"Feat" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... tragedy of the Hellespont, it has been the ambition of poets to perform a noteworthy swimming feat, and one of Poe's schoolboy memories was of his six-mile swim from Ludlam's Wharf to ...
— Literary Hearthstones of Dixie • La Salle Corbell Pickett
... other hand than an Esmond. I should have dashed the salver out of Lord Bergamot's hand, had I met him." And those who knew her ladyship are aware that she was a person quite capable of performing this feat, had she not wisely kept out ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... seeking, for the lack of which the world was dying; and it was his to give or to withhold, to lose or to save. He had to forge it and shape it, he had to embody it, to set it forth in images and symbols. And that meant a terrific labor, a feat of mental and emotional endurance quite indescribable. He must hold it, though it burned like fire; he must clutch it to his bosom, though it tore ...
— Love's Pilgrimage • Upton Sinclair
... the trappers, in presenting his athletic form in front of the fire, "throwing a couple of poor tigers is no great feat. If it had been an affair of a dozen Comanches, or Pawnees, that would have been different. Howsomever, a chunk of roast mutton is welcome after a fight, as well as before one, and we're ready for it with your permission. Come along, comrade! ...
— Wood Rangers - The Trappers of Sonora • Mayne Reid
... was not so agile, but he went down after him. He would have accomplished a far more difficult feat ...
— The Brown Mask • Percy J. Brebner
... to include all the famous names that belong to the history of exploration. Most of these explorers have been chosen for some definite new discovery, some addition to the world's geographical knowledge, or some great feat of endurance which may serve to brace us to fresh effort as a nation famous for our seamen. English navigators have been afforded the lion's share in the book, partly because they took the lion's ...
— A Book of Discovery - The History of the World's Exploration, From the Earliest - Times to the Finding of the South Pole • Margaret Bertha (M. B.) Synge
... his head on his right arm, a sterilized Teddy-bear clutched firmly in his other hand, with the concentration of one engaged upon a feat at which he is ...
— The Coming of Bill • P. G. Wodehouse
... cross with certain religious rites, he should plunge into the hole as soon as possible after the ceremony. I remember once at Yaroslavl, on the Volga, two young peasants successfully accomplished this feat—though the police have orders to prevent it—and escaped, apparently without evil consequences, though the Fahrenheit thermometer was below zero. How far the custom has really a purifying influence, is a question which ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... occasion now to bless the years of hard work that had made his body vigorous and his muscles hard and strong. Slowly he drew himself up out of the clinging ooze which closed behind him with a sickening, sucking sound. Once clear of the mud, it was an easy feat to go up the rope hand over hand and soon he was standing beside Charley at the foot of the tree where they were speedily joined by ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... puss that in the violence of her haste she ran in contact with the head of another; both stuck fast together, and Dick, lucky Dick! caught both. Dick obtained great celebrity by telling this wondrous feat, which he always affirmed as a truth, and from that every notorious liar in Thorner bears the title of Dick Strother. Now, Dick—I mean John—is not that the reason why you are called ...
— Law and Laughter • George Alexander Morton
... shock, and the cavalry drew back. A second time they charged, and were supported by some infantry detachments, which had now come up. It ended in a hand-to-hand fight; and eventually the enemy gave way. On the field lay dead some Sicyonians, and of the Pellenians many a good man. In record of the feat the Phliasians began to raise a trophy, as well they might; and loud and clear the paean rang. As to the Theban and Euphron, they and all their men stood by and stared at the proceedings, like men who had raced to see a sight. After all was over ...
— Hellenica • Xenophon
... exclaimed Greif, and the others joined readily in the promise. Seeing how probable it was that by the next evening Rex would be in bed, with a bag of ice on his head, it was not likely that they would be called upon to perform the feat. ...
— Greifenstein • F. Marion Crawford
... so there!" responded Miss Blake in return with such a good imitation of her own querulous tone that the girl burst into a shout of laughter, and the two started off again to make another, perhaps futile attempt, at the difficult feat, until, by the latter part of the winter, Miss Blake acquitted herself so creditably that her teacher regarded her with pardonable pride, ...
— The Governess • Julie M. Lippmann
... perhaps under the stress of necessity. There are even some trails over which sheep and goats are driven in and out of the canyon, but anyone who had not seen the flocks actually passing over the rocks would declare such a feat impossible. Some of these trails at least are of Navaho origin. Whether any of them were used by the former dwellers in the canyon can not now be determined; it seems probable that some ...
— The Cliff Ruins of Canyon de Chelly, Arizona • Cosmos Mindeleff
... himself at Saratoga by reading the burial service over Major Fraser under fire, and by a quite readable adventure, chronicled by Burgoyne, with Lady Harriet Ackland. Lady Harriet's husband achieved the remarkable feat of killing himself, instead of his adversary, in a duel. He overbalanced himself in the heat of his swordsmanship, and fell with his head against a pebble. Lady Harriet then married the warrior chaplain, who, like Anthony Anderson ...
— The Devil's Disciple • George Bernard Shaw
... and feat it footly, and dance and sing, and tootle-ty ting!" cried the child, as she flitted like a golden cloud about the room. Then, as she whirled round and faced the door, she stopped short. Her arms fell by her side, and she stood as ...
— Captain January • Laura E. Richards
... venture the young hunter alone "cilled a bar" and left the record of his feat carved with his hunting knife upon a tree. His imagination was fired with the tales of warfare about him, of the courage and independence of the men who dwelt far up in the mountains. He knew of the heroism of George Washington who, four years after the Boones left ...
