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More "Ponderous" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... had conducted them beyond, into the city, did he speak: "We know not what echoes there may be within those walls," he said, pointing back to the ponderous gateway ...
— The Royal Pawn of Venice - A Romance of Cyprus • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull
... if she could have slain the Queen on the spot, but commanded her temper and retired from the apartment, bearing in her hand the ponderous ...
— The Abbot • Sir Walter Scott
... flower-garden, adorned with large oil paintings (cattle-pieces and portraits) in massive and, for the most part, tarnished frames, and furnished in the solidest of British styles—mahogany chairs and table, an immense sideboard, a white marble fireplace, and a chandelier hanging with ponderous menace above the gleaming expanse of table-cloth. Here were seated eleven persons: Mr. Liversedge and his wife, their seven children (four girls and three boys), Miss Pope the governess, and Mr. Denzil Quarrier; waited upon ...
— Denzil Quarrier • George Gissing
... pudding, and it rendered him inattentive to Theodora's views on the origin of totem poles. Theodora saw his inattention, and, with the tact of the true hostess, she promptly changed the subject to one which should be less ponderous and more interesting. Leaving the totem poles, she began to talk of Quantuck and the vagaries of Mac. Quantuck proved to be an old vacation ground for Mr. Gilwyn, and he and Billy vied with each other in stories of the days when golf links were not, and the post office was still of the ...
— Phebe, Her Profession - A Sequel to Teddy: Her Book • Anna Chapin Ray
... foolish or otherwise, not according to the absolute facts involving the supposed danger, but according to the means which the person in question has of knowing the facts. A lady, for example, in passing along the sidewalk of a great city comes to a place where workmen are raising an immense and ponderous iron safe, which, slowly rising, hangs suspended twenty feet above the walk. She is afraid to pass under it. The foreman, however, who is engaged in directing the operation, passing freely to and fro under the impending weight, as he has occasion, and without the least ...
— Gentle Measures in the Management and Training of the Young • Jacob Abbott
... the right dogs for those who want Spaniels to travel faster and cover more ground than the more ponderous and short-legged Clumbers, Sussex, or Field Spaniels do, but their work is hardly equal in finish and precision to that of either of ...
— Dogs and All About Them • Robert Leighton
... defect in his character; and that was the habit in which he constantly indulged, of deploring the past, without making any very strong efforts toward amendment in the future. He was one evening seated in his room; a ponderous volume lay open, on his study-table; and for a time he vainly tried to fix his attention thereon, till finally he closed the book; and leaning back in his chair, his brows contracted, and the lines about his mouth grew tense, as if ...
— Stories and Sketches • Harriet S. Caswell
... been This night, in any guest-room, high or low? The drowsy porter at the gate saith, "No!"— Shooting the bars; while the packed camels shake Their bells to listen, and the sleepers wake, And to their feet the ponderous steers slow rise, Lifting from trampled fodder large mild eyes;— "Nay! Brothers! no such thing! yet there is gone Yonder, one nigh her time, a gentle one! With him that seemed her spouse—of Galilee; They toiled at sundown to our doors—but, see! No nook was here! Seek ...
— In The Yule-Log Glow—Book 3 - Christmas Poems from 'round the World • Various
... hearts; These are their stay, and when the leaden world Sets its hard face against their fateful thought, And brute strength, like a scornful conqueror, Clangs his huge mace down in the other scale, The inspired soul but flings his patience in, And slowly that outweighs the ponderous globe— One faith against a whole world's unbelief, One soul against the flesh ...
— Christopher Columbus and His Monument Columbia • Various
... sagely, and said nothing. The immediate result of the experience was that Veronica went to Miss Beasley, and borrowed An Antiquarian Survey of the County of Bedworthshire, including a description of its Castles and Moated Houses, together with a History of its Ancient Families—a ponderous volume dated 1823, which had before been offered for the girls' inspection, but which nobody had hitherto summoned courage to attack. She studied it now with deep attention, and gave a digest of its information for the benefit of weaker minds, less ...
— The Madcap of the School • Angela Brazil
... when the Argonauts, as these fifty brave adventurers were called, had prepared everything for the voyage, an unforeseen difficulty threatened to end it before it was begun. The vessel, you must understand, was so long and broad and ponderous that the united force of all the fifty was insufficient to shove her into the water. Hercules, I suppose, had not grown to his full strength, else he might have set her afloat as easily as a little boy launches his boat upon a puddle. But here were these fifty heroes, pushing and straining ...
— Myths and Legends of All Nations • Various
... probably take the longer time to effect her mobilization. Russia had started, it is true, before war was declared. But interior railroads in Russia are few. Russia, too, is proverbially slow, if for no other reason than by virtue of her ponderous numbers. France, on the other hand, is checked and counter-checked by good strategic railroads, and, having no such vast territory over which her troops would have to be moved, would be able to mobilize in a much shorter time than her ally. England, for ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 5, August, 1915 • Various
... first visit to the Mikado in 1868. Sir Harry Parkes showed us all their apartments, and the large though subsidiary temple once used as a hospital, and we afterwards went to see the service performed in the temple. A dozen bonzes, or priests, were sitting round in a circle, chanting monotonously from ponderous volumes, with an occasional accompaniment from a gong or drum. Incense was being burned, vestments worn, processions formed, and prayers offered to Buddha to intercede with the Supreme Being. The accessories ...
— A Voyage in the 'Sunbeam' • Annie Allnut Brassey
... it very raw at times, crude and new. He himself lived with dignity and elegant simplicity. He gave now and then lengthy, ponderous dinners, making out the lists himself, and handing them over to his timid English wife in much the manner in which he gave the wine list and the key to the wine cellar to the butler. And, at the head of his table, he let other men talk and listened. They talked, those industrial ...
— A Poor Wise Man • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... reverence at this bold buccaneer, for such he really suspected him to be. There was a chinking of gold and a sparkling of jewels in all his stories about the Spanish Main that gave a value to every period, and Wolfert would have given anything for the rummaging of the ponderous sea chest, which his imagination crammed full of golden chalices, crucifixes, and jolly round ...
— Stories by Modern American Authors • Julian Hawthorne
... his delivery was perfect, and even more than that. One of our best critics has called him matchless in this respect, and no other orator of the century, except possibly Canning, may be compared to him. Webster was more effective, but rather ponderous. Choate's style was peculiar, and Everett's cold and studied. Gladstone resembles him more, perhaps, than any other, but Gladstone has a decided solemnity of manner which is a help to him among his countrymen, but a defect as judged by classic standards. ...
— Sketches from Concord and Appledore • Frank Preston Stearns
... generous bands, secure to meet the rewards of victory or the repose of honourable death! Go forth, ye generous bands, but unaccompanied by the wretch I have described! His feeble arm refuses to bear the ponderous shield; the pointed spear sinks feebly from his grasp; he trembles at the noise and tumult of the war, and flies like the hunted hart to lurk in shades and darkness. Behold him roused from his midnight ...
— The History of Sandford and Merton • Thomas Day
... the engravings of Clarke's marbles, and read the account of how these ponderous marbles had been transported to England. We saw the marbles themselves. The famous enormous head of Ceres must have belonged to a gigantic statue, and perhaps at a great height may have had a fine effect. It is in a sadly mutilated condition; there is no face; the appearance ...
— The Life And Letters Of Maria Edgeworth, Vol. 1 • Maria Edgeworth
... sound of shrill protestation in strange vernacular. Even Wren heard the voice, and found something reminiscent in the sound of weeping and wailing that followed. The performer was unquestionably Elise—she that had won the ponderous, ...
— An Apache Princess - A Tale of the Indian Frontier • Charles King
... the field officers in a revolt against the general. No better fortune ever befell this very fortunate nation. If the anti-slavery extremists had been able to reinforce their own pressure by the ponderous impact of the popular will, and so had pushed the President from his "border-state policy" and from his general scheme of advancing only very cautiously along the anti-slavery line, it is hardly conceivable either that the Union would have been saved or that ...
— Abraham Lincoln, Vol. II • John T. Morse
... most important points to attend to is, that while they are held with sufficient firmness in order to be turned to the required form, they should be free from any strain which might in any way distort them. In strong and ponderous objects this can be easily accomplished by due care on the part of an intelligent workman. It is in operating by the lathe on delicate and flexible objects that the utmost care is requisite in the process of chucking, ...
— James Nasmyth's Autobiography • James Nasmyth
... I admitted. "And there again is another sign of wisdom. Your ponderous fool talks pompous sense always. He sees life in only one facet. Your lover sees its many sides, its infinite variety. He can laugh and weep; his imagination lights up dry facts with whimsical fancies; ...
— A Daughter of Raasay - A Tale of the '45 • William MacLeod Raine
... gubernatorial candidate, or for the construction of a canal. Samuel Young, who seemed to nourish a deep-seated dislike of Clinton, never tired of disparaging the ex-Mayor. He apparently took keen pleasure in holding up to ridicule and in satirising, what he was pleased to call his ponderous pedantries, his solemn affectation of profundity and wisdom, his narrow-mindedness, and his intolerable and transparent egotism. But the canal sentiment was all one way. With the help of the Federalists, who declined to make an opposing ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... the upper part of his ponderous figure arrayed in a frock-coat. He did not take kindly to what he termed "those skittish sparrow-tailed affairs". Frock-coats suited him, but I am not partial to them on every one. They look well enough on a podgy, fat, or broad ...
— My Brilliant Career • Miles Franklin
... was a somewhat ponderous affair, and, when she trusted to it, it usually ran her violently down a steep place. She concluded to say nothing more about ...
— The Grey Lady • Henry Seton Merriman
... busy, happy, splendid scene of English summer? And the highroad, a hundred years ago, was not that grass-grown desert of the present time. It was alive with constant travel and traffic: the country towns and inns swarmed with life and gaiety. The ponderous waggon, with its bells and plodding team; the light post-coach that achieved the journey from the White Hart, Salisbury, to the Swan with Two Necks, London, in two days; the strings of packhorses that had not yet left the road; my lord's ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... a long impromptu prayer followed, till some instinct told Mr Peters that supper-time had come, and we rose from our knees with hunger for our predominant feeling. Over supper the minister did unbend a little into one or two ponderous jokes, as if to show me that ministers were men, after all. And then at ten o'clock I went home, and enjoyed my long-repressed yawns in the three-cornered room before going to bed. Dinah and Hannah Dawson, so their names were put on the board above the shop-door—I always ...
— Cousin Phillis • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... figure, somewhat ponderous and thick in the legs, but well-dressed, walking in front of him, with a slight roll and waddle in his gait? Where had he seen that head, covered with tufts of flaxen hair, and as it were set right into the shoulders, that ...
— The Torrents of Spring • Ivan Turgenev
... no means gratified by the ponderous prancings of his imitator. We learn from Boswell that when the great man met Captain Cook at a dinner given by the President of the Royal Society, he said that he "was much pleased with the conscientious accuracy of that celebrated circumnavigator, who set me right as to many of the exaggerated ...
— Laperouse • Ernest Scott
... greatest pleasure,—he said, and proceeded to wheel the ponderous dome, and then to adjust the instrument, I think to the one in Andromeda, or that in Cygnus, but I should not know one of them ...
— The Poet at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... a little more; but finally he composed himself, and took a chair by Mr. Bayard's side. The bookseller then drew from his pocket a ponderous document, with a big official seal upon it, and exhibited it ...
— Now or Never - The Adventures of Bobby Bright • Oliver Optic
... after all, lost nothing of The Princess Pattie except half of the overture—a loss that, as operettas go, might indeed be counted a gain; but the succeeding activities of the prima donna, the ponderous basso and the brace of "comedians" were subject to a series of very sensible impediments and interruptions. Several times—and often at the most inopportune of moments—a swarthy, earnest young man walked across the stage, throwing out big sheets of brown paper right and left and looking ...
— Under the Skylights • Henry Blake Fuller
... sanctity of contracts for so small a result is another question; but our Mr. Jones certainly did feel the comfort that came to him from the fact. Certain fragments of land had been reduced by the sub-commissioners after ponderous sittings, very beneficial to the lawyers, but which Mr. Jones had found to be grievously costly to him. He had thus agreed to other reductions without the lawyers, and felt those also to be very grievous, seeing that since he had purchased the property with a Parliamentary ...
— The Landleaguers • Anthony Trollope
... the table, he turned up the lamp, acknowledged the ponderous jubilations of Brutus, and took the damaged pipe out of his pocket. Then he stood looking at it thoughtfully, as it lay in the palm of his hand; an eloquent testimony to that which had been starved, denied, ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver
... to the impregnable fortress, but on coming at last to the base of the rock we found a long flight of narrow steps mounting zig-zag up its dark, moss-grown face. When the cavalcade halted before them our trumpeters blew thrice shrill blasts upon their big ivory horns, and like magic the ponderous iron gate far above instantly swung open, and the walls literally swarmed with men, whose bright arms glittered in the sun. Above, where all had been silent a moment before, everything was now bustle and excitement ...
— The Great White Queen - A Tale of Treasure and Treason • William Le Queux
... singled me out as the object of her ponderous Palatine sarcasms. She exaggerated my style of dress, my ways and habits. She thought to make fun of my little spaniels by causing herself to be followed, even into the King's presence-chamber, by a large turnspit, which in mockery she called by the ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... ground timbers of all varieties, and for unnumbered uses, a tithe of which cannot be told in a brief notice. Formerly these trees were cut away and burned up, to clear the track for redwood, tamarack, and ponderous pith-pines, etc.; now all else is superseded by this incense cedar. Thus is seen how hasty and ill-advised notions give place to ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 365, December 30, 1882 • Various
... we will get in a large safe. There is nothing like a ponderous safe, with the name of the company in gilt letters on it, for impressing the ...
