"Contour" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the honey crystallized and of course the scions were no longer visible. I emptied the tubes and washed them, cleaned the scions in warm water, replaced them and refilled the tubes with pure glycerine. I submerged a thin, zinc tag, stencilled with the varietal name and bent to conform with the contour of the tube, inside of each one as a name plate which could not easily be lost or removed. I also labeled each cork with the name of the variety enclosed so that any one of them could be located when looking down at a nest of tubes in a ...
— Growing Nuts in the North • Carl Weschcke
... on the wall's outside we stand, Admire the keyhole's contour grand And gateposts' sturdy granite;— But, ah, is Science safe, we say, With one who treats Trustees this way? Who knows but he may snub, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 10, August, 1858 • Various
... intimate knowledge of Washington officialdom served him in both these precarious fields of endeavour. The liquor he drank—whenever and wherever he could get it—had bloated his face out of all wholesome contour and had given to his stomach, a chronic distention, but had depleted his frame and shrunken his limbs so that physically he was that common enough type of the hopeless alcoholic—a meagre rack of a man burdened amidships by an unhealthy ...
— The Thunders of Silence • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb
... interpretations,—in Alma y vida the author was obliged to come to the rescue with his own version; in neither is the identification of person and idea carried so far that the character loses its definite human contour; and both are employed ...
— Heath's Modern Language Series: Mariucha • Benito Perez Galdos
... replaced by an open viaduct, with the piers placed edgeways to the sea, the openings between them being spanned by ten cast-iron girders each 42 feet long. This accident induced the engineer to alter the contour of the sea wall, so that it should present a diminished resistance to the force of the waves. But the sea repeated its assaults, and made further havoc with the work; entailing heavy expenses and a complete reorganisation ...
— Lives of the Engineers - The Locomotive. George and Robert Stephenson • Samuel Smiles
... thing; the old knitting and narrowing of the forehead were gone; instead, the eyes had widened their spaces with a real calm that had grown in her, and their outer curves fell in lines of largeness and content toward the contour of the cheeks, making ...
— The Other Girls • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... instrumental in his success. Glazier had a fixed ambition to rise. He felt that the task would be difficult of accomplishment—that he must be not only the architect, but the builder of his own fortunes; and, as the statue grows beneath the sculptor's hand to perfect contour from the unshapely block of marble, so prosperity came to Captain Glazier only after he had cut and chiseled away at the hard surface of inexorable circumstance, and moulded therefrom ...
— Sword and Pen - Ventures and Adventures of Willard Glazier • John Algernon Owens
... Abbe Casgrain draws the following portrait of her: "Her whole person presented a type of attractiveness and gentleness. Her face, a beautiful oval, was remarkable for the harmony of its lines and the perfection of its contour. A slightly aquiline nose, a clear cut and always smiling mouth, a limpid look veiled by long lashes which the habit of meditation kept half lowered, stamped her features with an exquisite sweetness. Though her frail and delicate figure did not exceed medium height, and ...
— The Makers of Canada: Bishop Laval • A. Leblond de Brumath
... tenor of a man convinced that the source of all inspiration in art was Greek sculpture as amplified, transmuted, and translated to the realm of painting by Raphael. Painting in his hands became almost purely a matter of form. The element of color was virtually ignored, and form, chastened in contour and modelling, became through the magic of his genius the almost sufficient quality. The qualification is necessary. For though too great a man to lose, as too many of his master's pupils did, the grasp on nature; and while, therefore, his works, seen as they ...
— McClure's Magazine, March, 1896, Vol. VI., No. 4. • Various
... of other girls were doing in New York, with no more patience and no more self-sacrifice than they, but the childish vagaries of his visitor, still fresh in his memory, seemed to endow Dorothy Herrick with a firmer contour, a stronger claim on ...
— Madcap • George Gibbs
... the day, her attention was attracted by a graceful figure approaching the river bank. Her hat had fallen from her head, displaying its beautiful contour, and in her hair were wild flowers, so charmingly placed, that they seemed as though they had grown there. She watched her with the deepest interest, and turned to beckon her brother to the window, when ...
— Dawn • Mrs. Harriet A. Adams
... recognised the limits of his powers, he had great faith in his own critical judgment; and with good reason, for his perception of the beautiful in contour and attitude and grouping was almost unerring. All the drawings which Miss Thomson made for his "Three Sunsets" were submitted to his criticism, which descended to the smallest details. He concludes a letter to her, which contained the ...
— The Life and Letters of Lewis Carroll • Stuart Dodgson Collingwood
... he felt his knees shaking. With a superhuman effort he steadied himself—Denning must not suspect anything unusual. He descended the steps with a firm tread, and pausing at the last step, twisted as if to reach an uncomfortably settled coat collar—his quick glance taking in the contour of the house and the probability of access by the window. The glimpse was reassuring. By means of the iron railing a man might readily gain the ledge below the first floor windows. He entered the limousine and ...
— Out of the Ashes • Ethel Watts Mumford
... advance toward recovery. Much sweet coquetry was expended in trying to look her best for her father; and her best was very well, for though the brilliant bloom of health was gone, her cheeks had not lost their pretty rounded contour, and still had some rosiness, while her large bright blue eyes smiled and sparkled. A screen shut out the rest of the room, making a sort of little parlour round the fire, where sundry of the family were visiting her after coming home from church in the afternoon. ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... quarters that the face of each combatant was often for the first time revealed by the flash of his adversary's rifle, the enemy had his finger on the key to Ladysmith; and was clinging, like swallows on the eaves, to the whole length of the Platrand from Wagon Point along a sinuous contour line which curved round the eastern shoulder of Caesar's Camp, and awaiting the supporting bombardment which, as soon as there was light enough for the alignment of the sights, would be opened upon the position from the flanking guns on Bulwana and Rifleman's Ridge, and from Middle ...