— Blue Ridge Country • Jean Thomas
... English or French, or writing, are not formed at birth but must be built up within the life-time of the individual. It is the process of building them up that we call education. This process is a physical feat involving the production of changes in physical material in the brain. Study involves the overcoming of resistance in the nervous system. That is why it is so hard. In your early school-days, when you set about laboriously learning the multiplication table, your unwilling ...
— How to Use Your Mind • Harry D. Kitson
... feat has been accomplished by the use of the Dornifier. A remarkable invention that is named after that brilliant scientist, Colonel Robert A. Dorn, Commander of the Brooke Point Experimental Laboratory. It was there that ...
— Navy Day • Harry Harrison
... the shore. This was a Tahitian swing. A native lad seizes hold of the cord, and, after swinging to and fro quite leisurely, all at once sends himself fifty or sixty feet from the water, rushing through the air like a rocket. I doubt whether any of our rope-dancers would attempt the feat. For my own part, I had neither head nor heart for it; so, after sending a lad aloft with an additional cord, by way of security, I constructed a large basket of green boughs, in which I and some particular friends of mine used to swing ...
— Omoo: Adventures in the South Seas • Herman Melville
... was no surgeon, and there was little he could do for the lad. Newman undressed him—the squareheads had not been able to accomplish this feat, because of the pain their rough handling caused—and bared the poor broken body to view. The squareheads cursed deeply and bitterly at the sight of the shocking bruises on the white flesh. Nils was delirious, staring up at us with brilliant, ...
— The Blood Ship • Norman Springer
... covered with blood, streaming from a severe wound on the forehead, the iron fretwork having proved harder than the baby's head. The scar remains down to the present time, and gives me the valuable peculiarity of only wrinkling up one side of my forehead when I raise my eyebrows, a feat that I defy any of my readers to emulate. The heavy cut has, I suppose, so injured the muscles in that spot that they have lost the normal ...
— Autobiographical Sketches • Annie Besant
... story that has been woven into the plot of this book. To him also the writer is indebted for the artifice by which Umslopogaas obtained admission to the Swazi stronghold; it was told to Mr. Leslie by the Zulu who performed the feat and thereby won a wife. Also the writer's thanks are due to his friends, Mr. F. B. Fynney, (1) late Zulu border agent, for much information given to him in bygone years by word of mouth, and more recently ...
— Nada the Lily • H. Rider Haggard
... producing very small but comparatively soft diamonds, by heating lampblack under great pressure, in company with one or two other ingredients. The process was a costly one, and beyond being a great scientific feat, the discovery led to ...
— The Story of a Piece of Coal - What It Is, Whence It Comes, and Whither It Goes • Edward A. Martin
... back way, up a precipitous, though not perpendicular bank, the women of the party had to be helped; and Shelley was the most active in rendering that assistance. While others were content to accomplish the feat for one, he, I think, helped three up the bank, sliding in a half-sitting posture when he returned to fetch a new charge. I well remember his shooting past me in a cloud of chalk-dust, as I was slowly climbing up. He had a fit of panting after it, but he made light of the exertion. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., February, 1863, No. LXIV. • Various
... crowd. I'll bet 10 cents against Bryan's chance of being Pres. Skinny can wear one of her stockins for a sweater. If she ever wore a striped waist she'd look like the awning over a greek candy store, she never knows when she needs a shine, fer, like Bill the Twospot, she can't see de feat. ...
— Love Letters of a Rookie to Julie • Barney Stone
... a literary tongue. His elegy on the death of Lorenzo has real feeling in it and proves him to have esteemed that friend and patron. Like Pico, he survived Lorenzo only two years, and he also was buried in Dominican robes. Perhaps the finest feat of Poliziano's life was his action in slamming the sacristy doors in the face of Lorenzo's pursuers on that fatal day in the Duomo when Giuliano de' ...
— A Wanderer in Florence • E. V. Lucas
... neither the doctor nor Cutler knew, that to avoid falling under the circumstances I was placed in, and to escape without capsizing the canoe, was a feat that no man, but one familiar with the management of those fragile barks, and a good swimmer, too, can perform. Peter was aware of it, and appreciated it; but the other two seemed disposed to cut their jokes upon me; and them that do that, generally find, in the long run, I am ...
— Nature and Human Nature • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... of many a feat, How fairy MAB the junkets eat. She was pinched, and pulled, she said: And he, by friar's lanthern led, Tells how the drudging Goblin sweat To earn his cream-bowl duly set; When, in one night, ere glimpse of morn, His shadowy Flail hath threshed the ...
— An English Garner - Critical Essays & Literary Fragments • Edited by Professor Arber and Thomas Seccombe
... The track was incredibly bad, except for short bits, where ironstone prevailed. However, all went well, and on the road I chased and captured a pair of remarkably swift and handsome little 'Schelpats'. That you may duly appreciate such a feat of valour and activity, I will inform you that their English name is 'tortoise'. On the strength of this effort, we drank a bottle of beer, as it was very hot and sandy; and our Malay was a WET enough Mussulman to take his full share in a modest way, though he declined wine or 'Cape ...
— Letters from the Cape • Lady Duff Gordon
... This feat was performed again, and as final security the boatswain formed a bight, which he thrust down and passed over the fan whose edge was almost ...
— Fitz the Filibuster • George Manville Fenn
... be created and put into a man, then they' (who were able to perform this feat) 'would have obtained ...
— Meno • Plato
... the first race around the world's circumference. It was without denial an auspicious moment, and as they stood there and looked at the two big mechanical birds which were to attempt this prodigious feat, embracing almost 25,000 miles, threading every mile of the distance through the air in the astounding time of ten days, the situation was so fraught with awe, particularly to the native Panamanians, that now at the last ...