— A Woman Intervenes • Robert Barr
... peeped at us from beneath their clothes; indeed, they seemed more surprised than alarmed: the mothers kept uttering a low and mournful cry, as if entreating mercy. In the camp were several spears, or rather lances, as they were much too ponderous to be thrown by the arm; these were jagged: there were also some elamongs (shields), clubs, chisels, and several workbags filled with every thing necessary for the toilet of a native belle; namely, paint and feathers, ...
— Journals of Two Expeditions into the Interior of New South Wales • John Oxley
... parson's exit he has been executing "Norma" with great spirit, and, so far as I am able to judge, with wonderful skill. I doubt not his thoughts are a thousand miles hence, among brown-skinned wenches, dressed in crimson robes, and decorated with ponderous ear-drops. In fact, "Norma" is good, and goes far to carry one out ...
— The Citizen-Soldier - or, Memoirs of a Volunteer • John Beatty
... Brunswick tones, all and more of these varied sounds mingle with one another, and half-drown by their clamour the sweet strains of the Viennese orchestra that discoursed dreamy waltzes from behind a bower of crimson roses; whilst ponderous Flemish wives of city burgomasters gaze open-mouthed at the elegant ladies of the old French noblesse, and shy Belgian misses peep enviously at their ...
— The Bronze Eagle - A Story of the Hundred Days • Emmuska Orczy, Baroness Orczy
... many mornings she had wakened up in strange places that it took her several minutes before she could make out the geographical whereabouts of the heavy blue moreen curtains, the print of the lord-lieutenant of the county on the wall, and all the handsome ponderous mahogany furniture that stuffed up the room. As soon as full memory came into her mind, she started up; nor did she go to bed again, although she saw by her watch on the dressing-table that it was not yet six o'clock. She dressed herself with the ...
— A Dark Night's Work • Elizabeth Gaskell
... He over-sees the commonwealth, as his shop, and it is an argument of his policy, that he has thriven by his craft. He is a rigorous magistrate in his ward; yet his scale of justice is suspected, lest it be like the balances in his warehouse. A ponderous man he is, and substantial, for his weight is commonly extraordinary, and in his preferment nothing rises so much as his belly. His head is of no great depth, yet well furnished; and when it is in conjunction with his brethren, ...
— Microcosmography - or, a Piece of the World Discovered; in Essays and Characters • John Earle
... dome Where Genius and where Valour find a home; Awe-struck, midst chill sepulchral marbles breathe, Where all above is still, as all beneath; Bend at each antique shrine, and frequent turn To clasp with fond delight some sculptured urn, The ponderous mass of Johnson's form to greet, Or breathe the prayer at Howard's ...
— Eighteen Hundred and Eleven • Anna Laetitia Barbauld
... in the bar of candle-light which one of the shop sconces extended across the room, and lifted the violin to his neck. He was so large that all his gestures had a ponderous quality. His dress was disarranged by riding, and his blond skin was pricked through by the untidy growth of a three-days' beard, yet he ...
— Old Kaskaskia • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... spectacle are plainly observable. The gradual mustering of the forces is near the Rockies to the westward, then the skirmish-line of fleecy cloudlets comes rolling and tumbling in advance, bringing a current of air that causes the ponderous wind-mill at the railway tank to "about face" sharply, and sets its giant arms to whirling vigorously around. Behind comes the compact, inky veil that spreads itself over the whole blue canopy above, seemingly banishing all hope of ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... youth was speaking, the maddened baron snatched a heavy mace from a man who stood by. Already the ponderous mass quivered in his powerful grasp, when his daughter, with a piercing shriek, threw herself upon his arm. After a vain effort to free himself, the ready knight seized the weapon with his left hand, and with wonderful adroitness and strength prepared for the blow. But the baron's arm was again ...
— The Truce of God - A Tale of the Eleventh Century • George Henry Miles
... spoke; I almost added my childish plea to his for them to stop—to remember me and stop. But not a muscle in my throat responded to my agonized effort. Her cold, clear 'No!' fell before my tongue was loosed or my heart freed from the ponderous weight ...
— The Golden Slipper • Anna Katharine Green
... where Derwent rolls his dusky floods Through vaulted mountains, and a night of woods, The Nymph, GOSSYPIA, treads the velvet sod, And warms with rosy smiles the watery God; His ponderous oars to slender spindles turns, 90 And pours o'er massy wheels his foamy urns; With playful charms her hoary lover wins, And wields his trident,—while the Monarch spins. —First with nice eye emerging Naiads cull From ...
— The Botanic Garden. Part II. - Containing The Loves of the Plants. A Poem. - With Philosophical Notes. • Erasmus Darwin
... please, you may indulge in strengthening your hypothesis, and prove by the faithful histories of different nations, that Jews, Greeks, and Romans were most stupidly superstitious. Also that India, Turkey, and Arabia are now groaning under the ponderous weight of this vanity. Go on and enlarge on all that you have said, and point out all the superstitions of which we read or know; show how powerful this superstition is in the human heart; how it renders its votaries ...
— A Series of Letters In Defence of Divine Revelation • Hosea Ballou
... heavier piece than this," said young Mark, frowning, equally with the exertion and with the instigations of his aspiring spirit, as he held out the ponderous weapon in a single hand; "we have guns that might tame a wolf with greater certainty than any barrel of a bore less than my own height. Tell, me grand'ther; at what distance do the mounted warriors, you so often ...
— The Wept of Wish-Ton-Wish • James Fenimore Cooper
... covered the last vertebrae and pressed upon the giant's cerebellum, and, above all, hearing the shrill, sharp voice which contrasted so absurdly with his huge body, would have understood why this ponderous, coarse being adored his only son, and why he had so long expected him,—a fact proved by the name, Desire, which was ...
— Ursula • Honore de Balzac
... a precious human document," was the poet's ponderous pronouncement. "It is unpleasant, painful, but—what is the lesson? The lesson is that infinite trouble grows out of our rotten squeamishness about sex facts. This girl craved a reasonable amount of pleasure after ...
— Possessed • Cleveland Moffett
... seemed, of others. He saw in her now no longer merely the motherly aunt who was to welcome him, but one whom he should care for, and take under his protection. He heard steps in the entry, and easily detected the ponderous tread of Mr. Manlius, who now opened the door, and reappeared in more careful toilet, since he was furbished and smoothed by the addition of proper touches, until he had quite the air of a man of society. He entered ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 87, January, 1865 • Various
... Naval Brigade by Lord Charles Beresford; the Royal Sussex by Major Sunderland; the Royal Artillery by Captain Norton; and the Royal Engineers by Major Dorwood. So they marched slowly forward. The progress was like that of some ponderous machine, slow, regular, compact, despite the hail of bullets that came from front, left and right, and ultimately from the rear. Some ten or twelve thousand Arabs it was seen had surrounded the Zareba. There was no retreat; it was "do or die!" About 9.50 a.m., about 5000 of the enemy were seen on ...
— General Gordon - Saint and Soldier • J. Wardle
... universally conceded by every De Willoughby of the clan, was a dismal failure. Even from his earliest boyhood, when he had been a huge, overgrown fellow, whose only redeeming qualities were his imperturbable good-humor and his ponderous wit, his family had regarded him with a sense of despair. In the first place, he was too big. His brothers were tall, lithe-limbed youths, who were graceful, dark-eyed, dark-haired, and had a general air of brilliancy. They figured ...
— In Connection with the De Willoughby Claim • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... long breath and her eyes dilated. The howdah filled up, and the ponderous creature moved slowly down to the end of the space and up again, amid childish exclamations ...
— A Little Girl of Long Ago • Amanda Millie Douglas
... with the victims of Clinch's ponderous fists as they re-entered the room from which they had been borne ...
— The Flaming Jewel • Robert Chambers
... was seen hat in hand careering over the meadow, beyond the cover, with the tail hounds straining to overtake their flying comrades. Twang—twang—twang went Frostyface's horn; crack—crack—crack went the ponderous thongs of the whips; shouts, and yells, and yelps, and whoops, and halloas, proclaimed the usual wild excitement of this privileged period of the chase. All was joy save among the gourmands assembled at ...
— Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour • R. S. Surtees
... evolution performed, when there, right before us, were the lowering mat-sails of the great junk, and then, crash! there was a wild despairing yell, and we were into her amidships, the ponderous gunboat literally cutting her down and going right over her; while at a second command every man sprang up again, and for the next minute or two bayonet and cutlass were flashing in the evening sunlight as the wretches who climbed ...
— Blue Jackets - The Log of the Teaser • George Manville Fenn
... current set in a curve to the left, running off the rocky embankment into the natural channel of the river. The dam was now only a couple of hundred yards distant. The water was smooth and the drift had settled to a slow, ponderous, sliding movement. ...
— The Day of the Beast • Zane Grey
... too wicked to be reasoned with. He completely shrinks from the question; a question, be it remembered, not raised by us—a question which we should have felt strong objections to raising unnecessarily—a question put forward by himself, as intimately connected with the subject of his two ponderous volumes. He attempts to carp at detached parts of our reasoning on the subject. With what success he carries on this guerilla war after declining a general action with the main body of our argument our readers ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 2 (of 4) - Contributions To The Edinburgh Review • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... the lofty perpendicular monolith, to set up the tall stele as the headstone of a grave, to lift and poise the ponderous rocking-stone, to raise and fix the massive impost of the trilithon, or the slab covering a sepoltura, a cromlech, or a cistvaen; (for the remark applies to Celtic as well as Mediterranean antiquities), to heap up, not Pelion on Ossa, ...
— Rambles in the Islands of Corsica and Sardinia - with Notices of their History, Antiquities, and Present Condition. • Thomas Forester
... honey-dew Of learning from his lips. Amazement filled All eyes beholding him. No hoary sage, He who had sat in Egypt at the feet Of Moses ben-Maimuni, called him friend; Raschi the scholiast, poet, and physician, Who bore the ponderous Bible's storied wisdom, The Mischna's tangled lore at tip of tongue, Light as a garland on a lance, appeared In the just-ripened glory of a man. From his clear eye youth flamed magnificent; Force, masked by grace, moved in his balanced frame; An intellectual, ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. II. (of II.), Jewish Poems: Translations • Emma Lazarus
... This ponderous door, in elaborate carpentry, opened upon a flight of steps and on a flower-yard surrounded by elms, firs, and Paulownia trees, the latter of a beany odor and nature. A lower servants' part of ...
— The Entailed Hat - Or, Patty Cannon's Times • George Alfred Townsend
... great mistake, except as to a few passages where he rose to a white heat. If any person will open a volume of his speeches at random, it will be found that the characteristic of his sentences is a somewhat ponderous Latinity. ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar
... work in the sewing for my family, so that I might have more time for the improvement of my mind. For novels and light reading I never had much taste; the ladies' department in the periodicals of the day had no attraction for me. "She would lay a copy of William Penn's ponderous volumes open at the foot of her bed, and drawing her chair close to it, with her baby on her lap, would study the book diligently. A woman of less energy and less will-power than young Mrs. Mott would have given up all hope of being a scholar. She read the best books ...
— Lives of Girls Who Became Famous • Sarah Knowles Bolton
... had had his doubts as to the reception of Lady Milborough, and was, to tell the truth, listening with most anxious ear, when her ladyship was announced. His wife, however, was not so bitterly contumacious as to refuse admittance to his friend, and he heard the rustle of the ponderous silk as the old woman was shown up-stairs. When Lady Milborough reached the drawing-room, Mrs. Trevelyan ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope
... the "Articles of War and Army Regulations," condensed to a small compass, the result of our war experience. But they did not suit the powers that were, and have ever since slept the sleep that knows no waking, to make room for the ponderous document now in vogue, which will not stand the strain of a ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... aside the curtain of vindicative fire, and see what this pain of loss is like; I say, what it is like, for it fortunately surpasses human imagination to conceive its dire reality. Suppose that we could see the huge planets and the ponderous stars whirling their terrific masses with awful, and if it might be so, clamorous velocity, and thundering through the fields of unresisting space with furious gigantic momentum, such as the mighty avalanche ...
— The Education of Catholic Girls • Janet Erskine Stuart
... agony of that moment he uttered a cry so terrible that it might well have been supposed to have come from the throat of a supernatural being. The Indians had not time to evade the danger. The ponderous mass in its descent hit a projecting crag, and burst into smaller fragments, which fell in a rattling shower, killing two men, and wounding others. Those of the group who escaped, as well as those who chanced to be beyond the danger, saw, by the dim moonlight, the Wild Man ...
— The Wild Man of the West - A Tale of the Rocky Mountains • R.M. Ballantyne
... secession to the ranks of the sombre crew was therefore the more remarked. If Fanny moped, all Grey Abbey might figuratively be said to hang down its head. Lady Cashel was, in every sense of the words, continually wrapped up in wools and worsteds. The earl was always equally ponderous, and the specific gravity of Lady Selina could not be calculated. It was beyond the power of figures, even in algebraic denominations, to describe her ...
— The Kellys and the O'Kellys • Anthony Trollope
... is the clerical party, which is the majority; there is the anti-clerical party, and there are the ne'er-do-wells. The clerical people are dark and pious and cold; there is a curious stone-cold, ponderous darkness over them, moral and gloomy. Then the anti-clerical party, with the Syndaco at the head, is bourgeois and respectable as far as the middle-aged people are concerned, banal, respectable, shut off as by a wall from the clerical ...