— A Handbook of the Boer War • Gale and Polden, Limited
... whole, one is inclined to suppose that the general resemblance in facial appearance, bodily contour, and interests which we observe in children of the two sexes, indicates that deeper distinctions are latent rather than active. This is much more than an academic question, for if our subject in the present volume were the care of childhood, ...
— Woman and Womanhood - A Search for Principles • C. W. Saleeby
... moon had found its way through a filigree of boughs. Faintly its exploring ray lighted the contour of that shrouded head, touched the lovely curves of her arched brows and the tender pallor of the skin about those great wells of dark eyes.... From his own eyes a flame seemed to pass into hers.... ...
— The Fortieth Door • Mary Hastings Bradley
... perhaps surprise you, but the contour of my countenance is decidedly infantile—for when had a babby a bridge?—and the addition of a penny trumpet completes the full-blown expression of the light-headed things ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... same strong and stalwart contour as ever.... But in his countenance I saw a change: that looked desperate and brooding—that reminded me of some wronged and fettered wild beast or bird, dangerous to approach in his sullen woe. The caged eagle, whose gold-ringed eyes cruelty has extinguished, might look ...
— The Three Brontes • May Sinclair
... growing very earnest and his eyes were aglow with the fire of enthusiastic purpose. As he dropped his head on one side, it looked too heavy for the stemlike neck, but it conveyed an impression of immense intellectual power. Its imposing contour lent ...
— The Second Deluge • Garrett P. Serviss
... the sheet away, revealing the massive white head and clear-cut death mask of a man of sixty or sixty-five; a fine powerful face, benign in expression, with a chin and mouth of marked character and individuality. But the distorted contour of the half-open mouth, and the almost piteous expression of the unclosed sightless eyes, seemed to beseech the assistance of those who now bent over him, revealing only too clearly that death had ...
— The Shrieking Pit • Arthur J. Rees
... stream. Whatever there is of navigation is confined to the transport of coal down-stream from Western Shan-si, in large flats. Mr. Elias, who has noted the River's level by aneroid at two points 920 miles apart, calculated the fall over that distance, which includes the contour of Shan-si, at 4 feet per mile. The best part for navigation is above this, from Ning-hia to Chaghan Kuren (in about 110 deg. E. long.), in which Captain Prjevalski's observations give a fall of less ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... costume much less severe than the first, and harmonized wonderfully with the scarlet stockings, and the Madras scarf so capriciously twisted around the head of the Creole. Nothing could be more pure, more beautiful, than the contour of her arms and shoulders, to which little dimples ...
— Mysteries of Paris, V3 • Eugene Sue
... give up a Connecticut Valley sunset, such as last summer could be had for the looking at. Not Turner, even, could paint those level shadows, all interfused with trembling light, that filled the hollows of the hills across the river, and brought out their wavy contour, and showed the depth and distance of the valley opening miles away. Could he throw athwart the dark mirror of the sleeping water in the gorge, which led the imprisoned river stealthily to the sea, the gliding snows of the sails rosy-white that stole swan-like from behind ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 27, January, 1860 • Various
... breast heaves tumultuously against his; face to face they whirl, his limbs interwoven with her limbs; with strong right arm about her yielding waist, he presses her to him till every curve in the contour of her lovely body thrills with the amorous contact. Her eyes look into his, but she sees nothing; the soft music fills the room, but she hears nothing; swiftly he whirls her from the floor or bends her frail body to and fro ...
— Plain Facts for Old and Young • John Harvey Kellogg
... built on heroic lines. He was tall and rangy, and the spirit of a long line of thoroughbred ancestors was in him. It showed in the clear white of his gleaming, indomitable eyes, in his thin, sensitive nostrils and long, shapely muzzle; in the contour of his head and chest, and in his ...
— The Trail Horde • Charles Alden Seltzer
... says the narrative, "shut in between bare hills, can be seen from afar; the whiteness of its buildings rendering it very conspicuous. It partly faces the coast, and the houses, which are elegantly built, line the beach, following the natural contour of the shore. The parade is also the finest part of the town, and is much frequented by foreigners; behind it, the ground rises abruptly, and the facades of the buildings, such as convents, noticeable for their size and ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part III. The Great Explorers of the Nineteenth Century • Jules Verne
... observed upon the tongue. It grows upon a broad, spreading base, becoming very hard. It is almost lacking in blood vessels, although the few that are present are plainly in view, and in consequence is poorly supplied with fluids. It is of a smooth contour, white or whitish yellow in color, is sharply limited from the normal substance of the tongue, may be covered with mucous membrane, on which prominent papillae are located, or only by a thin, delicate ...
— Special Report on Diseases of Cattle • U.S. Department of Agriculture
... that natural order which it is so difficult to imitate. Her complexion was possessed of a certain freshness, not to be equalled by borrowed colours: her eyes were not large, but they were lively, and capable of expressing whatever she pleased: her mouth was full of graces, and her contour uncommonly perfect; nor was her nose, which was small, delicate, and turned up, the least ornament of so lovely a face. In fine, her air, her carriage, and the numberless graces dispersed over her whole person, made the Chevalier de Grammont ...
— The Memoirs of Count Grammont, Complete • Anthony Hamilton
... comes on. For it is impossible to navigate in the darkness on this sea, since it is everywhere full of shoals. But there are harbours there and great numbers of them, not made by the hand of man, but by the natural contour of the land, and for this reason it is not difficult for mariners to find anchorage wherever they ...
— History of the Wars, Books I and II (of 8) - The Persian War • Procopius
... white, the edge of something, a frame of wood. He moved his head slightly, following the contour of this shape. It went up beyond the top of his eyes. He tried to think where he might be. Did it matter, seeing he was so wretched? The colour of his thoughts was a dark depression. He felt the featureless ...
