"Flat" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Brook; "excuse me, my dear, for so flat a contradiction, but I have seen Gertie frequently overcome by things,—by Junkie's obstinacy for instance, which I verily believe to be an insurmountable difficulty, and I've seen her thoroughly overcome, night after night, by ...
— The Settler and the Savage • R.M. Ballantyne
... just the difference in the amount of power brought to bear on the action. That is all. I have seen, in a workshop in Calcutta, a hammer that would crack an eggshell without crushing it, or bruise a lump of iron as big as your head into a flat cake. 'Phenomena' may amuse women and children, but the real beauty of the system lies in the promised attainment of happiness. Whether that state of supreme freedom from earthly care gives the fortunate initiate the power of projecting himself to the antipodes ...
— Mr. Isaacs • F. Marion Crawford
... him," panted Gwyn; and he had to begin cutting again; but this time he found that by laying the blade of the knife flat against the spell, he could force the point beneath the handkerchief. "Now, steady, Sam," he said, "I'm going to have one big cut, and then ...
— Sappers and Miners - The Flood beneath the Sea • George Manville Fenn
... of saltpetre earth, in the short cave, a flat rock was met with by the workmen, a little below the surface of the earth in the Cave; this stone was raised, and was about four feet wide and as many long; beneath it was a square excavation about three feet deep and as many in length and width. In this small ...
— Rambles in the Mammoth Cave, during the Year 1844 - By a Visiter • Alexander Clark Bullitt
... lie on my face, and propped on both elbows, write for hours by the light of a smoky lamp; but also produced the flow of ideas that previously refused to come out of their mental hiding places, or which presented themselves in a flat and uninteresting form. I consider, then, the use of alcoholic and other stimulation to be conducive to literary labours under circumstances of physical and mental exhaustion; and very often the latter is the normal condition of writers, ...
— Study and Stimulants • A. Arthur Reade
... moderate length, the effect of the beautiful hand, as it lies on the purple mantle—all this foretells the sense of beauty of a coming time, and unconsciously approaches to that of classical antiquity. In other descriptions Boccaccio mentions a flat (not medievally rounded) brow, a long, earnest, brown eye, and round, not hollowed neck, as well as—in a very modern tone—the 'little feet' and the 'two roguish eyes' of a ...
— The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy • Jacob Burckhardt
... could be done by going directly west. He thought the world round although most people at that time thought it flat. After many trails he laid his plans before the Court of the King ...
— History Plays for the Grammar Grades • Mary Ella Lyng
... end of a cord it swung with inconceivable speed in a circle that enclosed the group of planes. Again and again it whipped around them, while the planes, by comparison, were motionless. Its orbit was flat with the ground: then tilting, more yet, it made a last circle that stood like a hoop in the air. And behind it as it circled it left a faint trace of vapor. Nebulous!—milky in the moonlight!—but the ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, November, 1930 • Various
... laugh from little Fanny, who had set herself to play behind the curtain, drew my attention towards her. She was twice as big as my companion on the window-seat, though but a few months older; her broad, flat face, showed like the moon in its zenith, set in thin, silky hair: and with eyes as pretty as they could be, expressing neither thought nor feeling, but abundance of mirth and good-humor. The coloring of her cheek was beautiful; but one wished it gone sometimes, ...
— The Ladies' Vase - Polite Manual for Young Ladies • An American Lady
... 1 ounce gelatine for 10 minutes in 1 pint cold water, add 1/4 pound sugar, 1/2 pint red wine and 1/2 pint raspberry juice; stir over the fire till boiling hot, strain through a jelly bag and put in a form to cool; when firm turn out on a flat dish and serve with vanilla sauce or ...
— Desserts and Salads • Gesine Lemcke
... hours for a white man. If any part of his person was exposed, he was sure to catch a rifle-ball. It was impossible to discover them, even when their mischief was done. They would lie in the grass flat on their bellies for days, almost under the very palisades. Sometimes an Indian yell would be heard near one point of the fort, startling all the settlers—a yell raised only to draw them all in one direction, while the Indians ...
