of all, healthy animals with large powers of endurance, elastic, buoyant, graceful, and in general well set up. These conditions constitute the foundation for the superstructure of education. The placid, anaemic, fiberless child is ill prepared in physique to attain to that mastery of the mental and spiritual world that makes for an approximation ...
— The Vitalized School • Francis B. Pearson
... everywhere, this other sovereign Poet, with his seeing eye, with his perennial singing voice, was sent to take note of it, to give long-enduring record of it. Two fit men: Dante, deep, fierce as the central fire of the world; Shakespeare, wide, placid, far-seeing, as the Sun, the upper light of the world. Italy produced the one world-voice; we English had the honour of ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... Guemenee arrived, a little more dressed than the Duchesse de Chevreuse, but taking events still more tragically. Her terror inspired the Queen with a slight degree of fear, because of the ceremonious and placid character she was known to possess. She entered without curtseying, pale as a spectre, ...
— Cinq Mars, Complete • Alfred de Vigny
... sweetness of seeming good-nature. Her large blue eyes, on fit occasions, became affectionate and caressing. But if any one dared to wound or ruffle her pride, gainsay her orders or harm her interests, her countenance, usually placid and serene, betrayed a cold but implacable malignity. Mrs. Grivois entered the cabinet, holding in her hand Florine's report of the manner in which Adrienne de ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... out of the New House, a Sunday trio was in course of passage upon the sidewalk: an ample young woman, placid of face; a black-clad, thin young man, whose expression was one of habitual anxiety, habitual wariness and habitual eagerness. He propelled a perambulator containing the third—and all three were newly cleaned, Sundayfied, and made fit to dine with ...
— The Turmoil - A Novel • Booth Tarkington
... stores aboard." If anything could astonish the Trade at this late date, one would almost fancy that the apparition of Silas Q. Swing ("very happy to meet you, gentlemen") might have started a rivet or two on E11's placid skin. But she never even quivered. She kept a lieutenant of the name of D'Oyley Hughes, an expert in demolition parties; and he went aboard the tramp and reported any quantity of stores—a six-inch gun, for instance, lashed ...
— Sea Warfare • Rudyard Kipling
... being in the majority as opposed to this autocrat, remain placid. A current of understanding exists between us. Miss Arnold, on the other hand, finds our ignorance a flattering background for her learning and adventures. She is so obviously a woman of the world on ...
— The Woman Who Toils - Being the Experiences of Two Gentlewomen as Factory Girls • Mrs. John Van Vorst and Marie Van Vorst
... a whisper of war, nor anything visible except the thin, pale line like a striation on the distant hills. Then a far-off sound of thunder is heard. It is a gun. A faint puff of smoke is pointed out to us. Neither the rumble nor the transient cloudlet makes any apparent impression on the placid and wide dignity of the scene. Nevertheless, this is war. And war seems a very vague, casual, and negligible thing. We are led about fifty feet to the left, where in a previous phase a shell has indented a huge hole in the earth. The ...
— Over There • Arnold Bennett
... over her, longing to share his feelings with her. But she remained sunk in her placid sleep, and as he stood, he became conscious of a different sensation. He had never seen her face—except convulsed by weeping—when it was not under full control. Was it because he had stared so long at it, or was ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... came to the great denials, and without much concerning himself with them turned to his own affirmations of spiritual reality, methods of life and personal results. Serenity was his peculiar trait; amid all the agitation about him he was entirely unmoved, lived calmly and wrote with placid power, concentrating into the slowly wrought sentences of his Essays (1841-1875) the spiritual essence and moral metal of a life lived to God, to himself and to his fellow-men. He, more than any ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... probably very prosaic out there, the same as it is anywhere, most of the time. It was a peculiar combination of circumstances that plunged us into such a maelstrom of adventure. And yet—I don't see why you should hope for such a placid courtship for them. It took just that ordeal to bring out your really fine points. They were there all the time, dear, but I might never have known they were there. Why, I've lived over those few days, step by step, a hundred times! The wreck, the celebration at Wolf River—" she paused and shuddered, ...
— Prairie Flowers • James B. Hendryx
... inspiring strains of McAllister's violin, while Peter sat in a corner in constant dread of being accidentally sat down upon. Fred, in another corner, looked on, laughed, and was caressed furiously by the nine dogs. Mrs Sudberry talked philosophy in the window, with grave, earnest Mrs McAllister, whose placid equanimity was never disturbed, but flowed on, broad and deep, like a mighty river, and whose interest in all things, small and great, seemed never to flag for ...
— Freaks on the Fells - Three Months' Rustication • R.M. Ballantyne
... enterprising emissary—in London he was in the oil trade—is endeavouring to introduce into the province. Of "tones" instead of the five used by the Chinese, he does not recognise more than two, and these he uses indifferently. He hopes, however, to be understood by loud speaking, and he bellows at the placid coolies like ...
— An Australian in China - Being the Narrative of a Quiet Journey Across China to Burma • George Ernest Morrison
... house, which stood high upon a grassy headland, we looked down upon the whole sinister semicircle of Mounts Bay, that old death trap of sailing vessels, with its fringe of black cliffs and surge-swept reefs on which innumerable seamen have met their end. With a northerly breeze it lies placid and sheltered, inviting the storm-tossed craft to tack into it for ...
— The Adventure of the Devil's Foot • Arthur Conan Doyle
... o'er the place, And softens ragged edges; The rising moon's great placid face Looks ...
— In the Days When the World Was Wide and Other Verses • Henry Lawson
... depths, and fainting, lay their treasure at his feet. Sweet lord Abrazza! how he pities those, who in his furthest woodlands day-long toil to do his bidding. Yet king-philosopher, he never weeps; but pities with a placid ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. II (of 2) • Herman Melville
... experience of her ancestors, therefore, has bequeathed nothing to her of a nature to alter her placid character; nor have her own tribulations aught to do with the sudden awakening of her vigilance in July. Like ourselves, animals have their joys and their sorrows. They eagerly make the most of the former; they fret but little about the latter, which, when all is said, is the best ...