— Twilight in Italy • D.H. Lawrence
... on habit and accommodating. When a boy I have listened to "Ivanhoe" read out—O enchantment! by the light of two "mould" candles—the regular thing—which required "snuffing" about every ten minutes, and snuffing required dexterity. The snuffers—laid on a long tray—were of ponderous construction; it was generally some one's regular duty to snuff—how odd seems this now! The "plaited wicks" which came later were thought a triumph, and the snuffers disappeared. They also are to be seen ...
— Pickwickian Manners and Customs • Percy Fitzgerald
... laugh. He seemed filled with laughter to-night. Evidently he had noticed nothing strange in Leland's greeting; he was in the gayest of his gay moods. He had no opportunity to answer Leland's words, for Julia, who had forgotten her usual slow, ponderous method of travel bounced into the room like a wonderfully animated ball at the sound of his voice, and he actually swept the two hundred pounds of her off of her feet as he gathered the big woman up into his arms and kissed her. Then ...
— The Short Cut • Jackson Gregory
... good-humoured eye of the habitual sportsman. He wore invariably an old shooting coat and a cap that had seen younger, but perhaps not better, days. His vehicle was a battered but serviceable two-wheeled cart drawn by a placid though adequate horse. His weapon for all purposes was a rather ponderous twelve-gauge. ...
— The Killer • Stewart Edward White
... to the mill without another word; without even a grin from the broad-faced Ole, who sat in ponderous thought in the wagon ahead. To a nature such as his the infrequency of a new idea gives it the force of a cataclysm; during its presence, obliterating ...
— A Breath of Prairie and other stories • Will Lillibridge
... was absent-minded rather; yet not that his mind was absent so much as intent upon other things. The children found him heavy; he seemed ponderous to them. And pondering he certainly was—pondering the meaning of existence. The children, he realised, were such brilliant comments upon existence; their unconscious way of living, all they said and thought ...
— The Extra Day • Algernon Blackwood
... staggered. Dick had a bowie-knife. The Senator grasped a ponderous beam that he had placed on the coach in case of another break-down. Mr. Figgs had a razor which he had grabbed from the storehouse in the Doctor's pocket. Buttons had nothing. But on the road lay three ...
— The Dodge Club - or, Italy in 1859 • James De Mille
... vaulted heaven,[9] fiery and without weight, shone forth, and selected a place for itself in the highest region; next after it, {both} in lightness and in place, was the air; the Earth was more weighty than these, and drew {with it} the more ponderous atoms, and was pressed together by its own gravity. The encircling waters sank to the lowermost place,[10] ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Vol. I, Books I-VII • Publius Ovidius Naso
... ponderous tome, "I read this case from a feeling that it bears very strongly upon that before us. Saponificus, the learned and animated civilian, in his reply to the celebrated treatise of 'Rigramarolius de Libris priggatis,' commonly called his Essay on Stolen Books, asserts that there ...
— The Black Baronet; or, The Chronicles Of Ballytrain - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... one side, the Dukes of Austria and their ponderous German chivalry wanted to reduce the cantons and cities to vassalage, not to the Imperial Crown, a distant and scarcely felt obligation, but to the Duchy of Austria; on the other, the hardy mountain peasants and stout burghers well knew their ...
— A Book of Golden Deeds • Charlotte M. Yonge
... The ponderous portal obeyed the signal of the bell, and apparently opened without any human means; and Captain Armine, proceeding down a dark yet capacious passage, opened a door, which invited him by an inscription on ground glass that assured him he was entering the counting-house. Here ...
— Henrietta Temple - A Love Story • Benjamin Disraeli
... must go back at once; he knew I could be trusted to stay by myself and walk home afterwards. He and Rickson quietly slipped out, and I was left sole tenant of the large square pew, with its high partition, and ponderous chairs, and fire-place, and table, just like a small room, as is the custom in ...
— The Story of the White-Rock Cove • Anonymous
... this place, "old in story and name-father to a noble book." The author of that same "noble book" possessed himself of some memorials of the keep he had rendered so famous, securing the stones of the gateway, and the door with its ponderous fastenings to decorate the entrance of his kitchen-court at Abbotsford. And this ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... Lord John we owe also the Probationary Ode for Major Scott, and the playful parody on "Donae gratus eram libi."] Townshend, Richardson, George Ellis, and Dr. Lawrence. [Footnote: By Doctor Lawrence the somewhat ponderous irony of the prosaic department was chiefly managed. In allusion to the personal appearance of this eminent civilian, one of the wits of the day thus parodied a passage ...
— Memoirs of the Life of the Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan V1 • Thomas Moore
... Annersley's mild manner. As Young Pete started toward the wagon, the trader jumped and grabbed him. The boy flung up his arms to protect his face. Old man Annersley said nothing, but with ponderous ease he strode forward, seized the trader from behind, and shook that loose-mouthed individual till his teeth rattled and ...
— The Ridin' Kid from Powder River • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... factory we saw an immense workman at the hottest and heaviest work, wielding a ponderous hammer, and asked him what liquor he drank. He replied by pointing to an immense vessel filled with water and oatmeal, to which the men went and drank as much as they liked." This is made by adding one pound fine oatmeal to ...
— Object Lessons on the Human Body - A Transcript of Lessons Given in the Primary Department of School No. 49, New York City • Sarah F. Buckelew and Margaret W. Lewis
... troll you no song that will hinder you long, I pen you no ponderous treatise, The theme that I sing is a gossamer thing As light as the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, June 25, 1919 • Various
... crewel in the cushion fixed: If cushion might be called, what harder seemed Than the firm oak of which the frame was formed. No want of timber then was felt or feared In Albion's happy isle. The lumber stood Ponderous, and fixed by its own massy weight. But elbows still were wanting; these, some say, An alderman of Cripplegate contrived, And some ascribe the invention to a priest Burly and big, and studious of his ease. But rude at first, ...
— The Task and Other Poems • William Cowper
... the bull when "whang!" came something against the door, and they all jumped for their guns. It was the discomfited but not discouraged Monarch breaking into the cabin in search of his supper. With two or three blows of his ponderous paw the grizzly smashed the door to splinters, but as he poked his head in he met a volley from two rifles and a shotgun. He looked at Jeff reproachfully for the inhospitable reception, turned about and went away, more in ...
— Bears I Have Met—and Others • Allen Kelly
... man who has been led to believe that he is a brilliant and interesting talker has been led to make himself a rapacious pest. No conversation is possible between others whose ears are within reach of his ponderous voice; anecdotes, long-winded stories, dramatic and pathetic, stock his repertoire; but worst of all are his humorous yarns at which he laughs uproariously though every one else grows solemn ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post
... the native had only time to pick up his ponderous spear and face toward the wood, when the lion emerged from the broadening band of shadow, and, with a low, threatening ...
— The Land of Mystery • Edward S. Ellis
... hatter's. Here the R.F.C. caps of the "stream-lined" variety had all been sold, so the war baby was obliged to buy a general service hat. The only one that fitted him was shapeless as a Hausfrau, ponderous as a Bishop, unstable as a politician, grotesque as a Birthday Honours' List. It was a nice quiet hat, we assured Marmaduke—just the thing for active service. Did it suit him? Very well indeed, we replied—made him look like Lord Haldane at the age ...
— Cavalry of the Clouds • Alan Bott
... and aunt Bhaer, who were receiving in state, the one full of genuine delight in all men and things, the other suffering martyrdom with a smile, as she stood shaking hand after hand, and affecting utter unconsciousness of the sad fact that ponderous Professor Plock had camped upon the train of her ...
— Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott
... indecision, then resistance, two or three sharp words from the man, and then the two seemed to fade through the wall. The ponderous gate was closing before the dumbfounded watcher could collect his wits. Like a shot he was across the stones, now alive to the meaning of the strange proceeding. With desperate hands he grasped the bar of the gate and pulled, ...
— Castle Craneycrow • George Barr McCutcheon
... thou hence unscathed to go? No, by Saint Bride of Bothwell, no! Up drawbridge, grooms,—what, warder, ho! Let the portcullis fall." Lord Marmion turned,—well was his need,— And dashed the rowels in his steed, Like arrow through the archway sprung; The ponderous gate behind him rung: To pass there was such scanty room, The ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... would do something, turned the cheeses in the cheese-room alone. Taking one corner of the clean cloth in her teeth, in a second, by some dexterous sleight-of-hand, the heavy cheese was over, though ponderous enough to puzzle many a man, especially as it had to come over gently that the shape might not ...
— Round About a Great Estate • Richard Jefferies
... of the 14th the monster iron-plated frigate New Ironsides, crossed the bar and added her formidable and ponderous battery to those destined for the great effort of reducing the sullen earthwork which barred the Federal advance. There were now five monitors, the Ironsides and a fleet of gunboats and monster hulks grouped together and only waiting the signal to unite ...
— The Black Phalanx - African American soldiers in the War of Independence, the - War of 1812, and the Civil War • Joseph T. Wilson
... love to Duncan, the fervent heat of which vaporized the dark heavy stone of obligation into the purple vapour of gratitude, and enhanced the desire of pleasing him until it became almost a passion. Obligation is a ponderous roll of canvas which Love spreads aloft into a tent ...
— Malcolm • George MacDonald
... pointing to St. Paul's; the back panel Charity, two female figures, typical of Plenty and Riches, casting money and fruits into her lap—while a wrecked sailor and sinking ship fill up the background. By the kind permission of the Lord Mayor we are enabled to give a representation of the ponderous old vehicle, which is still the centre of ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... the seeds terrene, since ponderous most And most perplext, in close embraces clung, And towards the centre conglobating sunk. And as the bond grew firmer, ampler forth Pressed they the fluid essences that reared Sun, moon, and stars, and main, and heaven's high wall. For those of atoms lighter far consist, Subtiler, and more ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... the church and seat of the patriarchs might be enriched with a repository of books: but, if the ponderous mass of Arian and Monophysite controversy were indeed consumed in the public baths, a philosopher may allow, with a smile, that it was ultimately devoted to the benefit of mankind. I sincerely regret the more valuable libraries, which have been ...
— On The Art of Reading • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... robe was of dark cloth, cinctured round the waist with his rich sword-belt, from which was suspended a gold-hilted scimitar, encased in a scabbard also enriched with gold: His legs and feet were bare, and had a ponderous look about them, since he suffered from that strange curse of Zanzibar—elephantiasis. His feet were slipped into a pair of watta (Arabic for slippers), with thick soles and a strong leathern band over the instep. ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley
... had grown stouter since he had returned to town from Black Fells; but the increase of weight was evenly distributed over his six feet odd, which made him only a trifle more ponderous and not abdominally fat. But Mortimer had become enormous; rolls of flesh crowded his mottled ear-lobes outward and bulged above his collar; cushions of it padded the backs of his hands and fingers; shaving left his heavy, distended face congested and unpleasantly shiny. ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers
... if it could possibly right itself, and if my father could escape. Was this the end of our struggles and adventures? Was this death? All these questions flashed through my mind in the fraction of a second, and a moment later I was engaged in a life and death struggle. The ponderous monolith of ice sank below the surface, and the frigid waters gurgled around me in frenzied anger. I was in a saucer, with the waters pouring in on every side. A moment ...
— The Smoky God • Willis George Emerson
... the great hooded television disk—the ponderous type we used in those days—and picked up Strobus without difficulty. The body more than filled the disk and I reduced the magnification until I could get a full view of ...
— The God in the Box • Sewell Peaslee Wright
... already gone. The next chance of a billet was at Grantsville, two leagues farther on. Now that sounds too absurdly short a distance to disquiet any traveler; but neither is the fatal straw in the camel's load a ponderous thing, per se. Both Falcon and I had reckoned that our day's work was done when we climbed the last hill, so it was in some discontent that we set our faces once more against the black road, and the stinging sleet, and the ...
— Border and Bastille • George A. Lawrence
... saw that it was filled with wild elephants. Everywhere, as far as the eye could range between the trees, they were massed, not in tens or scores, but in hundreds. On every side were vistas of multitudes of great heads with gleaming white tusks and restless-moving trunks, of huge bodies supported on ponderous legs. And with an unwonted fear clutching at his heart Dermot realised that all their eyes were turned in ...
— The Elephant God • Gordon Casserly
... George came in, ponderous and unsmiling; picked out the superintendent at once, and thanked him gruffly for admission to the "sanctum"; a word which George chose to ...
— Ambrotox and Limping Dick • Oliver Fleming
... crossed to Isaac and his ponderous volumes, and began to talk to him with that benign lack of haste which usually means a very competent personality. Phyllis hurried somewhat with Robin Hood among his little fishes, and felt happier. It was always, in her eventless life, something of a pleasant adventure ...
— The Rose Garden Husband • Margaret Widdemer
... by a triumph of manoeuvring, effected his escape. He was quit in this way of the ponderous gratitude of Mr. Killian, and of the confidential gratitude of poor Ottilia; but of Fritz he was not quit so readily. That young politician, brimming with mysterious glances, offered to lend his convoy as far as to the high-road; and Otto, in fear of some residuary ...
— Prince Otto • Robert Louis Stevenson
... a prominent worker in the cause of philanthropy and temperance. He is ponderous and bland; and for the rest, he is president of the Society for the Suppression of Nicotine and the Nude, vice-president of the Anti-Inebriation League, secretary of the Incorporated Brotherhood of Benevolence, and the bearer of ...
