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More "Topmost" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... on in silence, Rotherby in the background. Behind him again, on the topmost of the three steps that led up into the inner hall, stood Mistress Winthrop, white of face, a wild horror in the eyes she riveted upon the wounded and unconscious man. She realized that he was like to die. There was an infinite pity in her soul—and, ...
— The Lion's Skin • Rafael Sabatini
... his nest For the mate he lo'es to see, And on the topmost bough, O, a happy bird is he; Where he pours his melting ditty, And love is a' the theme, And he 'll woo his bonny lassie When the kye comes hame. When the kye ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume II. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... Proceed next earnestly to Deal them forth on the table in the following Order and Manner, and without first seeing their Faces. And be solicitous of laying them down just as they shall come, Faces upward, in a Downward and Oblique Line; taking them from the Topmost of the Pack until you have laid forth Seven, Cards. And while you cruise and lay down the same, and indeed during all that here ensueth of Directions for your following, avoid foolish Conversation and sottish Pleasantries with those ...
— The Square of Sevens - An Authoritative Method of Cartomancy with a Prefatory Note • E. Irenaeus Stevenson
... and Proberta that Pepe stumbled first. Felipe pulled him up and ceased to urge him to his topmost speed. But five hundred yards farther he stumbled again. The spume-flakes he tossed from the bit were bloody. His breath came in ...
— A Deal in Wheat - And Other Stories of the New and Old West • Frank Norris
... on one side while the building was still uncompleted; and this defect was afterwards provided for by its architect. This is evident from the staircase, of some 294 steps, being also at an angle. There are some very heavy bells on the topmost towers, to counterbalance the deviation. It is supposed to have been constructed about 1174, by William of Innsprueck, and afterwards finished by Italians, but it was not finally completed until 1350. It rises ...
— Fair Italy, the Riviera and Monte Carlo • W. Cope Devereux
... house this new sound came from above the topmost room, it seemed, up under the roof; a regular squeaking, oddly familiar, yet elusive. Upon it followed a very soft and muffled thud; then a metallic sound as of a rusty hinge in motion; then a new silence, pregnant with a thousand possibilities ...
— The Return of Dr. Fu-Manchu • Sax Rohmer
... best line to regain the camp. I searched in vain, and at last I determined to climb a tree from which I might obtain an extensive look-out. It was some time before I found one which I could manage to get up, and from the topmost boughs of which I at the same time might obtain such an extensive view as would be of any use to me, I at last found a tree answering my wishes. Of course I could not carry my rifle up with me, so I had to leave it leaning against the trunk. I ...
— My First Voyage to Southern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston
... leaves or petals, about three inches in length, of a beautiful crimson, the inside spotted with white. Its leaves, of a fine green, are oval, and disposed by threes. This plant climbs upon the trees without attaching itself to them; when it has reached the topmost branches, it descends perpendicularly, and as it continues to grow, extends from tree to tree, until its various stalks interlace the grove like the rigging of a ship. The stems or trunks of this vine are ...
— Astoria - Or, Anecdotes Of An Enterprise Beyond The Rocky Mountains • Washington Irving
... neared the wall, and as the population held their breath it suddenly flew over, and carried the spring away with it down the Derwent. Judge of the popular disgust when the sages of that region complainingly remarked that, having crossed but a few inches above the topmost stones of the wall, if the builders had only carried it a course or two higher the cuckoo might have been kept at home, and their valley thus have ...
— England, Picturesque and Descriptive - A Reminiscence of Foreign Travel • Joel Cook
... filed them away in a safe place, then brought the topmost copy of his just-received file of newspapers out upon the veranda and sat himself down ...
— From Place to Place • Irvin S. Cobb
... slowly, his mind crowded with memories—with what burning hatred in his heart he had come to face the owner of that house, to disarm Victor Mahr of his revengeful power. With what primeval elation he had stood upon that topmost step and drawn long breaths of satisfaction at the thought of the encounter in which, with his own hands he had laid his enemy low! Its thrill came to him anew. Again he recalled the hurried purposeful visit that had ended with his finding ...
— Out of the Ashes • Ethel Watts Mumford
... all the stairway had been run, and we were on the topmost step, Virgil fixed his eyes on me, and said, "The temporal fire and the eternal thou hast seen, son, and art come to a place where of myself no further onward I discern. I have brought thee here with understanding and with art; thine ...
— The Divine Comedy, Volume 2, Purgatory [Purgatorio] • Dante Alighieri
... grand staircase, with the carved balustrades rotting and crumbling away piecemeal, converted into a common sewer for all its inmates. Up stair after stair we went, while wails of children, and curses of men, steamed out upon the hot stifling rush of air from every doorway, till, at the topmost story, we knocked at a garret door. We entered. Bare it was of furniture, comfortless, and freezing cold; but, with the exception of the plaster dropping from the roof, and the broken windows, patched with rags and paper, there was a scrupulous neatness ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al
... her fair presence something is wanting to the completeness of her elder sisters. The great Campanile at Florence, though it be inlaid with glowing marbles, and fair sculptures, and perfect in its beauty, wants the gilded, skyward-pointing pinnacle of its topmost pyramid; and so it stands incomplete. And thus faith and love need for their crowning and completion the topmost grace that looks up to the sky, and is sure of ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren
... a few moments, and then struck into a green path which led through the wood. The path wound beneath dark pines; their topmost branches, were red in the evening light, but the shade was black beneath them. Soon the path reached a little grassy glade, and there among cold, wet grasses was the Wishing Well. It was almost hidden by the grass, and looked very black, ...
— The Gold Of Fairnilee • Andrew Lang
... Cross looks down upon lover and tourist as we all foregather on the topmost terrace of that gigantic shadow-pyramid ...
— Flash-lights from the Seven Seas • William L. Stidger
... to try the experiment took possession of the boy as he sat on the topmost rail with the glossy back temptingly near him. Never thinking of danger, he obeyed the impulse, and while Charlie unsuspectingly nibbled at the apple he held, Dan quickly and quietly took his seat. He did not keep it long, however, for with an astonished ...
— Little Men - Life at Plumfield With Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott
... of this wild youth found a chord of sympathy in Rosebud's heart. His sincerity, his splendid personality, savage though he was, made her listen attentively. The woman in her was not insensible to his address, but the very truth of his passion roused her fears again to the topmost pitch. There was no mistaking those horsemen surrounding her. She gave one little helpless glance around at them that surely would have melted the heart of any white man. But the impassive faces held out no hope to her. She ...
— The Watchers of the Plains - A Tale of the Western Prairies • Ridgewell Cullum
... surface, and picturesqueness of light and shade. It needed but a little applied ornament judiciously distributed; a moulding in the arches; a florid canopy and statue amid the buttresses; a few grinning monsters leaning out of unexpected nooks; a leafy budding of the topmost pinnacles; a piercing here and there of some little gallery, parapet, or turret into lacework against the sky — and the building became a poem, an inexhaustible emotion. Add some passing cloud casting its moving shadow over the pile, add the circling of birds about the ...
— The Sense of Beauty - Being the Outlines of Aesthetic Theory • George Santayana
... pretty toys for you. Behold the blocks, the Noah's arks, The popguns painted red and blue. No solemn pine-cone forest-fruit, But silver horns and candy sacks And many little tinsel hearts And cherubs pink, and jumping-jacks. For every child a gift, I hope. The doll upon the topmost bough Is mine. But all the rest are yours. And I will light ...
— The Congo and Other Poems • Vachel Lindsay
... there was swayed the tall top, and the ladder creaked like a ship's gangway. A telephone bell tinkled 50 foot overhead. Two invisible guns spoke fervently for half a minute, and broke off like terriers choked on a leash. We climbed till the topmost platform swayed sicklily beneath us. Here one found a rustic shelter, always of the tea-garden pattern, a table, a map, and a little window wreathed with living branches that gave one the first view of the Devil and all his works. It was a stretch of open country, ...
— France At War - On the Frontier of Civilization • Rudyard Kipling
... through the magnificent suite of apartments, which had already excited his displeasure, pointed out to her the armorial bearings of the proud minister, which were conspicuous in every room. The shield represented a squirrel ascending the topmost branches of a tree, with the ...
— Louis XIV., Makers of History Series • John S. C. Abbott
... horizontal as do earthly beetles, these insects stood erect on their two lower pairs of legs, which were of different lengths so that all four feet touched the ground when the shell was vertical. The two upper pairs of legs were used as arms, the topmost pair[A] being quite short and splitting out at the end into four flexible claws about five inches long, which they used as fingers. These upper arms, which sprouted from a point near the top of the head, ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science September 1930 • Various
... chance I had carried away his weapon, firmly grasped in my hands. It was a heavy two-edged dagger, sharp as a needle, and while I grasped the hilt I felt the strength and fury of a thousand fighting-men in me. As I advanced he retreated before me, until, seizing the topmost boughs of a great thorny bush, he swung his body to one side and wrenched it out of the earth by the roots. Swinging the bush with the rapidity of a whirlwind round his head, he advanced against me and dealt a blow that would have crushed me had it descended on ...
— The Purple Land • W. H. Hudson
... flings herself gracefully, like a ballet-dancer, into the plum, and takes up a caterpillar in her beak. She does not eat it at once, but stands still, eyeing you as though awaiting your applause. Her husband, sitting on the topmost spray, goes on singing his version of The Roast Beef of Old England. She does not even now eat the caterpillar, but hurries along the paths of the branches with the obvious purpose of finding a tasty insect to eat long with it. It may be that there are insects that play the part of mustard ...
— The Pleasures of Ignorance • Robert Lynd
... the general idea "above" as opposed to "below." According to its place in the sentence and the requirements of common sense, it may be a noun meaning "upper person" (that is, a ruler); an adjective meaning "upper," "topmost" or "best"; an adverb meaning "above"; a preposition meaning "upon"; and finally a verb meaning "to mount upon," or "to go to." [Ch] is a character that may usually be translated "to enter" as in [Ch][Ch] "to enter a door"; yet in the locution [Ch][Ch] "enter wood," the ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 2 - "Chicago, University of" to "Chiton" • Various
... rock-weed's dripping with their gore;— Thy blade too, HAFED, false at length, How breaks beneath thy tottering strength! Haste, haste—the voices of the Foe Come near and nearer from below— One effort more—thank Heaven! 'tis past, They've gained the topmost steep at last. And now they touch the temple's walls. Now HAFED sees the Fire divine— When, lo!—his weak, worn comrade falls Dead on the threshold of the shrine. "Alas, brave soul, too quickly fled! "And must I leave thee withering here, "The sport of ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... I think we have all known the feeling. O plain church, to which I used to go when I was a child, and where I used to think the singing so very splendid! O little room, where I used to sleep! and you, tall tree, on whose topmost branch I cut the initials which perhaps the reader knows! did I not even then wonder to myself if the time and would ever come when I should be far away from you,—far away, as now, for many years, and not likely to go back,—and yet feel entirely indifferent to the matter? and did not I even ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 43, May, 1861 • Various
... On this the Boiars at my feet fell down, Won by the force of these resistless proofs, And hailed me as the offspring of their Czar. So from the yawning gulfs of black despair Fate raised me up to fortune's topmost heights. And now the mists cleared off, and all at once Memories on memories started into life In the remotest background of the past. And like some city's spires that gleam afar In golden sunshine when naught else is seen, So in my soul two images grew bright, The loftiest sun-peaks in the ...