— Bramble-bees and Others • J. Henri Fabre
... farm-habitation standing amid orchards and hemp-fields, or a rarer hamlet of a dozen cottages grouped together. The country is flat, and, viewed from the rail or high road, unimpressive. But those fruitful fields have a placid beauty, and it needs but to penetrate the sequestered lanes and explore the thicket-bound courses of the streams, to meet with plenty of those pleasant solitudes after a poet's own heart, whose gift is to seize and perpetuate transient effects, and to open the eyes of duller minds to ...
— Famous Women: George Sand • Bertha Thomas
... particular regard shown me by the Chancellor and Vice-Chancellor of the University, and the Heads of the Colleges." As the years passed, the sense of being at ease among friends grew stronger; the serene and placid letters to "Dear Debby" became rather less frequent; the desire to return to ...
— The Eve of the Revolution - A Chronicle of the Breach with England, Volume 11 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Carl Becker
... conversation could be carried on. In returning in the evening to the boat, we stopped to witness a very pretty scene. Numbers of children were playing on the beach, and had lighted bonfires which illumined the placid sea and surrounding trees; others, in circles, were singing Tahitian verses. We seated ourselves on the sand, and joined their party. The songs were impromptu, and I believe related to our arrival: one little ...
— A Naturalist's Voyage Round the World - The Voyage Of The Beagle • Charles Darwin
... said Teddy, as a placid, neat, elderly lady came out upon the gallery to meet them. "Mrs. Mac, here's the boss. Very likely she will be wanting a hunk of ham and a dish of ...
— Whirligigs • O. Henry
... higher, hemming the water in with steep, forbidding cliffs close together. The river became much narrower and swirled with an oily-looking current around the buttresses of granite that thrust themselves from one side or the other into it. The declivity was not great and the torrent was otherwise placid. After three miles of this ominous docility, just as the dinner hour was near and the threatening black granite had risen to one thousand feet above the water, we heard a deep, sullen roar ahead and from the boats the whole river seemed to vanish instantly ...
— A Canyon Voyage • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh
... enough, with his cheek on a foot stool, as though disposed deliberately upon the ground to sleep. His biretta was still upon his head; his eyes were open, and the fret and passion manifested by his face in life had entirely left it. He looked many years younger, and no emotion of any kind marked his placid countenance. But he was dead; his heart had ceased to beat and his extremities were already cold. The room appeared unchanged in every particular. As in the previous cases, death had come by stealth, yet robbed, as far as ...
— The Grey Room • Eden Phillpotts
... and live with animals, they are so placid and self-contained I stand and look at them long and long. They do not sweat and whine about their condition, They do not lie awake in the dark and weep for their sins, No one kneels to another, nor to one of his kind that lived thousands ...
— AE in the Irish Theosophist • George William Russell
... upon the bench they found a little old man, his legs extended, his hands thrust deep into his pockets, and a look of calm meditation upon his round and placid face. Between his teeth was a black brier pipe, which ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces • Edith Van Dyne
... dried-up rose-bud of one's youth, religiously preserved as a relic, there is a faint flavor of youth and pleasure about them, sweet still, as a remembrance of the past. "Always beautiful, always amiable!" murmured the cavaliere, like a rhyme, a placid ...
— The Italians • Frances Elliot
... breaking, And gloom and darkness flee; Though storms our bark are tossing, There's somewhere a placid sea. ...
— The Gentleman from Everywhere • James Henry Foss
... took carried them along the bank of the placid Ourthe, flowing peacefully, calmly along toward its confluence with the more important stream of the Meuse at Liege. Behind them one strange thing proved that all was not quite normal. From Fort Boncelles a searchlight began to play. They ...
— The Belgians to the Front • Colonel James Fiske
... of the path rose a steep bank, and beyond that the bare, sloping mountain-side. In the shelter of the bank the snow had drifted deep, but, oddly 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 ...
— The Winds of Chance • Rex Beach
... one of the transverse beams of a seventy-four gun-ship, building in that arsenal, missed his footing, fell to the bottom of the hold of the huge vessel, and was killed on the spot. He left a widow and one child—a boy seven years of age, of placid, endearing disposition, but weak intellect—almost in a state of destitution. He had been a coarse-tempered, improvident man; and like too many of his class, in those days at least, dissipated the whole of his large ...
— The Experiences of a Barrister, and Confessions of an Attorney • Samuel Warren
... our farm has many whims. It ripples over bright and shiny rocks, and falls into a placid little pool so clear that I can see the pebbles on the bottom and can see myself down there, too. As I look straight down, it is hard to tell whether what I see is my nose or a .................., but as I move a little, that which I sec stands still, so I know it is ...
— Stanford Achievement Test, Ed. 1922 - Advanced Examination, Form A, for Grades 4-8 • Truman L. Kelley
... Ghats. The population, which in some parts attains extraordinary density and lives almost exclusively on the fruits of the soil, is of the old Dravidian stock, industrious and frugal as in other parts of India, and of a placid and gentle temper. Nowhere else in India does one come into such close contact with its original non-Aryan peoples; and nowhere else has the earliest type of religious and social institutions evolved by the superior civilization ...
— Indian Unrest • Valentine Chirol
... repairing power of the undertaker. At two o'clock of the afternoon the friends were to assemble to pay their last tribute of respect to one who had no further need of friends and respect. The surviving members of the family came severally every few minutes to the casket and wept above the placid features beneath the glass. This did them no good; it did no good to John Mortonson; but in the presence of death reason ...
— Can Such Things Be? • Ambrose Bierce
... party would fetch from one thousand to fifteen hundred dollars, according to its numbers and "condition." The spectacle was painful and monstrous. Most of the "lots" bore the examination of their points with a kind of placid dignity, and only showed some little interest when the biddings grew keen and ...
— In the Wrong Paradise • Andrew Lang
... "quite so; let me see." And again the gold pencil-case was pressed against his respectable forehead in placid cogitation. "Yes, that ...
— The Humourous Story of Farmer Bumpkin's Lawsuit • Richard Harris
... friend and master was only making more trouble for him. His placid readings before the fire were now subject to daily interruptions. It was impossible to read more than a chapter. The celebrated man was continually ordering him to betake himself to the street. "A new lesson," sighed the parasite. ...
— The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... thus passed away almost cheerfully. Her gentle, prudent, and placid deportment won upon the esteem of those who were least friendly to her opinions. The officers who were appointed to guard her, although they could not permit her to set her foot on shore, were pleased at the attention which she received from visitors. Commodore Smith behaved ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745 - Volume III. • Mrs. Thomson
... the usually placid Tantaine. His manner was so fierce and threatening that Paul shifted his position to one ...
