"Bird's-eye" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the fated hour nearer and nearer; and the student's assiduity knows no bounds. He reads his subjects over and over again, to keep them fresh in his memory, like little boys at school, who try to catch a last bird's-eye glance of their book before they give it into the usher's hands to say by heart. He now feels a deep interest in the statistics of the Hall, and is horrified at hearing that "nine men out of thirteen were sent ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, November 13, 1841 • Various
... From a bird's-eye view, these three burgs, the City, the Town, and the University, each presented to the eye an inextricable skein of eccentrically tangled streets. Nevertheless, at first sight, one recognized the fact ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
... the door of the office, peering through the reeking, smoke-filled atmosphere, to get a bird's-eye view of the situation ...
— The Sturdy Oak - A Composite Novel of American Politics by Fourteen American Authors • Samuel Merwin, et al.
... at them!" but there can be no doubt that there are stars so far away that the rays of light which started from the earth on the day of the battle of Waterloo are only just arriving there. Further off still, there are stars from which a bird's-eye view could be taken at this very moment of the signing of Magna Charta. There are even stars from which England, if it could be seen at all, would now appear, not as the great England we know, but as a country covered by dense forests, and inhabited ...
— Young Folks' Library, Volume XI (of 20) - Wonders of Earth, Sea and Sky • Various
... genuine cigars, it is a mystery where they all come from. Yet they say smuggling is a thing of the past! Or do the gentle tradesmen, to discourage smuggling, manufacture their own Havannas? Good tobacco, shag and bird's-eye, may be had at eighteen ...
— Jethou - or Crusoe Life in the Channel Isles • E. R. Suffling
... so, old friend, content I jog Along, amidst life's hurry-skurry, And smoke my bird's-eye, sip my grog, Without a ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100., Jan. 10, 1891 • Various
... been provided with a good place in one of the upper stories of the Roemer itself, where we might completely survey the whole. We betook ourselves to the spot very early in the morning, and from above, as in a bird's-eye view, contemplated the arrangements which we had inspected more closely the day before. There was the newly erected fountain, with two large tubs on the left and right, into which the double-eagle on the post was to pour from its two beaks white wine on this side, ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... which we have proposed should be prefaced by a chronological table, indicating the epochs into which the World's History divides itself, and the periods covered by each of the works recommended. This would give the student a bird's-eye view of the field which he is about to explore, and enable him, at any moment in his exploration, to take his reckonings and verify ...
— The Quarterly Review, Volume 162, No. 324, April, 1886 • Various
... my outline, I was just beginning to realize the complexities of a bird's-eye view with your middle distance in a valley, and your foreground sloping steeply upwards to your feet, when Jack, washing out a large, dyed sable sky-brush in my pot, with an amount of splashing that ...
— Six to Sixteen - A Story for Girls • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... will have to take account of stock, sum up the changes for better or for worse in the use and treatment of the room, in the manners and habits of the children and in their reading. She will have to retire a little from her work, take a bird's-eye view of it, and decide if on the whole progress is making toward her ideal. Without identifying itself with any of the movements such as the kindergarten, child-study, and social settlement, without losing ...
— Library Work with Children • Alice I. Hazeltine
... Monsignor," interrupted the priest in mild glee, "here's a subject to talk about at lunch. Just get Manners on to it, and you'll have no trouble. He loves lecturing; and he talks just like a history-book. Tell him you've been reading his History and want a bird's-eye view." ...
— Dawn of All • Robert Hugh Benson
... Barth, who is a better mathematician than any of the rest of us, and we decided to investigate the problem in a new way, by graphically representing each element of the work through plotting curves, which should give us, as it were, a bird's-eye view of every element. In a comparatively short time Mr. Barth had discovered the law governing the tiring effect of heavy labor on a first-class man. And it is so simple in its nature that it is truly remarkable that it should not have been discovered ...
— The Principles of Scientific Management • Frederick Winslow Taylor
... Town, by Gabriele D'Annunzio; translated by G. Mantellini, with an Introduction by Joseph Hergesheimer (Doubleday, Page & Company). This anthology drawn from various volumes of Signor D'Annunzio's stories gives the American a fair bird's-eye view of the various aspects of his work. These twelve portraits by the Turner of corruption have a severe logic of their own which may pass for being classical. As diploma pieces they are incomparable, but as renderings of life they ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... tea-plate, we often sallied forth in fancy to explore the Chinese world as portrayed in blue or pink upon earthen table-ware of the olden time. And what a world! How artfully adapted to childish notions, how convenient for bird's-eye views, this arrangement of lofty mountain peaks, deep gorges, and rocks of fantastic forms, tangled up with examples of nature subdued by Chinese art in landscape gardening and ornate architecture. In the near distance (far and near are the same in Chinese art), we behold a slender ...