— Demetrius - A Play • Frederich Schiller
... method of getting poultry to the great market, by means of carts of four stages or stories, one above another, to carry the birds in, drawn by two horses, which by means of relays travelled night and day, and covered as much as 100 miles in two days and one night, the driver sitting on the topmost stage. ...
— A Short History of English Agriculture • W. H. R. Curtler
... time on a large plantation. All hands join in the work—men, women and children; for it must be rushed. Over-ripe berries shrink and dry up. The pickers, with baskets slung over their shoulders, walk between the rows, stripping the berries from the trees, using ladders to reach the topmost branches, and sometimes even taking immature fruit in their haste to expedite the work. About thirty pounds is considered a fair day's work under good conditions. As the baskets are filled, they are emptied at a "station" in that particular unit of the plantation; ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... East, wind of the West, wandering to and fro, Chant your hymns in our topmost limbs, that the sons of men may know That the peerless pine was the first to come, and the pine will be ...
— Giant Hours With Poet Preachers • William L. Stidger
... came in a body, and even McGowan felt it incumbent upon him to stand up during the service and assume the air of one who had been especially bereft. Nor were the notices in the country and city papers wanting in respect. "One of our most distinguished citizens—a man who has reached the topmost round of the ladder," etc., etc., ...
— Peter - A Novel of Which He is Not the Hero • F. Hopkinson Smith
... that presently its tradition, like many legendary and romantic things, would soon be forgotten. But just at the turn of a path, where a low stile gives access to the road, I saw a man standing, his arms folded and leaning on the topmost bar of the stile—a man neither old nor young, with a strong quiet face, and almost snow-white hair—a man quite alone, whose attitude and bearing expressed the very spirit of solitude. I knew him for the master of the farm—a man greatly honoured ...
— Innocent - Her Fancy and His Fact • Marie Corelli
... the Sun," from winter to summer and from summer to winter, indicating at each noon the meridian altitude of the Sun from day to day, the latitude of Jerusalem being 31 deg. 47', and the Sun's altitude there on the shortest day being 34 deg. 41'. If the gnomon were raised above the topmost step so as to bring the tip of the gnomon or any aperture in it so much above the step as would be the equivalent of 2 deg. 54' or slightly more, then the top of the shadow of the gnomon (or a spot of light passing through a hole in it) would, on the shortest day of the year, fall just beyond ...
— The Story of Eclipses • George Chambers
... of a stunted growth, and lying like a dark patch on the landscape. It served, however, entirely to conceal the castle, and mask every movement of the wary and terrible master. A trained eye advancing on the copse would hardly mark the glimmer of the turrets over the topmost leaves, but to every loophole of the walls lies bare the circuit of the land. Werner could rule with a glance the Rhine's course down from the broad rock over Coblentz to the white tower of Andernach. He claimed that march as his right; ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... came back, and with him a she, And the acorn was grown to a tall oak tree. They built them a nest in the topmost bough, And young ones they had and were happy enow. But soon came a woodman in leathern guise, His brow, like a pent house, hung over his eyes. He'd an axe in his hand, not a word he spoke, But with ...
— The Children's Garland from the Best Poets • Various
... and for some distance up the middle of the street. Then she stopped and looked up at one of the black houses. There were lights, more or less curtain-dimmed, in nearly all the windows. Emma regarded a faint gleam in the topmost storey. To that ...
— Demos • George Gissing
... for the perfecting of corrupt societies seem to me to crawl far below the devotion of love. When the whole soul vibrates with that one thought, it has no room for the nice calculation of general interests; the topmost heights of earth are far ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... swallowed him and vomited him forth on the beach at the very spot where he had intended to land, while at another time two sharks towed his vessel against a head wind with such speed that the sea fowl could hardly keep him in sight. Clearing his eye by a fast and prayer, he climbed to the topmost height of the Waianae Mountains and closely scanned the horizon. The earth was as brick, and the sky as brass, and the sea as silver, save in one quarter: a tiny blur on the universal glare could be seen, he fancied, over Maui. He would wait, in order to be sure. ...
— Myths & Legends of our New Possessions & Protectorate • Charles M. Skinner
... resume all their aristocratical dignity and idleness. I have envied them the enjoyment which they appear to have in their ethereal heights, sporting with clamorous exultation about their lofty bowers; sometimes hovering over them, sometimes partially alighting upon the topmost branches, and there balancing with outstretched wings and swinging in the breeze. Sometimes they seem to take a fashionable drive to the church and amuse themselves by circling in airy rings about its spire; at other times a ...
— Bracebridge Hall, or The Humorists • Washington Irving
... can give you no idea of. My ladies were now on foot, of course; but we dragged them on as well as we could (they were thorough game, and didn't make the least complaint), until we got to the foot of that topmost hill I have drawn so beautifully. Here we all stopped; but the head guide, an English gentleman of the name of Le Gros—who has been here many years, and has been up the mountain a hundred times—and your humble ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 1 (of 3), 1833-1856 • Charles Dickens
... enough to possess a watch, I could not tell how time was passing, except by observing the slowly lengthening shadows from the window; which presented a side view, including a corner of the park, a clump of trees whose topmost branches had been colonized by an innumerable company of noisy rooks, and a high wall with a massive wooden gate: no doubt communicating with the stable-yard, as a broad carriage-road swept up to it from the park. The shadow of this wall soon took posession of the whole of the ground ...
— Agnes Grey • Anne Bronte
... of the East, Wind of the West, wandering to and fro, Chant your songs in our topmost boughs, that the sons of men may know The peerless pine was the first to come, and the pine will be last ...
— The Spell of the Yukon • Robert Service
... question with Carson which would last the longer—the club or the snouts, but in the hope of getting beyond their reach, he climbed to the topmost bough, where he crouched into the smallest possible space. It was idle, however, to hope they would overlook him, for they pushed on up the tree which swayed with ...
— The Life of Kit Carson • Edward S. Ellis
... same sharp snouts and long naked tails. We counted no less than thirteen of them, playing and tumbling about among the leaves.' The old 'possum looked wistfully up at the nest of the orioles, hanging like a distended stocking from the topmost twigs of the tree. After a little consideration she uttered a sharp note, which brought the little ones about her in a twinkling. 'Several of them ran into the pouch which she had caused to open for them; two of them took a turn of their little tails around the root of hers, ...
— Chambers' Edinburgh Journal - Volume XVII., No 422, New Series, January 31, 1852 • Various
... things. The Padre was out in the hills with gun and traps. Would he have anticipated the swift rising storm and regained the shelter of the stout old fort? With the boom of falling trees going on about them, with the fiery crackle of the blazing light as it hit the topmost branches of the adjacent forest, he wondered and hoped, and feared for the old man in the ...
— The Golden Woman - A Story of the Montana Hills • Ridgwell Cullum
... and the gloom of the forests; over it no flying things could wing their way unharmed, such a vapour streamed from the dark gorge and rose into the overarching sky. Here the priestess first arrays four black-bodied bullocks and pours wine upon their forehead; and plucking the topmost hairs from between the horns, lays them on the sacred fire for first-offering, calling aloud on Hecate, mistress of heaven and hell. Others lay knives beneath, and catch the warm blood in cups. Aeneas himself ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil • Virgil
... pair of military eyes that I had beside me a day or two ago, as I stood upon the topmost roofs of a high tower, in a certain little town in northern Italy, where much history has been made of late; and, since the owner of the eyes was likewise the possessor of a very well-ordered mind and a gift of lucid exposition, I found myself able ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume V (of 8) • Francis J. (Francis Joseph) Reynolds, Allen L. (Allen Leon)
... he said, "and lie low a-deck"; and he went up the companion ladder when I got my flannels and rubber-shod shoes upon me. But at the topmost step he stood awhile, and then he fell flat on his hands, and backed again down the stairway, so that he came almost on top of me; but I saw what prompted his action, for, as he moved, there was a shadow thrown from the deck light down to where we lay; and then ...
— The Iron Pirate - A Plain Tale of Strange Happenings on the Sea • Max Pemberton
... had been quite right in telegraphing so peremptorily to Hilda; and if she had not so telegraphed she would have been quite wrong. On the previous day she had been sitting on the cold new oilcloth of the topmost stairs, minutely instructing a maid in the craft of polishing banisters. And the next morning an attack of acute sciatica had supervened. For a trifling indiscretion Sarah was thus condemned to extreme physical torture. Hilda ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett
... Etna's topmost peak She lights two flames, that shining through the isle Leave dark no wood, or cave, or mountain path, Their sunlike splendour makes the moon-beams dim, And the bright stars are lost within their day. She's in yon field,—she comes towards this plain, Her loosened hair has fallen on her neck, ...
— Proserpine and Midas • Mary Shelley
... bonnet on, and looked from under its brim up at the amber sky. It was growing faintly green near the zenith, toward which the lofty topmost plumes of the dark green pines swayed. The great growths of the forest rose on every side. There was no view, no vista, save the infinitely repeated umbrageous tangle beneath the trees, where their boles stood more or less distinct ...
— The Mystery of Witch-Face Mountain and Other Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock
... the magnifying glass. It actually appeared like a whole town, where all the inhabitants ran about without clothes! it was terrible, but still more terrible to see how the one knocked and pushed the other, bit each other, and drew one another about. What was undermost should be topmost, and what was topmost should be undermost!—See there, now! his leg is longer than mine!—whip it off, and away with it! There is one that has a little lump behind the ear, a little innocent lump, but it pains him, and so it shall ...