— The Champdoce Mystery • Emile Gaboriau
... of the Victorian Age will never be written; we know too much about it. For ignorance is the first requisite of the historian—ignorance, which simplifies and clarifies, which selects and omits, with a placid perfection unattainable by the highest art. Concerning the Age which has just passed, our fathers and our grandfathers have poured forth and accumulated so vast a quantity of information that the industry of a Ranke would be submerged by it, and the perspicacity of a Gibbon would ...
— Eminent Victorians • Lytton Strachey
... and who discourse of heaven and future blessedness, till the closing ear can no longer catch the tones of the long-familiar voice, and who, lingering near, still feel for the hushed pulse, and then trace in the placid slumber, which pervades each feature, a quiet emblem of ...
— Sanders' Union Fourth Reader • Charles W. Sanders
... officer and twenty troopers as an escort they rode to the summit of the nearest bluff on the western shore, and with their field-glasses studied the landscape for miles. Far to the southwest lay the placid valley, unvexed now by sign of hostile force of any kind, and the sergeant indicated, some fifteen miles away, the butte near which they made their crossing of the stream the previous day. Far ...
— Under Fire • Charles King
... (whichever it was) to tell us about the very pleasant and human audience. I had only one disappointment, but that was acute. I did want just once for them to hear a distant bang, and see what happened. I rather doubt whether the placid and literary charm of the tales would have sufficed to keep them within doors had there ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, January 5, 1916 • Various
... clothes down last night. He had thought she was asleep, and had gone through his undressing noiselessly, with movements of angelic and elaborate gentleness that well-nigh disarmed her thought. He was sleeping now. She tried not to hear the sound of his placid breathing. Only the other night, their wedding night, she had lain awake at this hour and heard it, and had turned her face towards him where he lay in the divine unconsciousness of sleep. The childlike, huddled posture of ...
— The Helpmate • May Sinclair
... Ralph was sitting in an open boat, listening to the measured oar-strokes of the boatmen who were rowing him out to the nearest stopping-place of the steamer. The mountains lifted their great placid heads up among the sun-bathed clouds, and the fjord opened its cool depths as if to make room for their vast reflections. Ralph felt as if he were floating in the midst of the blue infinite space, and, with the strength ...
— Tales From Two Hemispheres • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... made little difference at Downside, except in Mr Robins' white hair and set lined face; the little house behind the yew-hedge looked just the same, and Jane Sands' kind, placid face was still as kind and placid. Some of the girls had left school and gone to service; some of the lads had developed into hobbledehoys and came to church with walking-sticks and well-oiled hair; one or two of ...
— Zoe • Evelyn Whitaker
... their leaves; the large plots of grass were of a luxuriant growth; here and there the flower beds were enameled with crocuses, primroses, and auriculas. The sun was shining brightly, and the old pensioners, dressed in gray coats, were walking up and down, or seated on the benches; their placid countenances expressed calmness, or a kind of tranquil indifference. Eleven o'clock had just struck, when two carriages stopped before the outer gate: from the first descended Madame George, Germain, and Rigolette; ...
— Mysteries of Paris, V3 • Eugene Sue
... midst forever. It is such a beautiful day! The air is so soft, the grass so green, and the birds singing so joyously! The day and the event have become so interwoven with each other, that I cannot separate them. I think of his placid face, sleeping its last still sleep; and through the open window, I see the springing grass and the bursting buds. My ears are filled with bird-music, and all other sounds are hushed in this Sabbath stillness. All I see and hear seems to be hallowed ...
— Isaac T. Hopper • L. Maria Child
... long have held their quiet course had it not been for Jim. As it has been said, he was very different in disposition from Elsie. Restless, eager, and full of curiosity, he could not understand her placid yet cheerful nature. He knew not the secret of her inner life, and of the way in which that life animated and directed the outer. The young man saw less and less of Tor Glen, having now obtained a good situation in a flax ...
— A Child of the Glens - or, Elsie's Fortune • Edward Newenham Hoare
... Presidency, the Senate, and the House, is builded the vast national party machine. Every citizen is familiar with the outer aspect of these great national parties as they strive in placid times to create a real issue of the tariff, or imperialism, or what not, so as to establish at least an ostensible difference between them; or as they, in critical times, make the party name synonymous with national security. The high-sounding platforms, ...
— The Boss and the Machine • Samuel P. Orth
... followed Arthur Howell's refined and distinct accents, I looked at the row of placid faces where the women sat, some rosy, some old, all in the monastic cell of the bonnet, which made it as impossible to see, except in front, as it is for a horse with blinders. I wondered how this queer ...
— Hugh Wynne, Free Quaker • S. Weir Mitchell
... got no real call to thank me," was the placid reply. "I'd be doing the same for any girl as good-looking as you be; and I'd be hoping somebody'd do the same for my Helen Louise. It seems like it's always most easiest for young folks to keep right on forgetting just what they ought to ...
— The Heart of Arethusa • Francis Barton Fox
... Brook Sam Turner found W. W. Westlake, of the Westlake Electric Company, a big, placid man with a mild gray eye and an appearance of well-fed and kindly laziness; a man also who had the record of having ruthlessly smashed more business competitors than any two other pirates in his line. ...
— The Early Bird - A Business Man's Love Story • George Randolph Chester
... moreover, swear an oath to thee, standing up among the Greeks, that he has never ascended her bed, nor has been mingled with her, as is the custom, O king, of men and wives; and to thee thyself, also, let the soul within thy breast be placid. Then let him next conciliate thee by a rich banquet within his tents, that thou mayest not have aught wanting of redress. And for the future, O son of Atreus, thou wilt be more just towards another; for it is by no means unworthy that a king should appease a ...
— The Iliad of Homer (1873) • Homer
... around the voice I saw frightened faces of women hanging in the smoke, some screaming with their lips apart and their eyes closed, some staring with wide eyes; and among the women's faces I discovered the large, placid, interested expression of the Gestionnaire and the nervous clicking eyes of the Surveillant. And there was a shout—it was the Black Holster shouting at us ...