— Tea Leaves • Francis Leggett & Co.
... chapel must be a couple of hundred feet above the main buildings, and from near it there is an excellent bird's-eye view of the sanctuary and the small plain behind; descending on to this last, we entered the quadrangle from the north-west side and visited the chapel in which the sacred image of the Madonna is contained. We ...
— Alps and Sanctuaries of Piedmont and the Canton Ticino • Samuel Butler
... sure to feel For one, true virtue's favorite employ, Her happiest exercise! her highest joy. One glorious motive sway'd each active mind Whether the bard, to rhymes no more confin'd, Rapidly sketch'd with glance intensely keen, His bird's-eye prospect of our human scene, Or the fair moralist, in polish'd prose, Describ'd the living manners as they rose. One glorious motive clear in each we prize. Bright as the vestal flame, which never dies. The philanthropic wish, from heaven inspir'd, That keeps the toiling ...
— Poems on Serious and Sacred Subjects - Printed only as Private Tokens of Regard, for the Particular - Friends of the Author • William Hayley
... breaks into a flight of steps cut out of the pale hard rock—exceedingly steep, and worn, and slippery, and perilous—overlooking the sea. A vision of low pale rocks, and surf bursting among them, and a toro or votive stone lamp in the centre of them—all seen as in a bird's-eye view, over the verge of an awful precipice. I see also deep, round holes in one of the rocks. There used to be a tea-house below; and the wooden pillars supporting it were fitted into those holes. I ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan - First Series • Lafcadio Hearn
... cross Central Africa into the Congo region on the Western side, returning afterward to the East for a bird's-eye view of the Abyssinians, the Somali, ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... Quong carried in a couple of pails full of boiling water; we laid out shaving tackle, an old suit of grey flannel, a pair of brown shoes, and the necessary under-linen. A blue bird's-eye tie, I remember, was the last touch. Then Ajax shrugged his shoulders and said significantly, "You ...
— Bunch Grass - A Chronicle of Life on a Cattle Ranch • Horace Annesley Vachell
... slight; we have barely a suspicion of what in the course of centuries, nay, of thousands of years, it has done for the progress of civilization. In my estimation, our house-warming cannot more fittingly be celebrated than by taking a bird's-eye view of ...
— Jewish Literature and Other Essays • Gustav Karpeles
... rattle of musketry from the tops, the hand-to-hand fight raged on, with shouts and groans and shrieks of execration. Hitherto no wounded man had been borne below to the cockpit, so that M'Hearty was idle as yet. He was on the rigging with the captain, from which they had a bird's-eye ...
— As We Sweep Through The Deep • Gordon Stables
... 'facts' is, in some ways, crucial. I have spoken with Jesuits and Plymouth Brethren, mathematicians and poets, dogmatic republicans and dear old gentlemen in bird's-eye neckcloths; and each understood the word 'facts' in an occult sense of his own. Try as I might, I could get no nearer the principle of their division. What was essential to them, seemed to me trivial or untrue. We could come to no compromise as to what was, or what was ...
— The Pocket R.L.S. - Being Favourite Passages from the Works of Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the summit, they staved off the edge of their hunger with a few biscuits, and, trudging on, covered the last mile in such quick time that Leonard declared it reminded him of a paper-chase. It was rather a steep pull to gain the highest point, yet they were well rewarded when they reached it by the bird's-eye view of the landscape around them, farms, churches, and distant village looking like so many toys, and the fields like the divisions ...
— The Manor House School • Angela Brazil
... beast in front of him, and how proud and disrespectful a horse in a dogcart can seem to those behind it! Moreover, unaccustomed as he was to horses, he was struck by the strong resemblance a bird's-eye view of a horse bears to a fiddle, a fiddle ...
— The Research Magnificent • H. G. Wells
... within sight of the German lines. From a wooded spur of the hills he looked down upon the enemy's left flank and beyond to the British lines. His position gave him a bird's-eye view of the field of battle, and his keen eyesight picked out many details that would not have been apparent to a man whose every sense was not trained to the highest point of perfection as were the ape-man's. He noted machine-gun emplacements ...
— Tarzan the Untamed • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... by this bird's-eye view from the Citadel (of course, I had to trot them up again for the sunset), my charges let themselves be led from mosque to mosque, from tomb to tomb. Some, possessed with a demoniac desire to get their money's worth ...