— A Christmas Greeting • Hans Christian Andersen
... Bring the Moon and Bear down with thee From the fir-tree's lofty branches." Ilmarinen, full consenting, Straightway climbed the golden fir-tree, High upon the bow of heaven, Thence to bring the golden moonbeams, Thence to bring the Bear of heaven, From the fir-tree's topmost branches. Thereupon the blooming fir-tree Spake these words to Ilmarinen: "O thou senseless, thoughtless hero, Thou hast neither wit nor instinct; Thou dost climb my golden branches, Like a thing of little judgment, Thus to get my ...
— The Kalevala (complete) • John Martin Crawford, trans.
... feel in one's fellows after a prolonged absence. He had moved a little to one side to allow a party of young people to make their way through the crowded chamber, when he was conscious of a woman standing alone on the topmost of the three thickly carpeted stairs. Their eyes met, and hers, which had been wandering around the room as though in search of some acquaintance, seemed instantly and fervently held. To the few loungers about the room, ignorant of any special significance in that ...
— The Great Impersonation • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... is that singular-looking bird, the Leatherhead, or Bald-headed Friar (Tropidorhynchus corniculatus); it is commonly seen upon the topmost branches of lofty trees, calling 'Poor Soldier,' 'Pimlico,' 'Four o'clock,' and uttering screaming sounds. It feeds upon insects, wild fruits, and any sweets it can procure from the flowers of the Banksia ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris
... and kicked, with his heels in the air, and rolled over the topmost man, who rolled over Mr. Pepperill, who rolled over the feather-bed, which rolled again over Mr. Ropes, in a most lively and ...
— Cudjo's Cave • J. T. Trowbridge
... that when all the rest were powerless to cross the river it alone stemmed the roaring eddy without weariness. This rapid comes down in so swift and sheer a volume that animals often lose all power of swimming in it, and perish. For, trickling from the topmost crests of the hills, it comes down the steep sides, catches on the rocks, and is shattered, falling into the deep valleys with a manifold clamour of waters; but, being straightway rebuffed by the rocks that bar the way, it keeps the speed of its current ever at the same even pace. And ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... and new baby. They turned inside, their minds entirely occupied with the rival merits of red and white roses. They ordered their flowers, inscribed the card, and then waited aimlessly till Martin should return to pick them up. Passing down the counter, they came upon a bill-sticker, the topmost item being, "Violets every Saturday to Miss Mae Van ...
— Just Patty • Jean Webster
... who have not seen a Persian walnut tree in full foliage, have something to live for. Imagine a tree, that was a nut in the spring of 1877, its branches now spreading full fifty feet, its topmost bough fully that far from the ground, its trunk measuring seventy-six inches around, well ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association, Report of the Proceedings at the Fourth Annual Meeting - Washington D.C. November 18 and 19, 1913 • Various
... to a curious instance in a species of Verbascum, the lower flowers of which had hairy stamens as usual, but the filaments of the topmost flower were quite destitute of hairs, and dilated like a ...
— Vegetable Teratology - An Account of the Principal Deviations from the Usual Construction of Plants • Maxwell T. Masters
... the fructifying energy of that Christian influence to which we are asked to ascribe all the scientific enlightenment of this age—about ten thousand years to build their Tyres and their Veii, their Sidons and Carthagenes. As other Troys lie under the surface of the topmost one in the Troad; and other and higher civilizations were exhumed by Mariette Bey under the stratum of sand from which the archeological collections of Lepsius, Abbott, and the British Museum were taken; and six Hindu "Delhis," superposed and hidden away out of sight, formed the pedestal ...
— Five Years Of Theosophy • Various
... that it was no time for greetings and, without offering to enter the enclosure, climbed to the top of the big gate, where he sat, with one leg over the topmost bar, ...
— When A Man's A Man • Harold Bell Wright
... real work of the finger of God. It had been giving him, William Dale, faint imperceptible pushes for fifteen years, and see now at the end where it had pushed him. First it had pushed him upward, higher and higher, to a position of conspicuous pride, to the topmost summit of a fair mountain, where he could look round and say, "I have all that I pined for. This is the world's castle, and I am the king of the castle." Then it had begun to push him down the other side of this mountain, the dark side, the side that was always in shadow, downward ...
— The Devil's Garden • W. B. Maxwell
... In the topmost height of the celestial world the Lord appears as a sun, and all the infinite multitudes of angels, swarming up through the innumerable heavens, wherever they are, continually turn their faces towards him in love ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... steadied it against the tree, and guided Jennie's little feet till they reached the topmost round, holding on to her skirts so that she should not fall. Above their heads the branches twined and interlaced, shedding their sweetest blossoms over their happy upturned faces. The old man's eyes lightened as he watched them for some moments; then, turning to Tom, ...
— Tom Grogan • F. Hopkinson Smith
... mountain summits neighbour to the sky, The more unceasingly their far crags smoke With the thick darkness of swart cloud, because When first the mists do form, ere ever the eyes Can there behold them (tenuous as they be), The carrier-winds will drive them up and on Unto the topmost summits of the mountain; And then at last it happens, when they be In vaster throng upgathered, that they can By this very condensation lie revealed, And that at same time they are seen to surge From very vertex of the mountain up Into far ether. ...
— Of The Nature of Things • [Titus Lucretius Carus] Lucretius
... her hand in his and trust to him for safety in all the coming years they might live together—what man of woman born would dare to interfere? There was a blue light coming in through the shutters. He went to the window: the topmost leaves of the trees were quivering in the cold air far up there in the clearing skies, where the stars were fading out one by one, and he could hear the sound of the sea on the distant beach, and he knew that across the gray plain of waters the dawn was ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Vol. XV., No. 85. January, 1875. • Various
... Koala, or native 'bear' of Australia, carries her young on her back (fig. 3), and apparently without serious inconvenience, though she has to make her way about the topmost boughs of the giant gum-trees. Finally, we must refer to the kangaroo, which carries its young in a special pouch, too well known to need description here. The point to which we would direct attention is the burden which all these ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various
... at bottom lined With linen of the softest kind, With such as merchants introduce From India, for the ladies' use; A drawer, impending o'er the rest, Half open, in the topmost chest, Of depth enough, and none to spare, Invited her to slumber there; Puss with delight beyond expression, Surveyed the scene and took possession. Recumbent at her ease, ere long, And lulled by her ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... king of the story, the king of fairyland, the king of the Hollow Needle! A strange and supernatural kingdom! From Caesar to Lupin: what a destiny!" He burst out laughing. "King of fairyland! Why not say King of Yvetot at once? What nonsense! King of the world, yes, that's more like it! From this topmost point of the Needle, I ruled the globe! I held it in my claws like a prey! Lift the tiara of Saitapharnes, Beautrelet.—You see those two telephones? The one on the right communicates with Paris: a private line; the one on the ...
— The Hollow Needle • Maurice Leblanc
... small fire, he baked the nuts slightly, and then pealed off the husks. After this he wished to bore a hole in them, which, not having anything better at hand at the time, he did with the point of our useless pencil-case. Then he strung them on the cocoa-nut spine, and on putting a light to the topmost nut, we found to our joy that it burned with a clear, beautiful flame; upon seeing which, Peterkin sprang up and danced round the fire for at least five minutes in the ...
— The Coral Island - A Tale Of The Pacific Ocean • R. M. Ballantyne
... escape. But I had forgotten this strange city in which I was. Every house is an island. As I flung open the door, ready to bound out into the street, the light of the hall shone upon the deep, still, black water which lay flush with the topmost step. ...
— The Adventures of Gerard • Arthur Conan Doyle
... largest landowner in Great Britain and probably in Europe. Just before reaching Golspie, a lofty, sombre mountain, with its bald head enveloped in the mist, and which I had been two hours apparently in passing, cleared away and revealed its full stature—and more. Towering up from its topmost summit, a tall column lifted a human figure in bronze skyward cloud-high and frequently higher still. I believe the brazen face that thus looks into the pure and holy skies without blushing, is a duplicate of the one worn in human flesh ...
— A Walk from London to John O'Groat's • Elihu Burritt
... woodcuts decorate the title-page of one exemplar, which was certainly printed at Basil, apud Andream Cratandrum. The topmost woodcut, dated 1519, is here misplaced; for it should be at the bottom of the page, in which position it appears when employed to grace the title of the facetious Responsio of Simon Hess to Luther. The second copy is in Gothic letter, and has ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 40, Saturday, August 3, 1850 - A Medium Of Inter-Communication For Literary Men, Artists, Antiquaries, • Various
... memory. At the edge of the clearing he paused; a giant tree loomed directly ahead of him and, as though actuated by sudden and irresistible impulse, he leaped into the branches and swung himself with apelike agility to the topmost limbs that would sustain his weight. There, balancing lightly upon a swaying bough, he sought in the direction of the eastern horizon for the tiny speck that would be the British plane bearing away from him the last of his own race and kind ...
— Tarzan the Untamed • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... with eager haste, they reached the summit just as the sun rose and tinged the topmost pinnacles with a golden hue. Pushing on towards an elevated ridge of rock, they climbed to the top of a mound, from which they could obtain a view of the surrounding country, and then they discovered that their place of refuge was a small ...
— Shifting Winds - A Tough Yarn • R.M. Ballantyne
... heaven whereof the Hours are warders, to whom is committed great heaven and Olympus, whether to throw open the thick cloud or set it to. There through the gates guided they their horses patient of the lash. And they found the son of Kronos sitting apart from all the gods on the topmost peak of many-ridged Olympus. Then the white-armed goddess Hera stayed her horses and questioned the most high Zeus, the son of Kronos, and said: "Father Zeus, hast thou no indignation with Ares for these violent deeds? How great and goodly a company of Achaians hath ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer (Lang, Leaf, Myers trans.)
... brook tinkled and plashed over the stones on its way to the near-by Catawba; and its peaceful brawling, and the evensong of a pair of clear-throated warblers poised on the topmost twigs of one of the trees, should have been sweet music in the ears of a returned exile. But on that matchless bride's-month evening of dainty sunset arabesques and brook and bird songs, I was in ...
— The Master of Appleby • Francis Lynde
... drawing their canoe up the bank, a few moments later, to carry it around the dam, when something away up along shore attracted their notice. There, perched in a birch tree, in the topmost branches, with her weight bending it over till it nearly touched the water, they espied a girl, swinging. Then, as they looked, she ...
— The Rival Campers Ashore - The Mystery of the Mill • Ruel Perley Smith
... the realm below; Or, by the deluge roused from sleep Within his bristling forest-keep, Shakes all his pines, and far and wide Sends down a rich, imperious tide. At night the whistling tempests meet In tryst upon his topmost seat, And all the phantoms of the sky Frolic and gibber, storming by. By day I see the ocean-mists Float with the current where it lists, And from my summit I can hail Cloud-vessels passing on the gale,— The stately ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 104, June, 1866 • Various
... fell upon a medley of photographs; snaps from her own camera, which had tumbled out of her bag in unpacking. The topmost one represented a group of young men and maidens standing under a group of stone pines in a Riviera landscape. She herself was in front, with a tall youth beside her. She bent down to ...