— Around the World in Ten Days • Chelsea Curtis Fraser
... and his partner achieved in this country out-bid in dimensions, variety and the use of practical imagination, even the work of Rhodes in South Africa. It was a feat of economic and financial engineering which but for its peculiarly selfish energy and ruthless characteristics, might have become a monumental contribution to the human welfare of Canada. No man of common brain or conventional ethics could have been ...
— The Masques of Ottawa • Domino
... ominous silence which has been maintained concerning him in almost all quarters of our Church. For what can he say or do against the other miracles if he be powerless against the Resurrection? He can make sentences which sound plausible, but that is no great feat. Can he show that there is any a priori improbability whatever, in the fact of miracles having been wrought by one who died and rose from the dead? If a man did this it is a small thing that he should also walk upon the waves and command the winds. But if there is no a priori difficulty with regard ...
— The Fair Haven • Samuel Butler
... shouted again and again at this feat of their commander, and they went into the battle feeling sure that the victory would be theirs. They rushed upon the English with fury and although outnumbered three to one, completely defeated them. Thousands of the English were slain and a great ...
— Famous Men of the Middle Ages • John H. Haaren
... and lovingly to me, that they are styled fools to a proverb, and yet scorn to be ashamed of their name. Well, let fond mortals go now in a needless quest of some Medea, Circe, Venus, or some enchanted fountain, for a restorative of age, whereas the accurate performance of this feat lies only within the ability of ...
— In Praise of Folly - Illustrated with Many Curious Cuts • Desiderius Erasmus
... had carried on within the memory of the present generation, and it was beyond the power of the authorities not only to organize the imperial defences on an adequate scale but even to realize the necessity of attempting the feat. In a word, the prospect could hardly ...
— England and Germany • Emile Joseph Dillon
... her sake. Ah, me! I trust I was not well awake— The voice was very sweet, Yet a faint languor kept me in my seat. I saw a pouted lip, a toss, and heard Some low expostulating tones, but stirred Not even a leaf's length, till the pretty fay, Wondering, and half abashed at the wild feat, Climbed the low pales, and laughed my gloom away. And here again, but led by other powers, A morning and a golden afternoon, These happy stars, and yonder setting moon, Have seen me speed, unreckoned and untasked, A round of precious hours. Oh! here, where ...
— Poems of Henry Timrod • Henry Timrod
... supporting its own weight for over two minutes," is given by Romanes as a proof that man is descended from a simian (ape-like) ancestor. As this same picture is widely copied in evolution text books, they must have failed to get the picture of any other infant performing a like feat. Just how this affords any convincing proof that man is a monkey, we leave the reader to figure out. Our attention is called to the way this child and another child, whose picture is likewise generally copied, hold their feet (like monkeys climbing trees) showing ...
— The Evolution Of Man Scientifically Disproved • William A. Williams
... stream, I watch a dragon-fly, or darning needle, float over the water, his flight so swift my eyes can hardly follow it. At last it stops in front of me, perfectly poised for a second, but with wings in rapid motion, then darts away to perform its acrobatic feat of standing on its head on a lilypad, or to feast on the gnats and other insects that it captures while on the wing. Truly it is rightly named ...
— Byways Around San Francisco Bay • William E. Hutchinson
... spoke, Daniel Quilp drew off and drank three small glassfuls of the raw spirit, and then with a horrible grimace took a great many pulls at his pipe, and swallowing the smoke, discharged it in a heavy cloud from his nose. This feat accomplished he drew himself together in his former ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... or two the ball was restarted, and the greater noise had diminished to the sensitive uneasy murmur which responded like a delicate instrument to the fluctuations of the game. Each feat and manoeuvre of Knype drew generous applause in proportion to its intention or its success, and each sleight of the Manchester Rovers, successful or not, provoked a holy disgust. The attitude of the host had ...
— The Matador of the Five Towns and Other Stories • Arnold Bennett
... a chap capable of such a feat must join the football squad, said the fellows of the University. But Bill's father back in Cincinnati had entirely different plans for the giant freshman. He was eager to have his son win his laurels ...
— Modern Americans - A Biographical School Reader for the Upper Grades • Chester Sanford
... like tops of half inflated balloons. Enormous buttresses supporting nothing leaned incapable against the building. Bottles and wine cups formed part of the mad construction. Satyrs' heads leered instead of windows. The whole palace looked reeling drunk. It was a tremendous feat of imagination and skill. The hour that he spent in elaborating it passed like five minutes. When he had finished he ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke
... Raven remembered afterward that the horse, startled by the swish of the blows, jumped aside and that he called out to him. He did not propose depriving Martin of the means of exit. The fellow did not meet judgment lying down. He did a wild feat of struggling, but he was soft in every muscle, a mean antagonist. The act over, Raven released him, with an impetus that sent him staggering, set the whip in the socket and turned back to the house. At that moment he saw Tenney coming along the road, not with his usual hurried stride, but ...
— Old Crow • Alice Brown
... and bumped into an anvil, striking his knee against the metal. He swore again and, in his mounting anger, he seized the anvil in his great hands, lifted it bodily from its stand and heaved it into a corner—a feat which four strong men, at any time, would have experienced difficulty ...
— The Spoilers of the Valley • Robert Watson
... "possible" in the year 30 (or thereabouts) at Cana in Galilee. If I should live so long, I shall take great interest in the announcement of the performance of this operation, say, nine years hence; and, if there is no objection raised by chemical experts, I shall accept the fact that the feat has been performed, without hesitation. But I shall have no more ground for believing the Cana story than I had before; simply because the evidence in its favour will remain, for me, exactly where it is. Possible or impossible, that evidence is worth nothing. ...