— The Sleeper Awakes - A Revised Edition of When the Sleeper Wakes • H.G. Wells
... surgical experience, by the stone-like figure of man that lay before him. It was as if one should have unearthed a statue, grey with time—a statue nobly formed, with a powerful head and severe features sternly set,—the growth of beard revealing, rather than concealing, the somewhat cruel contour of mouth and chin. The Professor walked slowly up to the bed and looked at this strange effigy of a human being for many minutes in silence,—Morgana watching him with strained but quiet suspense. ...
— The Secret Power • Marie Corelli
... his attack must be made from the rear. Backward, like a crab he wriggled free of the golden-rod, and hidden by the contour of the hill, raced down it and into the woods on the hill opposite. When he came to within twenty feet of the oak beneath which he had seen the stranger, he stood erect, and as though avoiding a live wire, stepped on tip-toe to the wall. The stranger still sat against it. The binoculars hung from ...
— The Red Cross Girl • Richard Harding Davis
... closely curtained, the silent forces of physical life, in her deep tranquillity, were doing an artist's work. The hollow cheeks were gradually rounded and given the faintest possible bloom. Her form was gaining a contour that ...
— His Sombre Rivals • E. P. Roe
... full in her face, rendering every feature, shade, and contour distinct, from the curve of her little nostril to the colour of her eyes. The farmer, though he seemed annoyed at the boy's persistent presence, did not order him to get out of the way; and thus the ...
— Wessex Tales • Thomas Hardy
... the rocky shores of the Isle of Skye were reached, and the boat was put into one of the many inlets that break its irregular contour. Silence, indeed, was maintained until they had landed on a rocky shelf, and the boat had pushed off on its return ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 4 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... continuance of unimpaired health among young reporters. Anyhow—thus I to myself in the same strain, continuing—anyhow, I was not actually getting fat. Nothing so gross as that. I merely was attaining to a pleasant, a becoming and a dignified fullness of contour as I neared my thirtieth birthday. So why worry about what was natural and normal among persons of my temperament, and having my hereditary impulses, upon attaining a ...
— One Third Off • Irvin S. Cobb
... gunfire from the southern bank. Above this was a heavy chevaux-de-frise and barbed-wire entanglement, partly sunk and concealed from view; in many places pitted and covered with brushwood. Above this, following approximately a thirty-foot contour, came a line of trenches for infantry, and fifty yards behind a second line of trenches, commanding a further elevation of fifty feet. Two-thirds of the way up the hill came the trench-living quarters, the kitchens, the bakeries, the dormitories, ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume II (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... detachment, I watched her descend, swaying foot following swaying foot falteringly down the stairs, I was able to see that only the emotions which denaturalised her expression were a woman's; that her features, her pose, and the peculiar childlike contour of the one cheek open to view were those of one whose ...
— The House of the Whispering Pines • Anna Katharine Green
... eighth wife of the king, with her daughter Salome, whose praises had been sung at the banquet of Antipater. Both were renowned for beauty and the splendor of their dress. Salome had the colors of the far north, and that perfect and voluptuous contour found only in marble figures of Venus, above the great purple sea, and, below it, in the daughters of men. She was tall, shapely, full blooded. They called her Salome, child of the sun, because she had the dark of night in her large eyes, the tints of morning in her cheeks, and the gold of noonday ...
— Vergilius - A Tale of the Coming of Christ • Irving Bacheller
... walls were measured from both sides, and openings were located on the plan and described in a notebook, as was done in the survey of the inhabited villages. The entire site was then leveled, and from the data obtained contour lines were drawn with a 5-foot interval. Irregularities in the directions of walls were noted. In the later plans of ruins a scale of symbols, seven in number, were employed to indicate the amount and distribution of ...
— Eighth Annual Report • Various
... almost hidden by the clambering white roses that grew around it. He took off his hat and passed his hand over his brows with an air of dejection and fatigue,—the moonlight fell full on the clear contour of his features,—and she drew herself and her sparkling draperies well back into the deep shadow of the portal lest he should catch a glimpse of her, and, ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli
... of the breakers, uttering indescribably weird and lonely cries. A long file of pelicans, their wings outspread, sailed close to the surface of the ocean, undulating over the waves and into the hollows exactly paralleling, at a height of only a few feet, the restless contour of the sea. Occasionally they would all flop their wings two or three times ...
— The Gray Dawn • Stewart Edward White
... imported tie: Bound neatly with the choicest silks its lappets wave-like roll, While a watch-chain dangles sprucely from the proper buttonhole And a certain sensuous languor is ineffably expressed In the contour and the mise en scene of ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... Lesley had surprised him a little. She had more force and fire in her composition than he had expected to find. She was, as he had said, very like her mother in face and figure; and the minute differences of line and contour that showed Lesley to be strong where Lady Alice had been weak, original where Lady Alice had been most conventional, intellectual where Lady Alice had been only intelligent, were not perceptible at first sight even to a practised observer of men and women ...
— Brooke's Daughter - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... warm night, and she wore nothing over her white dress. I could see her tall, shapely figure and shining eyes, and the firm contour of her beautiful face, which, if any fault might be found with it, erred in being too regular. She looked like a woman formed by nature to meet dangers and difficulties, and to play a great part; even here, at midnight, in the midst of these desperate men, she did not ...
— Under the Red Robe • Stanley Weyman
... her face, and the firm contour of her chin as it rounded into the grace of her throat, he had a joyful sense of confidence that she would not prove wanting, and dismissed Bully Presby from his thoughts. With a great embarrassment, ...