— Lady Connie • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... and the lower half of his body plunged into twigs and foliage. The parachute, released from a part of the weight which had held it steady, careened, was caught by a sidewise gust of wind, and, bellying out like a sail, it dragged the two aerial travelers through the topmost branches in short, vicious jerks which made Stuart feel as though he were being pulled apart. This lasted but a minute or two, however, when the parachute itself, torn, and caught in the branches, ...
— Plotting in Pirate Seas • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... of life. A tall twig led from the nest straight up into the air, and this was the ladder he mounted. Step by step he climbed one leaf-stem after another, with several pauses to cry and to eat, and at last reached the topmost point, where he turned his face to the west, and took his first survey of the kingdoms of the earth. A brother nestling was close behind him, and the pretty pair, seeing no more steps above them, rested a while from their labors. In the mean time the first young oriole had gone ...
— A Bird-Lover in the West • Olive Thorne Miller
... long line of upheaven rocks seek again the ocean which gave them birth in its far-separated divisions of Atlantic, Pacific, and Arctic. The sun sank slowly behind the range and darkness began to fall on the immense plain, but aloft on the topmost edge the pure white of the jagged crest-line glowed for an instant in many-coloured silver, and then the lonely peaks grew dark ...
— The Great Lone Land - A Narrative of Travel and Adventure in the North-West of America • W. F. Butler
... mass of pillars and super-structures and carvings, increasing in complexity from within outwards, until it attained the appearance of an ornate temple in the centre of which burned a little coal. It was grotesque. On the topmost ledges of this monstrous absurdity stood two vases. They bulged like distended stomachs, covered on their outsides with yellow, green and black splotches of colour. I recollected that I paid ten pounds apiece for them. Under what perverted impulse had I done that? My memories became incredible. ...
— The Blue Germ • Martin Swayne
... towered up towards the heavens. The space of ground, embraced thus in the arms of the mountain, as it were, was laid out, as though by the cunning hand of man, in three terraces that rose one above the other. To the right and left of the topmost terrace were chasms in the cliff, and down each chasm fell a waterfall, from no great height, indeed, but of considerable volume. These two streams flowed away on either side of the enclosed space, one towards the north, and the other, the course of which we had been following, ...
— Allan's Wife • H. Rider Haggard
... plain, while the kine as they come in droves to the stalls warn the belated traveller to hasten on his way. May the fallows be broken for the seed-time, while the cicala, watching the shepherds as they toil in the sun, in the shade of the trees doth sing on the topmost sprays. May spiders weave their delicate webs over martial gear, may none any more so much as name the cry ...
— Theocritus, Bion and Moschus rendered into English Prose • Andrew Lang
... last splashes of crimson had faded from the topmost boughs he began anxiously to watch the tree about which all the villagers had seated themselves in a circle after first scraping the snow from the dead leaves. Darker and darker grew the air, and ...
— The Faery Tales of Weir • Anna McClure Sholl
... Through the door and over the line of the topmost stair she could just see the upper panes of the window at the back of Mrs. Johnstone's room. A heavy beam crossed the ceiling in front of the window, and from it, from a hook she had used that morning for twisting her yarn, depended ...
— Two Sides of the Face - Midwinter Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... drawn. On either hand 5 The lawns and meadow-ledges midway down Hang rich in flowers, and far below them roars The long brook falling thro' the clov'n ravine In cataract after cataract to the sea. Behind the valley topmost Gargarus 10 Stands up and takes the morning: but in front The gorges, opening wide apart, reveal Troas and Ilion's column'd citadel, The ...
— Selections from Wordsworth and Tennyson • William Wordsworth and Alfred Lord Tennyson
... the adventures that awaited him. The island, as he saw it for the first time, was beautiful. Steep hills, rocky and mountainous, rose precipitately out of the blue waters, and the rising sun glinted upon the topmost peaks of the hills and threw their deep shadows down upon the bay, and upon the group of yellow stucco bungalows that clustered together upon the edge of the water, upon the narrow strip of land lying between the sea and the sheer sides of the backing ...
— Civilization - Tales of the Orient • Ellen Newbold La Motte
... surface, but of the surrounding ocean. Mark now began to comprehend the character of the singular geological formation, into the midst of which the Rancocus had been led, as it might almost be by the hand of Providence itself. He was at that moment seated on the topmost pinnacle of a submarine mountain of volcanic origin—submarine as to all its elevations, heights and spaces, with the exception of the crater where he had just taken his stand, and the little bit of visible and venerable lava, by which it was surrounded. ...
— The Crater • James Fenimore Cooper
... and affecting different sensibilities in divers ways, corresponds to the high-strung passion of his life, his fine-drawn and ethereal fancies, and the clear vibrations of his palpitating verse. Such a voice, far-reaching, penetrating, and unearthly, befitted one who lived in rarest ether on the topmost heights ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley • John Addington Symonds
... came in. The color on the pasteboard binding had run, and as they lay on the drawn linen cover to the chiffonier, she went over and picked them up to see how much damage they'd done. Then she frowned, peered at the paper label that had half peeled off of the topmost cover, and read what was written ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster
... morning we set off early to the plaza de toros. The day was fresh and exhilarating. All the country people from several leagues round were assembled, and the trees up to their very topmost branches presented a collection of bronze faces and black eyes, belonging to the Indians, who had taken their places there as comfortably as spectators in a one-shilling gallery. A platform opposite ours was filled ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon De La Barca
... did was to punish Prometheus for stealing fire from the sun. He bade two of his servants, whose names were Strength and Force, to seize the bold Titan and carry him to the topmost peak of the Caucasus Mountains. Then he sent the blacksmith Vulcan to bind him with iron chains and fetter him to the rocks so that he could not move hand ...
— Old Greek Stories • James Baldwin
... The topmost cleft That grudged him footing on the mountain scars He planted and despaired not; till he left His vines soft breathing to the host of stars. He wrought, he tilled; and even as he sang, The creatures of his planting laughed to scorn The ancient threat of deserts where there sprang The wine, ...
— The Singing Man • Josephine Preston Peabody
... be it slippers, brass-work, or embroideries, alternating with eatables, fruit, pipes, and the like, there being no attempt at classification. Woe be to the unwary who approach these bazars without the ability to "bargain"; for there is ever a scale of prices, and the topmost one ...
— Travels in the Far East • Ellen Mary Hayes Peck
... kind, may be justly and satisfactorily inferred from the fact that in Philadelphia, lately, they attempted to execute their dogs with carbonic acid gas. When the box or tub was opened, the irrepressible spirits of the animals confined therein were perceived to be at the topmost heights of jollity, and the police were obliged to go back to first principles and shoot the ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 14, July 2, 1870 • Various
... revelry of the bobolink. He comes amid the pomp and fragrance of the season; his life seems all sensibility and enjoyment, all song and sunshine. He is to be found in the soft bosoms of the freshest and sweetest meadows, and is most in song when the clover is in blossom. He perches on the topmost twig of a tree, or on some long, flaunting weed, and, as he rises and sinks with the breeze, pours forth a succession of rich, tinkling notes, crowding one upon another, like the outpouring melody of the skylark, and possessing ...
— McGuffey's Fifth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... about it, with great interest, and had gone up to the topmost round of seats, and turning from the lovely panorama closed in by the distant Alps, looked down into the building, it seemed to lie before me like the inside of a prodigious hat of plaited straw, with an enormously broad brim and a shallow ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Vol VIII - Italy and Greece, Part Two • Various
... the man who looks at it. They are not only imposing, but they contain six or seven stories, one above another, of eight-foot square rooms, deducting a Jacob's-ladder stairway at one side, whereon people climb to the topmost room for the sake of looking out in the wrong direction through a round dormer-window, scratching their heads in the mean time on the nails that come through the roof! Cupolas too are lovely,—especially ...
— Homes And How To Make Them • Eugene Gardner
... whole of the workers, before whom fled an innumerable crowd of monkeys who were hardly their superiors in agility, slung themselves into the upper branches, sawing off the heavier boughs and cutting down the topmost limbs, which had to be cleared away on the spot. Very soon there remained only a doomed forest, with long bare stems, bereft of their crowns, through which the sun luxuriantly rayed on to the humid soil which perhaps its ...
— Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon • Jules Verne
... places as skilfully as an expert horse-dealer can draft his stock at a sale. Then, when the audience is complete, in the middle and front of the edifice are to be found they of the white hands and fine jewels; and in the topmost seat of the synagogue, praying audibly, is one who has made all his wealth by devouring widows' houses; while pushed away to the corners and wings are they who earn their bread by the sweat of their brow; and those who cannot afford ...
— My Brilliant Career • Miles Franklin
... is the murmur of bees a-swing? What is the laugh of a child at play? What is the song that the angels sing? (Where were the tune could the sweet notes stay Longer than this, to kiss and betray?) Nay, on the blue sky's topmost towers, What is the song of the seraphim? Say— Carol of birds ...
— Collected Poems - Volume Two (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... is lifted high Against the twilight sky, The same low, melancholy music grieves Amid the topmost leaves,[14] As when I watched, and mused, and dreamed with him, Beneath ...
— Poets of the South • F.V.N. Painter
... and where they twain could meet unseen, Unknown! Love found the way, The place, the hour. Rowena with her page was wont to stray Along the topmost cliffs. Here was a bower Hemmed in by rocks, where once ...
— Rowena & Harold - A Romance in Rhyme of an Olden Time, of Hastyngs and Normanhurst • Wm. Stephen Pryer
... was divided by a door in the middle. There were open coup82s and side seats which became plank beds when necessary. We slept in three tiers on the bare boards. I had a very decent place on the second tier, and, by a bit of good luck, the topmost bench over my head was occupied only by luggage, which gave me room to climb up there and sit more or less upright under the roof with my legs dangling above the general tumult of mothers, babies, and Bolsheviks ...
— Russia in 1919 • Arthur Ransome
... Houses of Germany? A prince or a princess may say, "I will this or that." The Diet says, "Thou shalt not"; pre-eminently, "Thou shalt not mix thy blood with that of an impure race, nor with blood of inferiors." Hence, we have it what we see it, a translucent flood down from the topmost founts of time. So we revere it. "Qua man and woman," the Diet says, by implication, "do as you like, marry in the ditches, spawn plentifully. Qua prince and princess, No! Your nuptials are nought. Or would you maintain them a legal ceremony, and ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... and wilder. They passed an immense tree, under which Indians may have bivouacked, and in some storm long past the lightning had plowed its way from the topmost branch to ...