— Collected Essays, Volume V - Science and Christian Tradition: Essays • T. H. Huxley
... rods would have been ruin, therefore we dropped them, and by getting the two lines in my own hand and using them as one, I managed to haul in the brace of fish by sheer strength, and the somewhat novel feat was accomplished of getting into the landing net a 3-lb. and a 5-lb. barbel upon lines that were entangled. As our lines were of the fine Nottingham description, and the gut fine also, this was to say the least a piece of good fortune. There will, I know, be some reader ...
— Lines in Pleasant Places - Being the Aftermath of an Old Angler • William Senior
... undrawn. The man and the boy, who were alone visible, seemed, in a sense, to be working under protest. Every now and then the former stopped to yawn, and the latter performed a difficult balancing feat upon his stool. De Grost, having satisfied his curiosity, came presently from his shelter, almost running into the arms of a policeman, who looked at him closely. The Baron, who had an unlighted cigarette in his mouth, stopped to ask for a light, ...
— Peter Ruff and the Double Four • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... connections with a phonograph that explains the features of the Canal Zone as the appropriate points are passed. Next to seeing the Canal itself, a sight of this miniature is the most interesting and instructive view possible of the great engineering feat. In one way it is even better than a trip through the Canal. It gives the broad general view impossible from any ...
— The Jewel City • Ben Macomber
... conducting his happy grub to the heaven of his mouth. When he would quench his thirst, he disdains to apply the earth-born beaker to his lips, but lets the water fall into his solemn swallow from on high,—a pleasant feat to see, and one which, like a whirling dervis, diverts you by its agility, while it impresses you ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... motion of the earth. Motion is changed into heat by stoppage, and the world turns with such velocity that its sudden stoppage would create a heat of intensity beyond the wildest flight of our imagination, and yet this impossible feat was performed that Joshua might have longer time to expend in slaying a handful of Amorites. The bible also upholds the doctrines of witchcraft and spiritualism, for Saul visited the witch of Endor, and she, after preparing the cabinet, trotted out the spirit ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll - Latest • Robert Green Ingersoll
... driver leaped from the car a second man disconnected himself from the shadows, paused for a moment to take orders from the new arrival, and then jumped into the seat just vacated. Whereupon the one-time driver performed precisely the same feat that Dauntless had performed three minutes before him. He jerked forth a couple of bags and then proceeded to lift from the tonneau of the car a vague but animate something, which, an instant later, resolved itself into the form of a woman at ...
— The Flyers • George Barr McCutcheon
... own personal friends, nay my masters: still, since I cannot quite say nothing of them I must say the plain truth, which is this; never in the whole history of art did any set of men come nearer to the feat of making something out of nothing than that little knot of painters who have raised English art from what it was, when as a boy I used to go to the Royal Academy Exhibition, to ...
— Hopes and Fears for Art • William Morris
... more than fulfilled this requirement, not only for piano but for orchestral music. As conductor of the famous Meiningen orchestra, he directed every work given without a note of score before him—considered a great feat in those days. He was a ceaseless worker, and his eminence in the world of music was more largely due to unremitting labor ...
— Piano Mastery - Talks with Master Pianists and Teachers • Harriette Brower
... our pair then (quite by chance!) In Vauxhall's garden of romance,— That paradise of nymphs and grottoes, Of fans, and fiddles, and ridottoes! What wonder if, the lamps reviewed, The song encored, the maze pursued, No further feat could seem more pat Than seek the Hermit after that? Who then more keen her fate to see Than this, the new LEUCONOE, On fire to learn the lore forbidden In Babylonian numbers hidden? Forthwith they took the darkling road ...
— Collected Poems - In Two Volumes, Vol. II • Austin Dobson
... Rosetta Stone, found by a French artillery officer in 1799, while Napoleon's soldiers were excavating preparatory to erecting fortifications at Fort St. Julien. The deciphering of its trilingual inscriptions was the greatest literary feat of modern times, in which Dr. Thomas Young and J. F. Champollion share ...
— History Of Egypt From 330 B.C. To The Present Time, Volume 12 (of 12) • S. Rappoport
... Rome for that purpose. This story I met with in a little volume, entitled Contes populaires, Prejuges, Patois, Proverbes de l'Arrondissement de Bayeux, recueillis et publies, par F. Pluquet, the frontispiece of which consists of a sufficiently graphic representation of the worthy canon's feat. Pluquet concludes his narrative by ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 233, April 15, 1854 • Various
... report of these fifty-three meetings was transcribed and furnished to the press by a thoroughly organized corps of women under the direction of Miss Mary F. Seymour of New York City, an unexcelled if not an unparalleled feat.[66] The management of the Council by the different committees was perfect in every detail, and the eight days' proceedings passed without a break, a jar or an ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various
... The whole body was passive, motionless, relaxed in every muscle and every nerve; and therein lay the marvel—to all save the thousandth human in this restless age, the impossibility. To be awake and still motionless, to do absolutely nothing, not even sleep—seemingly the simplest feat in life, it is one of the most difficult. A wild thing can do it, all wild things when need is sufficient; but man, modern man—Here and there one retains the faculty, as here and there one worships another God than wealth; ...