— The Eagle's Shadow • James Branch Cabell
... but whom he had failed to win. He had risen with the others at La Fosse's bidding, either unsuspicious or else deeming suspicion too flimsy a thing by which to steer conduct. Yet at the mention of her name a scowl darkened his ponderous countenance. He set down his glass with such sudden force that its slender stem was snapped and a red stream of wine streaked the white tablecloth and spread around a silver flowerbowl. The sight of that stain recalled him to himself ...
— Bardelys the Magnificent • Rafael Sabatini
... wheeze from the engine, as if from a giant in pain; the sharp jerk, and then the steady pull at the carriage in which I was sitting; the "pant, pant! puff, puff!" of the iron horse, as he buckled to his work with a will; and then, finally, the preliminary oscillation of the ponderous train, the trembling and rumbling of creaking wheels along the rails—as we glided and bumped, slowly but steadily, out of the terminus—the distance signal showing "all clear" to us, and blocking the up line with the red ...
— She and I, Volume 2 - A Love Story. A Life History. • John Conroy Hutcheson
... dignified, terse, epigrammatic, felicitous, euphonious, elegant, and lofty. Undesirable qualities are the diffuse, verbose, redundant, inflated, prolix, ambiguous, feeble, monotonous, loose, slip-shod, dry, flowery, pedantic, pompous, rhetorical, grandiloquent, artificial, formal, ornate, halting, ponderous, ...
— Talks on Talking • Grenville Kleiser
... the charge of the judge does not mean his bill for expenses or his salary for trying the case. A charge implies something grave, heavy, and aggressive. It is what the judge tells the jury about the case. It is never light or humorous, but ponderous and hard to understand. The court-room doors are locked, no one must come in or ...
— The Man in Court • Frederic DeWitt Wells
... stood in full view of that grand old building—a castle of the olden times—kept, so far as possible to elegance or comfort, in its ponderous mediaeval grandeur. But Madam Art had softened all its ruder features. Plate-glass was sunk into those thick walls; circular rooms in those twin towers, commanded a splendid view of the valley, over which the ...
— The Old Countess; or, The Two Proposals • Ann S. Stephens
... derived from mathematical study; the power of keeping continually in the mind's eye, without winking or wavering, the distant proposition which is to be proven; of advancing to it by steady steps on the shortest route; and bearing up, with the strength of Atlas, the most extended and ponderous chain of logical deductions. Such was the habitual steadiness and strength of his mind, that, unlike his fellow-students, I never saw him lose sight, for an instant, of the point in debate, much less ...
— Discourse of the Life and Character of the Hon. Littleton Waller Tazewell • Hugh Blair Grigsby
... of heaven! Does any passion bear sway there? The ponderous globes obey the mandate of spiritual superiority; and shall the order of nature be reversed here, and the animal species lord it over men? Shall barbarism again come on the track of civilization, with fire and sword, and ruthless annihilation? Shall civilization invoke ...
— The Right of American Slavery • True Worthy Hoit
... considerable difficulty they succeeded in dislodging the spirit, and in securing it to a sledge to which these oxen were yoked, and now struggling to get free, he was dragged along by the powerful oxen towards a lake on Hiraethog Mountain, but so ponderous was their load and so fearful was the spirit's contentions that the sledge ploughed the land between the church and the lake as they went along, leaving in the course that they took deep furrows, ...
— Welsh Folk-Lore - a Collection of the Folk-Tales and Legends of North Wales • Elias Owen
... phrase: "Honest as the day is long." He did not go to the hotel that night. He went back to his room and read the Constellation. He liked the Constellation. Newspapers were very kind, he thought. Now and then, he would pick up his pile of legislative bills and try to spell through the ponderous sentences, but he always gave it up and went back to the Constellation. He wondered if Hurlbut had read it. Hurlbut had. The leader had even told the author of the item that he was glad somebody could appreciate the ...
— In the Arena - Stories of Political Life • Booth Tarkington
... The tank is ponderous, the smallest of them, which were those first constructed, weighing forty-two tons, or about as much as a good-sized railroad freight car. And it is this ponderosity, with its slow but resistless movement, that gives ...
— Tom Swift and his War Tank - or, Doing his Bit for Uncle Sam • Victor Appleton
... the spirit and the intentions of those with whom he had to do. We, however, must keep a faithful, everlasting memory of this dear father of ours, and never let him go out of our hearts." Such was Luther—an almost superhuman nature; his mind ponderous and sharply limited, his will powerful and temperate, his morals pure, his heart full of love. Because no other man appeared after him strong enough to become the leader of the nation, the German people lost for centuries their leadership of the earth. The leadership of ...
— The German Classics Of The Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries, Volume 12 • Various
... on the track of the powerful helper from the unconscious. These ever active and, as it were, immortal wishes from the unconscious recall the legendary Titans who from time immemorial have borne the ponderous mountains which were once rolled upon them by the victorious gods, and which even now quiver from time to time from the convulsions of their mighty limbs; I say that these wishes found in the repression are of themselves of an infantile ...
— Dream Psychology - Psychoanalysis for Beginners • Sigmund Freud
... the main gate of her main fort on one of the frontiers of her empire so insecurely defended that a single American can carry it with his fruit-knife. Such ideas I energetically enforce, till I am cut short by the slow retrogression of the massive gate on ponderous hinges turning. ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton
... illustrate what I mean. Take any large, massive, heavy building: this hard, ponderous body that fills so much space exists, I tell you, only in the soft pulp of the brain. There alone, in the human brain, has it any being. Unless you understand this, you ...
— The Essays of Arthur Schopenhauer; The Art of Controversy • Arthur Schopenhauer
... a close carriage drove up to the palace. It contained no less a personage than the Prime Minister, the Marquis de Lutera,—a dark, heavy man, with small furtive eyes, a ponderous jaw, and a curious air of seeming for ever on an irritable watch for offences. His aspect was intellectual, yet always threatening; and his frigid manner was profoundly discouraging to all who sought to win his attention or sympathy. He ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli
... her to the cell, fitted the key to the ponderous lock, pushed back the door, and remained outside. Mary entered, and in a second was in the arms of our hero, kissing him, and bedewing his ...
— The Poacher - Joseph Rushbrook • Frederick Marryat
... village, happily remains what nature left it, a stony and desolate valley, without a single object to divert the eye from the scene before it. This is a solid mass of limestone, of perhaps equal height with the Cove, cleft asunder by some great convulsion of nature, and opening its "ponderous and marble jaws" on the right and left. The sensation of horror on approaching it is increased by the projection of either side from its base, so that the two connivant rocks, though considerably distant at the bottom, admit only ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 20, Issue 561, August 11, 1832 • Various
... role of a working member until committees fought for him. It surprised his colleagues to see this elegant young man, with such fine abilities, so modest and so laborious—to see him ready on the dryest subjects and with the most tedious reports. Ponderous laws of local interest neither frightened nor mystified him. He seldom spoke in the public debates, except as a reporter; but in the committee he spoke often, and there his manner was noted for its ...
— Monsieur de Camors, Complete • Octave Feuillet
... ten shots without reloading. The barrels were not very long, measuring only three feet from breech to muzzle, but they were of one- and-a-half-inch bore and fired a conical shell four and a half inches in length. Notwithstanding their somewhat ponderous appearance they were very light, being ...
— The Log of the Flying Fish - A Story of Aerial and Submarine Peril and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... in the Boston Symphony or the Official Symphony, and of military bands up to the perfected concert organizations headed by a Sousa or a Gabriel Pares. It would embrace with like inclusiveness the history of the pipe organ through its stages of evolution from the ponderous instruments with men straddling unwieldy bellows to the marvel installed in Festival Hall, and it would embrace the history of the art of organ music up to such exemplars as our own Clarence Eddy, John &. McClellan, Edwin ...
— The Jewel City • Ben Macomber
... warehouses shut. Pausing in the alleys behind the closed Banks of mighty Lombard-street, it gives one as good as a rich feeling to think of the broad counters with a rim along the edge, made for telling money out on, the scales for weighing precious metals, the ponderous ledgers, and, above all, the bright copper shovels for shovelling gold. When I draw money, it never seems so much money as when it is shovelled at me out of a bright copper shovel. I like to say, 'In gold,' and to see seven pounds musically pouring out of the shovel, like ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens
... almost overwhelming. One lovely and enthusiastic person told him that the sight of his "Dryad Disturbing a Beanfeast" had just marked an epoch in her mental development, and that she considered it quite the supreme achievement of the Art of the Century. A ponderous man in spectacles, whom TICKLER had no recollection of having ever met before in his life, encouraged him by his solemn assurance that his "Jews Sitting in a Dentist's Waiting-room, in the reign of King John," was perfectly marvellous ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 102, April 9th, 1892 • Various
... clear to the mill without another word; without even a grin from the broad-faced Ole, who sat in ponderous thought in the wagon ahead. To a nature such as his the infrequency of a new idea gives it the force of a cataclysm; during its ...
— A Breath of Prairie and other stories • Will Lillibridge
... this room!" Rexhill had arisen in all of his ponderous majesty, roused to wrath at last. His pudgy finger shook as he pointed to the door, and his fat face was congested. "I'm not here to be insulted by a ...
— Hidden Gold • Wilder Anthony
... hold of Jock's ear so as to end his war-dance in a howl, bringing the ponderous Rob to the rescue, and there was a general melee, ending by all the five rolling promiscuously on the gravel drive. They scrambled up with recovered tempers, and at the sight of an indignant housemaid rushed in a general stampede to the two large ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge
... them. The stories contained much food for thought in the shape of revelations of character in this or that man of prominence. What we should have talked about if he had not thus held the floor I could not guess. I had noted that there were upon a ponderous table six popular novels, as many magazines, and piles of the great dailies. Nowhere could I descry even a small collection of books of the sort which may furnish material for conversation. I tried to imagine the Philosopher drawing a certain beloved book of essays from his pocket, settling himself ...
— A Court of Inquiry • Grace S. Richmond
... brown study into which I had fallen by the sound of a loud voice at the rear of Number 16, and presently heard also Kitty's summons for me to come. I found her undertaking to remove from the hands of Annie, her ponderous black cook, a musket which the latter was attempting to rest over the ...
— The Way of a Man • Emerson Hough
... hand, and, as it happened, he stood quite still for almost a minute after she had gone. In due time, however, he reached the inn he had inquired about, and its old-world simplicity delighted him. It was built, feet thick, of slate stone, against the foot of the fell, and roofed, as he noticed, with ponderous flags. In Canada, where the frost was Arctic, they used thin cedar shingles. The room his meal was brought him in was panelled with oak that had turned black with age. Great rough-hewn beams of four times ...
— Hawtrey's Deputy • Harold Bindloss
... deceived by Annersley's mild manner. As Young Pete started toward the wagon, the trader jumped and grabbed him. The boy flung up his arms to protect his face. Old man Annersley said nothing, but with ponderous ease he strode forward, seized the trader from behind, and shook that loose-mouthed individual till his teeth rattled and ...
— The Ridin' Kid from Powder River • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... through the last row of saplings and bushes, his beard embellished with a broken twig, his big face red and perspiring. He was a fine, a mighty man, ponderous of shoulder, monumental of height, stupendous of girth; there was cloth enough in the hot-looking black frock-coat he wore for the canopy of a small pavilion. Half a dozen books were under his arm, and in his hand he carried a hat which evidently belonged to "that other monsieur," ...
— The Guest of Quesnay • Booth Tarkington
... Keeping this elderly guard at attention till the poor fellow looked as though he would explode, he groped in the pocket in the tail of his tunic, and, producing a notebook, proceeded to extricate from it a sheet of paper on which were some typewritten lines; and then in a ponderous and somewhat menacing voice he read the orders—orders which set forth exactly and minutely when a guard should come on duty and when he should be relieved, what reports he should prepare, and what he was to observe amongst the prisoners. Finally, having elaborated a number of minor ...
— With Joffre at Verdun - A Story of the Western Front • F. S. Brereton
... Miss Ellicott, Miss Juliana. How are you, Polly? And, Alexia, how is your aunt?" And without waiting for a reply, she sprang, if such a ponderous body could be said to spring, at the box of centerpieces Miss Angell was packing away. "Oh, oh! how beautiful! Stop"—laying her large hand on one. "Just what I want. How ...
— Five Little Peppers and their Friends • Margaret Sidney
... He got at his little bit of mind through his senses. Honor to all the great arts! The limit to their beauty and their usefulness has never yet been found and never will. Painting was the golden key this thinker held to the Bramah lock of an imbecile's understanding the ponderous wards were beginning to revolve—when a blockhead came and did his best to ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade
... white and lonely, though closely surrounded by others. Along the brook, now the grass and herbage extended close to the water; now a small, sandy beach. The wall of rock before described, looking as if it had been hewn, but with irregular strokes of the workman, doing his job by rough and ponderous strength,—now chancing to hew it away smoothly and cleanly, now carelessly smiting, and making gaps, or piling on the slabs of rock, so as to leave vacant spaces. In the interstices grow brake and broad-leaved forest-grass. The ...
— Passages From The American Notebooks, Volume 1 • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... made his way down the marble road to the city level, he met a ponderous motor-driven trolley of great length—the thing was evidently bound for the Temple. Two hundred workmen followed behind the trolley, and the Temple-messenger noticed that on the trolley, lying beside the huge coffin-like packing-case that formed ...