— The Enormous Room • Edward Estlin Cummings
... vice's paths in the days of thy bloom; Innocence leads to the summit of glory, Innocence gilds the dark shades of the tomb. The tyrant, whose hands are red, Trembles alone in bed; But pure is the peasant's soul, pure as the snow, No horror fiends haunt his rest, Hope fills his placid breast, Hope bright as dew on the hill ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume IV. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... Justice Hare, looked up at him, wondering why he did not stir in answer to his name—wondering at the pallid hue which overspread his face. Not he, but another came forward—a fair, placid, gentlemanly young man, with blue eyes, fair hair, and a pleasant countenance. It was Richard Hare the younger. He had assumed his original position in life, so far as attire went, and in that, at least, was a gentleman again. In speech also—with his working dress Richard ...
— East Lynne • Mrs. Henry Wood
... life, he was amiable and kind; was patient under contradiction, and placid in manners; had great self-possession, and extraordinary dignity. His person was beautiful, and his address commanding. He was feared as a general, but loved as a man. He never lost his affections for his home, and loved to idolatry his ...
— A Modern History, From the Time of Luther to the Fall of Napoleon - For the Use of Schools and Colleges • John Lord
... best comparison is supplied by my first remark—that in this city you can do what you like. You're rather fenced in yonder. If you're of a placid disposition, that, no doubt, is comforting, because it shuts out unpleasant things. On the other hand, if you happen to be restless and active, the fences are inconvenient, for you can't always climb over—and it is not considered proper to break them down. Still, having admitted ...
— Vane of the Timberlands • Harold Bindloss
... as though, instead of being thirty-three, you were still very small and very young and ignorant of all the things that really mattered. She was vaguer and greyer, more placid than ever, and more content ...
— Mary Olivier: A Life • May Sinclair
... uninformed minds, while circulated in a form to come within the narrow means of the lowest mechanics—this was an enterprise worthy especial note, even had not God openly blessed it to the turning of that formidable tide. When I looked upon the placid but animated countenance of the aged saint, as she sat in her bow-window looking out upon the fair fields, the still inviolate shores of her beloved country, I thought more of her "Cheap Repository Tracts" than of all her other works combined. There lay the Bristol Channel, that noble inlet to our ...
— Personal Recollections • Charlotte Elizabeth
... Presently Elizabeth Gauthier arrived, placid and cool as though everything were normal. "Paris is calm; calm as Paris always is ...
— My Home In The Field of Honor • Frances Wilson Huard
... usually placid but now irate Lord Bazelhurst was not quite as momentous as it sounded. As a matter of fact, the title to the land was vested entirely in his young American wife; his sole possession, according to report, being a title much less substantial but ...
— Master Tales of Mystery, Volume 3 • Collected and Arranged by Francis J. Reynolds
... neatly-flowered skirts—red and white, like her own pretty face—were as composed and orderly, as if the very wind that blew so hard out of doors could not disturb one of their folds. Whereas his coat had something of a fly-away and half-off appearance about the collar and breast, her little bodice was so placid and neat, that there should have been protection for her, in it, had she needed any, with the roughest people. Who could have had the heart to make so calm a bosom swell with grief, or throb with fear, or ...
— The Haunted Man and the Ghost's Bargin • Charles Dickens
... shacks, in front of which were gaily coloured washings hung out to dry in the hot sun. For miles in every direction hills, with but little vegetation on their volcanic sides, rose tier above tier as far as the eye could reach, and the bay reflected on its placid surface every cloud in the heavens, every tree on ...
— A Woman's Journey through the Philippines - On a Cable Ship that Linked Together the Strange Lands Seen En Route • Florence Kimball Russel
... to group, resting now on a family party, now on a quartet of lovers, now on two stout men obviously trying to drive a bargain with vigorous rhetoric and emphatic gestures, now on an elderly woman in a shawl spending an hour with her soldier son in placid silence, now on some sailors from a ship in the distant port by the arsenal bent over a game of cards, or a party of workmen talking wages or politics in their shirt-sleeves with flowers above ...
— A Spirit in Prison • Robert Hichens
... an attitude of placid attention, secretly enjoying the clever thrust he had given his adversary. At these last ...
— The Philistines • Arlo Bates
... groups of horsemen coming adown the winding road, or stopping to greet some good wife and her gossip—going abroad in a high-railed cart in quest of trade, or friendly call. And as the day wanes, the sleek cows, with considered careful walk and placid mien, wend their way homeward, bearing their heavy udders to the house-mother, who, pail in hand awaiting their approach, pauses for a moment to mark the feathered boaster at her feet, as he makes his parting vaunt of a day well spent and summons "Partlet" ...
— The Romantic Settlement of Lord Selkirk's Colonists - The Pioneers of Manitoba • George Bryce
... 'Village Blacksmith' and his smithy are not alone the stalwart man and dingy shop under the 'spreading chestnut-tree' which the Professor daily passes on his way to his college duties, but belong wherever a smithy stands. Through the meadows in front flows the placid Charles." ...
— Great Fortunes, and How They Were Made • James D. McCabe, Jr.
... Abolitionist, took pity and showed his sympathy by telling the men to turn him loose, and not to interfere with non-combatants. He was told to run now, and if he kept the gait he started with through the woods, not many hours elapsed before he placed the placid waters of the Potomac between him and the blood-thirsty Rebels. Strict orders were given to "stay in ranks," but the sight of so much valuable plunder, and actual necessaries to the soldiers, was too much for the poorly provided Confederates; and not a few plucked from the pile a blanket, overcoat, ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert
... far away in the hills of the fertile Oise, I think of you. I hope I may again visit you. And I wonder. What ripples from the seething capitals will stir the placid thoughts of your stouthearted peasants? And will your broad-browed women wait with age-old resignation for the next wave of war, or will they catch the echo that is rebounding through all the valleys of the world and join their voices in ...
— Where the Sabots Clatter Again • Katherine Shortall
... finished his cruising, having covered his territory. The packs were made up and slung; the two campers set out on their three days' tramp back to the settlements; and the solemn autumn quiet descended once more upon the placid beaver ponds, the shallow-running brooks, and the ...