— A Young Girl's Wooing • E. P. Roe
... hand, he might extend his view, and perhaps gain a portion of the knowledge he was so desirous of obtaining. He acted upon the thought at once, and, selecting the tallest, first concealed his rifle, and then climbed to the very topmost branches. There he was rewarded by a magnificent view, and one which promised him some of the results he was seeking. With this extension of his field of vision he discovered more than one evidence that he was not in a solitude. In the first place, by looking to the southward, ...
— Through Apache Lands • R. H. Jayne
... but the Corsairs imputed his conduct to cowardice, and, suddenly changing their part from attacked to attackers, they swooped like eagles upon the galleys, and after a brisk hand-to-hand combat, in which Portundo was slain, they carried seven of them by assault, and sent the other flying at topmost speed to Ivica. This bold stroke brought to Algiers, besides the Moriscos, who had watched the battle anxiously from the island, many valuable captives of rank, and released hundreds of Moslem galley-slaves from irons and the lash.[11] "Drub-Devil" had a splendid ...
— The Story of the Barbary Corsairs • Stanley Lane-Poole
... possible that Christmas could come around so soon. Santa Claus was not quite such a real thing this year, so many gifts came to the little girl by the way of the hall door. But she hung up her stocking all the same, and had it full to the topmost round. There was a beautiful set of dishes, and they came with best love from "Dolly and Stephen." There was cloth for a pretty new winter coat, blue-and-black plaid, some squirrel fur to trim it with, ...
— A Little Girl in Old New York • Amanda Millie Douglas
... said it might prove that he should wish to alter it. He then went to the other end of the same cross-bar, bored a hole there, and put a nail in, driving it as far as he had driven the first one. This was the topmost cross-bar of the ladder, and it was held securely in its place by the two nails. Stuyvesant then took the bottom cross-bar and secured that in the same way. Then he put on the other bars one at a time, until his ladder was complete in form, only the cross-bars ...
— Stuyvesant - A Franconia Story • Jacob Abbott
... in that frame of mind which, during the middle ages, resulted in the immurement of such disturbing daughters in the topmost turrets ...
— The Ffolliots of Redmarley • L. Allen Harker
... cases out of ten, books so acquired never attain the same status as their fellow-volumes. They are invariably assigned either to the lowest or topmost shelves of the library, and are, in fact, pariahs. Their owner did not really want them, and he can never quite forgive their presence on his shelves. Generally their stay in any one home is not a long one, for they are weeded out at the first opportunity, and find no permanent ...
— The Book-Hunter at Home • P. B. M. Allan
... heeded. Up went the sure-footed athlete until he had almost reached the topmost peak of the barn. Crash! a board gave way under his feet, and down to the ground he was hurled, landing on his back on a pile of heavy boards. Limp and lifeless he lay there, a strange contrast to the vigorous young man ...
— Ten American Girls From History • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... she had not the dimmest idea why. She stood watching the sunset light fade out of the topmost windows of the opposite house—ghostly reflection of some sunset over fields and trees far away; and she listened to the long monotonous cry melting away round the crescent, and beginning again at the other ...
— Mistress and Maid • Dinah Craik (aka: Miss Mulock)
... into the by-road up the hill, dismounting now and again to open a gate; past farms and little cottages, ever higher and higher, till at last he reached the topmost ridge, and halted in a clearing. The chestnut threw up his head and sniffed the air; horse and rider were wet with the dew-drip from the trees, that were now just flushing in the first glow of the coming sun. Far below was the lake, reflecting sky and hills and farmsteads, ...
— The Great Hunger • Johan Bojer
... built this pagoda and was immensely proud of it He delighted to deck it with gold and precious stones. She says that once the whole of the exterior was covered with plates of solid gold, and the Hti, the umbrella, that is the topmost stage of the pagoda, was hung with thousands of golden and silver bells, and decked with huge rubies and other precious stones. Most of these didn't belong to him. For he had a habit of marching upon neighbouring rulers and stripping their treasuries ...
— Jack Haydon's Quest • John Finnemore
... silvery sound, and settles upon some tall tree, and waves his wings, and sinks to the swaying twigs. I hear too a quail piping from the meadow fence, and another trilling his answering whistle from the hills. Nearer by, a tyrant king-bird is poised on the topmost branch of a veteran pear-tree, and now and then dashes down, assassin-like, upon some homebound, honey-laden bee, and then with a smack of his bill ...
— Dream Life - A Fable Of The Seasons • Donald G. Mitchell
... his menials to clamber back into his plundered carriage. Gabinius drove his horse at topmost speed, and before morning was saluted by the remainder of the banditti, near their mountain stronghold. ...
— A Friend of Caesar - A Tale of the Fall of the Roman Republic. Time, 50-47 B.C. • William Stearns Davis
... been in the Roman Forum. The arena at Arles, with its great magnitude, is less complete than that of Nimes; it has suffered even more the assaults of time and the children of time, and it has been less repaired. The seats are almost wholly wanting; but the external walls, minus the topmost tier of arches, are massively, ruggedly complete; and the vaulted corridors seem as solid as the day they were built. The whole thing is superbly vast and as monumental, for a place of light amusement—what ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James
... to our most sombre hours, and put a point on the imagination. As for the superstition of the tales of ceilidh and buaile-mhart I have little to say. Perhaps the dullest among us scarce credited the giant and dwarf; but the Little Folks are yet on our topmost hills. ...
— John Splendid - The Tale of a Poor Gentleman, and the Little Wars of Lorn • Neil Munro
... into the gallery," she gasped; and on she went to the topmost of the large branches. There she paused, and from her lap ...
— A Flat Iron for a Farthing - or Some Passages in the Life of an only Son • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... pine is lifted high Against the twilight sky, The same low, melancholy music grieves Amid the topmost leaves, As when I watched and mused and dreamed with him ...
— Literary Hearthstones of Dixie • La Salle Corbell Pickett
... is one vast museum. In ensemble, it stands majestic on its hills, with its long lines of palaces and convents terraced around the rocky slope, and on the height the soaring steeples of a swarm of churches piercing the blue, and the huge cube of the Alcazar crowning the topmost crest, and domineering the scene. The magnificent zigzag road which leads up the steep hillside from the bridge of Alcantara gives an indefinable impression, as of the lordly ramp of some fortress ...
— Castilian Days • John Hay
... results that all the life of human beings, in all ages and stages of culture, is primarily controlled by a vast mass of folkways handed down from the earliest existence of the race, having the nature of the ways of other animals, only the topmost layers of which are subject to change and control, and have been somewhat modified by human philosophy, ethics, and religion, or by other acts of intelligent reflection. We are told of savages that "it is difficult to exhaust the customs and small ceremonial usages of a savage people. Custom ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... the unpleasant-looking houses on the West Cliff, we will shut our eyes to these shortcomings, and admit that the task is not difficult in the presence of such a superb view over Whitby's glorious surroundings. We look over the chimney-stacks of the topmost houses, and see the silver Esk winding placidly in the deep channel it has carved for itself; and further away we see the far-off moorland heights, brown and blue, where the sources of the broad river ...
— Yorkshire—Coast & Moorland Scenes • Gordon Home
... to crawl to land for their nightly ramble. And it died, at last, upon the highest peaks. Then the brief twilight, ephemeral as the flight of a moth, came and went; the Southern Cross peeped with its topmost eye above a row of palms, and the fire-flies heralded with their torches the approach of ...
— Cabbages and Kings • O. Henry
... very hard. I saw a woman in the indefinable seasons past fifty. In my vague mental condition, the impression of her came slowly. First it was as though I saw three cubes, one above the other, the largest in the middle. Then these took on clothing, blue calico with large polka dots, and the topmost one crowned itself with thin wisps of hair, parted in the middle and plastered down at the side. So, little by little, John Shadrack's widow grew on me, till I saw her a square little old woman, with a wrinkled, brown face, a perpetual ...
— The Soldier of the Valley • Nelson Lloyd
... and the mender of roads, being found already dozing on the topmost stair, was advised to lay himself down on the pallet-bed and take some rest. He needed no persuasion, and ...
— A Tale of Two Cities - A Story of the French Revolution • Charles Dickens
... had been saying. That thought arrested his steps. On that hypothesis there was no reason whatever why he should go on to the station and London. Instead——He stopped short, saw a convenient gate ahead, went to it, seated himself upon its topmost rail and attempted a calm survey of the situation. He had somehow to continue that ...
— The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... rode through the woods and up the hill seeking his false bride. High and low he searched, but no sign of his lost mistress did he discover. Out in the distance he saw the shining city of Baile-ata-Cliat, on the near wood side of which his gray towers stood. He could see the flag on its topmost turret waving in the breeze like a beckoning finger calling him back from his futile search. He turned him about, and on every side of him were the shadowy mountains watching him and appalling him with their ...
— The Story and Song of Black Roderick • Dora Sigerson
... ostriches," retorted Sergeant Archelaus, as he gained the topmost step and, after a fearful glance behind him, sank against a ...
— Major Vigoureux • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... rose over the topmost letter and a moist silence prevailed till a sudden jerk fished up the bag, and before the dolls could recover their wits they were spread out on the floor of a mail car to dry, while several busy men sorted and saved such papers and letters as still ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag VI - An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott
... hour. The course changed. The yacht was around behind Walden. The whole planet lay between it and its intended prey. The course of the small ship curved, now. It would pass almost close enough to clip the topmost tips of Walden's atmosphere. There was nothing for Hoddan to do but think ...
— The Pirates of Ersatz • Murray Leinster
... now and then a quick turn displayed their brown throats and white breasts. They were darting hither and thither, so rapidly that the eye could hardly follow them, catching the many-winged insects as they flew by. Then they would suddenly dart off to the topmost gables of the old mansion, where their compact mud nests could be plainly seen ...
— What the Blackbird said - A story in four chirps • Mrs. Frederick Locker
... laughed and shook out the folds of the topmost garment. "Nightgown!" she said, and ...
— Roast Beef, Medium • Edna Ferber
... those of the airplane, are in the control of men; and there may be still a chance of bringing about a better state of affairs than now exists. While the war correspondents were actually in France, and while they were often forced to write at topmost speed, there was excuse for avion and camion, vrille and escadrille, and all the other French words which bespattered the columns of British and American, Canadian and Australian newspapers. I doubt if there was ever any necessity for hangar, the shed which sheltered the ...