— The Mark of the Beast • Sidney Watson
... the precipice, rendering his head more steady, and his footing sure, the Elizabeth was casting, under close-reefed top-sails, and two reefs in her courses, with a heavy stay-sail or two, to ease her helm. He saw that the ponderous machine would stagger under even this short canvass, and that her captain had made his dispositions for a windy night. The lights that the Dover and the York carried in their tops were just beginning to be visible in the gathering ...
— The Two Admirals • J. Fenimore Cooper
... was not so utterly unbearable after all, and acknowledged that it had a brightness of its own. Meeting her at a clan gathering in the camps of the Philistines, one always found her in excellent spirits, and quite undamped in her enjoyment of the frequently ponderous rejoicings. In the Bilberry school-room, among dog-eared French grammars and lead-pencilled music, education did not appear actually dispiriting; and now, as she sat by the fire, with the bright, sharp little scissors in lier hand, and the pile of white merino on her knees and trailing on the ...
— Vagabondia - 1884 • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... a hideous battalion, at the cost of labor so enormous, would be known only to certain families of spiders in one generation, and of rats in the next. Such a labor of Sysyphus,—the rolling up a ponderous stone to the summit of a hill only that it might roll back again by the gravitation of its own dulness,—seems a bad employment for a man of genius in his meridian energies. And yet, perhaps not. Perhaps the collective wisdom of Europe ...
— Biographical Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... speaking, led her to the cell, fitted the key to the ponderous lock, pushed back the door, and remained outside. Mary entered, and in a second was in the arms of our hero, kissing him, and bedewing his cheeks with ...
— The Poacher - Joseph Rushbrook • Frederick Marryat
... already acquainted with the particulars of the shocking tragedy that has occurred here?" said Taylor with ponderous dignity. ...
— The Just and the Unjust • Vaughan Kester
... demand our View; and there No less the Marks of perfect skill appear. When first the Atoms to the Congress came, And by their Concourse form'd the mighty Frame, What did the Liquid to th' Assembly call To give their Aid to form the ponderous Ball? First, tell us, why did any come? next, why In such a disproportion to the Dry! Why were the Moist in Number so outdone, That to a Thousand Dry, they ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... many a heavier piece than this," said young Mark, frowning, equally with the exertion and with the instigations of his aspiring spirit, as he held out the ponderous weapon in a single hand; "we have guns that might tame a wolf with greater certainty than any barrel of a bore less than my own height. Tell, me grand'ther; at what distance do the mounted warriors, you so ...
— The Wept of Wish-Ton-Wish • James Fenimore Cooper
... exhibition of the aurora we saw while in northern waters. Its sudden darts into new quarters of the heavens, its tumultuous waves and gentle undulations, now looking like a fleecy cloud, now like a gigantic curtain shaken by still more gigantic hands into ponderous folds—all were reflected in the quiet water and from the numerous bergs, great and small, that dotted the surface, till the beholder was at times awe-struck and silent, utterly unable to find words with which to ...
— Bowdoin Boys in Labrador • Jonathan Prince (Jr.) Cilley
... was handsome enough, though his form was frail, and not perfectly symmetrical. Those who had charge of him tried to strengthen his constitution by training him to the martial exercises and usages which were practiced in those days, and especially by accustoming him to wear the ponderous armor which was ...
— Richard III - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... some Sunday ye'll nab the fellow with his own pious bait. Can catch a pious runaway nigger 'most any time; the brute never knows enough to keep it to himself," says a flashily dressed gentleman, as he leaned against the counter, squinted his eye with an air of ponderous satisfaction, and twirled his tumbler round and round on the counter. "'Pears to me," he continues, quizzically, "Squire, you've got a lot o' mixed cracker material here, what it'll be hard to manufactor to make dependable ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... were in the car, and it had turned round, and was speeding towards Knype. A feverish journey! We passed electric cars every minute, and for three miles were continually twisting round the tails of ponderous, creaking, and excessively deliberate carts that dropped a trail of small coal, or huge barrels on wheels that dripped something like the finest Devonshire cream, or brewer's drays that left nothing behind them ...
— The Grim Smile of the Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... source of the religion of these groups. It was built by Hiro, the first king of Raiatea, who, deified after death, became the god of thieves. The Papara marae was made of coral, but the quarried mountain rock was laid at the foundation, and these ponderous, uneven stones being patched with coral, in time the blocks had become tightly cemented together. A lime-kiln was along the land side of this marae of Oberea, and for years had furnished the cement, plaster, and whitewash ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien
... slow in resolving, slower in action. The ponderous three-deckers of Biscay were notoriously the dullest sailers ever known, nor were the fettered slaves who rowed the great galleys of Portugal or of Andalusia very brisk in their movements; and yet the King might have found time to ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... at all encouraging. She was often ailing and peevish, behaving as if she owed Dorothy grudge instead of gratitude. And indeed to herself Dorothy would remark that if nothing more came out of it than seemed likely now, Juliet would be under no very ponderous obligation to her. She found it more and more difficult to interest her in any thing. After Othello she did not read another play. Nothing pleased her but to talk about her husband. If Dorothy had seen him, Juliet had endless questions to put to her ...
— Paul Faber, Surgeon • George MacDonald
... understanding. For the merchandise thereof is better than the merchandise of silver, and the gain thereof than fine gold. She is more precious than rubies: and all the things thou canst desire are not to be compared unto her." Here is the weight of wisdom in itself. See how ponderous it is of itself; so heavy that it may weigh down all that come within the compass of desire, and certainly its compass is infinite. But, he adds, "Length of days are in her right hand, and in her left hand riches and honour. Her ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... strained in his ponderous garments. Temple gazed abashed. I knew not how to act. My father kept lifting his knees on the spot as if ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... these words I do not think that the full horror of what had happened had come home to us, preoccupied as we were with the sight of poor Foulata's end. But now we understood. The ponderous mass of rock had closed, probably for ever, for the only brain which knew its secret was crushed to powder beneath its weight. This was a door that none could hope to force with anything short of dynamite in large quantities. And we were ...
— King Solomon's Mines • H. Rider Haggard
... by, starting for Paris, before the voracious railway marched victoriously in and swallowed diligence, horses, postilions—bells, boots and all! The gay crowd passing across the place was making for the huge iron-gray cathedral, quite ponderous and fortress-like in its character. Here is the grand messe going on, the Swiss being seen afar off, standing with his halbert under the great arch, while between, down to the door, are the crowded congregation and the convenient chairs. Overhead ...
— A Day's Tour • Percy Fitzgerald
... the thunderous! How he drove the bolted breath Through the cloud, to wedge the ponderous In the gnarled oak beneath. Oh, our Sophocles, the royal, Who was born to monarch's place, And who made the whole world loyal, Less by kingly power than grace. Our Euripides, the human, With his droppings of warm tears, And his touches of ...
— The Booklover and His Books • Harry Lyman Koopman
... "no man" in her life. It was like dangling ripe fruit above the mouths of hungry boys to make such a boast in such a land. But they were lazy. It was a country of lazy, slow-thinking, slow-moving, and slow-talking adventurers—you will notice this ponderous, inevitable quality of rolling stones—and though men talked with humor not too fine of "travelin' up Lone River for John's gel," not a man had got there. Perhaps the men knew John Carver for a coward, that most dangerous animal to meet ...
— The Branding Iron • Katharine Newlin Burt
... table, he turned up the lamp, acknowledged the ponderous jubilations of Brutus, and took the damaged pipe out of his pocket. Then he stood looking at it thoughtfully, as it lay in the palm of his hand; an eloquent testimony to that which had been starved, denied, trampled upon for years,—with this result! Smiling half-scornfully ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver
... flight should never forget. Bareheaded he accompanied us to a hatter's. Here the R.F.C. caps of the "stream-lined" variety had all been sold, so the war baby was obliged to buy a general service hat. The only one that fitted him was shapeless as a Hausfrau, ponderous as a Bishop, unstable as a politician, grotesque as a Birthday Honours' List. It was a nice quiet hat, we assured Marmaduke—just the thing for active service. Did it suit him? Very well indeed, we replied—made him look like ...
— Cavalry of the Clouds • Alan Bott
... old soldier talk with me," blustered the adjutant, shaking a ponderous forefinger. "You knew you were doing wrong.... Why did you send the waggon off ...
— Pushed and the Return Push • George Herbert Fosdike Nichols, (AKA Quex)
... may well ask whether in fashion's eyes women are such paragons of ugliness that these ever-varying styles (introduced, we are seriously informed, to conserve to her beauty,) are absolutely essential, and by what rule of art can we explain the fact that the ponderous hoopskirt was the essential requirement of beauty in the sixties and the enormous bustles demanded in the seventies. The truth is, fashion is supremely indifferent alike to all laws of art and beauty, health and life, decency and propriety—a ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 22, September, 1891 • Various
... said the Director-General, concluding his address, "if in your opinion the Exposition here presented is commensurate in dignity with what the world should expect of our great country, to direct that it shall be opened to the public. When you touch this magic key the ponderous machinery will start in its revolutions and the activity of the Exposition will begin." After a brief response Mr. Cleveland laid his finger on the key. A tumult of applause mingled with the jubilant melody of Handel's ...
— History of the United States, Volume 5 • E. Benjamin Andrews
... had ordered from Italy to adorn his new house. He is a man of original ideas in regard to such matters, and in this instance had gone so far as to have this end of the house constructed with a special view to an advantageous display of this promised work of art. Fearing the ponderous effect of a pedestal large enough to hold such a considerable group, he had planned to raise it to the level of the eye by having the alcove floor built a few feet higher than the main one. A flight of low, wide steps connected the two, which, following the curve of the wall, added ...
— The Woman in the Alcove • Anna Katharine Green
... them, Russia, would probably take the longer time to effect her mobilization. Russia had started, it is true, before war was declared. But interior railroads in Russia are few. Russia, too, is proverbially slow, if for no other reason than by virtue of her ponderous numbers. France, on the other hand, is checked and counter-checked by good strategic railroads, and, having no such vast territory over which her troops would have to be moved, would be able to mobilize ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 5, August, 1915 • Various
... florid man, who moved about a committee hearing chamber with the ponderous smoothness of a luxury liner. He was never visited by a single doubt about the rightness of his chosen course—no matter how erratic it might appear to an onlooker. His faith in his established legislative procedures ...
— The Great Gray Plague • Raymond F. Jones
... mistake it. This is the place. We are almost there,' and putting down the child, she tugged with all her strength at the ponderous gate, which she at last succeeded in opening, and resuming her burden, passed through into the field where the snow lay on the ground in great white drifts, while the blinding flakes and cutting sleet from the leaden ...
— Tracy Park • Mary Jane Holmes
... sense of suffocation. For a long time he was an inmate of the London Hospital, where special quarters were provided for him, and it was there that he was found dead, April 11, 1890; while in bed his ponderous head had fallen backward and dislocated ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... other boys succeeded in reaching their castle, and barricading the ponderous door. And then commenced the battle. The besieged were well armed, and all behaved with admirable bravery; but none more bravely than Shell's wife, who loaded the pieces as her husband and sons discharged them. The battle commenced at two o'clock, ...
— An Historical Account of the Settlements of Scotch Highlanders in America • J. P. MacLean
... many times, prouder than king on throne, Loosed from the village school-dame's A's and B's, 240 Panting have I the creaky bellows blown, And watched the pent volcano's red increase, Then paused to see the ponderous sledge, brought down By that hard arm voluminous and brown, 224 From the white iron ...
— The Vision of Sir Launfal - And Other Poems • James Russell Lowell
... Mittheilungen aus der Zoologische Station zu Neapel, permits the author to take his choice among four languages—German, English, French, or Italian. It is issued intermittently, as occasion requires. The second set of publications consists of ponderous monographs upon the fauna and flora of the Gulf of Naples. These are beautifully illustrated in color, and sometimes a single volume costs as much as seventeen thousand dollars to issue. Of course only a fraction of that sum is ever recovered through ...
— A History of Science, Volume 5(of 5) - Aspects Of Recent Science • Henry Smith Williams
... these are essential characteristics alike of Villon's poetry, and of the Hours of Anne of Brittany. They are characteristic too of a hundred French Gothic carvings and traceries. Alike in the old Gothic cathedrals, and in their counterpart, the old Gothic chansons de geste, the rough and ponderous mass becomes, as if by passing for a moment into happier conditions, or through a more gracious stratum of air, graceful and refined, like the carved ferneries on the granite church at Folgoat, or the lines which describe ...
— The Renaissance: Studies in Art and Poetry • Walter Horatio Pater
... watch'd the sun; And a sweet sadness dwelt on every one; I knew not why,—but know that sadness dwells On Mermaids—whether that they ring the knells Of seamen whelm'd in chasms of the mid-main, As poets sing; or that it is a pain To know the dusk depths of the ponderous sea, The miles profound of solid green, and be With loath'd cold fishes, far from man—or what;— I know the sadness but the cause know not. Then they, thus ranged, gan make full plaintively A piteous Siren sweetness on the sea, Withouten instrument, or conch, or bell, Or stretch'd chords ...
— Poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins - Now First Published • Gerard Manley Hopkins
... entirely out of the room, then turned and fled across the yard, her calico wrapper blowing wildly and lashing about her slender legs, to her own house, the doors of which she locked. Presently the other woman followed her, stepping with the ponderous leisure which results from vastness of body and philosophy of mind. The autumn wind, swirling in impetuous gusts, had little effect upon her broadside of woollen shawl. She had not come out on that raw evening with nothing upon her head. She ...