— The Plunderer • Roy Norton
... value, and which he therefore despises as unworthy of his notice. He knows nothing of pictures,—'Of the colouring of Titian, the grace of Raphael, the purity of Domenichino, the corregioscity of Correggio, the learning of Poussin, the airs of Guido, the taste of the Caracci, or the grand contour of Michael Angelo,'—of all those glories of the Italian and miracles of the Flemish school, which have filled the eyes of mankind with delight, and to the study and imitation of which thousands have in vain ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... the old dispensation that have actually come into operation, are the suburban railways, which render possible an average door to office hour's journey of ten or a dozen miles—further only in the case of some specially favoured localities. The star-shaped contour of the modern great city, thrusting out arms along every available railway line, knotted arms of which every knot marks a station, testify sufficiently to the relief of pressure thus afforded. Great Towns before this century presented rounded contours and grew as a puff-ball swells; ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells
... unlike in person. The dark hair, deep-set black eyes, and prominent features of the Ex-Queen were in entire contrast to the golden tresses, the full blue orbs, and the soft lines and contour of her daughter's countenance. Yet, in latter days, illness had taken from my poor girl the full outline of her face, and reduced it to the inflexible shape of the bone beneath. In the form of ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley
... coast line was charted accurately so as to show the precise location of the inlets. It was a contour map, giving the hills, sand reaches, and groves. At the nearest one of these last was jotted down the ...
— The Pirate of Panama - A Tale of the Fight for Buried Treasure • William MacLeod Raine
... chivalrous, which was characteristic of the manly beauty of the young Hungarian. She was then twenty, very ignorant of life, her great Oriental eyes seeing nothing of stern reality; but, with all her gentleness, there was a species of Muscovite firmness which was betrayed in the contour of her red lips. It was in vain that sorrow had early made her a woman; Marsa remained ignorant of the world, without any other guide than Vogotzine; suffering and languid, she was fatally at the mercy of the first ...
— Prince Zilah, Complete • Jules Claretie
... and stouter than Duke Philip, but well formed, strong in arm and thigh. His shoulders were rather thick-set and a trifle stooping, but his body was well adapted to activity. The contour of his face was rounder than that of his father, his complexion brunette. His eyes were black and laughing, angelically clear. When he was sunk in thought it seemed as though his father looked out of them. Like his father's mouth was his, full and red. His nose was ...
— Charles the Bold - Last Duke Of Burgundy, 1433-1477 • Ruth Putnam
... Jessie were rather a pleasure to me than otherwise. They settled right down to the heart-softening business in such matter-of-fact fashion that their hearts must have lost contour before the voyage was half over. Polly dismissed them from her mind with a sigh of satisfaction, and I then hoped that she would find some time to devote to me, but I was disappointed. She assured ...
— The Fat of the Land - The Story of an American Farm • John Williams Streeter
... district of India, in Berar. The town had a population in 1901 of 4137. The district has an area of 3662 sq. m. The southern part forms a portion of Berar Balaghat or Berar—above the Ghats. Here the general contour of the country may be described as a succession of small plateaus decreasing in elevation to the extreme south. Towards the eastern side of the district the country assumes more the character of undulating high lands, favoured ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various
... day, a determined and systematic attempt was made to cross the summit. Nearly the entire train was engaged in the work. The road, of course, was entirely obliterated by the snow. Guided only by the general contour of the country, all hands pressed resolutely forward. Here, large bowlders and irregular jutting cliffs would intercept the way; there, dizzy precipices, yawning chasms, and deep, irregular canyons would interpose, and anon a bold, impassable mountain of rock would ...
— History of the Donner Party • C.F. McGlashan
... Cardigan Bay contains a submerged territory is widely known, and strangely enough seems to be corroborated by the shape of the coast-line, the contour of which suggests the subsidence of a large body of land. Like their brothers of Ireland, the fishermen of Wales assert that at low tide they can see the ruins of ancient edifices far down beneath the clear ...
— Legends & Romances of Brittany • Lewis Spence
... more than fifteen minutes' run east now, and so Bob awakened his sleeping comrades while Paul guided the airplane across the strait. They flew a little higher, later, following the general contour of the terraced slopes of the ...
— Around the World in Ten Days • Chelsea Curtis Fraser
... a more pleasing expression, but the timid furtive look, the ungainly gait, and the ungraceful contour of their abak skirts, detract from the moderate beauty that they possess in their youth. After marriage their ...
— The Manbos of Mindano - Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume XXIII, First Memoir • John M. Garvan
... at every glance she groaned, as if groaning were a duty. The kitchen was unlighted save by the fire and one guttering candle; but even through such inadequate illumination the Widder Poll was a figure calculated to stir rich merriment in a satirical mind. Her contour was rather square than oblong, and she was very heavy. In fact, she had begun to announce that her ankles wouldn't bear her much longer, and she should "see the day when she'd have to set by, from mornin' to night, like old Anrutty Green that ...
— Meadow Grass - Tales of New England Life • Alice Brown
... the long glass and directed it at the dark stockade. The sun had sunk behind the forests leaving the contour of the tree-tops outlined by a thread of gold under a band of delicate green lying across the lower sky. Higher up a faint crimson glow faded into the darkened blue overhead. The shades of the evening deepened over the lagoon, clung to the sides of the Emma and to the forms ...
— The Rescue • Joseph Conrad
... Her contour is more rounded, her neck is longer, her skin smoother, her voice softer, her hair less generally distributed over the body, but stronger in growth than in man. She breathes with the muscles of her chest—he with those of his abdomen. He has greater muscular force—she more ...
— The Physical Life of Woman: - Advice to the Maiden, Wife and Mother • Dr. George H Napheys
... been intolerable to the sensitive eye. But on Rachel it simply had a piquant and perverse air, because she was young, with the incomparable, the unique charm of comely adolescence; it simply excited the imagination to conceive the exquisite treasures of contour and tint and texture which it veiled. Do not infer that Rachel was a coquette. Although comely, she was homely—a "downright" girl, scorning and hating all manner of pretentiousness. She had a fine best dress, and when she put it on everybody ...