— Where the Trail Divides • Will Lillibridge
... the joy, surprise, laughter, gratulation, and comment which burst from the rescue party on discovering the hunter. We therefore leave it to the reader's imagination. One of the young braves was at once sent off to find the agent and fetch him to the spot with his cage on wheels. The feat, with much difficulty, was accomplished. Bruin was forcibly and very unwillingly thrust into the prison. The balance of the stipulated sum was honourably paid on the spot, and now that bear is—or, if it is not, ought to be—in the Zoological Gardens of New York, London, or Paris, ...
— The Prairie Chief • R.M. Ballantyne
... him from the shoulder to the nipple of his breast, so that he fell dead. Sakurai Jinsuke, seeing his brother killed before his eyes, grew furious, and shot an arrow at Matayemon, who deftly cut the shaft in two with his dirk as it flew; and Jinsuke, amazed at this feat, threw away his bow and attacked Matayemon, who, with his sword in his right hand and his dirk in his left, fought with desperation. The other Ronins attempted to rescue Jinsuke, and, in the struggle, Kazuma, who had engaged Matagoro, became separated from Matayemon, whose ...
— Tales of Old Japan • Algernon Bertram Freeman-Mitford
... passed in complete inaction. Frankly, Starratt did not know what move to make. He felt that he should have been trying to square matters, but to raise offhand six hundred-odd dollars was a feat too impossible to even attempt. He had few relations, and these few were remote and penniless, and his friends were equally lacking in financial resource. He was confident that he could convince Hilmer of the soundness of his new plan once he achieved ...
— Broken to the Plow • Charles Caldwell Dobie
... worrying, the Wends are now finally reduced to silence; their anarchy well buried and wholesome Dutch cabbage planted over it; Albert did several great things in the world; but this, for posterity, remains his memorable feat. Not done quite easily, but done: big destinies of nations or of persons are not founded gratis in this world, He had a sore, toilsome time of it, coercing, warring, managing among his fellow-creatures, while his day's work lasted—fifty years or so, for it began early. He died in ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... prepared, all that remained to do was to cut out the coats, a feat the crusoes accomplished by using their old garments for patterns; and then, by the aid of the useful little housewife which Celia Brown had given Eric, after an immense amount of stitching, the brothers were able at last ...
— Fritz and Eric - The Brother Crusoes • John Conroy Hutcheson
... and severe. But it was not in the least degree stiff and pedantic. It was, on the contrary, an intellect of marvelous flexibility. There was no material to which it could not adapt itself and no feat which it could not perform. You may observe this, for example, in the diverse ways in which he addresses different audiences. In one town he has to address a congregation of Jews; in another a gathering of heathen rustics; in a third a crowd of philosophers. To ...
— The Preacher and His Models - The Yale Lectures on Preaching 1891 • James Stalker
... stay, Emma managed, little by little, to take the place of second mother in the household. She had tact and finesse and cleverness enough even for that herculean feat. Grace's pale cheeks and last year's wardrobe made her ...
— Emma McChesney & Co. • Edna Ferber
... where he found a sheet of the Shakspeare letterpress was ready for his revision: thus, while the printers were asleep, the editor was @ awake; and the fifteen large volumes were completed in the short space of twenty months. The feat is recorded by Mr. Matthias, in ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... sure they could not get in. The gates opened inward, and three heavy bars were held in place by means of stout staples riveted to the sheets of steel. The boy had been told that the power of the Blue Pearl would enable him to accomplish any feat of strength, and he ...
— Rinkitink in Oz • L. Frank Baum
... friendly shelter of the dingle, to which with all due speed he was retreating. By this time all our comrades had assembled. Loud was the glee—boisterous the applause, which fell especially to me, who had performed with my own hand the glorious feat of slaying two wolves in one morning; and deep the cups of applejack, Scotch whiskey, and Jamaica spirits, which flowed in rich libations, according to the tastes of the compotators, ...
— Warwick Woodlands - Things as they Were There Twenty Years Ago • Henry William Herbert (AKA Frank Forester)
... the legend, William Tell shot the apple from his son's head. This act by tradition happened on the market-place, where in 1895, at the foot of an old tower (with rude frescoes commemorating the feat), there was set up a fine bronze statue (by Richard Kissling of Zurich) of Tell and his son. In 1899 a theatre was opened close to the town for the sole purpose of performing Schiller's play of Wilhelm Tell. The same year a new carriage-road was opened from Altdorf through the Schachen valley ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... a weariness to gods and men, gets the floor pulled from under it (Ripperda's feat, 30th April, 1725); so that Kaiser and Termagant stand ranked together, Apanage wrapt in mystery,—to the ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Volume V. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... in at the window to soothe the fevered bodies within prison walls. What a chance of escape they had missed during the noisy hours of the storm, when not a soul was abroad in the place! Knowing the opportunity was there, they tried desperately to force the door. But the feat was far beyond all the ...
— Sea-Dogs All! - A Tale of Forest and Sea • Tom Bevan
... that it was a most splendid feat, and also in regretting that he had not been on the ground to witness the wonderful migration of ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid
... The feat, indeed, was a splendid one. Some two hundred and fifty men, Hindoos and Mussulmans had, at the worst time of the year, brought two mountain guns, with their carriages and ammunition, across a pass which was blocked ...
— Through Three Campaigns - A Story of Chitral, Tirah and Ashanti • G. A. Henty
... on an island artificially made in the brook below the terraces in front of the Hive, breathing the pure, balmy air of outdoors instead of the indoor air of the workshop, reclining on the thick greensward, when some two or three essayed the not very difficult feat of jumping the merrily running brook, from embankment to embankment, and dared Tirrell, one of the number, to follow. He was the oldest and a little less supple than the others; and in trying the jump deliberately landed about three inches short of the opposite ...