— The Portion of Labor • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... rogue had just charged, and I was almost in the act of firing through the temple of the still struggling elephant, when I heard a tremendous crash in the jungle behind me similar to the first, and the savage scream of an elephant. I saw the ponderous foreleg cleave its way through the jungle directly upon me. I threw my whole weight back against the thick rattans to avoid him, and the next moment his foot was planted within an inch of mine. His lofty head was passing over me in full charge at B., who was unloaded, when, holding the ...
— The Rifle and The Hound in Ceylon • Samuel White Baker
... It is an inseparable part of the system. A philosophical Cuvier, from one act or condition of tyranny, will supply the rest of the organism. Wherever despotism exists, we look for the Bastile as naturally as we do for the character of a robber in an Italian story. Like the ponderous step of the statue of the commander in the Don Juan of Moliere, its approach is audible above civil commotion, above the shrieks of frenzied orators, the howlings of a demoralized clergy, and the sound of battle. It brings with ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2 No 4, October, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... the article, but I did not mean any harm. I saw by an item in the Boston ADVERTISER that a solemn, serious critique on the English edition of my book had appeared in the London SATURDAY REVIEW, and the idea of SUCH a literary breakfast by a stolid, ponderous British ogre of the quill was too much for a naturally weak virtue, and I went home and burlesqued it—reveled in it, I may say. I never saw a copy of the real SATURDAY REVIEW criticism until after my burlesque was written and mailed to ...
— The $30,000 Bequest and Other Stories • Mark Twain
... father took me to the House of Lords to hear the proceedings. We were shown into the chancellor's room, where he indeed was not, but where his huge official wig was perched upon a block; the temptation was irresistible, and for half a minute I had the awful and ponderous ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... of him as if he saw some expected and unpleasant thing far in the distance. Then with irresistible steps, neither swift nor slow, but ponderous, he strode to the porch ...
— The Mysterious Rider • Zane Grey
... about the theatre, because there is nothing else alive in London at this season. All the world are out of it, except us, who remain to lie in,—in December, or perhaps earlier. Lady B. is very ponderous and prosperous, apparently, and ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. III - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... being the one whom he secretly hoped one day to call Mrs. David Sweeting, with whom he dreamt of taking stately walks, leading her like an empress through the village of Nunnely; and an empress she would have been, if size could make an empress. She was vast, ponderous. Seen from behind, she had the air of a very stout lady of forty; but withal she possessed a good face, and ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... queer sight against the mat of the night. McCord closed his mouth and opened it again for two words: "By gracious!" The following instant he had the lantern and was after her. I watched him go up above my head—a ponderous, swaying climber into the sky—come to the cross-trees, and squat there with his knees clamped around the mast. The clear star of the lantern shot this way and that for a moment, then it disappeared and in its place there ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1915 - And the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... custom, we sat around the round table in the evening. Father was in very good spirits, and was telling us amusing tales about his youthful travels. As it was striking nine we all at once heard the street door creak on its hinges, and slow ponderous steps echoed across the passage and up the stairs. "That is Coppelius," said my mother, turning pale. "Yes, it is Coppelius," replied my father in a faint broken voice. The tears started from my mother's ...
— Weird Tales. Vol. I • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... of the Citizen-President, four clerks were busy making entries in that ponderous ledger, that amazing record of the foulest crimes the world has ever known, the "Bulletin du ...
— I Will Repay • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... contrast between the lightness of his book, "Songs for the Children," and his ponderous setting of Kipling's "Recessional." The treatment of Paul Laurence Dunbar's "Southern Lullaby" is unusual, and the songs, "My Ladye" and "The Ideal," ...
— Contemporary American Composers • Rupert Hughes
... good spirits, who, though seldom mentioned in their early records, had after their return from Babylon begun to form an important part of their unseen world? For as they had lost faith in the One Preserver of their race, they had filled up the void by a ponderous demonology of innumerable preservers. This process of thought was not confined to Alexandria. Dr. Layard, in his last book on Nineveh, gives some curious instances of its prevalence among them at an earlier period, well worth your careful study. ...
— Alexandria and her Schools • Charles Kingsley
... consisted of a huge mouse-coloured bull, with an enormous hunch on his shoulders, and about a dozen cows, with a few calves. The bull came slowly towards us, muttering low bellows, and shaking his fierce head and ponderous neck, on which grew a short, black mane. From some unexplained cause or other the native fired his gun before the animal was within range, and the bull, being a beast of discretion, stopped short, as though extremely surprised, and after a little hesitation, turned ...
— The Bushman - Life in a New Country • Edward Wilson Landor
... the Tombs, but had not seen his father. The sight, the air, the ponderous gloom of the awful prison-house, was as much as he had fortitude to bear; and though he had at first thought preferred meeting him in the shadows of night, he recoiled from ...
— Ernest Linwood - or, The Inner Life of the Author • Caroline Lee Hentz
... this ponderous tome, the author's desire has been to describe the eminent characters and remarkable events of our annals in such a form and style that the YOUNG may make acquaintance with them of their own accord. For this purpose, while ostensibly relating the adventures of a chair, ...
— A Mother's List of Books for Children • Gertrude Weld Arnold
... as may be seen throughout the country, but rather more frequently toward the coast. In these isolated trees their imposing character can be best appreciated, the great trunk carrying the massive head perfectly poised, an interesting example of ponderous weight gracefully balanced. The solid, weighty appearance of the head of the tree is increased by its even and generally symmetrical outline, this especially in the examples near the coast, the mass ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 488, May 9, 1885 • Various
... timid Flower! Fear thou no more the winter's might, The whelming thaw, the ponderous shower, The silence of the freezing night! Since Laura murmur'd o'er thy leaves 5 The potent sorceries of song, To thee, meek Flowret! gentler ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... contributions toward a systematic Christology than the Exposition of the Hebrews, with its dissertations on the Saviour's priesthood; but whilst there are few theologians who have not occasionally consulted it, those are still fewer who have mastered its ponderous contents; and we have frequently known valiant students who addressed themselves to the "Perseverance of the Saints," or the "Justification," but like settlers put ashore in a cane-brake, or in a jungle of prickly pears, after struggling for hours ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various
... to-day active developments are to be seen. The continuous system of spinning, which for a time had to take a second place, now appears to be again forging ahead, and looks as though it would supersede its more ponderous rival. Especially in countries outside England is this the case, for it is found that the method of ring spinning preponderates, and even in England the number of spindles devoted to ...
— The Story of the Cotton Plant • Frederick Wilkinson
... dusty window-pane on the opposite wall. Mother Rigby, meanwhile, with one brown arm akimbo, and the other stretched towards the figure, loomed grimly amid the obscurity, with such port and expression as when she was wont to heave a ponderous nightmare on her victims, and stand at the bedside to enjoy their agony. In fear and trembling did this poor scarecrow puff. But its efforts, it must be acknowledged, served an excellent purpose; for, with each successive whiff, the figure lost more and more of its dizzy and perplexing tenuity, ...
— The International Monthly Magazine - Volume V - No II • Various
... truck-horses are not the least striking to a stranger. They are large and powerful brutes, with such sleek and glossy coats, that they look as if brushed and put on by a valet every morning. They march with a slow and stately step, lifting their ponderous hoofs like royal Siam elephants. Thou shalt not lay stripes upon these Roman citizens; for their docility is such, they are guided without rein or lash; they go or come, halt or march on, at a whisper. So ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville
... without a moment's hesitation, he opened his book at the place and bellowed forth the responses as he proceeded up the church to his seat. The scene may be imagined, but scarcely described: Russell's quaint little figure, the broad-rimmed spectacles on his nose, the ponderous book in his hands, the clatter of his heels, the choking gasps with which he bellowed out the words as he laboured for breath, and finally the sudden disappearance of the congregation beneath the shelter of their high pews with a ...
— The Parish Clerk (1907) • Peter Hampson Ditchfield
... Gradually the ponderous witticism in which Janner had indulged became an accepted joke in the settlement. Bess had fallen a victim to the tender sentiment at last. She had found an adorer, and had apparently succumbed to his importunities. Seth spent less time in his shanty and more in her society. He lingered in her vicinity ...
— "Seth" • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... in their infancy; the whole machinery of our recently organized government was new, and the hands that worked it, however wise and brave they might be, were untried, and had much to learn before the ponderous works could be brought into ...
— The New England Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, Bay State Monthly, Volume 4, No. 4, April, 1886 • Various
... by the warriors behind him, he flung his ponderous weapon as he spoke towards the wretched object of his sarcasm. The hilt struck heavily against the man's breast; he staggered and fell helpless to the ground. The laugh was redoubled among the Goths; but now their leader did not join in it. His eye glowed in triumphant scorn as he pointed to the ...
— Antonina • Wilkie Collins
... cloud of steam. The gay truculence of the hollow knocking, the metallic jingle, the shrill trolling, went on crescendo to a burst of babbling voices, a mad speed of tinkling, a thundering shout, "Altro, Amigos!" followed by a great clatter of oars flung in. The sudden silence pulsated with the ponderous strokes ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... mountain pathway that leads from Upper Rydal to Grasmere. The ponderous block of stone, which is mentioned in the poem, remains, I believe, to this day, a good way up Nab-Scar. Broom grows under it, and in many places on ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... could not shock a taste which had been formed by the Sorrows of Werther. It is extremely moral, deeply sentimental, and of a deadly earnestness—three characteristics which could not fail to recommend it to a dreary and ponderous generation, the most deficient in taste that ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... dangerously exceeding the speed-limit. The thing was flying along its thirty yards of rail as fast as a tram, and the heavy fall-blocks swung like a ponderous kite-tail, thirty feet below. As I watched, the engine brought up within a yard of the end of the way, the blocks crashed like a ram into the broken house end, fetching down plaster and brick, and then the mechanism was reversed. The crane set ...
— Widdershins • Oliver Onions
... the Three Crows all that day and shared their dinner with them on the quarterdeck when, wearied to death with the strain of wrestling with the slatting canvas and ponderous boom, they at last threw themselves upon the hamper of "cold snack" I had brought off with me and pledged the success of the venture in tin ...
— A Deal in Wheat - And Other Stories of the New and Old West • Frank Norris
... Lissa—that ingeniously contrived box in which the criminal was bound fast hand and foot, and then was forced to watch the huge lid descending slowly, slowly, slowly, half an inch at a time, till at last its ponderous weight crushed into a flat and mangled mass the writhing wretch within, who had for long agonized hours watched death steadily approaching. Suppose that I had such a coffin now! I stopped my train of reflection with a slight shudder. No, no; she whom I sought to punish ...
— Vendetta - A Story of One Forgotten • Marie Corelli
... Price? What's wrong now?' testily demanded the captain, grievously annoyed at being disturbed over his ponderous ...
— The Captain's Bunk - A Story for Boys • M. B. Manwell
... the ponderous chords of the Amen faded slowly into the twilight, flushed, breathing a little quickly, she paused, listening to the stillness of the church. Presently a small boy emerged ...
— Victorian Short Stories • Various
... inconceivable readiness and swiftness. To the eye, in watching the gliding and noiseless movements of one of the great modern engines, the power of which one has only a vague and inadequate conception seems not only inexplicable, but gentle. The ponderous iron pieces seem to weigh nothing. There is a feeling that one might hinder the movement as he would that of a watch. There is an inability to realize the fact that one of the mightiest forces of nature is there embodied in an easy, gliding, noiseless impulse. Yet ...
— Steam Steel and Electricity • James W. Steele
... among numerous other amulets and relics. But what was the peculiar virtue attributed to such coins? Du Cange, in the same treatise, says, on the authority of "Bosius," that they were a remedy against the "comitialem morbum," or epilepsy. The said "Bosius," or rather "Bozius," wrote a ponderous work, "de Signis Ecclesiae Dei" (a copy of which, by the by, is not to be seen in the library of the British Museum, although there are two editions of it in the Bodleian), in which he discourseth as follows:—"Monetae adhuc aliquot exstant, quae ...
— Notes & Queries 1849.12.15 • Various
... Hanoverian and lusty Brunswick tones, all and more of these varied sounds mingle with one another, and half-drown by their clamour the sweet strains of the Viennese orchestra that discoursed dreamy waltzes from behind a bower of crimson roses; whilst ponderous Flemish wives of city burgomasters gaze open-mouthed at the elegant ladies of the old French noblesse, and shy Belgian misses peep enviously at ...
— The Bronze Eagle - A Story of the Hundred Days • Emmuska Orczy, Baroness Orczy
... still wore a long black frock coat, and now looked like a policeman. His commonplace good looks had changed to a ponderous regularity of feature. But Alfred was instinctively a gentleman, and he made no allusion to her painting that might lead Mildred to suppose that he thought that she had failed. That a young girl like Mildred should have chosen to live with such people as the Delacours, worse still, to have wasted ...
— Celibates • George Moore
... thoroughfare of Delhi—the Chandni Chowk—one constantly meets ponderous elephants, solemn and awkward camels, fine Arabian horses, and the diminutive, toy-like ponies of Cashmere. Daily marriage processions of the most fantastic description crowd the roadway, with the ...