— The House in the Water - A Book of Animal Stories • Charles G. D. Roberts
... and cannot endure independence in others. Women like Madame Sipiagina excite and disturb people of inexperienced and passionate natures, but are fond of a quiet and peaceful life themselves. Virtue comes easy to them, they are placid of temperament, but a constant desire to command, to attract, and to please gives them mobility and brilliance. They have an iron will, and a good deal of their fascination is due to this will. It is difficult for a man to hold his ground when the mysterious sparks of tenderness begin to ...
— Virgin Soil • Ivan S. Turgenev
... not showing himself to be deformed in any part of his person. I, however," continues the Countess, "believe that he often gazed on those wonders, but in the late and solitary hour, when the stupendous edifices which surrounded him, illuminated by the soft and placid light of the moon, appeared a thousand times more lovely." "During an entire winter, he went out every morning alone, to row himself to the island of the Armenians (a small island, distant from Venice ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 17, No. 476, Saturday, February 12, 1831 • Various
... and heavily; his eyes never unclosed; she felt tempted to raise the lashes, as she would lift up and peep under the lids of a child. Ah! but she feared to see the balls sightless and glazing over fast. The marked, lively face was placid as if it were set in death, and the slight contraction between the brows, which she had remarked the first night she saw him, was almost effaced. How dreadful it would be if he died on her knees there, in the solitude of the moor! The son at the daughter's feet, ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler
... human conversation, till I took pity on him. No, he hasn't exactly the Chinese type, but he's wearing a Chinese costume, and I should suppose he'd feel uncommonly hot in that exasperatingly placid Chinese head. I'm nearly suffocated, and I'm only wearing a loup. For the rest, why ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume X (of X) • Various
... conduct by his brother Henry, and she was so overjoyed by receiving an invitation from General Tilney to pay a visit to Northanger Abbey, his beautiful country seat, that a parting interview with Isabella and James, at which he was in excellent spirits and she most engagingly placid, left her blissfully convinced that the behaviour of the lovers was ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol. I • Various
... disparity of years, Though much in temper; but they never clash'd: They moved like stars united in their spheres, Or like the Rhone by Leman's waters wash'd, Where mingled and yet separate appears The river from the lake, all bluely dash'd Through the serene and placid glassy deep, Which fain would lull ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... outside his placid soul All touch of sense, letting no contact through; Whose quiet eyes gaze straight from fixed brows, Whose outward breath and inward breath are drawn Equal and slow through nostrils still and close; That one-with organs, heart, and mind constrained, Bent on deliverance, ...
— The Bhagavad-Gita • Sir Edwin Arnold
... electioneering crew Wearing the colours of Whigs and Tories. Ah! well the Poet said, in sooth, That "whispering tongues can poison Truth," - Yes, like a dose of oxalic acid, Wrench and convulse poor Peace, the placid, And rack dear Love with internal fuel, Like arsenic pastry, or what is as cruel, Sugar of lead, that sweetens gruel, - At least such torments began to wring 'em From the very morn When that mischievous Horn Caught the whisper of tongues ...
— Playful Poems • Henry Morley
... tubes and reedy pipes, The skilful hand a soften'd stop controuls: In sweetest harmony the dulcet strains steal forth, Now swelling high, and now subdued; afar they float In lengthened whispers melting into cadenced murmurs, Forming soft melodious strains, and placid airs, Spreading gently all around, then ...
— The Recent Revolution in Organ Building - Being an Account of Modern Developments • George Laing Miller
... the idea or notion of producing brilliant or sensational results, he will in all probability so disturb the placidity of the receiving surface of his mind that the latter will fail to register or record the impressions being made upon it by the spirit vibrations. It is similar to the case of a placid bosom of a deep lake which, normally, will reflect clearly and distinctly the images of the surrounding scenery cast upon it from the light waves; but which, if disturbed by strong breezes, will exhibit merely a distorted, disturbed, incomplete, and untrue ...
— Genuine Mediumship or The Invisible Powers • Bhakta Vishita
... good-by said! But the sobs were forced back, the hands wiped off the tears, the quivering features were bidden into some degree of calmness; and she leaned forward, over the loved face that in death had kept all its wonted look of mildness and placid dignity. It was in vain to try to look through Fleda's blinded eyes; the hot tears dropped fast, while her trembling lips kissed, and kissed, those cold and silent that could make no return; and then feeling that it was the last, that the parting was over, she stood ...
— Queechy, Volume I • Elizabeth Wetherell
... has had tastes, the reverse of orthodox where his emotions were concerned, though happily he has not jeopardised the family fortunes as his brother would have done had he been head. All the children have been so well brought up and instructed in the tenets of the Church that she feels quite placid and sure that she has done all that could be expected of her, and is horribly surprised and distressed when disasters presently occur. She looks upon them as the will of God and fate, but feels in no ...
— Three Things • Elinor Glyn
... question her, very obligingly entertained him with a recital of the particulars which she herself knew of that escape, which does so much honour to the humanity, fidelity, and generosity, of the Highlanders. Dr Johnson listened to her with placid attention, and said, 'All this should ...
— The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, LL.D. • James Boswell
... to gather his opinions. When anything that was read or related displeased him, he was observed to smoke his pipe vehemently, and to send forth short, frequent and angry puffs; but when pleased, he would inhale the smoke slowly and tranquilly, and emit it in light and placid clouds; and sometimes, taking the pipe from his mouth, and letting the fragrant vapor curl about his nose, would gravely nod his head in token ...
— The Short-story • William Patterson Atkinson
... a placid mood, and strangely inclined to retrospection. Thoughtfully fingering the key which locked up the record of his wealth, he walked to the window and looked out. It was a dreary prospect of brown moor and gray sea, but Crawford loved it. The bare land and the barren ...
— Scottish sketches • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... 'oner;" the officer answers in a deep, gruff voice, as he steps forward and places a volume of the revised statutes before that high jurist. Fetter moves the book to his left, where Felsh has taken his seat. With placid countenance and softest accents, Fetter orders the prisoner at the bar to stand up while our constable calls the ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... Sir Henry's face wore an expression of placid self-congratulation. He thought the conversation had been rather improving, I believe, and that some of the ideas and illustrations had been rather neatly put; so he laid his head down that night with the calm, ...
— Guy Livingstone; - or, 'Thorough' • George A. Lawrence
... smoked his cigarette without a sign of perturbation. Save for a certain steeliness in his pale eyes, his habitually placid expression remained unaltered. ...