— Brook Farm • John Thomas Codman
... born of man and woman, and no knight ever sat in a saddle, who was the equal of this man." Then the father turns to his son, and says: "Son, what dost thou think about him now? Is he not a man to be respected who has performed such a feat? Now thou knowest who was wrong, and whether it was thou or I. I would not have thee fight with him for all the town of Amiens; and yet thou didst struggle hard, before any one could dissuade thee from thy purpose. Now we may as well go back, for we should be ...
— Four Arthurian Romances - "Erec et Enide", "Cliges", "Yvain", and "Lancelot" • Chretien de Troyes
... unimaginable load of allotropic iron the water seethed and boiled; and instead of floating gracefully upon the surface of the sea, this time the huge ship of space sank like a plummet to the bottom. Having accomplished this delicate feat of docking the vessel safely in the immense cradle prepared for her, Nerado turned to the Terrestrials, who, now under guard, had been ...
— Triplanetary • Edward Elmer Smith
... to witness the experiment, were profoundly impressed; and there can be no doubt that the feat was reported to the enemy in the field, for they raised no stockade in the future, and reverted to their old plan of ...
— Through Three Campaigns - A Story of Chitral, Tirah and Ashanti • G. A. Henty
... against the combined armies of five kings, flushed with recent victory, to rescue one man! His army? Just 318 odd fellows, armed like a circus crowd. And he won too. "He always wins who sides with God." What pluck! Only a farmer! No war training! Yet what hero has eclipsed his feat? His open secret? He ...
— The Chocolate Soldier - Heroism—The Lost Chord of Christianity • C. T. Studd
... it furlongs deep, into the true centre of the matter; and there not only hits the nail on the head, but with crushing force smites it home, and buries it.—On the other hand, let us be free to admit, he is the most unequal writer breathing. Often after some such feat, he will play truant for long pages, and go dawdling and dreaming, and mumbling and maundering the merest commonplaces, as if he were asleep with eyes ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... seemed as though fully an hundred voices were raised to applaud the daring feat of the two boys, as the figure of the professor was seen coming rapidly down at the end of the ...
— The Outdoor Chums on the Gulf • Captain Quincy Allen
... reached Dongola. It is not easy to alter the plan of any campaign, nor to adapt a heavy moving machine to the work suitable for a light one. To feed 10,000 British soldiers on the middle Nile was alone a feat of organisation such as no other country could have attempted, but the effort was exhausting, and left no reserve energy to despatch that quick-moving battalion which could have reached Gordon's steamers early in December, and would have reinforced the Khartoum garrison, ...
— The Life of Gordon, Volume II • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... fired again, but he was soon made to alight, and it was as he turned to call his people, that he was struck. It was the most dexterous feat you ever saw—he was struck in the back with three stillettos at once. He fell, and was dispatched in a minute; but the lady escaped, for the servants had heard the firing, and came up before she could be taken care of. "Bertrand," said the ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe
... people, under whose auspices he accomplished this brilliant feat, had just emerged from their long contest with Spain. The return of peace to the Netherlands found many active spirits in readiness for fresh adventures, and Hudson's work opened for them a new ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 11 • Various
... Howlands' drawing-room all the guests had arrived. He accomplished this difficult feat, which is considered an art in fashionable schools, with easy grace and unconsciousness and ...
— Dan Merrithew • Lawrence Perry
... the impossible literary feat of showing us one person who is happy all the time, but he does what is more obvious, he makes us see a great many people who have snatches of good cheer in the midst of their humdrum lives. He lets us see another obvious ...
— Humanly Speaking • Samuel McChord Crothers
... either; a thing of startling and evil beauty. Spenser's pages of description, however, give no such vivid image of loathsome loveliness as do the first three lines of this stanza. "Her skin was as white as leprosy" is a feat in suggestion. ...
— Coleridge's Ancient Mariner and Select Poems • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... below. Holding his pail in one hand, with the other he steadied himself by clutching the ferns and brambles at his side, and at last reached the spring—a niche in the mountain side with a ledge scarcely four feet wide. He had merely accomplished the ordinary gymnastic feat performed by the members of the Eureka Company four or five times a day! But the day was exceptionally hot. He held his wrists to cool their throbbing pulses in the clear, cold stream that gurgled into its rocky basin; he threw the water over his head and shoulders; he swung his legs ...
— From Sand Hill to Pine • Bret Harte
... Mulinuu. From all salaries (I gather) a small monthly guarantee was withheld. The army was to cost from three to four thousand, Apia (many whites refusing to pay taxes since the suppression of the municipality) might cost three thousand more: Sir Becker's high feat of arms coming expensive (it will be noticed) even in money. The whole outlay was estimated at twenty-seven thousand; and the revenue forty thousand: a sum Samoa is well able ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 17 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... water. And while the Sultan was sitting and looking on and considering the operation, the Fakir brought out something from a casket and taking a pinch of it on the ear-picker besprinkled therewith the lead and copper and the tin which presently became virgin gold. He repeated this feat once or twice before the King who after that fell to working as the Religious had wrought and turned out in his presence the purest gold. So the Sultan rejoiced and was wont to sit before the Darwaysh whatever time his heart chose[FN160] and there and then he gathered ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... feat. The sweet was made from biscuits ground to powder, boiled and then mixed with jam. Never was anything like it. We lingered over the dish loud in our praise of the energetic Stoner. "By God, I'll give you a ...