— The Price of Love • Arnold Bennett
... world to vision, sketching a landscape hazily on a black canvas, then stippling in the colors, and finishing, swiftly but gradually, the details to an inconceivable minuteness of definition, giving each leaf its own sharp contour and every rock its every facet. From the brook below a mistlike cigarette smoke exhaled. The sky was crimson, then ...
— The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes
... the sloop had been long exposed to the weather in the rear of the house, and perhaps no one save Jim and his assistants could have traced a resemblance in the roughly-hewn contour of the face to that of the prosperous merchant. They, however, were well satisfied with the instrument which might bring Master Lillie to a realisation of his offence, and Hardy Baker was positive no citizen of Boston could look upon the wooden face without seeing in it a strong resemblance ...
— Under the Liberty Tree - A Story of The 'Boston Massacre' • James Otis
... indeed a lovely little dwelling. It was built of stone, and then painted white, but the roof and gables were tiled with great pink tiles, giving an odd little foreign look to it, something like Anne Hathaway's cottage in general contour, Leslie declared. ...
— Cloudy Jewel • Grace Livingston Hill
... barometers, and their reaction to passing showers was invariable. The clay surface held water, and after each downfall the pools would be higher, and the contour of the little region altered. At the first few drops, all the ants would hasten, the throbbing corpuscles speeding up. Then, as the rain came down heavier, the column melted away, those near each end hurrying to shelter and those in the center ...
— Edge of the Jungle • William Beebe
... size: It is a tall tree with a trunk that divides a short distance above ground. Its general contour, together with the numerous branches that interlace its massive crown, give the elm an interesting and stately appearance which is ...
— Studies of Trees • Jacob Joshua Levison
... enormous nose which he had once possessed had been splintered by a blow from a tomahawk, so that in no respect at all did it resemble that useful and ornamental organ. There was an enormous breadth, too, between the eyes, or rather temples, the face tapering down to the chin so rapidly that the contour from the front suggested the shape of ...
— In the Pecos Country • Edward Sylvester Ellis (AKA Lieutenant R.H. Jayne)
... husband in the parlor of Grange farmhouse, scarcely realized the air-drawn image which dwelt in the memory of the unforgiving, unforgetting man. Mrs. Burton was at this time a comely dame, whose embonpoint contour, however indicative of florid health and serenity of temper, exhibited little of the airy elegance and grace said to have distinguished the girlhood of Elizabeth Gainsford. Her soft brown eyes were gentle and kind as ever, but the brilliant lights of youth no longer sparkled in their quiet depths, ...
— The Experiences of a Barrister, and Confessions of an Attorney • Samuel Warren
... winding path that led to the mountain. Above them were the Alps, and the picture was crowned by three snow-capped summits. Nothing could be more simple or more beautiful than this landscape. The valley resembled a lake of verdure and the eye followed its contour with delight. ...
— The Confession of a Child of The Century • Alfred de Musset
... have required a somewhat extended observation to convince you that he moved at all. His bead-like black eyes roved here and there. He did not look for a caribou—no such fool he—but for a splotch of brown, a deepening of shadow, a contour of surface which long experience had taught him could not be due to the forest's ordinary play of light and shade. After a moment his gaze centred. In the lucent, cool, green shadow of a thick clump of moose maples he felt rather than discerned a certain warmth of tone. You and I would probably ...
— The Silent Places • Stewart Edward White
... of grace where the slope got steeper towards its top. This was Dick's innovation. He had fought hard for it and when Jake supported him Stuyvesant had written to Fuller, who sanctioned the extra cost. The rib marked the fine contour of the structure and fixed its bold curve upon ...
— Brandon of the Engineers • Harold Bindloss
... the stays to squeeze her waist into the dress, which gave her splendid figure an even more magnificent "contour." She also put on the wreath and looked at herself in the glass. Timea sighed deeply, and whispered to Athalie, in tones of undisguised admiration, "How lovely, how lovely ...
— Timar's Two Worlds • Mr Jkai
... a lost continent, yet its savage ruin was sublimely beautiful. The comparatively level spot that allowed the luxury of a gallop was made up of sand and stones, with here and there a black rock thrusting its bold contour above the shingle. A curiously habitable aspect was given to the desert by numbers of irregular alluvial mounds which, on examination, were found to consist of caked soil held together by the roots of trees. So, at one time, this arid plain had borne ...
— The Wheel O' Fortune • Louis Tracy
... hands in the weak, uncertain way of a young child; but in the main he lay like a giant, bound by invisible and invincible bonds; speechless, motionless, seeking through his large, pathetic eyes the help and comfort of those who bent over him. He had quite lost the fine, firm contour of his face, his ruddy color was all gone; indeed, the country expression of "face of clay," best of all words described the colorless, still countenance amid the white pillows ...
— The Squire of Sandal-Side - A Pastoral Romance • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... not consent. The road was not so badly drifted as before, and they got through a little after nightfall. Northwick remembered the place because it was here that the Saguenay steamer lay so long before starting up the river. He recognized in the vague night-light the contour of the cove, and the hills above it, with the villages scattered over them. It was twenty years since he had made that trip with his wife, who had been nearly as long dead, but he recalled the place distinctly, and its summer effect; it did not seem much lonelier ...