— The Adventures of Daniel Boone: the Kentucky rifleman • Uncle Philip
... was madame's common voucher, acceded, with this slight emendation—that he had heard numbers defy any critic of good taste to point out a flat line in Phaedre. ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. 6 • Maria Edgeworth
... transportation, the lashing of two canoes together, had practically disappeared on the upland waters by 1800, being replaced by a small open flat-bottomed boat called the bateau, which carried a load of from five to eight hogsheads. Two planters, N. C. Dawson and A. Rucker, both of Amherst County, patented a bateau, in the early 1800's, which was a great improvement over the earlier ones. This bateau was from forty-eight to fifty-four ...
— Tobacco in Colonial Virginia - "The Sovereign Remedy" • Melvin Herndon
... black stallion, but was stopped short. Black Bart was suddenly changed to a green-eyed devil, his hair bristling around his shoulders, his teeth bared, and a snarl that came from the heart of a killer. Satan also greeted his proposed rider with ears laid flat back on his neck ...
— The Untamed • Max Brand
... hour (12 M.). I rose, and thereby created a panic in my small world. Six cedar-birds disappeared over the bank, a song sparrow flew shrieking across the field, a squirrel interrupted in his investigations fled madly along the rail fence, every few steps stopping an instant, with hindquarters laid flat and tail resting on the rail, to see if his head was ...
— Little Brothers of the Air • Olive Thorne Miller
... from a home which was unendurable that Elizabeth flat-footedly, and for the first time, refused to accede to her parents' authority. When the matter of a spring term of school came up for discussion she refused to teach the home school again, though Mr. Crane had been so pleased with her work that he had offered it to her. When asked if Jake Ransom ...
— The Wind Before the Dawn • Dell H. Munger
... the fragments merely struck the soldiers on the flat without producing any wound. In one such case a blow upon the epigastrium was, according to the patient, followed by the vomiting of a considerable amount of blood. A fluid diet was ordered, and no further ill effects were noted. The following case illustrates an oblique blow of a perforating character, ...
— Surgical Experiences in South Africa, 1899-1900 • George Henry Makins
... breath from a glacier, "I have known but one man who was equal to this task, and he was a convict and in the galleys." The old man moans, "How it crushes me!" and, hearing that cry, under the cart the mayor crawls; and while those beside hold their breath, he, lying flat under the weight, lifts twice, ineffectually, and, with one herculean effort, lifts again, and the cart slowly rises, and many willing hands helping from without, the old man is saved; and Monsieur Madeleine arises, pale, dripping with sweat, garments muddy ...
— A Hero and Some Other Folks • William A. Quayle
... Charming, knight and troubadour, she surrendered. He told her many wonders of fairy things. He led her into lands where woman's soul is free and dances on buttercups. He made exquisite verses to her auburn hair. But when she learned that these same verses were composed in a flat in Milan which he shared with a naughty little opera singer of no account, she dismissed Prince Charming offhand, and betook herself alone to the middle of Abyssinia to satisfy her curiosity as to the existence there of dulcimer-playing maidens ...
— The Mountebank • William J. Locke
... this house, just as it is, to Mr. Atherton, who will come from the Norfolk branch to fill Father's post in London. We are to rent Mr. Southern's flat in Naples, while he takes a voyage round the world to try to regain his health. Dad means to put you into his office in Naples, Vin. Don't look so aghast! It's high time you started, and it will be a splendid opening for you. And as for Renie—of course ...
— The Jolliest School of All • Angela Brazil
... yea, they declared that the gods had committed nearly all unlawful acts, such as theft, adultery, and fraud." "Men seem to have created their gods, and to have given to them their own mind, voice, and figure. The Ethiopians made their gods black and flat-nosed; the Thracians red-haired and blue-eyed." This was spoken about 500 B. C. Herakleitos, about 460 B. C., one of the boldest thinkers of ancient Greece, declared that Homer deserved to be ejected from public ...
— Chips From A German Workshop, Vol. V. • F. Max Mueller
... this second engine was cylindrical in form, flat at the ends, and made of wrought iron. The furnace and flue were inside the boiler, within which the single cylinder, eight inches in diameter and four feet six inches stroke, was placed horizontally. As in the first engine, the motion of the wheels was ...