— The Red Horizon • Patrick MacGill
... such matters, this Karl Gustav. In these same months, busy with the Danish part of the Controversy, he was doing a feat of war which set all Europe in astonishment. In January, 1658, Karl Gustav marches his Army, horse, foot, and artillery, to the extent of Twenty thousand, across the Baltic ice, and takes an island without shipping—Island of Fuenen, across the Little Belt—three miles of ice, and a part of the ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 12 • Editor-In-Chief Rossiter Johnson
... that the African Arabs first employed cannon in A.D. 1200, and that the Maghribis defended Algeciras near Gibraltar with great guns in A. D. 1247, and utilised them to besiege Seville in A.D. 1342. This last feat of arms introduced the cannon into barbarous Northern Europe, and it must have been known to civilised Asia for many a decade before ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton
... pure devotion and delight that vigorous Mr. Kingsley must shriek, "Windrush!" "Intellectual Epicurism!" and disturb himself in a somewhat diverting manner. Pollok declaimed against the attempt to lay hold of the earth with one hand and heaven with the other. But that is the peculiar feat for which the American is born,—to bring together seeing and doing, principle and practice, eternity and to-day. The American is given, they say, to extremes. True, but to both extremes; he belongs to the two antipodes. To the one he appertains ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 12, October, 1858 • Various
... at the surprise she expressed at Jane's feat in climbing from Wangat. Evidently Jane's reputation is not that of a ...
— A Holiday in the Happy Valley with Pen and Pencil • T. R. Swinburne
... attempts have been made by reckless miners to take a boat through, but it is much the same as trying to shoot the rapids below Niagara, and the place has well earned its title of "The Miners' Grave." Still, the feat has ...
— Klondike Nuggets - and How Two Boys Secured Them • E. S. Ellis
... mistress, giving as her reason that she had wished to prove his love by his obedience to her injunctions; and on this account she afterwards loved him the more, for she felt sure that he was capable of even a greater feat than this, though it were a very great one."— Lalanne's OEuvres de Brantome, ...
— The Tales Of The Heptameron, Vol. II. (of V.) • Margaret, Queen Of Navarre
... and the lecturer stopped and looked round. Then a big dark man pushed his way through the tittering crowd of girls and reaching the platform, stretched out his hand and grasping one of its supports, leaped lightly to it. The feat was not an easy one and it was boldly and gracefully done; a hearty cheer greeted its success. Even John joined in it and then he looked at the man and though there was a slight change in appearance, knew him. It was Ralph Lugur, and as ...
— The Measure of a Man • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... billiard-table, kick his servants, neigh, and make a fearful noise for an hour. His domestics would then get him into bed, and after much sweating he would wake without the least memory of what had passed. As "jumping over a billiard-table" might appear an incredible feat, at least for an aged cardinal, it is proper to remark that the billiard-tables of those times bore about the same relation in size to our modern billiard-tables that the ancient spinnet did to a ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 90, June, 1875 • Various
... no takers. Not a man believed him capable of the feat. Thornton had been hurried into the wager, heavy with doubt; and now that he looked at the sled itself, the concrete fact, with the regular team of ten dogs curled up in the snow before it, the more impossible the task ...
— The Call of the Wild • Jack London
... triumph towards his athletic young antagonist. On many an occasion had he played at solitaire fisticuffs with that leathern dummy, but never before had he struck it such a mighty blow, and now he did not believe that another in all Red Jacket could equal the feat ...
— The Copper Princess - A Story of Lake Superior Mines • Kirk Munroe
... down, and became impressive. In almost breathless silence, Derrick and the audience watched the man as he went through his performance. It was an extremely clever and daring one, and he brought it to a close by turning a double somersault as he left one trapeze and caught the other, a feat which made all who watched it ...
— The Woman's Way • Charles Garvice
... drums. The spectators recoiled against the walls of the houses shouting their Vivas! Behind the rabble could be seen the lances of the cavalry, the "army" of Pedro Montero. He advanced between Senores Fuentes and Gamacho at the head of his llaneros, who had accomplished the feat of crossing the Paramos of the Higuerota in a snow-storm. They rode four abreast, mounted on confiscated Campo horses, clad in the heterogeneous stock of roadside stores they had looted hurriedly in their rapid ride through the ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... under the gentle influence of the gentle child, this great feat was accomplished, almost as effectually, although by no means so suddenly, as in the well-known case of Cymon and Iphigenia, the most noted precedent upon record of the process of reaching the head through the heart. Venus, and a beautiful Welsh pony called Taffy, which her grandfather ...
— Jesse Cliffe • Mary Russell Mitford
... Cornelia Throop Geer (Atlantic Monthly). With a quiet and somewhat reticent art, the author of this story has succeeded in deftly conveying to her readers a delicate pastoral scene of innocence reflecting the dreams of two little Irish children. It was a difficult feat to attempt, as few can safely reproduce the atmosphere of an alien race successfully, and, even to Irish-Americans, Ireland cannot be sufficiently realized for creative embodiment. I am told that a volume of Irish stories is promised from the pen of ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... acting promptly. In a few decisive words he begged his companion, Lucius Albinus, to hurry back to his old soldiers and bring them to the rescue; then he desired his slaves to force a way for him with their powerful arms up to the door of the house. This feat was accomplished in no time, but how great was his astonishment when he ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... rolled by since Adele had eased Jonah of sixty pounds, and the Antoinette ring we had given her to commemorate the feat was now for the first time in danger of suffering an eclipse. In a word, a ...