— Greatheart • Ethel M. Dell
... clearly and plainly a knowledge of the customs, language, and manners of the inhabitants of Norlamin. Each mind became suffused with a vast, immeasurable peace, calm power, and a depth and breadth of mental vision theretofore undreamed of. Looking deep into his mind they sensed a quiet, placid certainty, beheld power and knowledge to them illimitable, perceived depths of wisdom ...
— Skylark Three • Edward Elmer Smith
... to anger. Who was doing this? How dare he play like that in the midst of divine service? I glanced at the people near me: not one appeared to be in the least disturbed. The placid brows of the kneeling nuns, still turned towards the altar, lost none of their devout abstraction under the pale shadow of their white head-dress. The fashionable lady beside me was looking expectantly at Monseigneur C——. For all her face betrayed, the organ might have been singing ...
— The King In Yellow • Robert W. Chambers
... and four to the west! Arrowy shots at the Umpire's chest! Placid the sinewy batsman beams— How easy it ...
— More Cricket Songs • Norman Gale
... tinted with the hues of myriads of wild flowers, purple, pale blue, and creamy white; the mountain breeze that is already whirling the dust-clouds on the Denver plains has not yet begun to ruffle the cottonwoods or the placid surface of the slow-moving stream, and in many a sheltered pool the waters of the "Smoky Hill" gleam like silvered mirror, without break or flaw. Far out on the gentle slopes small herds of troop-horses or ...
— Marion's Faith. • Charles King
... on which this hotel stands the piercingly blue Bow River throws itself down in a string of foaming white cataracts to mate with the amber and rapid-rushing Spray. The level valley through which the united and now placid stream flows is carpeted with the vivid-red painter's brush, white and yellow marguerites, asters, fireweed, golden-rod, and blue-bells; to the left rise the perpendicular cliffs of Tunnel Mountain, while to the right Mt. Rundle lifts its weirdly ...
— The Land of Contrasts - A Briton's View of His American Kin • James Fullarton Muirhead
... back the light to us. Or again, a mass of low, solid ice, flushed pink in the morning light. And behind us, just above the horizon, a segment of purple sky where a storm was gathering—a deep purple which was mirrored in the placid patches of open water, and darkened the ice-floes ...
— Tarrano the Conqueror • Raymond King Cummings
... were of that opinion,' said the soldier, with a scowl at the placid old man in the corner. 'Thy Sikhs thought so when our two companies came to help them at the Pirzai Kotal in the face of eight Afridi standards on the ridge not ...
— Kim • Rudyard Kipling
... group of screening trees to the next): It can be done. Put your village on the east side of the big lake, back of the hardwood ridge. Do you remember Placid Brook? That will flow through the main street. It will be kept clean and well stocked with trout, so that the old men can fish from the bridges. Above the village there shall be a path along the brook, all in the shade. Can't you see the girls and ...
— If You Touch Them They Vanish • Gouverneur Morris
... the valley and up a steep zigzag path climbing the almost overhanging farther side, he saw long trains of camels pass, and occasionally odd horsemen. Sometimes machine-gun fire at extreme range disturbed their placid way, but usually the gunners kept their ammunition for ...
— The Tale of a Trooper • Clutha N. Mackenzie
... down twice to Folkestone during the following week. Her visits made her mind easier. Mrs. Phillips seemed so placid, so contented. There was no suggestion of suffering, either ...
— All Roads Lead to Calvary • Jerome K. Jerome
... to traverse a quarter of a mile or more till we saw the stream ahead of us, running placid as before. Kakaik, going down into the water, placed his canoe gently on the surface, and then helped to take Mike's off his shoulders. The goods we had brought were next placed in them, and the Indian sat down on the bank to ...
— Afar in the Forest • W.H.G. Kingston
... intense to-day. His conscience slept with the winds. And the sea slept too with all its sorrow. He sat there like a carven figure with his face in his hand. And, by degrees, he ceased to feel, to think actively. Conscious, not asleep, with open eyes he remained in a placid attitude, lulled in the arms ...
— Tongues of Conscience • Robert Smythe Hichens
... the man looked; as if, in short, he was disappointed that he had not made a more sensible impression upon me: nor, when he recollected himself (as he did immediately), what a visible struggle it cost him to change his haughty airs for more placid ones. But I took no notice of either; for I thought it best to convince him, by the coolness and indifference with which I repulsed his forward hopes (at the same time intending to avoid the affectation of pride or vanity) that he was ...
— Clarissa, Volume 1 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... though the faithful trees, still gladly green, Show fretted depths of blue their boughs between, Though placid sunlight sleeps upon the lawn, It only tells us of what might have been Of ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101. October 24, 1891 • Various
... or thy gains, Whate'er thy projects or thy fears, Whate'er the joys, whate'er the pains, That prompt thy baby smiles and tears; Come to my school, and thou shalt learn, In one short hour of placid thought, A stoicism, more deep, more stern, Than ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 3. (of 4) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... hand, she gazed out the small chintz bordered window of the room, preoccupied. He noticed the daintiness of her profile, the placid sweetness of her face ...
— Spring Street - A Story of Los Angeles • James H. Richardson
... Queen, with a view to annexation, were unfit to retain offices granted during pleasure, if persons who made a similar declaration with a view to independence were to be differently dealt with. Baldwin had Lord John's speech in his hand. He is a man of singularly placid demeanour, but he has been seriously ill, so possibly his nerves are shaken—at any rate I never saw him so much moved. 'Have you read the latter part of Lord J. Russell's speech?' he said to me. I nodded assent. 'For myself,' he added, 'if the anticipations therein expressed ...
— Letters and Journals of James, Eighth Earl of Elgin • James, Eighth Earl of Elgin
... some difficulty to make one's way on horseback out of the gates of Mexico at an early hour of the morning, but it must be confessed, that the whole scene is lively and cheerful enough to make one forget that there is such a thing as care in the world. There is an indifferent, placid smile on every face, and the bright blue sky smiling over them all; dogs bark, and asses bray, and the Indian, with near a mule's load on his back, drags his hat off to salute a bevy of his bronze-coloured ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca
... a happy little stream, so calm, so placid, no angry ripples ever disturbed its pure surface, over which the Swallows lightly skimmed. And it meandered along for many miles; sometimes you would lose sight of it altogether, then out it would come from some quiet, grassy nook, gaily sparkling, and glide with a merry sound, ...