— The Quality of Mercy • W. D. Howells
... light service. A cope or hood, intricately woven of delicate steel wire, and close enough to refuse an arrow or the point of a dagger, defended head, throat, neck, and shoulders, while open at the face; a coat, of the same artistic mail, beginning under the hood, followed closely the contour of the body, terminating just above the knees as a skirt. Amongst Teutonic and English knights, on account of its comparative lightness, it would have been distinguished from an old-fashioned hauberk, and called haubergeon. A sleeveless surcoat ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 1 • Lew. Wallace
... the slightly frizzed and powdered masses of mouse-coloured hair, surmounting a long ivory neck, whose graceful turn, the theme of many a sonnet, was not concealed by the masculine collar of the habit. The exquisite oval contour of the cheek, the delicate ear, and Grecian profile were as perfect in moulding as when she had been Sir Jovian's bride, and so were the porcelain blue of the eyes, the pencilled arches of eyebrow, and the curve of the lips, while even her complexion retained its ...
— Love and Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... looking glass, twist himself into all sorts of shapes so as to get a view from every possible angle, then remove that one, and call for another. Finally, after trying on about every coat in the house, he would leave without making a purchase, having found nothing that suited the exact contour of his delicately moulded form. A very brief experience in a regiment that had a gruff old quartermaster would take that tuck out of that Beau Brummell, ...
— The Story of a Common Soldier of Army Life in the Civil War, 1861-1865 • Leander Stillwell
... without either any previous knowledge of the spot or any object to establish a connection with it. He can also readily rise high into the air so as to gain a bird's eye view of the country which he is examining, so as to observe its extent, the contour of its coastline, or its general character. Indeed, in every way his power and freedom are far greater when he uses this method than they are in any of the lesser forms ...
— Clairvoyance and Occult Powers • Swami Panchadasi
... 4, 6, 7, and 8, to wit, Edgar, Clement, Fulbert, and Lancelot, all three handsome, blue-eyed, fair-faced lads. Indeed Edgar was remarkable, even among this decidedly fine-looking family. He had a peculiarly delicate contour of feature and complexion, though perfectly healthy; and there was something of the same expression, half keen, half dreamy, as in Geraldine, his junior by one year; while the grace of all the attitudes ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the picture were two figures. Sleeping on a couch of ice was the form of a young girl. The flow of the drapery, the contour of the form, was grace itself, and yet all was ice. But the face was the most wonderful achievement. Christine saw her own features, as beautiful as in her vainest moments she had ever dared to hope. So perfect was the portrait that the ...
— Barriers Burned Away • E. P. Roe
... the street, and at the corner he found his usual attendant, Michaele del Tovallaccino, a soldier possessed of a splendid physique, combining the soft contour of Apollo and the brute force of Hercules. His comrades called him "Scoronconcolo," on account of his wild, lustful nature. "He could kiss and bite," they ...
— The Tragedies of the Medici • Edgcumbe Staley
... of intelligence, and characterized by small brain capacity, with great prominence of the superciliary ridges, occipital protuberance and zygomatic arches, the latter projecting beyond the general contour of the skull like the handles of a jar or a peach basket; and lines drawn from the most projecting part of the arches and touching the sides of the frontal bone are supposed to meet over the forehead, forming a triangle, for ...
— The First Landing on Wrangel Island - With Some Remarks on the Northern Inhabitants • Irving C. Rosse
... coast-line, to which they are now often almost at right angles. The argument, moreover, which formerly had most weight in favour of floating ice, namely, that it explained why so many of the stones did not conform to the contour and direction of the minor hills and valleys, is now brought forward, and with no small effect, in favour of the doctrine of continental ice on the Greenlandic scale, which, after levelling up the lesser inequalities, would occasionally flow in mighty ice-currents, ...
— The Antiquity of Man • Charles Lyell
... I take [Greek: entypas] adverbially, with Eustathius, p. 1474, and understand that he was "so completely enfolded, as to exhibit the entire contour of his person" (Kennedy), with the Schol. Hesych. t.i.p. 1264. Phavorinus, Suidas, and the Schol. on Appoll. Rh. 264. Ernesti well expresses the idea: "[Greek: Entypas kekalymmenos] est, qui ita adstrinxit vestem, eique se involvit, ...
— The Iliad of Homer (1873) • Homer
... we want harmony. We cannot, therefore, throw together a number of forms unrelated to each in line, contour, or meaning. We seek in composing or designing not contradictions, but correspondences of form, with just an element of contrast to give flavour and point. In grouping pottery, for instance, we should not place big and little or squat and slender forms close together without connecting links ...
— Line and Form (1900) • Walter Crane
... work of the "Resolute's" parties, in this spring of 1852, Commander McClintock travelled 1,325 miles with his sledge, and Lieutenant Mecham 1,163 miles with his, through regions before wholly unexplored. The sledge, as we have said, is in general contour not unlike a Yankee wood-sled, about eleven feet long. The runners are curved at each end. The sled is fitted with a light canvas trough, so adjusted that, in case of necessity, all the stores, &c., can be ferried over any ...
— If, Yes and Perhaps - Four Possibilities and Six Exaggerations with Some Bits of Fact • Edward Everett Hale
... lay and contour of the ground in the region over which the British Army fought at the Battle of the Aisne are deeply ...
— 1914 • John French, Viscount of Ypres
... examine him more closely. His body was a silky, dark, but exquisitely modulated gray, deepening to black in his paws and muzzle. His fur was excessively long, thick, and soft as eider-down, the cushions of flesh beneath perfectly infantine in their texture and contour. He was so very young that the palms of his half-human feet were still tender as a baby's. Except for the bright blue, steely hooks, half sheathed in his little toes, there was not a single harsh outline or detail in his plump figure. He was ...
— Short Stories and Selections for Use in the Secondary Schools • Emilie Kip Baker
... two parts, encircle the harmonious contour of her white and delicate cheeks, brilliant in their glow and freshness. Her ebony brows have the form and charm of the bow of Kama, the god of love, and beneath her long silken lashes the purest reflections and a ...