— It Happened in Egypt • C. N. Williamson & A. M. Williamson
... hungry, but later went to St. John's Cathedral to vespers.... After dinner we were glad to lay ourselves away. We have a pleasant room, with windows opening upon a broad court and lovely garden and fountain. Monday we drove around the city for bird's-eye views from famous points. Such wonders ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 2 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... delight on the human sea through which the procession had lately passed. The higher they the incline, the more did the Place du Rosaire and the avenues and paths of the gardens expand below them, black with the swarming multitude. It was a bird's-eye view of a whole nation, an ant-hill which ever increased in size, spreading farther and farther away. "Look!" Berthaud at last exclaimed to Pierre. "How vast and how beautiful it is! Ah! well, the year won't have been a ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... around the president man's back garden? I was up there trying to get a bird's-eye of the town. I happened to notice a chink in the wall where a stone and a lot of plaster had slid out. Thinks I, I'll take a peep through to see how Mr. President's cabbages are growing. The first thing I saw was him and this Sir Englishman sitting at a little table about twenty feet away. ...
— Cabbages and Kings • O. Henry
... situation not to know how to make the necessary allowances. After examining her well, when she was within a league of the cliffs, he came to the opinion that the ship was a vessel of about six hundred tons, and that she was both armed and strongly manned. So far as he could judge, by the bird's-eye view he got, he fancied she was even frigate-built, and had a regular gundeck. In that age such craft were very common, sloops of war having that construction quite as often as that of the more modern deep-waisted vessel. As for the brigs, they were much ...
— The Crater • James Fenimore Cooper
... unknown. Birmingham was as ignorant as Tamfield as to his origin or the sources of his wealth. Robert McIntyre brooded languidly over the problem as he leaned against the gate, puffing his blue clouds of bird's-eye into ...
— The Doings Of Raffles Haw • Arthur Conan Doyle
... Germans were killed by a bomb dropped upon the ammunition wagon of a cavalry column. It was thought at the time that this might have been the work of one of our airmen, who reported that he had dropped a hand grenade on this convoy, and had then got a bird's-eye view of the finest display of fireworks he had ever seen. From corroborative evidence it now appears that this was the case; that the grenade thrown by him probably was the cause of the destruction of a small convoy carrying ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol 1, Issue 4, January 23, 1915 • Various
... people of two distinct nationalities and extends over so wide a region—so far beyond the Acadia and Canada which France once called her own. But that the story may be more intelligible from the beginning, it is necessary to give a bird's-eye view of the country, whose history is contemporaneous with that of the United States, and whose territorial area from Cape Breton to Vancouver—the sentinel islands of the Atlantic and Pacific approaches—is hardly inferior to ...
— Canada • J. G. Bourinot
... summit there was a curious view of the multitudinous wooden houses and the sinuous windings of the river, which could alone be obtained from such a bird's-eye point of inspection. An old temple at the top was in the hands of the Hindoo faction, being dedicated to the goddess Mahadewee, and in charge of it I found two of the dirtiest fukeers, or religious mendicants, ...
— Diary of a Pedestrian in Cashmere and Thibet • by William Henry Knight
... our position, we discover, on the south of the gardens, and connected with the state apartments, a long ambulatory, called the Stone Gallery. Then returning to our first post of observation, and taking a bird's-eye view of the whole, after examining it in detail, as before mentioned, we come to the conclusion, that, though irregular in the extreme, and with no pretension whatever to plan in its arrangement, the Palace of Whitehall is eminently picturesque, and imposing from its vast extent. ...
— The Star-Chamber, Volume 2 - An Historical Romance • W. Harrison Ainsworth
... thy graceful leisure, To what is LIFE, and what IS pleasure. 'Tis LIFE to see the first dawn stain With sallow light the window-pane: To dress—to wear a rough drab coat, With large pearl buttons all afloat Upon the waves of plush: to tie A kerchief of the King-cup dye (White spotted with a small bird's-eye) Around the neck, and from the nape Let fall an easy fan-like cape: To quit the house at morning's prime, At six or so—about the time When watchmen, conscious of the day Puff out their lantern's rush-light ray; Just when the silent streets ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... hour had been lost by this delusive retracing of footmarks. He thought that if he climbed the highest tree he could find, he would be able to get a bird's-eye view of the country round. Oh that he might behold some islet of clearing amid ...
— Cedar Creek - From the Shanty to the Settlement • Elizabeth Hely Walshe
... Such a review aims at seeing new relations, at connecting new knowledge and old, at "giving freshness and vividness to knowledge that may be somewhat faded, at throwing a number of discrete facts into a bird's-eye view." ...
— Ontario Teachers' Manuals: History • Ontario Ministry of Education
... forced all its details upon our observation. In my present position, now that the lapse of many years separates me from my personal investigations of the ancient and modern glaciers, and I look back upon them from another continent, it seems to me that I have, as it were, a bird's-eye view of their whole extent; and I confess that this distant retrospect of the subject has been to me almost as fascinating as were the researches of my earlier years in the same direction. I wish that I could present it to the minds of my readers ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 76, February, 1864 • Various
... main thing is to get an elevation from which you may see in every direction. If you could come up to Heaven, we should be saved any further trouble; you would then have a good bird's-eye view of everything. But it would be sacrilege for one so conversant with phantoms to set foot in the courts of Zeus. Let us lose no time, therefore, in looking out ...