— Foot-prints of Travel - or, Journeyings in Many Lands • Maturin M. Ballou
... the conscious retention, for reasons of outward convenience, of the principles of the popular faith, which were recognized as irrational. One of the most prominent men of the Scipionic circle, the Greek Polybius, candidly declares that the strange and ponderous ceremonial of Roman religion was invented solely on account of the multitude, which, as reason had no power over it, required to be ruled by signs and wonders, while people of intelligence had certainly ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... reflected in his dimly seen features. Something indefinable was in the air, something so mysterious and wonderful, that voices seemed stricken dumb, and life itself suspended. An owl flew slowly out from the wood with ponderous flapping of wings, and sailed over their heads. Every one started: Madame de Melbain gave a half-stifled shriek. The strain was over. Louise and she were half sobbing now in ...
— The Avenger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... supreme faith in the all-conquering power of a principle. He had the love of learning, and the patient industry of investigation, to which John Quincy Adams owes his prominence and his presidency. He had some of those ponderous elements of mind which distinguished Mr. Webster, and which, indeed, in all our public life have left the great Massachusetts Senator without ...
— Hidden Treasures - Why Some Succeed While Others Fail • Harry A. Lewis
... to see the Ghetto, and for this reason it had that purely incidental relish, which is the keenest possible savor of the object of interest. We were on an expedition to find Sior Antonio Rioba, who has been, from time immemorial, the means of ponderous practical jokes in Venice. Sior Antonio is a rough-hewn statue set in the corner of an ordinary grocery, near the Ghetto. He has a pack on his back and a staff in his hand; his face is painted, and is habitually dishonored with dirt thrown upon it by boys. On the wall near ...
— Venetian Life • W. D. Howells
... no objection. So, being hoodwinked, he was led by the stranger through various rough lanes and winding passages until they stopped before the portal of a house. The stranger then applied a key, turned a creaking lock, and opened what sounded like a ponderous door. They entered; the door was closed and bolted, and the mason was conducted through an echoing corridor and a spacious hall to an interior part of the building. Here the bandage was removed from his eyes, and he found himself in a court dimly lighted by a single lamp. In ...
— The Elson Readers, Book 5 • William H. Elson and Christine M. Keck
... therefore removed my shoes and, carrying them in my hand, stole on tiptoe round the corner of the building, keeping a wary eye on the sleeper as I did so. Presently I slipped noiselessly in through the open door, and found myself in a long, spacious apartment abundantly stored with ponderous hempen cables and hawsers, anchors of various sizes, piles of sails neatly stopped up, quantities of chain of various kinds, coils of rope, sufficient, it appeared to me, to fit a new gang of running rigging to a dozen ships like the Barracouta, bundles of blocks, ...
— A Middy in Command - A Tale of the Slave Squadron • Harry Collingwood
... its pleasant music makes, As the descendant waters roll along, In rhythmic flow and dulcet cantabile, In various concord and harmonious pitch, Pursuant of its journey to the sea; The murmuring treble of the rivulet, Uniting with the deep and ponderous bass Of torrent wild and foaming cataract; The thunderous, reverberating tones And seething ebullition of the falls Are blended in one grand ...
— Mountain idylls, and Other Poems • Alfred Castner King
... perverse, who, weak and blind, In pride refusing to behold, shall find The ponderous roll of circumstance will grind His steps; and if he turn not, must Bruise ...
— My Beautiful Lady. Nelly Dale • Thomas Woolner
... roughing it a little, we can let you have a bed, and you can rely upon me that it is clean and well-aired.' I followed her eagerly, and she led me down a narrow passage into a big room with a low ceiling, traversed with a ponderous oak beam, blackened with the smoke of endless ...
— Animal Ghosts - Or, Animal Hauntings and the Hereafter • Elliott O'Donnell
... the man whose appearance struck me so much when we were in the Senate last week, is he not? A great, ponderous man, over six feet high, very senatorial and dignified, with a large head and rather good features?" inquired ...
— Democracy An American Novel • Henry Adams
... weighs over three hundred pounds; but so finely finished is every wheel, pinion, and pivot in the clock, and so little power is required to drive them, that a weight of only one hundred pounds is all that is necessary to keep this ponderous mass of metal vibrating, and turn four pairs of hands on the dials of the cupola. The clock does not stand, as many suppose, directly behind the dials, but in the story below, and a perpendicular iron rod, twenty-five feet in length, connects ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... only four reports from the muskets, I was led to believe that they were worked by the islanders in the same manner as the Sultan Solyman's ponderous artillery at the siege of Byzantium, one of them taking an hour or two to load and train. At last, no sound whatever proceeding from the mountains, I concluded that the contest had been determined one way or the other. Such appeared, ...
— Typee - A Romance of the South Sea • Herman Melville
... contrivance above and below, were not yet opened, and the party were detained on the bridge. A small oval orifice only appeared, less than a human face, and an ear was applied there to receive an expected word in a whisper. This complied with, the ponderous gates unfolded, and a vista of solemn magnificence was presented to the view. It was a vista at once of colossal statues and trees, interminable in perspective and extending, as it was found, the whole length of the city to its western ...
— Memoir of an Eventful Expedition in Central America • Pedro Velasquez
... was vaulted with Spanish chestnut, and on the stained glass of the casement, through which gleamed a dim yet rich light on the long rows of shelves, bending under the weight of legal commentators and monkish historians, whose ponderous volumes formed the chief and most valued contents of a Scottish historian [library] of the period. On the massive oaken table and reading-desk lay a confused mass of letters, petitions, and parchments; to toil amongst which was the pleasure at once and the plague of Sir William Ashton's life. His ...
— Bride of Lammermoor • Sir Walter Scott
... plough. I saw one of these mild formidable servants of the glebe, who took a sudden interest in Modestine and me. The furrow down which he was journeying lay at an angle to the road, and his head was solidly fixed to the yoke like those of caryatides below a ponderous cornice; but he screwed round his big honest eyes and followed us with a ruminating look, until his master bade him turn the plough and proceed to reascend the field. From all these furrowing ploughshares, from the feet of oxen, from a labourer ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... it on the instant, as did the engineer; for the latter checked the swinging of the ponderous working-beam at the same second that he received the signal from the captain—a thing which never happens unless ...
— Brave Tom - The Battle That Won • Edward S. Ellis
... spoke, wanted to say something to the daughter, who stood there so near him, but he could think of nothing that would do; certain words that came to him, his Mississippi phrases, seemed patronising and ponderous. Besides, he didn't wish to assent to what she had said; he wished simply to tell her she was delightful, and it was difficult to mark that difference. So he only smiled at her in silence, and she smiled back at him—a smile that seemed to him quite ...
— The Bostonians, Vol. I (of II) • Henry James
... a great deal of irrigating is done all through the season. In some places ponderous machinery is used but to this day a large portion of work is done by hand. One of the most common sights along the Nile is the shadoof. This is a long pole with a weight on one end and a bucket on the other. Hour after ...
— Birdseye Views of Far Lands • James T. Nichols
... of Gold, was afforded a more thrilling spectacle than when these two paladins rushed to the onset and met in mid-career. Each gave a yell and dug his heels into his charger, and whacked her with the butt end of his lance, and forced her into a ponderous gallop for the meeting. It matters not now what was the precise intent of either jouster, which of them aimed at gorget or head-piece, or at shield, for—either because the flour bags made the lances difficult to manage or of some unevenness ...
— A Man and a Woman • Stanley Waterloo
... hath been This night, in any guest-room, high or low? The drowsy porter at the gate saith, "No!"— Shooting the bars; while the packed camels shake Their bells to listen, and the sleepers wake, And to their feet the ponderous steers slow rise, Lifting from trampled fodder large mild eyes;— "Nay! Brothers! no such thing! yet there is gone Yonder, one nigh her time, a gentle one! With him that seemed her spouse—of Galilee; They toiled at sundown to our doors—but, see! No nook was here! ...
— In The Yule-Log Glow—Book 3 - Christmas Poems from 'round the World • Various
... activity—qualities ever appreciated most highly by those who are deficient in mental power. His bow was renowned throughout the surrounding tribes, for its weight and extraordinary dimensions; and there were few that could raise his ponderous war-club, or poise his mighty spear. He was often known to have shot one of his flint-headed arrows through the body of a deer, and to have beat in the skull of a male buffalo with a single blow of his club. His counsel was as much sought as his prowess was feared, so that he came in tune to ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 1 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... enough, as the dwelling of a small farmer would be, and much like the other farm-houses of the region. But Diana's room, a little one it was, had one side filled with bookshelves; and on the bookshelves was a dark array of solid and ponderous volumes. A table under the front window held one or two that were apparently in present use; the rest of the room displayed the more usual fittings and surroundings of a maiden's life. Only in their essentials, however; no luxury was there. The little chest of drawers, covered with ...
— Diana • Susan Warner
... There is a ponderous old two-handed sword kept here, said to have belonged to Sir William Wallace. It is considerably shorter than it was originally, but, resting on its point, it reached to the chin of a good six foot gentleman of our party. The handle ...
— Sunny Memories Of Foreign Lands, Volume 1 (of 2) • Harriet Elizabeth (Beecher) Stowe
... afforded the surest recommendation to notice, it may be easily conceived, that attention to the parade duty of the troops, gradually diminished. Now were to be seen officers and soldiers not "trailing the puissant pike" but felling the ponderous gum-tree, or breaking the stubborn clod. And though "the broad falchion did not in a ploughshare end" the possession of a spade, a wheelbarrow, or a dunghill, was more coveted than the most refulgent arms in which ...
— A Complete Account of the Settlement at Port Jackson • Watkin Tench
... Derwent rolls his dusky floods Through vaulted mountains, and a night of woods, The Nymph, GOSSYPIA, treads the velvet sod, And warms with rosy smiles the watery God; His ponderous oars to slender spindles turns, 90 And pours o'er massy wheels his foamy urns; With playful charms her hoary lover wins, And wields his trident,—while the Monarch spins. —First with nice eye emerging Naiads cull From ...
— The Botanic Garden. Part II. - Containing The Loves of the Plants. A Poem. - With Philosophical Notes. • Erasmus Darwin
... fire which occurred in Liverpool, Eng., in October, 1874, involving the loss of several "fire-proof" stores, repeated explosions of the vapor of turpentine rent ponderous brick arched vaults, and exposed to the flames stocks of cotton, etc., in the stories above. This conflagration was started by the carelessness of an employee in snuffing a tallow candle with his fingers and throwing the burning ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 288 - July 9, 1881 • Various
... stake down full on the dog's muzzle. There was a snarling scream of pain, and the big pup sprang for his assailant. An old, grey hound came up and seemed to take in the situation at a glance. With a deep growl he bounded at Henson and caught him by the throat. Before the ponderous impact of that fine free spring Henson went ...
— The Crimson Blind • Fred M. White
... little the world knows you—you and your children! It sees you fat of figure, an Adam's apple struggling with your every vowel, ponderous of temperament. It sees you a sullen and varicose mistress, whose draperies hang heavy and ludicrous from a pudgy form. It sees you a portly, pursy, foolish Undine struggling awkwardly from out a cyclopean vat of beer. It hears your music in the ...
— Europe After 8:15 • H. L. Mencken, George Jean Nathan and Willard Huntington Wright
... how difficult it was to write a History of the World, I should never have undertaken the task. Of course, any one possessed of enough industry to lose himself for half a dozen years in the musty stacks of a library, can compile a ponderous tome which gives an account of the events in every land during every century. But that was not the purpose of the present book. The publishers wanted to print a history that should have rhythm—a story which galloped rather than walked. And now that I have almost finished ...
— The Story of Mankind • Hendrik van Loon
... heavy booming and presently came softly back into the door from the kitchen to listen. She leaned against the facing in an attitude of ponderous attention, a hand, on her bulging hip. She could not suppress her unbounded admiration of her liege lord's manly physique, and jealous to fierceness as she was of his experiences so eloquently and picturesquely ...
— Alice of Old Vincennes • Maurice Thompson
... of Belle's absence had brought on one of his periodic soul-searchings and the gloom of it was as thick as a fog when the mail brought word of Belle's return. As he sat with her letter in his hand his mind went back to the hills and the free days and he longed to go back—to get away from the ponderous stolidity ...
— The Preacher of Cedar Mountain - A Tale of the Open Country • Ernest Thompson Seton
... up in his hall; though his head no more filled it than a dry pea its pease cod; yet his eyes sparkled from the bottom of the iron cavern with the brilliancy of carbuncles, and when he poised the ponderous two-handled sword of his ancestors, you would have thought you saw the doughty little David wielding the sword of Goliath, which was unto ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving
... deep in the hollow, so damp and so cold, Where oaks are by ivy o'ergrown, The gray moss and lichen creep over the mould, Lying loose on a ponderous stone. Now within this huge stone, like a king on his throne, A toad has been sitting more years than is known; And, strange as it seems, yet he constantly deems The world standing still while he's dreaming his dreams,— ...
— The World's Best Poetry Volume IV. • Bliss Carman
... loathing of his surroundings swept over John Woolfolk, a sudden revulsion from the dead man on the floor, from the ponderous menace on the stair, the white figure that had brought it all upon him. A mounting horror of the place possessed him, and he turned and incontinently fled. A complete panic enveloped him at his flight, a blind necessity to get away, and he ran heedlessly ...
— Wild Oranges • Joseph Hergesheimer
... who can believe it? The bearers move within a few feet of us, and yet it resembles the most ponderous limestone or granite. Then you ask yourself: How is it possible? If their burden were what it seems to be, they would be crushed to earth instead of striding proudly along. Admirable figures! As you say, the spectacle takes one back into mythological ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... twenty feet square, set on a spreading base of concrete, and divided perpendicularly down the middle into Titanic halves, these being snugly fitted one to the other by a series of triangular corrugations, a variation of the familiar tongue and groove. Interlacing the ponderous mass, from corner to corner, were huge steel bolts, and the hulking heads of more bolts, some forty on each of the four sides, showed that the whole might be split into halves at will, and readily ...