— Society for Pure English, Tract 5 - The Englishing of French Words; The Dialectal Words in Blunden's Poems • Society for Pure English
... canoe up the bank, a few moments later, to carry it around the dam, when something away up along shore attracted their notice. There, perched in a birch tree, in the topmost branches, with her weight bending it over till it nearly touched the water, they espied a girl, swinging. Then, as they looked, she waved a ...
— The Rival Campers Ashore - The Mystery of the Mill • Ruel Perley Smith
... and above it the great Babyan Peak towered up towards the heavens. The space of ground, embraced thus in the arms of the mountain, as it were, was laid out, as though by the cunning hand of man, in three terraces that rose one above the other. To the right and left of the topmost terrace were chasms in the cliff, and down each chasm fell a waterfall, from no great height, indeed, but of considerable volume. These two streams flowed away on either side of the enclosed space, one towards the north, and the other, the course of which we had been ...
— Allan's Wife • H. Rider Haggard
... Then from the topmost bough falls calm reply: "Hush, hush, I see the coming of the morn; Swiftly the silent night is passing by, And in her bosom rosy Dawn is borne. 'Tis but your own dim shadows that ye see, 'Tis but your own low moans that ...
— It Can Be Done - Poems of Inspiration • Joseph Morris
... getting poultry to the great market, by means of carts of four stages or stories, one above another, to carry the birds in, drawn by two horses, which by means of relays travelled night and day, and covered as much as 100 miles in two days and one night, the driver sitting on the topmost stage. ...
— A Short History of English Agriculture • W. H. R. Curtler
... owls delight to hoot, the bats go whirring past, the moonbeams surely cast their kindest rays; by day the pigeons coo from the topmost boughs their tales of love, while squirrels sit blinking merrily, or run their Silvios on ...
— Molly Bawn • Margaret Wolfe Hamilton
... Who, beyond measure, dar'd on earth." I then: "If soul that to the verge of life delays Repentance, linger in that lower space, Nor hither mount, unless good prayers befriend, How chanc'd admittance was vouchsaf'd to him?" "When at his glory's topmost height," said he, "Respect of dignity all cast aside, Freely He fix'd him on Sienna's plain, A suitor to redeem his suff'ring friend, Who languish'd in the prison-house of Charles, Nor for his sake refus'd through every vein To tremble. More I will not say; and dark, I know, my words ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante
... he refused to drink. He devoured all the books at home and ransacked the neighbouring book-cases. He found at Clavering an old cargo of French novels which he read with all his might; and he would sit for hours perched on the topmost bar of Dr. Portman's library steps with an old folio ...
— Boys and girls from Thackeray • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... gorilla. He had a great, lazy, smiling face, with a square cleft chin which stuck out beyond the rest. His brow retreated and the stubby back of his head ran forward to meet it, while his neck below bulged out over his collar. His head was exactly the shape of a pear with the sharp end topmost. ...
— Greenmantle • John Buchan
... one the stars died out as the yellow turned to a deeper glow that shot forth in long streamers, the rosy fingers of the dawn, from the horizon to the zenith. Cold and ghostly lay the snows on the mighty cone; till at last there came upon their topmost slope, six thousand feet above us, a sudden blush of pink. Swiftly it floated down the eastern face, and touched and kindled the rocks just above us. Then the sun flamed out, and in a moment the Araxes valley and all the hollows of the savage ridges ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... his son Naram-Sin. He found also the ancient wall of the city, which had been built by Naram-Sin, 13.7 metres wide. The debris of ruined buildings which lies below the pavement of Sargon is as much as 9.25 metres in depth, while that above it, the topmost stratum of which brings us down to the Christian era, is only 11 metres in height. We may form some idea from this of the enormous age to which the history of Babylonian culture and writing reaches back. In fact, Professor Hilprecht quotes with approval Mr. Haynes's ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 1 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... clambering up a raspberry-bush, eating the raspberries as he went along. He would climb up by the little branches, and pull in the raspberries in succession, until he got to the topmost one, when the bush would bend over with his weight until it almost ...
— Rollo at Play - Safe Amusements • Jacob Abbott
... of his weight and trained to run the trail, kept right on ahead, and he, skillfully handling the reins, for he was a fine driver, drove on at the topmost speed of the six animals drawing ...
— Beadle's Boy's Library of Sport, Story and Adventure, Vol. I, No. 1. - Adventures of Buffalo Bill from Boyhood to Manhood • Prentiss Ingraham
... these insects stood erect on their two lower pairs of legs, which were of different lengths so that all four feet touched the ground when the shell was vertical. The two upper pairs of legs were used as arms, the topmost pair[A] being quite short and splitting out at the end into four flexible claws about five inches long, which they used as fingers. These upper arms, which sprouted from a point near the top of the head, were peculiar in that ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science September 1930 • Various
... see him," went on Mr. Bobbsey. "He must have gone inside." But Freddie was not there, nor was he anywhere on the outside platform that surrounded the topmost peak of the ...
— Bobbsey Twins in Washington • Laura Lee Hope
... the top of the second mast, was a white figure, standing on a rope under the topmost sail, and holding on with one hand and waving the other down at the passengers. Mr. Toby waved his white derby, and Mr. Hanlon began to come down. Freddie trembled with alarm, but Mr. Hanlon was obviously having the time ...
— The Old Tobacco Shop - A True Account of What Befell a Little Boy in Search of Adventure • William Bowen
... supper dishes were washed, and Amos was attending to the chickens, Lydia came slowly out to the front steps where Levine was sitting. He reached up and catching her hand pulled her down beside him on the topmost step. She leaned her head against his arm and they sat in silence, Lydia with her eyes on the dim outline of ...
— Lydia of the Pines • Honore Willsie Morrow
... me. The conquest of the mountains is ours. We are now as nearly as possible on a level with the topmost peak of Everest, the most lofty projection on the earth's surface; and in due time I hope we shall have the unique felicity of planting our feet on that as yet untrodden spot, and of leaving a record ...
— The Log of the Flying Fish - A Story of Aerial and Submarine Peril and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... he came back, and with him a she, And the acorn was grown to a tall oak tree. They built them a nest in the topmost bough, And young ones they had and were happy enow. But soon came a woodman in leathern guise, His brow, like a pent house, hung over his eyes. He'd an axe in his hand, not a word he spoke, But with many a hem! ...
— The Children's Garland from the Best Poets • Various
... in every moment to fetch away your Articles, Captain. Here they are all ready for you.' And turning to a pile of agreements lying at his elbow he took up the topmost of them. From where I stood I could read the words: 'Ship Ferndale' written in a large round hand on ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad
... to proceed from the same path, they would destroy the whole world. It hath never happened that a path hath been misplaced. Should I, then, have mistaken Job for another? The gazelle gives birth to her young on the topmost point of a rock, and it would fall into the abyss and be crushed to death, if I did not send an eagle thither to catch it up and carry it to its mother. Were the eagle to appear a minute earlier or later than the appointed time, the little gazelle would perish. ...
— The Legends of the Jews Volume 1 • Louis Ginzberg
... At the center of the southerly blocks towers a gray quadrangular wall, the last of a large building. At the western terminus of the village, where the slope falls away to the valley, is a gigantic ruin. Its walls are thirty feet high and six feet thick. The roof has fallen, and the topmost layers of the bluish-gray limestone are ...
— The Round-up - A Romance of Arizona novelized from Edmund Day's melodrama • John Murray and Marion Mills Miller
... Boudier, from a photograph taken in the British Museum. The chariot speeding along at a gallop in the topmost series of pictures carries a soldier bearing the head of Tiumraan in his hand; behind him, under a tent, scribes are registering the heads which are brought in. In the two lower bas-reliefs are displayed the closing ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 8 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... foliage was bursting from the trees; and below, the little stream was pursuing its busy way by a devious but certain path to its unknown future. Then my eyes turned to the tree-clad ascent on the opposite side: through the topmost of its trees, shone a golden spark, a glimmer of yellow fire. It was the vane on the highest tower of the Hall. A great desire seized me to look on the lordly pile once more. I descended in haste, and proposed to my companions that we should climb through ...
— Wilfrid Cumbermede • George MacDonald
... partly by burning charcoal, for the purpose of smelting the ore from the neighbouring mines; it was distant about two miles from any other habitation. I can call to mind the whole landscape now: the tall pines which rose up on the mountain above us, and the wide expanse of forest beneath, on the topmost boughs and heads of whose trees we looked down from our cottage, as the mountain below us rapidly descended into the distant valley. In summer-time the prospect was beautiful: but during the severe winter, a more desolate scene could not well ...
— The Phantom Ship • Frederick Marryat
... or is not, he is universally recognized as an inspired song-composer and those who do not know his songs are cut off from one of the greatest joys music has to offer. As Huneker so well says, "Although his topmost peaks are tremendously remote, and glitter and gleam in an atmosphere almost too thin for dwellers of the plains, in his songs he was as simple, as manly, as tender as Robert Burns." In Brahms's songs we ...
— Music: An Art and a Language • Walter Raymond Spalding
... be that chap," said father, sitting down in his old armchair under the tree and looking up at Jocko, who had released 'Ally Sloper' on our approach and gone up aloft in one of the topmost branches. "I'd bet 'arf-a-crown now, Sarah, as how them two youngsters here could tell us summat o' the monkey ...
— Young Tom Bowling - The Boys of the British Navy • J.C. Hutcheson
... took out a dozen cigars in the layer on top and one from the layer next the bottom; then, rearranging the underlying layer so as to fill in the empty space, he replaced the others in perfect order in the topmost row, and thus had one cigar left over to substitute for the one he had ...
— A Husband by Proxy • Jack Steele
... near our house, under the chestnut trees, deep in the shade. The full moon could not pierce the closely woven foliage. All her beams were caught on the topmost boughs which waved in silver. A lovely night to stain with murder! Oh ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat
... which probably varied in number—never, how-ever, so far as appears, exceeding seven. The sculptured example before us, which is from a bas-relief found at Koyunjik, distinctly exhibits four stages, of which the topmost, owing to the destruction of the upper portion of the tablet, is imperfect. It is not unlikely that in this instance there was above the fourth a fifth stage, consisting of a shrine like that which at Babylon ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 2. (of 7): Assyria • George Rawlinson
... should be selected near bodies of fresh water and tremendous excavations made. The walls and floor of the excavations should be lined with concrete, through which the water is piped. The cities could be on many levels, the topmost peraps several miles in the air—glass enclosed—and with pipes reaching still igher to bring air in, and completely tight against the Grass. They should be selfcontained, generating their own power and ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... bird that Nat spied after they left the meadows was perching on the topmost wire of a fence by the roadside. Every once in a while he darted into the air, snapped up an insect, and returned to the same perch on the wire whence he had started. He was a very smart-looking bird, with ...