— Parables from Flowers • Gertrude P. Dyer
... Pharaoh resumed his coolness, his face regained its majestic, weary, placid look, and seeing that Timopht did not ...
— The Works of Theophile Gautier, Volume 5 - The Romance of a Mummy and Egypt • Theophile Gautier
... the death of his wife two years before. I have heard it ingeniously observed by a lady of rank and elegance, that 'his melancholy was then at its meridian.' It pleased GOD to grant him almost thirty years of life after this time; and once, when he was in a placid frame of mind, he was obliged to own to me that he had enjoyed happier days, and had many more friends, since that ...
— Life of Johnson - Abridged and Edited, with an Introduction by Charles Grosvenor Osgood • James Boswell
... loss of their independence and their trade in a tolerable physical well-being, in the suppression of all disorders, and in an enforced calm such as Louis, by reason of his false position, had not been able to secure for them—a boon which, it must be confessed, their placid dispositions did not undervalue. When, however, opportunity was ripe, they bravely rose to assert once more ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. III. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... to be a more placid time with Milton. With his book out, his wife restored to him, the Divorce argument dropped, and his pupils to teach, he might look about him quietly on the state of public affairs, and expect what should be the next call on him. There ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson
... a loud whistling noise above our heads; and on looking up, saw a flock of wild-ducks making for the coast. We watched these, and observing where they alighted, followed them up until we came upon a most lovely blue lake, not more than two hundred yards long, embosomed in verdant trees. Its placid surface, which reflected every leaf and stem as if in a mirror, was covered with various species of wild ducks, feeding among the sedges and broad-leaved water-plants which floated on it, while numerous birds like water-hens ran to and fro most busily on its margin. These all with ...
— The Coral Island - A Tale Of The Pacific Ocean • R. M. Ballantyne
... though he could not affect cordiality. The Major was somewhat of a BON VIVANT, and his wine was excellent. He told his old campaign stories, and displayed much knowledge of men and manners. Mr. Morton had an internal fund of placid and quiet gaiety, which seldom failed to enliven any small party in which he found himself pleasantly seated. Waverley, whose life was a dream, gave ready way to the predominating impulse, and became the most lively of the party. He had at all times remarkable natural powers of ...
— Waverley • Sir Walter Scott
... good-looking, with a composed, yet cheerful expression of countenance; her dress was plain and primitive, very much resembling that of a Quaker. She held a straw bonnet in her hand. "I am glad to see thee moving about, young man," said she, in a soft, placid tone; "I could scarcely have expected it. Thou must be wondrous strong; many, after what thou hast suffered, would not have stood on their feet for weeks and months. What do I say?—Peter, my husband, who is skilled in medicine, just now told me that not one in five hundred would ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... noble river that they first felt that impassioned glow that colors all the after life of man or woman, and which is as different from the feelings that characterize early boy or girlhood, as the noon-day solar blaze is from the cold and placid beams of the pale new moon. There is one point at which the true passion of love, in all great hearts, leaps into fierce and instantaneous existence. There may be many imperceptible approaches to it in some cases, ...
— Ridgeway - An Historical Romance of the Fenian Invasion of Canada • Scian Dubh
... nothing of the honourable, or the just; but what weakness will not parental affection encourage? As for Lucy, her countenance told me she suspected the truth. Never before had I seen on those usually placid, and always lovely features, an expression of so much humiliation. For a single instant, it almost amounted to anguish. Recovering her self-possession, however, she was the first to turn the discourse to ...
— Miles Wallingford - Sequel to "Afloat and Ashore" • James Fenimore Cooper
... lifted it, brandished it and adjusted it so easily you could have thought it a bowl at a game of skittles, to bring it down upon the pale forehead of the said Rene, who knowing that he was greatly in fault towards his lord, remained placid, and stretching his neck, thought that he was about to expiate his sin for his sweetheart in this world ...
— Droll Stories, Complete - Collected From The Abbeys Of Touraine • Honore de Balzac
... here. And insensible, indeed, to the beautiful realities of the sweet wild solitude that reigned around, must that man have been, who could have gazed unmoved, from the lofty banks of the Erie, on the placid lake beneath his feet, mirroring the bright starred heavens on its unbroken surface, or throwing into full and soft relief the snow white sail, and dark hull of some stately war-ship, becalmed in the offing, and only waiting the rising of the capricious ...
— The Canadian Brothers - or The Prophecy Fulfilled • John Richardson
... call him Count Teufelskine. In dress he is sublime; art is considered in that toilet, the harmony of colour respected, the chiar' oscuro evident in well-selected contrast. In manners he is dignified—nay, perhaps apathetic; nothing disturbs the placid serenity of that calm exterior. One day our friend breakfasted chez Bignon. When the bill came he read, "Two peaches, 15f." He paid. "Peaches scarce, I presume?" was his sole remark. "No, sir," replied the waiter, ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... purpose, and to retire into the east afterward, its whole duty done. On board, men were moving about, hanging lanterns, making taut here, setting free there, all with an air of utter peace and repose such as is found only on placid waterways beneath a setting sun. Occasionally an oar dipped in the still water, a hint of action, modified, softened into repose. Along one of the quaint streets of the irregular town, winding where it would, climbing where it climbed, hurried an angular figure,—that ...
— A Christmas Accident and Other Stories • Annie Eliot Trumbull
... pedantry. The solemn bray of one pedagogue was taken up and prolonged in a thousand echoes. There was not only no originality, but no desire for it,—perhaps even a dread of it, as something that would break the entente cordiale of placid mutual assurance. No great writer had given that tone of good-breeding to the language which would gain it entrance to the society of European literature. No man of genius had made it a necessity of polite culture. It was still as rudely provincial ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell
... spirits the anxious lads followed the dignified Secretary of the Council to the strongly built gaol on the edge of the town. In a very gloomy cell behind iron bars they found the luckless brace of pirates, shackled hand and foot. Bill Saxby took it like a placid philosopher but the ancient buccaneer was spitting Spanish oaths and condemning the hospitality of Charles Town in violent terms. He quieted instantly at sight of his young friends and the harsh, wrinkled visage fairly beamed ...