— Around the World in 80 Days • Jules Verne
... ways out, as of yore, was quite white now. His old cheeks were softly rounded, with some colour in them; strangely enough, that something childlike always noticeable in the general contour of his physiognomy had become much more marked. Like his handwriting, he looked childish and senile. He showed his age most in his unintelligently furrowed, anxious forehead and in his round, innocent eyes, which appeared to me weak and blinking ...
— 'Twixt Land & Sea • Joseph Conrad
... is simpler, less morbid, sultry and languorous, therefore saner, than the much bepraised study in C sharp minor, No. 7, op. 25. Niecks writes that this study "may be counted among Chopin's loveliest compositions." It combines "classical chasteness of contour with the fragrance of romanticism." Chopin told his faithful Gutmann that "he had never in his life written another such melody," and once when hearing it raised his arms aloft and cried out: ...
— Chopin: The Man and His Music • James Huneker
... very rare in pueblo architecture, only one instance having been encountered by the writer in an experience of many years. The map seems to show more local relief to this terrace than the general view indicates, but it should be borne in mind that the contour interval is but ...
— Aboriginal Remains in Verde Valley, Arizona • Cosmos Mindeleff
... much as would suffice a full-grown man, and that one of them will devour a whole stalk of bananas at a meal, with other food. Some tribes are described as physically and mentally degenerate, and prognathism is in many cases strongly declared, the lower part of the face having an ape-like contour, and the protruding chin, that feature peculiar to man, being very deficient. In their great abdominal development the adult Akkas resemble the children of Arabs and negroes. This, therefore, seems the retention of a primitive feature which has become ...
— Man And His Ancestor - A Study In Evolution • Charles Morris
... always with him; and, in the true humour of observation, will find in that sufficient company. From its subtle windings and changes of level there arises a keen and continuous interest, that keeps the attention ever alert and cheerful. Every sensitive adjustment to the contour of the ground, every little dip and swerve, seems instinct with life and an exquisite sense of balance and beauty. The road rolls upon the easy slopes of the country, like a long ship in the hollows of the sea. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XXII (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... very little while we were awake between bed and dinner in poring upon maps. I have always been fond of maps, and can voyage in an atlas with the greatest enjoyment. The names of places are singularly inviting; the contour of coasts and rivers is enthralling to the eye; and to hit, in a map, upon some place you have heard of before makes history a new possession. But we thumbed our charts on these evenings with the blankest ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... insufficient observations, even if erroneous, were slow to die. Thus it used to be stated that an upper cloud floor adapted itself to the contour of the land over which it rested, giving what Mr. Monck Mason has called a "phrenological estimate" of the character of the earth below; the clouds, "even when under the influence of rapid motion, seeming to accommodate themselves to all variations ...
— The Dominion of the Air • J. M. Bacon
... drapery behind. His left hand guides the reins; his right is advanced straight forward on the same side of the horse's neck. The head of the statue is crowned with a laurel wreath." It was formed from a bust of Peter, modelled by a young French damsel. The contour of the face expresses the most powerful command, and exalted, boundless, expansion of thought. "The horse, says Sir Robert, is not to be surpassed. To all the beauties of the ancient form, it unites the easy grace of nature with ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 487 - Vol. 17, No. 487. Saturday, April 30, 1831 • Various
... goodness in things evil. The Hole portrait shows him with long hair, small 'goatee' beard, and aquiline nose drawn up at the nostrils: while the National portrait shows a type of nose and beard intermediate between the Hole and the Dulwich pictures: the general contour of the face, though the forehead is broad enough, is long and oval. Drayton seems to have been tall and thin, and to have been very susceptible of cold, and therefore to have hated Winter and the North.[25] He is said to have shared ...
— Minor Poems of Michael Drayton • Michael Drayton
... will differ from every one that has preceded it. If it be true, as every physicist believes, that the earth is a cooling globe, then, whatever its present stage of refrigeration, the time must come when its surface contour will assume a rigidity of level not yet attained. Then, just as surely, the slow action of the elements will continue to wear away the land surfaces, particle by particle, and transport them to the ocean, as it does to-day, until, compensation no longer being afforded by the upheaval of the continents, ...
— A History of Science, Volume 3(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... by the addition or subtraction of the intervals between them. For instance, knowing the succession, an outcrop of a certain sandstone may indicate that the marking horizon is 200 feet below, and the structural contour is then drawn accordingly. Observations of strike and dip at the surface are helpful; but where the beds are but slightly flexed, small irregularities in deposition may make strike and dip observations useless in determining major structures. It is then necessary to have recourse ...
— The Economic Aspect of Geology • C. K. Leith
... overboard by some passing ship, or like a gigantic lump of foam tossed on the crest of a wave. If the day is sunless, the reflection of light which gives it that glistening appearance, so remarkable as the midnight sun glances among an array of these objects, is wanting to add dignity to the contour of what it is a rude dissipation of life's young dream to learn is an iceberg—though on a very small scale. It is simply a wave- worn straggler from the fleet which will soon be met sailing southward out of the Greenland fjords. The warm waters ...
— Tom Finch's Monkey - and How he Dined with the Admiral • John C. Hutcheson
... coal themselves will not yield much information, from which it will be possible to judge of the contour of the landmasses at this ancient period. Of one thing we are sure, namely, that at the time each seam was formed, the spot where it accumulated was dry land. If, therefore, the seams which appear one above the other coincide fairly well as ...
— The Story of a Piece of Coal - What It Is, Whence It Comes, and Whither It Goes • Edward A. Martin
... detours would bring it to the foot of White glacier, and thence through Summerland and Cowlitz Park, and westward to a junction with the existing road in Paradise. Its elevation would range between four and seven thousand feet above the sea. The route, as indicated on the contour map, suggests very plainly the engineering feats involved in hanging roads on ...