— The Diamond Master • Jacques Futrelle
... suppose]; Hebraics with Dr. Danz; Homiletics with Dr. Weissenborn; PASTORALE [not Pastoral Poetry, but the Art of Pastorship] and MORALE with Dr. Buddaeus.' [There, your Majesty!—what a glimpse, as into infinite extinct Continents, filled with ponderous thorny inanities, invincible nasal drawling of didactic Titans, and the awful attempt to spin, on all manner of wheels, road-harness out of split cobwebs: Hoom! Hoom-m-m! Harness not to be had on those terms. Let ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVI. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Ten Years of Peace.—1746-1756. • Thomas Carlyle
... for him on, or rather in, that vehicle. Accordingly a rattle was sprung, and duly answered by two or three more of those alphabetical gentlemen who emanate from Scotland-yard, by whose united efforts the refractory musician was carried out in triumph, firmly and safely seated in his own ponderous instrument, loudly insisting that he ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... heard the first part of this sentence; he responded heartily, begging the marquis to call at any hour. Then, being at the end of his talk, he shook hands once more with ponderous good will, and passed on, he and the oxen ...
— Rosin the Beau • Laura Elizabeth Howe Richards
... the matter looked, Theseus was now growing up to be such a vigorous youth, that, in his own opinion, the time would quickly come when he might hope to get the upper hand of this ponderous lump of stone. ...
— Tanglewood Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... and his immense reputation concealed from the public the decay of his powers and the degeneration of his morals. At least, few said what perhaps many felt, that "he was not the man he had been." People went away from one of his ponderous and empty speeches disappointed, but not ill pleased to boast that they too had "heard Daniel Webster speak," and feeling very sure that he could be eloquent, though he had not been. We heard one of the last of his out-of-door speeches. It was near Philadelphia, in 1844, ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton
... Boulton and Watts' factory we saw an immense workman at the hottest and heaviest work, wielding a ponderous hammer, and asked him what liquor he drank. He replied by pointing to an immense vessel filled with water and oatmeal, to which the men went and drank as much as they liked." This is made by adding ...
— Object Lessons on the Human Body - A Transcript of Lessons Given in the Primary Department of School No. 49, New York City • Sarah F. Buckelew and Margaret W. Lewis
... suffice to raise the building above the level of the highest tides; that then it should be floated off to its station on the rock, which should be previously prepared for its reception; that the cofferdam should be scuttled, and the ponderous mass of masonry, weighing perhaps 1000 tons, allowed to sink at once into ...
— The Lighthouse • R.M. Ballantyne
... you'd a-done it on purpose," returned the other with ponderous sarcasm. "Now you stop here; I'm goin' to that sap—an' I'll ...
— No Man's Land • H. C. McNeile
... will put us on the track of the powerful helper from the unconscious. These ever active and, as it were, immortal wishes from the unconscious recall the legendary Titans who from time immemorial have borne the ponderous mountains which were once rolled upon them by the victorious gods, and which even now quiver from time to time from the convulsions of their mighty limbs; I say that these wishes found in the repression are of themselves of an infantile origin, as we have learned from the psychological investigation ...
— Dream Psychology - Psychoanalysis for Beginners • Sigmund Freud
... to a bedroom with ponderous mahogany furniture, so complete a contrast from her own shabby, cheery little den that the sight of it added the final touch to her depression. She refreshed herself by a long splash in hot water, ...
— A College Girl • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... about eight leagues from Orleans. It is a small, obscure hamlet, not mentioned in the guide-book, and stands upon the precipitous banks of a deep ravine, through which a noisy brook leaps to turn the ponderous wheel of a thatch-roofed mill. The village inn stands upon the highway; but the village itself is not visible to the traveler as he passes. It is completely hidden in the lap of a wooded valley, and so embowered in trees that not a roof nor ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 4 (of 10) • Various
... not the slightest signs of preference, had seemed as gay and heart-whole as a child. Only a fortnight before she had convulsed Miss Carr with laughter by putting on Mr Rayner's top-coat, and paying an afternoon call, a la Arthur Newcome, when all that young gentleman's ponderous proprieties had been mimicked with merciless fidelity. And she had ...
— Sisters Three • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... puzzled. Why should A'tim wish him to eat of a Death Flower; and yet, there was the graze of the Wolf's fang on his thigh that time they came up out of La Biche River. That surely had the full flavor of treachery about it. His ponderous mind worked slowly over the ...
— The Outcasts • W. A. Fraser
... goes!" said Jane, half aloud, with her foot on the lowest of the glistening granite steps. The steps led up to the ponderous pillared arches of a grandiose and massive porch; above the porch a sturdy and rugged balustrade half intercepted the rough faced glitter of a vast and variegated facade; and higher still the morning sun shattered its beams over ...
— With the Procession • Henry B. Fuller
... tragic bond, as they stood there islanded among the swelling tides of civilization which had already engulfed their kindreds. "Last Bull" they had called him, as he answered their gaze with little, sullen, melancholy eyes from under his ponderous and shaggy front. "Last Bull"—and the passing of his race ...
— Kings in Exile • Sir Charles George Douglas Roberts
... Richard Mead, Fellow of the College of Physicians and of the Royal Society, and Physician to his Majesty. 9th Edition. London, 1744." Though Defoe, like his admiring critic Mr. Saintsbury, had but small sense of humor, even he must have felt tickled in his grave at this ponderous scientific tribute to his skill in the art of ...
— History of the Plague in London • Daniel Defoe
... way across the Strait, he at first gave his entire attention to picking a pathway. Indeed this was quite necessary, for here a great pan of ice, thirty yards square and eight feet thick, glided upon another of the same tremendous proportions to rear into the air and crumble down, a ponderous avalanche of ice cakes and snow. He must leap nimbly from cake to cake. He must take advantage of every rise and fall of the heaving swells which disturbed the great blanket winter had cast upon ...
— Triple Spies • Roy J. Snell
... of his horses: is well known by them; and there is all flourish and noise, and no sort of cruelty, in his treatment of them. His spurs are of tremendous dimensions; such as we see sticking to the heels of knights in illuminated Mss. of the XVth century. He has nothing to do with the ponderous machine behind him. He sits upon the near of the two wheel horses, with three horses before him. His turnings are all adroitly and correctly made; and, upon the whole, he is a clever fellow in the exercise ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume One • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... no more. Except two or three reprints from writers like Bishop Wilson, the Tracts from No. 70 to No. 90 were either grave and carefully worked out essays on some question arising out of the discussions of the time, or else those ponderous catenae of patristic or Anglican divinity, by which the historical continuity and Church authority of various points of doctrine ...
— The Oxford Movement - Twelve Years, 1833-1845 • R.W. Church
... offering aid to the queen: it was a united rather than a divided nation which Philip faced. The English fleet, composed of comparatively small and easily maneuvered vessels, worked great havoc upon the ponderous and slow-moving Spanish galleons, and the wreck of the Armada was completed by a furious gale which tossed ship after ship upon the rocks of northern Scotland. Less than a third of the original expedition ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes
... paragraphs, had the effect of abridging the work by about one-tenth. Touching the style of other writers, Mr. Spencer points out the defects in some passages quoted from Matthew Arnold and Froude. He says that he is repelled by the ponderous, involved structure of Milton's prose, and he dissents from the applause of Ruskin's style on the ground that it is too self-conscious, and implies too much thought of effect. On the other hand, he has always been attracted by ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIV • John Lord
... faces of the beasts were so concealed by masks of knotted wool that at first I could distinguish neither eyes, noses, horns or ears; but in spite of their ragged trousers and their masked faces, the bison are sublime in their mighty strength and ponderous proportions, and as this was the first wild herd I had ever seen and one of the very few, if not the only one, then extant, I viewed them with the ...
— The Black Wolf Pack • Dan Beard
... But in the dear old American streets the epidermis is vital: what strength and mutual reliance in the cobbles as they stand together in serried ranks, like so many eye-teeth! How they are perpetually sinking into prodigious ruts, along which the ponderous drays are forced to dance on one wheel in a paroxysm of agony and critical equipoise! But the perpetual state of street-mending, that is the crowning interest. What would I not sometimes give to exchange the Swiss sweeping-girls, plying their long brooms desolately in the mud, for the paviors' ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 29. August, 1873. • Various
... table, got his pipe from the mantel, filled it and lighted it, and went over and deposited his somewhat ponderous body in a cushioned chair by the window. Pen's mother and aunt pushed the wheel-chair in which Grandma Walker sat, to one side of the room, and began to clear the dishes from ...
— The Flag • Homer Greene
... picked up his spear. It was unwieldy, ponderous, the weight of that long, not-too-thin steel bar. Jim's great shoulders and heavy arms were suited well enough to such a weapon; but Dennis could have wished that his were some ...
— The Raid on the Termites • Paul Ernst
... very little damage. Not a single pew in the gallery or bottom having been removed in the process. In this emigrated chapel, I had the satisfaction of preaching the gospel of the kingdom to a large congregation. Perhaps you will wonder how the ice of this mighty river bore upon its bosom so ponderous a body; but your surprise will cease when I inform you that in the depth of winter, it is from two to three feet in thickness, making a bridge of aqueous crystal capable almost of bearing up ...
— Glimpses of the Past - History of the River St. John, A.D. 1604-1784 • W. O. Raymond
... rubbed his stomach, made jokes about Matrona Semyonovna, and so on. I was on the point of asking for his blessing there and then, but I thought better of it and deferred doing so till the next day. His ponderous jokes jarred upon me; besides I was exhausted.... I said good-bye to him and ...
— The Diary of a Superfluous Man and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... rags are lowered from this room through a hatchway, and are given a red hot lime bath. They are placed in ponderous cylinders of boiler iron, which revolve horizontally in great gears high above the floor. A mixture of lime and water, which has been prepared in large brick vats, is poured over them. An iron door, secured by huge bolts, is closed on them. ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 363, December 16, 1882 • Various
... mighty deeds of valor, childish pranks had no interest. He cared now for nothing in the world but to read all day long, and half the night; to read anything and everything, from the hair-raising cowboy tales Davy Munn loaned him, to the ponderous histories from the minister's book-shelf. Through this selfsame book-shelf the minister had become one of Tim's closest friends, and might have made a pastoral visitation every day in the week and been welcome. He had almost got ahead of the doctor ...
— Treasure Valley • Marian Keith
... movements of the bird until it had wheeled away from me, when, carefully judging the amount of elevation required, I pressed the trigger, and was delighted the next moment again to see the feathers fly, to note the convulsive stroke of the great pinions which indicated a hit, and to see the ponderous bulk of the bird come hurtling earthward. It was a magnificent shot—I felt that I was justified in admitting that much to myself—and it satisfied me that, even now, at the beginning of my acquaintance with my new rifle, I was as much master of it ...
— Through Veld and Forest - An African Story • Harry Collingwood
... everything, and the sun, only venturing now a little way above the southern horizon, shone cold and cheerless, weakly penetrating the ever-present frost veil. The tide, still defying the shackles of the mighty power that had bound all the rest of the world, surged up and down, piling ponderous ice cakes in mountainous heaps along the river banks. Occasionally an Eskimo or two would suddenly appear out of the snow fields, remain for a day perhaps, and then as suddenly disappear into the bleak wastes ...
— The Long Labrador Trail • Dillon Wallace
... society probably suggested topics for the Rambler, which appeared at this time, and caused Johnson's fame to spread further beyond the literary circles of London. The wit and humour have, indeed, left few traces upon its ponderous pages, for the Rambler marks the culminating period of Johnson's worst qualities of style. The pompous and involved language seems indeed to be a fit clothing for the melancholy reflections which are its chief staple, and in spite of its unmistakable power it is as heavy reading as the heavy class ...
— Samuel Johnson • Leslie Stephen
... the sound of grounding of arms, of the drawing of bolts and the turning of a key in a complicated lock. The prison was kept locked from within, and very heavy bars had to be moved ere the ponderous door slowly swung ...
— El Dorado • Baroness Orczy
... some cross-mated couple too! This Pasha party shows up ponderous and imposin', in spite of the funny little fez arrangement on his head. He's thrown his cloak back, revealin' a regulation frock coat; but under that is some sort of a giddy-tinted silk blouse effect, and the fringed ends of a bright red sash hangs down below his knee on the left ...
— Shorty McCabe on the Job • Sewell Ford
... "bird-footed"). Each of them then gave birth to an order of quadrupeds. In the spreading waters and rich swamps of the later Triassic some of the Theropods were attracted to return to an amphibious life, and became the vast, sprawling, ponderous Sauropods, the giants in a world of giants. On the other hand, a branch of the vegetarian Ornithopods developed heavy armour, for defence against the carnivores, and became, under the burden of its weight, the quadrupedal and monstrous Stegosauria and ...
— The Story of Evolution • Joseph McCabe
... be a mountain," said he, with ponderous lightness, "and have angels in blue climb up you instead of ...
— Options • O. Henry
... desired as little as themselves. He smiled at my courageous spirit, paid me the first quarter of my income, and gave me the remainder of my personal effects, which had been sent to me, under his care, in a couple of rather ponderous boxes. With these I returned in triumph to my lodgings, more content with my position than I should have thought possible a week before, and fully determined to make ...
— The Dynamiter • Robert Louis Stevenson and Fanny van de Grift Stevenson
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