— Blackbeard: Buccaneer • Ralph D. Paine
... the town-clerk, in a way as if he pawkily jealoused something. Mr Warner, however, in his placid and ...
— Ringan Gilhaize - or The Covenanters • John Galt
... pipe in placid contentment on the deck of the tug looked up in astonishment as the posse of eight crossed the plank which connected him with the quay. Nevertheless he preserved an undaunted front, kept his pipe in his tightly closed lips, and cocked a defiant eye ...
— Scarhaven Keep • J. S. Fletcher
... no ambition except to get out of it and to remain a private while in it. His ambition for his civil career was tremendous. He tried to prod the placid John (his neighbour in their hut) into ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Jan. 8, 1919 • Various
... him out of the room and locked the door behind him, and he, after a dazed stare, stalked off indignantly to the front entrance. A Chinaman was passing by, with placid face, folded arms and long queue flopping in the wind. Ellhorn grabbed the queue with a drunken shout. The man yelled from sudden fright, and started off on the run with Ellhorn hanging on to the braid, shouting, his ...
— With Hoops of Steel • Florence Finch Kelly
... a little past twilight, and the western sky presented an unusual, if not an ominous, appearance. A sharp and melancholy breeze was abroad, and the sun, which had set among a mass of red clouds, half placid, and half angry in appearance, had for some brief space gone down. Over from the north, however, glided by imperceptible degrees a long black bar, right across the place of his disappearance, and nothing could be more striking than the wild and unnatural ...
— Willy Reilly - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... a fertile valley, where runs a placid river amid many meadows, gardens, and orchards, until at last it empties into a picturesque basin, where the landscape shows a harmonious blending of mountain and water, of cultivated fields and ...
— Canada • J. G. Bourinot
... Toussaint had looked at them with his keen and still intelligent eyes, as if he longed to participate in the life and activity into which they were returning. And a jealous thought came to his wife, who usually was so placid and good-natured. "Ah! my poor old man!" said she, after propping him up with a pillow, "those two are luckier than we are. Everything succeeds with them since that madman, Salvat, had his head cut off. They're provided for. They've plenty ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... Calmly, O placid Neckar! does thy blue stream glide through thy vine-clad vales; but calmer seems thy course when it touches ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield
... increasing prosperity seemed to give him great satisfaction; for he rubbed his white and well-kept hands, settled his staid cravat, smoothed his gravely decorous coat, and looked the picture of placid content. He meditated, gently twirling ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 15, January, 1859 • Various
... of skill or kindness had power to arrest its fatal progress. He sank under it about eleven o'clock at night. Such was the rapidity of this fatal disease, that his silver playful voice still seemed to ring through the house when he lay a placid corpse. Several poetic tributes to his memory were made, but none more touching than some lines from his own mother, which are fit to be preserved as a specimen of ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft
... that little white-washed home, where the brown hills rise around and the placid mountains look down from the distance, and a tongue of spruce trees beyond the stream stands sentinel against the open prairie, she is carrying on, not in despondency and bitterness, but in service and in hope. And so her sisters, all this world over, must carry on, until their sweetness ...
— The Cow Puncher • Robert J. C. Stead
... bright, Untroubled sentries of the shadowy night, While half the world is lapp'd in downy dreams, And round the lattice creep your midnight beams, How sweet to gaze upon your placid eyes, In lambent beauty ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... struggles of the inferior agents. The foaming and rushing waves had gone down nearly as fast as they had arisen, and, in their stead, remained myriads of curling ridges along which the glittering moonbeams danced, rioting with mild impunity on the surface of the placid sheet. Boats were out again, pulling for Savoy or the neighboring villages: and the whole view betokened the renewed confidence of those who trusted habitually to the fickle and ...
— The Headsman - The Abbaye des Vignerons • James Fenimore Cooper
... pleasing when sung by a crew of broad-chested fellows dashing their light birch-bark canoes over the waters rough or smooth, taking them, as they take fortune, cheerfully,—sometimes skimming like wild geese over the long, placid reaches, sometimes bounding like stags down the rough ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... for her, that he would have given anything to have been able to turn to her when he had exclaimed, "My God, war", and to have caught her hands and looked into her beautiful face. To-morrow he would send the letter. To-morrow? Why, yes, to-day, like all to-days in the removed and placid light of all to-morrows, would be shown needlessly hectic. Ten to one something would have happened in the night to make to-day look foolish. If nothing had happened, if it still was war, it could only be a swiftly over business, a rapid and ...
— If Winter Comes • A.S.M. Hutchinson
... Woonsocket, having made its placid way across the Mediterranean, up the Aegean Sea, and through the Dardanelles to the Bosporous, stopped overnight at Istanbul and then turned around and went back. On the way in, it had stopped at Gibraltar, Barcelona, Marseilles, Genoa, Naples, ...
— The Foreign Hand Tie • Gordon Randall Garrett
... as full of placid content as a kitten's, suddenly puckered with anxiety. "Lady, as I passed, it was still a long way down the fiord. I could only see that it was a large and fine trading-vessel. But one of the seamen on the ...
— The Thrall of Leif the Lucky • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz
... of her bosom, with the famished and concentrated expression of a starving man looking at food. She drew herself up to him and rubbed her head against his cheek slowly and gently. He sighed. She, with her hands still on his shoulders, glanced up at the placid ...
— An Outcast of the Islands • Joseph Conrad
... this morning "marched to the rear to the sound of the enemy's cannon." Many were men and boys merely out for a lark and almost ludicrously astonished at the nature of the business. New Englanders had come to battle as to a town meeting; placid farmers and village youths of the Middle States had never placed in the meadows of their imaginations events like these, while the more alert and restless folk of the cities discovered that the newspapers ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston
... ruined shudder. Wonder moved all the people While they listened to the sayings, To the wonders he unfolded Of the regions which he guarded. Thus he made his mystic sayings: "Through this wicket on my right hand Is a vale of noble grandeur, Placid and surpassing lovely, Which the pilgrim, as he enters, Hails with overflowing gladness. Seraphs from the holy regions— Oh, so sweet, and so inviting!— Meet him as he enters therein; Through the pleasant passes guide ...
— A Leaf from the Old Forest • J. D. Cossar
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