— Lives of the Engineers - The Locomotive. George and Robert Stephenson • Samuel Smiles
... the party having gained the broad flat mead through which the Calder flowed, took their way quickly towards its banks, the spot selected for the ordeal lying about fifty yards above the weir, where the current, ordinarily rapid, was checked by the dam, offering a smooth surface, with considerable depth of water. ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... door of the castle opens into one of these intermediate apartments. On the left-hand side of the entrance has been a spiral staircase, leading to the rooms above and to the top of the castle, which has had a flat roof, surrounded by a parapet and several turrets. The walls of this tower are very strong and firm; a deep buttress is placed at each corner, and one against the middle of each side wall. A small square tower has stood at the southern corner, but the greater part of it has been thrown down by ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... through Alsace or German France, and those who do, take the shortest route, by which they avoid Colmar. As I took the longest in preference, I shall in few words point out the features of the country. You pass through the valley of the Rhine, which is flat and fertile to excess, the only break in the uniformity of the country being the chain of Vorges mountains, distant about eight miles on your right, and the occasional passage of the dry bed of a winter torrent from ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... with a sock-dolyger that popped like a wagin' whip. It turned him half round, and as quick as lightnin' I let him hav another on the right temple, and followed it up with a leap that sprawled him as flat as a foot mat. I knowed my customer, and I never giv him time to rally. If ever a man was diligent in business it was me. I took him so hard and so fast in the eyes with my fists, and in his bred basket with my knees, that he didn't hav a chance to see or to breathe, ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume III. (of X.) • Various
... passenger carriages, carrying wounded and prisoners to Paris from the fighting lines in the north. It had been a gloomy morning, and the rain now fell in torrents. Nevertheless the townsfolk crowded up, and for half an hour managed to conduct a satisfactory combination of profit and pity by supplying big flat loaves, bottles of wine, fruit, cigarettes, and jugs of water to those in the train who had money and some who had none. One very old woman in white, with a little red cross on her forehead, turned up to take advantage of the only opportunity ever likely to fall in her way. A great Turco ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol 1, Issue 4, January 23, 1915 • Various
... Squitty one bright afternoon when the sea was flat and still, unharassed by the westerly. The Cove was empty. All the fleet was scattered over a great area. The Bluebird was somewhere on her rounds. MacRae dropped the Blanco's hook in the middle of Cradle Bay, a spot he seldom chose for anchorage. But he had a purpose ...
— Poor Man's Rock • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... losing a crop by frost; but George was more curious to discover if there were any other homesteads in the vicinity. His view was restricted, but there was no sign of life on the quarter-circle it commanded. A flat, grassy waste, broken only by a few clumps of brush, ran back to the horizon, and by the cold blue of the sky and the drift of a few light clouds floating before the prevalent westerly wind, he knew he was looking north. This was the way he must take if he could escape, ...
— Ranching for Sylvia • Harold Bindloss
... fierce passion, not so much for Death As against Life! all, all, into the dark— No more!—and science now could drug and balm us Back into nescience with as little pain As it is to fall asleep. This beggarly life, This poor, flat, hedged-in field—no distance—this Hollow Pandora-box, With all the pleasures flown, not even Hope Left at the bottom! Superstitious fool, What brought me here? To see her grave? her ghost? Her ghost ...
— Becket and other plays • Alfred Lord Tennyson
... poor little James exclaimed: "We only killed the toad because An ugly-looking thing he was,— So very ugly, that we knew He surely would some mischief do. He had great warts upon his back, And curious blotches, greenish black, And darting tongue, and strange flat head"— "And how he sprawled his legs!" cried Fred. "His mouth," said Martin, "was so wide, It reached far round on either side; And queer winks with his eyes he'd give: We did not dare to let him live. We had to kill that toad because An ugly-looking thing ...
— The Nursery, No. 165. September, 1880, Vol. 28 - A Monthly Magazine For Youngest Readers • Various
... Jolnes, finally. "The disappearance of people in this city has always been an interesting problem to me. I remember a case that I brought to a successful outcome a year ago. A family bearing the name of Clark disappeared suddenly from a small flat in which they were living. I watched the flat building for two months for a clue. One day it struck me that a certain milkman and a grocer's boy always walked backward when they carried their wares upstairs. Following ...