— Citizen Bird • Mabel Osgood Wright and Elliott Coues
... going down; but all that one associates with summer days, spent in sweet rural scenes. There is great variety in summer days. There is the warm, bright, still summer day; when everything seems asleep, and the topmost branches of the tall trees do not stir in the azure air. There is the breezy summer day, when warm breaths wave these topmost branches gently to and fro, and you stand and look at them; when sportive winds bend the green corn as they swiftly sweep ...
— The Recreations of A Country Parson • A. K. H. Boyd
... wind of the West, wandering to and fro, Chant your songs in our topmost boughs, that the sons of men may know The peerless pine was the first to come, and the pine ...
— Songs of a Sourdough • Robert W. Service
... against the dome of the Statehouse. The strains of "The Star-Spangled Banner" burst upon the ear; and amid cheers and cries of "Old Glory! Old Glory!" that echoed to the distant hills the old sea flag unfurled and floated above the topmost pinnacle of the Capitol of Tennessee. And thus Old ...
— How the Flag Became Old Glory • Emma Look Scott
... saddle again an hour before sunset, our next point being a log-hut on the very topmost ridge of the Alleghanies, wherein dwelt a man said to be better acquainted than any other in the country round, with the passes leading into the Shenandoah Valley. We ascertained, beyond a doubt, that a company was ...
— Border and Bastille • George A. Lawrence
... The approach was entirely new. Two fresh wings had been added, and the front was all over scaffolds and cement, in all stages of colour, from rich brown to permanent white. Robert explained that nothing was so nice as to watch the workmen, and showed Lucilla a plasterer on the topmost stage of the scaffolding, who, he said, was the nicest man he knew, and could sing all manner ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... above Balder's head. It was such a note as might have been uttered by a paradisical cuckoo with the breath of a brighter world in his throat. Looking up, he saw a beautiful little fowl perched on the topmost twig of the birch-tree. It had a slender bill, and on its head a crest of splendid feathers, which it set up at Balder in a most coquettish manner. The next moment it flew over the wall, and from the farther side warbled an invitation ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne
... surrounding the court. She still sat at her sons' pillow, never removing her eyes from them for a moment, nor thinking of sleep. Already the horses, divining the approach of dawn, had ceased eating and lain down upon the grass; the topmost leaves of the willows began to rustle softly, and little by little the rippling rustle descended to their bases. She sat there until daylight, unwearied, and wishing in her heart that the night might prolong itself ...
— Taras Bulba and Other Tales • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... talk of years evanished, let me harp upon the time When we trod these sands together, in our boyhood's golden prime; Let me lift again the curtain, while I gaze upon the past, As the sailor glances homewards, watching from the topmost mast. Here we rested on the grasses, in the glorious summer hours, When the waters hurried seaward, fringed with ferns and forest flowers; When our youthful eyes, rejoicing, saw the sunlight round the spray In a rainbow-wreath ...
— The Poems of Henry Kendall • Henry Kendall
... by handfuls, bewitched court and city, and induced Councillor d'Epremesnil to say, "The friendship of M. de Cagliostro does me honor." At the same time splendid works in the most diverse directions maintained at the topmost place in the world that scientific genius of France which the great minds of the seventeenth century had revealed to Europe. "Special men sometimes testify great disdain as regards the interest which ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume VI. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... topmost partition, and revealed a number of small drawers. Eagerly he drew out the topmost one, and looked inside. Then he knew the worst. It was empty. There was no longer any doubt whatever. His cottage had been entered by no ordinary housebreaker, ...
— The New Tenant • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... seer to stone; to hide thine eyes from the horror. Kiss me but once, and I go.' Then lifting her neck, like a sea-bird Peering up over the wave, from the foam-white swells of her bosom, Blushing she kissed him: afar, on the topmost Idalian summit Laughed in the joy of her heart, far-seeing, the queen Aphrodite. Loosing his arms from her waist he flew upward, awaiting the sea-beast. Onward it came from the southward, as bulky and black as a galley, Lazily coasting ...
— Andromeda and Other Poems • Charles Kingsley
... spirit of the hive that fixes the hour of the great annual sacrifice to the genius of the race: the hour, that is, of the swarm; when we find a whole people, who have attained the topmost pinnacle of prosperity and power, suddenly abandoning to the generation to come their wealth and their palaces, their homes and the fruits of their labour; themselves content to encounter the hardships and perils of a new and distant country. This act, be it conscious or ...
— The Life of the Bee • Maurice Maeterlinck
... possible—if she could put her hand in his and trust to him for safety in all the coming years they might live together—what man of woman born would dare to interfere? There was a blue light coming in through the shutters. He went to the window: the topmost leaves of the trees were quivering in the cold air far up there in the clearing skies, where the stars were fading out one by one, and he could hear the sound of the sea on the distant beach, and he knew that across the gray plain of waters the dawn was breaking, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Vol. XV., No. 85. January, 1875. • Various
... the androecium.—Dunal[500] alludes to a curious instance in a species of Verbascum, the lower flowers of which had hairy stamens as usual, but the filaments of the topmost flower were quite destitute of hairs, and dilated ...
— Vegetable Teratology - An Account of the Principal Deviations from the Usual Construction of Plants • Maxwell T. Masters
... Starkey) was held on to his pony by a serving-man. A woman past middle age walked, with a firm and strong step, by the cart that held much of the baggage; and, high up on the mails and boxes, sat a girl of dazzling beauty, perched lightly on the topmost trunk, and swaying herself fearlessly to and fro, as the cart rocked and shook in the heavy roads of late autumn. The girl wore the Antwerp faille, or black Spanish mantle over her head, and altogether her appearance was such that the ...
— Curious, if True - Strange Tales • Elizabeth Gaskell
... on, a quiet undertone of perfect confidence, freedom without reserve as to another self, suddenly discovered in the working identity of a fellow-creature. It ripples on just thus, all the distance of the walk along the topmost down, in the evening sunlight, and then comes a pause to negotiate the descent to their handy little forest below. Then a sense that they are coming back into a sane, dry world, and must be a lady ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... to see the regions beyond, he had the intensest desire to climb upward—so that without shifting his horizon, he could yet extend it, and take in a far wider sweep of vision. "I envied every bird," he goes on, "that sat singing on the topmost bough of the great, century-old cherry tree; the weathercock on our barn seemed to me to whirl in a higher region of the air; and to rise from the earth in a balloon was a bliss which I would almost have given my life to enjoy." His desire to ascend soon took the ...
— Four Famous American Writers: Washington Irving, Edgar Allan Poe, • Sherwin Cody
... must through the creature's brain have past! Even from the topmost stone, upon the steep, [24] Are but three bounds—and look, Sir, at this last— O Master! it has ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. II. • William Wordsworth
... their comely cheeks, Wind-play tossed their hair, Creeping things among the grass Stroked them here and there; Meggan piped a merry note, A fitful, wayward lay, While shrill as bird on topmost twig Piped merry May; Honey-smooth the ...
— Poems • Christina G. Rossetti
... their coffee in Anna's sitting-room, seated in easy-chairs drawn up to the wide-flung windows. The topmost boughs of some tall elm trees rustled almost in their faces. Away before them spread the phantasmagoria of a wilderness of London roofs, softened and melting into the dim blue obscurity of the falling twilight. Lights were flashing out everywhere, and ...
— The Double Traitor • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... terminated, like the other sides of the palace, by a circular tower enclosing a staircase, up which we mounted, winding round and round, and emerging at various heights, until at last we found ourselves at the very topmost point of the edifice; and here there is a small pepper-box of a turret, almost as entire as when the stones were first laid. It is called Queen Margaret's bower, and looks forth on a lovely prospect of mountain and plain, and on the old red roofs of Linlithgow ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... summit of the topmost of those gigantic mountains, the peak of which is lost high in the depths of the cloudless sky, a female stands, ...
— Boycotted - And Other Stories • Talbot Baines Reed
... plane beneath. Even so, the One does not directly touch even the highest of these seven planes. (Theosophy is, first of all, a study in descents and not in ascents; ascent comes later.) There are between the One and the topmost plane three emanations (but perhaps we would better let Mrs. Besant speak to us herself): "The self-unfolding of the Logos in a threefold form: the first Logos the root of all being, from Him the second manifesting the two aspects of life and form, then the ...
— Modern Religious Cults and Movements • Gaius Glenn Atkins
... morrow of still greater festival, when their sultan and their god took to himself this stranger beauty as a wife. Doubtless, too, he would soon weary of her, and they would be called together to see her cast from some topmost tower and hear her frail bones break on the cruel rocks below, or—as had happened to the last queen—to watch her writhe out her life in the pangs of poison upon a charge of sorcery. It was indeed a night of ...
— The Brethren • H. Rider Haggard
... board, some twelve feet high, between which the whole crew, their ammunitions, and provisions, were housed roomily, rose the enormous trunk full forty feet in girth, towering like some tall lighthouse, smooth for a hundred feet, then crowned with boughs, each of which was a stately tree, whose topmost twigs were full two hundred and fifty feet from the ground. And yet it was easy for the sailors to ascend; so many natural ropes had kind Nature lowered for their use, in the smooth lianes which hung to the very earth, often without a knot or ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... stood still and Userti sat herself down on the topmost step, resting her chin upon her jewelled hand. There he stood searching the place with his eyes. He lifted his sceptre and all rose, hundreds and hundreds of them throughout the hall, their garments rustling as they rose like leaves in a sudden ...
— Moon of Israel • H. Rider Haggard
... of the failing light. The Quay was covered by a carpet of white that made the waters beyond look doubly dark and cold. The trees on the opposite shore looked as if they had been painted from the topmost twig to the root. Down in the lane, two of the workers in the distillery were pelting each other with snowballs while a third one was shouting at the top of ...
— The Soul of a Child • Edwin Bjorkman
... and crumbling away piecemeal, converted into a common sewer for all its inmates. Up stair after stair we went, while wails of children, and curses of men, steamed out upon the hot stifling rush of air from every doorway, till, at the topmost story, we knocked at a garret door. We entered. Bare it was of furniture, comfortless, and freezing cold; but, with the exception of the plaster dropping from the roof, and the broken windows, patched with rags ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al
... God's holiest charge, The minister of praise at large, Which thou mayst now receive; From thy blest mansion hail and hear, From topmost eminence appear To this the wreath ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... of the old fir, bearing its heavy mantle of ivy from base to topmost twig, and not twenty yards from the window, a thrush sits and sings. You must watch him carefully ere you assure yourself that those sweet, trilling notes of peerless music come from that tiny throat. A rare lesson in voice production he will teach you. Deep breathing, headnotes clear as a ...