— Works, V1 • Lucian of Samosata
... on the side of his bed with an aspect altogether dejected and heartless. In his better days he had liked what he used to call 'a stripe of white satin,' which was the poetic for a glass of Old Tom gin. I carried a bottle of that liquor with me as a peace-offering, and a quarter of a pound of bird's-eye. He did not know me, and there was no speculation in his look; but after a drink he brightened. When I entered the room he sat in he was twirling an empty clay with a weary listless thumb and finger, and ...
— The Making Of A Novelist - An Experiment In Autobiography • David Christie Murray
... reached the prospect at the end of the hill, where the ground falls away like a cliff and you have a bird's-eye view of two counties, we sat down on the steps of the monument erected in honour of those Hampdenshire men whose lives were thrown ...
— The Wonder • J. D. Beresford
... Dombey, as a Man and a Father, is seen at the Head of the Home-Department 4. In which some more First Appearances are made on the Stage of these Adventures 5. Paul's Progress and Christening 6. Paul's Second Deprivation 7. A Bird's-eye Glimpse of Miss Tox's Dwelling-place; also of the State of Miss Tox's Affections 8. Paul's further Progress, Growth, and Character 9. In which the Wooden Midshipman gets into Trouble 10. Containing ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... sufficient for mahogany—and a piece of glue about the size of a walnut; the whole to be well stirred and boiled. Brush over while hot, and immediately rub off with soft shavings or a sponge. For the antique hues of old wainscot mix equal parts of burnt umber and brown ochre. For new oak, bird's-eye maple, birch, satin-wood, or any similar light yellowish woods, whiting or white-lead, tinted with orange chrome, or by yellow ochre and a little size. For walnut, brown umber, glue size, and water; or by burnt umber very moderately modified with yellow ochre. For rosewood, Venetian red tinted ...
— French Polishing and Enamelling - A Practical Work of Instruction • Richard Bitmead
... mind the confusing lists of tribes and kings on either side—the Jutes and Anglo-Saxons, the Danes and Normans, on one side, and the Celts of England, Scotland, Wales, and Ireland, on the other; nor yet the different dates and places; but simply take a single bird's-eye view of all the Seven Seas as one sea, of all the British Norsemen as one Anglo-Norman folk, and of all the centuries from the fifth to the twentieth as a single age; and then you can quite easily understand how the empire of ...
— Flag and Fleet - How the British Navy Won the Freedom of the Seas • William Wood
... time to come from the name to the flower. The English Primrose is one of a large family of more than fifty species, represented in England by the Primrose, the Oxlip, the Cowslip, and the Bird's-eye Primrose of the North of England and Scotland. All the members of the family, whether British or exotic, are noted for the simple beauty of their flowers, but in this special character there is none that surpasses ...
— The plant-lore & garden-craft of Shakespeare • Henry Nicholson Ellacombe
... have had the precaution to order, is probably waiting our appearance. It must be eaten, though under the penalty of being thought moon-struck rhymers by the whole State. Come, Ned; if you are sufficiently satisfied with looking at the Wigwam in a bird's-eye view, we will descend and put its beauties to the severer test of a ...
— Home as Found • James Fenimore Cooper
... in a most delicious real spring day. I returned with my nerves strung and my mind determined. I will make this plunge, and with little doubt of coming off no loser in character. What is given in detail may be suppressed, general views may be enlarged upon, and a bird's-eye prospect given, not the less interesting, that we have seen its prominent points nearer and in detail. I have been of late in a great degree free from wafered letters, sums to make up, notes of hand wanted, ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... were forgotten. A milky whiteness spread more and more over the whole heavens though they were still darkened here and there by wreaths of smoke. Little by little, bright clusters of houses became plainly visible; a bird's-eye view was obtained of the whole city, intersected by streets and squares, which with their shadowy depths described the framework of ...
— A Love Episode • Emile Zola
... had so fine a prospect. When there, although our curiosity was highly gratified, it prompted us to see more; so, pressing a native into our service, we proceeded along the brink of the N.W. side, until, being nearly half-way round the outer circle of the crater, we had hoped to obtain almost a bird's-eye view of the active volcano; we were therefore extremely chagrined to find, that as we drew nearer our object, it was completely shut out by a ridge below the one on which we stood. Our walking had thus far been very difficult, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various
... the marvellous chapter on "A Bird's-eye view of Paris," an amazing restoration by a poet, in which archaeology itself, in spite of the progress it has made, would find it difficult to discover a flaw. Well, what Victor Hugo has done for mediaeval Paris, M. Ernest Feydeau has attempted for the Thebes ...