— The Mountain that was 'God' • John H. Williams
... mass of gray that advanced slowly toward him. From a distance to the lay observer this mass would have looked like an ordinary cloud-bank, but the experienced eyes of a fisherman would have discerned its ghastly gray hue and its flat contour. ...
— The Harbor of Doubt • Frank Williams
... her innocence, the beautiful, direct gaze, the childlike fulness of mouth and contour of cheek and throat, left him spellbound. The very air around them seemed suffused with the vital glow of her youth and beauty; each breath they drew increased their wonder, till the whole rosy universe seemed thrilling and singing at their feet, and they two, love-crowned, ...
— Iole • Robert W. Chambers
... revels in their beauty with ever fresh delight. In their relations to each other the individual members of a group have evidently been derived from the same general rock-mass, yet they never seem broken or abridged in any way as to their contour lines, however abruptly they may dip their sides. Viewed one by one, they seem detached beauties, like extracts from a poem, while, from the completeness of their lines and the way that their trees are arranged, ...
— Travels in Alaska • John Muir
... girls halted on the threshold, half shy, half smiling. For the moment, in the shadow of the doorway, they were surprisingly like each other, the difference of colouring being lost in their curious similarity of contour. ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... store beauty, strolled up to Ray, who was straightening a pile of corset covers and brassieres. Miss Myrtle was the store's star cloak-and-suit model. Tall, svelte, graceful, lovely in line and contour, she was remarkably like one of those exquisite imbeciles that Rossetti used to love to paint. Hers were the great cowlike eyes, the wonderful oval face, the marvellous little nose, the perfect lips and chin. Miss Myrtle could don a forty-dollar gown, parade it before a possible purchaser, ...
— Cheerful—By Request • Edna Ferber
... these awkward intuitions," spoke a melodious voice, and turning, Graciosa met the eyes of the intruder. This magnificent young man had a proud and bloodless face which contrasted sharply with his painted lips and cheeks. In the contour of his protruding mouth showed plainly his negroid ancestry. His scanty beard, as well as his frizzled hair, was the color of dead grass. He was sumptuously clothed in white satin worked with silver, ...
— The Certain Hour • James Branch Cabell
... giggle, which appeared to come from the woman in the corner who had not yet spoken, and whose face and figure in the shadow he had previously overlooked. But he could now see that her outline was slim and graceful, and the contour of her head charming,—facts that had evidently not escaped the observation of the expressman and Mr. Heckshill, and that might have accounted for the cautious reticence of the one and the comfortable ...
— From Sand Hill to Pine • Bret Harte
... face a great rushing, flushing wave of tenderness blocked out for a second all trace of the cruel, slim scar that marred the perfect contour of one cheek. ...
— The Indiscreet Letter • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... cloth a little, but her malicious companions followed her example, and kept poking the cloth with their fingers, so that there were as many mysterious signals as there were girls beneath the canopy. The square head-dresses upheld the cloth so evenly that it was impossible to discern the contour of a brow outlined ...
— The Devil's Pool • George Sand
... order to become altogether American is like desiring to invent an entirely new kind of clothes. I shall not give up trousers because my fourth great-grandfather, who was a Yorkshireman, wore them, and his pattern no longer fits my different contour. I shall make me a pair better suiting my own shanks—yet they shall still be trousers. But in ...
— Definitions • Henry Seidel Canby
... will fail to deceive. The eye is deep and direct, but the high, jutting forehead above is like a table of stone, bearing the ten broken commandments. He keeps the lips ajar in a smile, or shut in a resolve, to hide their sensuality, and the fine black beard conceals the massive contour of jaws which ...
— Bohemian Days - Three American Tales • Geo. Alfred Townsend
... forehead it was clipped short, and was wavy, and impertinent,—as is also the fashion of the day. Such as it was, she so wore it that a man could hardly wish it to be otherwise. Her eyes, unlike those of her father and sister, were blue; and in the whole contour of her features there was nothing resembling theirs. The upper lip was short, and the chin was short and dimpled. There was a dimple on one cheek too, a charm so much more maddening than when it is ...
— Ralph the Heir • Anthony Trollope
... shadows in Holbein's drawings; he seems to have put his sitters near a wide window, close against which he worked. Select also a background as near the tone of the highest light on the object to be drawn as possible. This will show up clearly the contour. In the case of a portrait drawing, a newspaper hung behind the head answers very well and is always easily obtained. The tone of it can be varied by the distance at which it is placed from the head, and by the angle at which it is turned away from ...
— The Practice and Science Of Drawing • Harold Speed
... this picture, in the matter of balance, contains a principle: The line of the figure curves in toward the flower and pot which become the radius of the whole inner contour. This creates an elliptical line of observation, which being the arc on this radius receives a pull toward its centre. There is a modicum of balance in the mere weight of this empty space, but when given force by its isolation, plus the concession ...
— Pictorial Composition and the Critical Judgment of Pictures • Henry Rankin Poore
... being connected by twelve miles of narrows, extends up the Grand River Valley as far as Gull Island Lake, the whole forming one grand glacial record. From Lake Melville to Gull Island the bed was being gradually filled in by the deposits of the river, but the contour of the basin is the same here as below. The bed of the country here is Archaean rock, and many beautiful specimens of labradorite dot the shores. In the distance the grim peaks of the Mealy Mountains stand out in bold relief against ...
— Scientific American Supplement No. 822 - Volume XXXII, Number 822. Issue Date October 3, 1891 • Various
... the stranger who favoured such painful manicuring processes and who so enjoyed a moving picture show. For his part, Green had seen only the man's side face, and that casually and at a fleeting glance; but before the young lady was through with her description, he knew the other's deportment and contour as though he had passed him a hundred times and each time had closely ...
— From Place to Place • Irvin S. Cobb |