— A Cotswold Village • J. Arthur Gibbs
... under an olive tree, Which by the reins two Sarrazins do lead; Those messengers have wrapped them in their weeds, To the palace they climb the topmost steep. When they're come in, the vaulted roof beneath, Marsilium with courtesy they greet: "May Mahumet, who all of us doth keep, And Tervagan, and our lord Apoline Preserve the, king and guard from harm the queen!" Says Bramimunde "Great foolishness I hear: Those gods of ours ...
— The Song of Roland • Anonymous
... exclaimed Captain Hunnewell, who stood by; "not paint the figure-head of the Cynosure! And what sort of a figure should I cut in a foreign port with such an unpainted oaken stick as this over my prow! She must, and she shall, be painted to the life, from the topmost flower in her hat down to the silver spangles on ...
— Mosses from an Old Manse and Other Stories • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... an oak tree resting, I heard a roundelay, The nightingale was singing On the oak tree's topmost spray. ...
— The Young Seigneur - Or, Nation-Making • Wilfrid Chateauclair
... himself, and he sought now to trace the exact lineage of the human family as no one had hitherto attempted to fathom it. Utilizing his wide range of zoological and anatomical knowledge, he constructed a hypothetical tree of descent—or, if you prefer, ascent—from the root in a protozoon to the topmost twig or most recent offshoot, man. From that day till this Haeckel's persistent labors have been directed towards the perfection of ...
— A History of Science, Volume 5(of 5) - Aspects Of Recent Science • Henry Smith Williams
... 'bout star and cradle and 'gain he speak his thought. He say: "What is cradle, Sensei? I know 'bout star. Every night at my honorable home I open shoji to see old priest strike bell and make him sing. Then I see big star hang out light over topmost of mountain." One more time he say, like thinking to himself: "Cradle. Maybe him shrine for new God of ...
— Mr. Bamboo and the Honorable Little God - A Christmas Story • Fannie C. Macaulay
... failure. We saw nothing save a Scotch mist, which wetted us to the bones; and we shivered standing in a slush of snow which would have been quite at home in Upper Norwood. On this topmost peak were found roots of the Madeiran cedar (Juniperus Oxycedrus), showing that at one time the whole ...
— To the Gold Coast for Gold - A Personal Narrative in Two Volumes.—Vol. I • Richard F. Burton
... rows of nests and the beautiful brown eggs in them. Jimmy Skunk couldn't climb, and so he could have gotten only the eggs in the lower nests. Now if he, Unc' Billy, had been there, he could have climbed to the very topmost nest and—but what was the use of thinking about it? He hadn't been there, and he couldn't go now, ...
— The Adventures of Unc' Billy Possum • Thornton W. Burgess
... all outward prosperity, Ortnit was lonely and unhappy. One day, while he was strolling along the seashore at sunset, he saw a misty castle rise slowly out of the waves. On its topmost tower he beheld a fair maiden, with whom he fell deeply in love at first sight. As he was gazing spellbound at the lady's beauty, castle and maiden suddenly vanished; and when Ortnit asked his uncle, Ylyas (Elias), Prince of the Reussen, what ...
— Legends of the Middle Ages - Narrated with Special Reference to Literature and Art • H.A. Guerber
... the poet Verlaine. The singer of the sweetest verses in the French language—a sort of ambling song like a robin's. You have heard the robin singing on a coral hedge in autumn-tide; the robin confesses his little soul from the topmost twig; his song is but a tracery of his soul, and so is Verlaine's. His gift is a vision of his own soul, and he makes a tracery as you might of a drawing with a lead pencil, never troubling himself to inquire if what he traces is good or ...
— Memoirs of My Dead Life • George Moore
... that he must look to the impoverished people of the high mountains for a food supply in this his sore extremity. Therefore, instead of crossing the range by way of any of the main-traveled passes, he pushed his grass-refreshed steed straight up Mount Pleasant to its topmost heights. ...
— A Captain in the Ranks - A Romance of Affairs • George Cary Eggleston
... in the steerage, by Wolf Larsen's bunk. I looked at him, the man who had been hurled down from the topmost pitch of life to be buried alive and be worse than dead. There seemed a relaxation of his expressionless face which was new. Maud looked at ...
— The Sea-Wolf • Jack London
... which to spend a summer's day; for, though they reach unto the heavens, they are, like most of their kind, somewhat stuffy, the dust of the great city in all their nooks and corners, and the noise of the crowded life penetrates even to the topmost flat. ...
— Nell, of Shorne Mills - or, One Heart's Burden • Charles Garvice
... you?—such vague projects for the perfecting of corrupt societies seem to me to crawl far below the devotion of love. When the whole soul vibrates with that one thought, it has no room for the nice calculation of general interests; the topmost heights of earth are ...
— Cinq Mars, Complete • Alfred de Vigny
... lie low a-deck"; and he went up the companion ladder when I got my flannels and rubber-shod shoes upon me. But at the topmost step he stood awhile, and then he fell flat on his hands, and backed again down the stairway, so that he came almost on top of me; but I saw what prompted his action, for, as he moved, there was a shadow thrown from the deck light down to where ...
— The Iron Pirate - A Plain Tale of Strange Happenings on the Sea • Max Pemberton
... might be classed as perfunctory, an essential part of the occasion. But at night the spirit of the people showed beyond mistake. Not only were the streets arched and bordered with festoons of colored incandescent lights, not only were the battleships in the harbor strung with fiery beads to the topmost spar, but every window in every house in the city bore its light. Fine houses had candelabra behind the glass, and the poorest mere tapers, but everywhere the same fire ...
— Norwegian Life • Ethlyn T. Clough
... never did no sich a thing; I was a-making of your bed, sir, when I sees the tag of a stay-lace hanging out of your topmost drawer, sir—("I am a married man, sir," to the dean apologetically, "and I know the tag of a stay-lace, sir")—and so I took it out, sir; and knowing my duty to the college, sir, though I should be very sorry to bring you into trouble, Mr ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 54, No. 338, December 1843 • Various
... group and Portugal the plummet of your human navigators finds no bottom, I have often heard them say, till it reaches 2,500; and out of this profound sea-bed the volcanic energies pushed up my islands as a small submarine mountain range, whose topmost summits alone stood out bit by bit above the level of the surrounding sea. One of them, the most abrupt and cone-like, by name now Pico, rises to this day, a magnificent sight, sheer seven thousand feet into the sky ...
— Science in Arcady • Grant Allen
... shafts are driven upwards from them to the surface, and other levels driven sixty feet higher than the first. This process is continued until the lode lying above the lowest level has been divided off into horizontal bands, each about sixty feet in depth. The quartz is then excavated above the topmost level, and thrown down the shafts to the lowest, where it is received into waggons and conveyed to the reduction works. As both the ore and the enclosing rocks are greatly decomposed and very soft, the whole of the ground has to be securely timbered ...
— The Naturalist in Nicaragua • Thomas Belt
... infinite:- Which is so strong, my strongest throes And the rough world's besieging blows Not break it, and so weak withal, Death ebbs and flows in its loose wall As the green sea in fishers' nets, And tops its topmost parapets:- Which is so wholly mine that I Can wield its whole artillery, And mine so little, that my soul Dwells in perpetual control, And I but think and speak and do As my dead fathers move me to:- If this born body of my bones ...
— Underwoods • Robert Louis Stevenson
... service, for this gush of sentimental feeling is a transient and fluctuating thing; it gives out just as soon as it meets with difficulty and occasion for self-sacrifice. And this attempt to live forever on the topmost wave of emotional excitement defeats itself by the satiety and ennui which it brings. Whether in courtship, or society, or business, it behooves us to be on our guard against this insidious sham which cloaks selfishness ...
— Practical Ethics • William DeWitt Hyde
... illume The pale high-altar. On the prayer-worn floor, By worshippers innumerous thronged of yore, A few brown crones, familiars of the tomb, The stranded driftwood of Faith's ebbing sea— For these alone the finials fret the skies, The topmost bosses shake their blossoms free, While from the triple portals, with grave eyes, Tranquil, and fixed upon eternity, The cloud of witnesses ...
— Artemis to Actaeon and Other Worlds • Edith Wharton
... opportunities slipped by me, left an' right. It makes me hate myself to-day when I on Fancy's ferry Have crossed the current of the years to olden days gone by, T' think of all the lips I've missed, ripe-red as topmost cherry, The lips I might have tasted if I'd had ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VI. (of X.) • Various
... a fresh star-shell lit up the trench they saw a man in khaki thrust his head and shoulders over the topmost bag and look under his hand ...
— With Haig on the Somme • D. H. Parry
... childhood; how he had played among the little rustics, and been at once the wildest and the sweetest of them all; and how, in his very infancy, he had plunged into the deep pools of the streamlets and never been drowned, and had clambered to the topmost branches of tall trees without ever breaking his neck. No such mischance could happen to the sylvan child because, handling all the elements of nature so fearlessly and freely, nothing had either the power or the will to do ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume II. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... house. At the same moment there rose up a babel of sounds, followed by two pistol shots, and a roaring, gasping hubbub, with clash of swords and storm of oaths. At this sudden uproar we all three ran at our topmost speed up the pathway and peered in through the open door, where we saw a scene such as I shall never forget while this old memory of mine can conjure up any ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle
... ascended to the topmost of its 12,349 feet, still in the Southern Alps the peaks are many which are yet unsealed, and the valleys many which are virtually untrodden. Exploring parties still go out and find new lakes, new passes, and new waterfalls. It ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves
... stone balustrades, he noticed a black cat seated on the top of a pillar, its head thrown far back, and its wide-open eyes, looking like balls of yellow fire, fixed on a sparrow perched high above on the topmost twig of a tall slender tree. "Puss, puss," said Eden, speaking to the animal almost unconsciously, and without pausing in his walk. Down instantly leapt the cat, inside the wall, and dashing through the shrubbery, shot ahead of ...
— Fan • Henry Harford
... to stay, no matter how the sun beat down into their narrow streets and small stifling rooms. There had been no rain for a long time; many people were sick and dying, and the world looked very dark to some of them. Mrs. Holmes lived high up in the topmost rooms of a tall block of buildings. Her rooms were small and hot, for the sun shone into her windows and upon the roof all the long day. She was a seamstress and a widow with ...
— Sunshine Factory • Pansy
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