— The Works of Theophile Gautier, Volume 5 - The Romance of a Mummy and Egypt • Theophile Gautier
... a fine sight—certainly a very fine sight; such as an old seaman loves; but there must be an end to it," he said. "You will excuse me, Sir Wycherly, but the movements of a fleet always have interest in my eyes, and it is seldom that I get such a bird's-eye view of those of my own; no wonder it has made me a somewhat ...
— The Two Admirals • J. Fenimore Cooper
... made free use of the abundant wild cherry for the furniture called for by the growing prosperity of the settlements, its close grain and warm color giving it the preference over other native woods, excepting always the curly and bird's-eye maple, which were ...
— The Development of Embroidery in America • Candace Wheeler
... bright sun may suit particular scenes, and peculiar moods of the mind, but every connoisseur in the beauties of nature will allow that, as a rule, clouds, and very frequently a partial obscurity, greatly aid a landscape. This is yet more true of a bird's-eye view of a grey old mass of walls, which give up their confused and dusky objects all the better for the absence of glare. I love to study a place teeming with historical recollections, under this light; leaving the sites of memorable scenes to issue, one by one, out of the grey mass of gloom, ...
— Recollections of Europe • J. Fenimore Cooper
... love old and familiar scenes, there is always a novelty in something new, and the bird's-eye aspect of Chagmouth was attractive, especially to those whose young limbs did not mind the climb. Mr. and Mrs. Percy Tremayne were most enthusiastic about their quarters. They were charming people, and ready to fall in with the young folk's plans and give them a thoroughly ...
— Monitress Merle • Angela Brazil
... fallen awry. All the other thoroughfares on all sides of that hill were full of the pulsation and the pain of battle, full of shaking torches and shouting faces. When at length they had risen high enough to have a bird's-eye view of the whole campaign, Turnbull was already intoxicated. He had smelt gunpowder, which was the incense of his own ...
— The Ball and The Cross • G.K. Chesterton
... of Swiss history: to tell the tale of six chief towns—Geneva, Fribourg, Basle, Thun, Baden and Schaffhausen, to which in 1858 he added Rheinfelden and Bellinzona. He intended to illustrate the work with pictures of the places described. He began with his drawing of Thun, a large bird's-eye view of the town with its river and bridges, roofs and towers, all exquisitely defined with the pen, and broadly coloured in fluctuating tints that seem to melt always into the same aerial blue; ...
— The Life of John Ruskin • W. G. Collingwood
... the gentle Dilettanti crew Now delegate the task to digging Gell? That mighty limner of a bird's-eye view, How like to Nature let his volumes tell; Who can with him the folio's limits swell With all the Author saw, or said he saw? Who can topographise or delve so well? No boaster he, nor impudent and raw, His pencil, pen, and shade, alike ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Letters and Journals, Vol. 1 • Lord Byron, Edited by Rowland E. Prothero
... century in the histories is one thing, and seeking to become acquainted with it by reading contemporary letters is another and a far different thing. The two procedures give rise to conflicting impressions. Historians, taking a bird's-eye view of their subject, portray its most general characteristics; they bring out only the prominent features, and sacrificing all the rest, draw pictures whose precision and simplicity captivate our minds. ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various
... three of us being seen," he said, planting his transit in the sand, but making no effort to adjust it to a level. "That ridge there overlooks the claim. I'll climb up alone and take a bird's-eye view." ...
— The Furnace of Gold • Philip Verrill Mighels
... principal thoroughfares show a fair degree of life and activity considering that the population is so largely made up of Mexicans. The area covered by the city cannot much exceed sixty acres, the town being built in a very compact manner, a bird's-eye view of which makes it resemble the outspread human hand. The port has seen its most prosperous days, if we may judge by present appearances. The aggregate of the imports and exports amounted to about thirty million dollars ...
— Aztec Land • Maturin M. Ballou
... of lady's-smocks peer maidenly, maidenly; Meadow-sweet, donning her fragrant lace, is daintiest friend of the breeze; Hyacinths wild, blue-misting the woods, hang ladenly, ladenly, And tiniest bird's-eye burns deep blue in thickets of ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, April 25, 1917 • Various
... view from this citadel is held the finest in Greece. I speak here of the large and diverse views to be obtained from mountain heights. To me, personally, such a view as that from the promontory of Sunium, or, above all, from the harbor of Nauplia, exceeds in beauty and interest any bird's-eye prospect. Any one who looks at the map of Greece will see how the Acro-Corinthus commands coasts, islands, and bays. The day was too hazy when we stood there to let us measure the real limits of the view, and I can not say how near to Mount Olympus the ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Vol VIII - Italy and Greece, Part Two • Various
... you a bird's-eye view of Germany; rocks, and woods, and clouds, and brooks, and the pebbles in their beds, and mills, and cottages, and fences, and what not; but it is all a feverish dream, ghastly and strange, a ...