— Jonah and Co. • Dornford Yates
... Europe, the spirit of adventure seized him, and he climbed those lofty mountains of the Alps, the Jungfrau and the Matterhorn, and for those deeds of daring was made a member of the Alpine Club of London. It may be mentioned here that climbing the mountains mentioned is a very difficult feat, and that more than one traveller has lost his life in such attempts. The peaks are covered with snow and ice; the path from one cliff to the next is narrow and uncertain, and a fall into some dark and fearful hollow usually means death. But the danger only urged Theodore ...
— American Boy's Life of Theodore Roosevelt • Edward Stratemeyer
... protection, succeeded in gaining admittance to the Lamaseries of Tibet and to the sacred literature of the isolated tribe which inhabits it, probably because he treated the Mongolians and the Tibetans as his brothers and not as an inferior race—a feat which has never been accomplished by generations of scientists. One cannot help feeling ashamed of humanity and science when one thinks that he whose labors first gave to science such precious results, he who was the first sower of such ...
— From the Caves and Jungles of Hindostan • Helena Pretrovna Blavatsky
... according to the old maxim, that the ordinary spectator should never be clearly conscious of the skill and travail that have gone to the making of the finished product. But the artist who would achieve a like feat must realise its difficulties, or what are his ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson - a Record, an Estimate, and a Memorial • Alexander H. Japp
... hold office in the east. Summoned to Nanking, he offended the emperor by asserting that real merit lay, not in works, but solely in purity and wisdom combined. He therefore retired to Lo-yang, crossing the swollen waters of the Yangtsze on a reed, a feat which has ever since had a great fascination for Chinese painters and poets. There he spent the rest of his life, teaching that religion was not to be learnt from books, but that man should seek and find the Buddha in his own heart. Thus Buddhism ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 2 - "Chicago, University of" to "Chiton" • Various
... life to be in danger, but she would have loved saving it. She fell to pondering possible conditions in which she could perform this feat, while ...
— The Dust Flower • Basil King
... on record a more colossal diplomatic feat than this treaty, by which Europe has been neatly divided into two sections: victors and vanquished; the former being authorized to exercise on the latter complete control until the fulfilment of terms which, even at an optimistic point ...
— Peaceless Europe • Francesco Saverio Nitti
... Fay's appearance something has already been said; enough, perhaps,—not to impress any clear idea of her figure on the mind's eye of a reader, for that I regard as a feat beyond the power of any writer,—but to enable the reader to form a conception of his own. She was small of stature, it should be said, with limbs exquisitely made. It was not the brilliance of her eyes or ...
— Marion Fay • Anthony Trollope
... seemed rather the object of pity than of amusement; he, however, appeared delighted with himself, and also with his audience, for at the conclusion he walked first to the left of the stage and bobbed his head in his usual grotesque manner at the side boxes; then to the right, performing the same feat; after which, going to the centre of the stage with the usual bob, and placing his hand upon his left breast, he exclaimed, "Haven't I done it well?" To this inquiry the house, convulsed as it was with ...
— Reminiscences of Captain Gronow • Rees Howell Gronow
... and the offer was accepted. While the two stood together in Cristoforo's wagon, and the intruder was haranguing the people, the quack, without a movement of his face or a twitch of his body, jerked his foot against his rival's leg and threw him to the ground. He had the effrontery to proclaim the feat as magnetic entirely, accomplished without bodily means, and by virtue ...
— The Humbugs of the World • P. T. Barnum
... (who hails from Greenlands), started yesterday (November 25), for a second attempt—the first having been a failure—to swim from Tithes Pier to Purchase Point Buoy. It was an unfavourable time of the year for such an unprecedented feat of natation, but the Hatfield Champion was confident of success. He is a perfect whale at long-distance immersions, and has been heard to talk of 'twenty years of resolute' swimming against stream as a comparative trifle. His 'pal and pardner,' SMIFF—more commonly ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, August 8, 1891 • Various
... a hand and began to uncoil the tresses. "Bateese has not answered me," she insisted. "I tell him that a man who should do such a feat as he named would live in song for ...
— Fort Amity • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... second week, we proceed to sponge the baby's body; the hands are washed with soap and rinsed, and, only those who have performed this feat know just how tightly they hold shut their little fists. These hands must be relaxed, and all the lint, dirt, and perspiration be thoroughly washed away. The arms, shoulders, chest, and back are then sponged. All the time the nurse or caretaker is ...
— The Mother and Her Child • William S. Sadler
... the enemy, and if we could get loose there would be no chance of our stealing away without being captured. But could we get across the river in safety, and make our way along the farther bank; or could we swim down? I shuddered as I thought of what would be the consequences of trying such a feat. ...
— Mass' George - A Boy's Adventures in the Old Savannah • George Manville Fenn
... from the branches, while the river rose and rose and rose, and the rain crept by inches under their tent flies, and the enemy walked the parapet of Vicksburg and laughed. Two gunboats accomplished the feat of running the batteries, that ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... early in 1862. The ships entered the Mississippi in April. Two forts opposite each other on the Mississippi, some distance from its mouth, had been strongly garrisoned by the Confederates, who considered them a perfect protection to New Orleans. These had to be passed. That perilous feat was performed by the fleet in the dark hours of the morning of April 24, when a terrific scene was witnessed. Farragut, in the wooden ship Hartford, led the way. Forts, gun-boats, mortar-boats, and marine monsters called "rams" opened their great guns at the ...
— Harper's Young People, September 7, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... sparkling and most unusual feat, and the whole stand rose to Teddy as he came in, and cheered and cheered until he was forced to pull off his cap. The Mount Vernon rooters forgot their partisanship and shouted as loudly as the rest. As for his schoolmates, they mauled and ...
— The Rushton Boys at Rally Hall - Or, Great Days in School and Out • Spencer Davenport |