— Ariadne Florentina - Six Lectures on Wood and Metal Engraving • John Ruskin
... such as are now in Holborn, Smithfield, and Whitechapel bars. Afterwards there was a house of timber erected across the street, with a narrow gateway and an entry on the south side of it under the house." This structure is to be seen in the bird's-eye view of London, 1601 (Elizabeth), and in Hollar's seven-sheet ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... although heavily laden, they scorned to support themselves. Some of our party were nearly exhausted, and a long way in the rear before we came to the village. We had to wait for their coming up, and threw ourselves under the shade of some huge trees, that we might contemplate the bird's-eye view beneath. It was a sight which must be seen to be appreciated. Almost as far as the eye could reach was one immense wooded plain, bounded by lofty mountains in the far distance, whose tops pierced the clouds. The rivers appeared like silver threads, running through the jungles; now breaking ...
— Borneo and the Indian Archipelago - with drawings of costume and scenery • Frank S. Marryat
... made in one of the monoplanes, but even a bird's-eye view of the surrounding country failed to discover their whereabouts. Then came the sandstorm, and hope that the missing ones could have weathered it was almost given up. Nevertheless, James Bell, in whom hope died hard, had set Jimsy as sentinel on the lofty ...
— The Girl Aviators on Golden Wings • Margaret Burnham
... and the windows, which ran around all sides on a level with the ground at intervals of about six feet, were high above the great boilers. In fact, as Max gazed down he had a bird's-eye view of the interior, and could see workmen flitting to and fro, stoking the great furnaces in blissful ignorance of the fact that a bolt which might destroy them with their engines was on the ...
— Two Daring Young Patriots - or, Outwitting the Huns • W. P. Shervill
... fiercely in their throats. Nevertheless, she did not wish to stay very long among them now. She was resolved to get a full and delicately complete first impression of Beni-Mora, and to do that she knew that she must detach herself from close human contact. She desired the mind's bird's-eye view—a height, a watchtower and a little solitude. So, when the eager Mozabite merchants called to her she did not heed them, and even the busy patter of the informing Batouch fell ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens
... reader commences the above account of a visit to this monastery, he may as well be informed that the SUBJOINED bird's-eye view of it, together with an abridged history (compiled from Trithemius, and previous chroniclers) appears in the Monasteriologia of Stengelius, published in ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Three • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... put a lot of the professors at work in the offices and shops, and give these canned-culture boys jobs in the glue and fertilizer factories until a little of their floss and foolishness had worn off. For it looks to an old fellow, who's taking a bird's-eye view from the top of a packing house, as if some of the colleges were still running their plants with machinery that would have been sent to the scrap-heap, in any other business, a hundred years ago. They turn out a pretty fair article as it is, but with improved machinery they could save ...
— Old Gorgon Graham - More Letters from a Self-Made Merchant to His Son • George Horace Lorimer
... complacently of Mary's wonderful store of resources for her own entertainment, wondering what she would do next. She had been asking questions about the roof garden, and how to open the scuttle. Probably she would be investigating that before long, getting a bird's-eye view of the city ...
— The Little Colonel's Chum: Mary Ware • Annie Fellows Johnston
... "hired man," pursuing a suggestion made by the latter, went to the top of Quill's Window for a bird's-eye view of the river and the surrounding country. The sharp eyes of the Pinkerton man descried the rowboat under the willows along the opposite bank ...
— Quill's Window • George Barr McCutcheon
... it may, one thing is certain, that no solid plot of earth between its walls or hedges allows us such intricate and unexpected bird's-eye views of streets and squares, of the bustling or resting city; none gives us such a vault of heaven, pure and sunny, or creeping with clouds, or serenely starlit, as do these hanging gardens of ...
— Hortus Vitae - Essays on the Gardening of Life • Violet Paget, AKA Vernon Lee
... of its completeness; and information on this point is unfortunately much more defective for our own country than it is for France. In illustration, therefore, of what I have been saying about the position of monastic libraries, I will next shew you two bird's-eye views of the Benedictine House of S. Germain des Pres, Paris. The first, dated 1687, shews the library over the south walk of the cloister, where it was placed in 1513. It must not, however, be supposed that no library existed ...
— Libraries in the Medieval and Renaissance Periods - The Rede Lecture Delivered June 13, 1894 • J. W. Clark
... which shone in the full glare of the lamp above her head. The man wore an old-fashioned, double-breasted fancy waistcoat, but so low as to reveal a good deal of his shirt-front. And in that space, beneath his bird's-eye blue tie, loosely knotted in a bow, Zillah saw a stud, which her experienced eyes knew to be of platinum, and on it was engraved the same curious device which she had seen once before that day—on the ...
— The Orange-Yellow Diamond • J. S. Fletcher
... "A seaman who tells the truth about anything startling that happens on board a passenger boat gets fired. The convention is to wrap the thing in mystery, if it can't be denied. Besides, the ability to take what you might call a quick, bird's-eye view isn't a British gift; an Englishman would have concentrated on some particular point. Anyhow, I can't see how the boat came to be where she was at the time mentioned." He turned to Dick and asked: "Do ...
— Brandon of the Engineers • Harold Bindloss
... the western hill, from which I obtained a fine bird's-eye view of the town. The large, broad streets, at right angles to each other, looked well laid out, neat, and clean looking. What seemed strangest of all was the lazy puffing of the engines over the claims, ...
— A Boy's Voyage Round the World • The Son of Samuel Smiles
... tempests, its terrible thunder storms, and devastating earthquakes,—all alike frightful defects, not in the original plan,—is not only unlike the primeval world, not very good, or, unlike the antediluvian world, tolerably good, but not good at all. "On taking a bird's-eye view of the geographical and hydrographical features or superficies of the globe," says this bold writer, "any unprejudiced person must at once admit, that in either of these departments there is scarce a trace of that beautiful, tasteful, and ...
— The Testimony of the Rocks - or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed • Hugh Miller
... had taken one of the big boxes next the stage on the first tier, and Cuckoo had never been in such a situation before. She could survey the endless rows of heads in the stalls with a completeness of bird's-eye observation never previously attained. What multitudes there were. Endless ranks of men, all staring in the same direction, all smoking, all with handkerchiefs peeping out of their cuffs, and gold rings on their little fingers. Some of them looked half asleep, others, ...
— Flames • Robert Smythe Hichens
... peasants lay in a single able and enterprising leader. She admired the genius of the minister who, sitting in his study, had been able to grasp the true way of procuring peace. She thought she understood the considerations which act on the minds of men powerful enough to take a bird's-eye view of an empire; men whose actions, criminal in the eyes of the masses, are the outcome of a vast and intelligent thought. There is in these terrible souls some mysterious blending of the force of ...
— The Chouans • Honore de Balzac
... of the Gospel had begun at Jerusalem. Before Luke goes on to tell how the last part of our Lord's programme—'to the uttermost parts of the earth'—began to be carried into execution by the conversion of Cornelius, he gives us this bird's-eye view. To its significant items I desire to ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren
... composite; it mixes localities wide apart; it comes out, like the snake-creeper-swamp-forest thing of grammar-school South America, an unreal and deceitful impression. If, on the other hand, I try to give you a bird's-eye view-saying, here is plain, and there follows upland, and yonder succeed mountains and hills-you lose the sense of breadth and space and the toil of many days. The feeling of onward outward extending distance is gone; and that impression so indispensable to finite understanding-"here ...
— The Land of Footprints • Stewart Edward White
... for amusement; Jack Littlefork did it for occupation. I expostulated with him in public and in private; Mr. Pepper cut his society; Mr. Tomlinson read him an essay on Real Greatness of Soul: all was in vain. He was pumped by the mob for the theft of a bird's-eye wipe. The fault I had borne with,—the detection was unpardonable; I expelled him. Who's here so base as would be a fogle-hunter? If any, speak; for him have I offended! Who's here so rude as would not be a gentleman? If any, speak; for him have I offended! I pause for a reply! What, none! then ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... and gay. On the other side the ground to seaward swept down and then up again to the famous or infamous wood; the square of strange trees lay silently tilted on the slope, also suggesting, if not a map, or least a bird's-eye view. Only the triple centerpiece of the peacock trees rose clear of the sky line; and these stood up in tranquil sunlight as things almost classical, a triangular temple of the winds. They seemed pagan in a newer and more placid sense; ...
— The Trees of Pride • G.K. Chesterton
... day before. You could see the red stems clearly above the other trees. It evidently marked a knoll or rising ground of some kind, and I determined to make that the object of my journey, and scale, if possible, the trees to get a bird's-eye view of ...
— Memoirs of Arthur Hamilton, B. A. Of Trinity College, Cambridge • Arthur Christopher Benson
... a "between-decks" is, step below with me, and there picture to himself a room forty feet long, not taking in the deep transom, by sixteen in breadth, having on either hand a range of inclosed state-rooms about eight feet square, each with its own door and window, of bird's-eye maple curiously inlaid with variously grained wood, polished as glass. The upper part of the door and the whole of the side window are latticed; so that on both being closed, the occupant is hidden, yet ...
— Impressions of America - During the years 1833, 1834 and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Tyrone Power
... the United States of America and the not yet United States of Australia, there is one characteristic of South Africa which is particularly noticeable. It is its oneness as a country. And this oneness is all the more remarkable when we take into consideration its racial and political divisions. A bird's-eye view of America is beyond one; a similar glance at the seaboard of Australia from Rockhampton even round to Albany (which is then only round half its circle) gives me a mental crick in the neck. But in thinking of Africa, south ...
— A Tramp's Notebook • Morley Roberts
... back to the paper on Machiavelli now, and ask the reader to examine this passage from it which I append. I do not mean examine it in a bird's-eye way; I mean search it, study it. And, of course, read it aloud. I may be wrong, still it is my conviction that one cannot get out of finely wrought literature all that is in it by reading ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... scientific men and badauds, great and small, were moved with one universal impulse. In the streets the praises of the balloon were sung; in the libraries models of it abounded; and in the salons the one universal topic was the great "machine." In anticipation, the poet delighted himself with bird's-eye views of the scenery of strange countries; the prisoner mused on what might be a new way of escape; the physicist visited the laboratory in which the lightning and the meteors were manufactured; the geometrician beheld the plans of cities and the outlines of kingdoms; the general ...
— Wonderful Balloon Ascents - or, the Conquest of the Skies • Fulgence Marion
... a stretch more than fifty times as deep as the falls and the gorge, generally admitted to be the most awful scenic grandeur within reach of the ordinary traveler. Nor is this all. Visitors to Paris who have enjoyed a bird's-eye view of the gay city from the summit of Eifel Tower, have felt terribly impressed with its immense altitude, and have been astounded at the effect on the appearance of living and inanimate objects so far below them. How many of the Americans who ...
— My Native Land • James Cox
... interesting woman of five-and-forty, properly dressed as far as visible, and propped up in a bed covered with a quilt which presented a field of little squares in many tints, looking altogether like a bird's-eye view of ...
— The Hand of Ethelberta • Thomas Hardy
... had had specially taken and framed by a local man in bird's-eye maple, as a present for Arabella, and had duly given her on their wedding-day. On the back was still to be read, "Jude to Arabella," with the date. She must have thrown it in with the rest of her ...
— Jude the Obscure • Thomas Hardy
... first dresses were finished, there came a Sunday when I was allowed to go to the Mission Church with Kitty Purcell, the baker's little daughter, and I felt wonderfully fine in my pink calico frock, flecked with a bird's-eye of white, a sun-bonnet ...
— The Expedition of the Donner Party and its Tragic Fate • Eliza Poor Donner Houghton
... must not stay. I have to look in at Mrs. Rayner's studio; she has a reception, and will want a mention of it. Then there are Sir Charles Goodman's training schools for deaf-mutes and the new Art Photography Company's rooms to run through before I go to the House of Commons to do my 'Bird's-eye View' letter ...
— A Crooked Path - A Novel • Mrs. Alexander
... yacht-like ships that now ply between the two hemispheres in such numbers, and which in luxury and the fitting conveniences seem to vie with each other for the mastery. The cabins were lined with satin-wood and bird's-eye maple; small marble columns separated the glittering panels of polished wood, and rich carpets covered the floors. The main cabin had the great table, as a fixture, in the centre, but that of Eve, somewhat shorter, but of equal width, was free from all ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... effect of what one may thus take in, bit by bit. The indirect effect is even more important. For by sampling a whole literature, as he does, he not only gets a bird's-eye view of it, but he finds out what lie likes and what he dislikes; he begins to form his taste. Are you afraid that he will form it wrong? I am not. We are assuming that the library where he browses is a good one; here is no chance ...
— A Librarian's Open Shelf • Arthur E. Bostwick
... easily surmised that none of the high-born senoritas who demurred at appearing at the promenade when it was empty, were likely to be the first to arrive at the salon of the Casino. But as there was no side walk here, from whence they could take a bird's-eye view, and they could not keep a watch from the windows at night, these clever young ladies, as high-born as they were ingenious, hit upon a means of ...
— The Grandee • Armando Palacio Valds
... Her auburn hair curled over her white forehead, and snakily twisted around her ivory white ears. Her eyes were amber-brown, with queer yellow lights that rose and fell as she talked, and in some strange way reminded Pearl of a piece of bird's-eye maple. She was dressed in the style of twenty years before, with her linen collar inside the high collar of her dress, which was fastened with a bar pin, straight and plain like herself. In the centre of the pin was a cairn-gorm, which reflected the slumbering ...
— Purple Springs • Nellie L. McClung
... the coronation ceremonies of England as presenting a bird's-eye view of our history; and particularly of the various claims and privileges—and changes—of the monarchical branch of the Constitution. Some of these ceremonies, as we have seen, had their origin in those remote ...
— Coronation Anecdotes • Giles Gossip |