— Sixes and Sevens • O. Henry
... devised for turning the difficulty. The first idea of Marshal Belleisle, like that of Napoleon, was to gather the army at Ambleteuse and Boulogne, and to avoid the assemblage of transports by passing it across the Strait by stealth in flat boats. But this idea was abandoned before it had gone very far for something much more subtle. The fallacious advantage of a short passage was dropped, and the army was to start from three widely separated points all in more open waters—a ...
— Some Principles of Maritime Strategy • Julian Stafford Corbett
... Hyrricano's spout, Till you haue drench'd our Steeples, drown the Cockes. You Sulph'rous and Thought-executing Fires, Vaunt-curriors of Oake-cleauing Thunder-bolts, Sindge my white head. And thou all-shaking Thunder, Strike flat the thicke Rotundity o'th' world, Cracke Natures moulds, all germaines spill at ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... street in his favourite wedge, with the base resting on the home street, and this time he gave the signal, and so impetuous was their charge that they drove their way almost through the ranks of the Seminaries, and Speug himself, through sheer weight of attack, was laid flat in the middle of the street. Robertson and his officers rallied their forces, but it was possible that the Seminaries might have lost the day had it not been for the masterly foresight of Speug and the opportune arrival of Jock Howieson. That ...
— Young Barbarians • Ian Maclaren
... road is axed ter be run; them ez ain't got proputty alongside ain't nigh so anxious. But that thar strange valley man ez they say hev got a lung complaint, he won't sign nuther. He owns the house he built up thar on the flat o' the mounting an' cornsider'ble land, though he don't keep no stock nor nuthin'. 'Lows the air be soft an' good for the lung complaint. He 'lows he hev been tryin' ter git shet o' the railroads an' dirt roads an' human folks, an' he s'posed he hed run ter the ...
— The Mystery of Witch-Face Mountain and Other Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock
... are your grizzlies? You might have imported a few grizzlies to keep up the name of your railroad. Where are your herds of antelopes scudding before the advancing train? Nary an antelope have you got for to scud. Rocky Mountains, sir? They ain't rocky at all—they're as flat as my hand. Where are your savage gorges? I can't see none. Where are your wild injuns? Do you call them loafing tramps in dirty blankets, injuns? My belief is that they are greasers looking out for an engagement as song and dance men. They're 'beats,' ...
— Railway Adventures and Anecdotes - extending over more than fifty years • Various
... night. One night the great war pipe was held out to me and to Young-Man-Afraid-of-His-Horses. At daybreak, having met no one, we hid our horses and climbed to the top of the nearest butte to take an observation. It was a very hot day. We lay flat on our blankets, facing the west where the cliff fell off in a sheer descent, and with our backs toward the more gradual slope dotted with scrub pines and cedars. We stuck some tall grass on our heads and proceeded to study the landscape ...
— Indian Heroes and Great Chieftains • [AKA Ohiyesa], Charles A. Eastman
... these two impatient words threw down a sheet of notepaper from which he had been reading, carefully smoothed out the folds to make it flat, and then, balancing it upon one finger as he sat back in a cane chair with his heels upon the table, gave the paper a flip with his nail and sent it skimming out of the window of his military quarters at Campong Dang, ...
— Trapped by Malays - A Tale of Bayonet and Kris • George Manville Fenn
... for a swift glance at the lower windows, barred against intruders. The great house was of stone. On side and rear it stood flat against other houses. But it was built on a corner; and along its front and outer side, the tops of the basement windows were set a foot or more above the level of the sidewalk. To Gwendolyn those windows were huge eyes, peering out at her from ...
— The Poor Little Rich Girl • Eleanor Gates
... about six years old, and I was playing one day in the parsonage garden with my simple dolls, which I set up on flat stones, that I always collected for seats for my children, whenever and wherever I found them. For I had no such outfit for my dolls as you children have now, no sofas and chairs and other furniture. You all know that your grandfather was the pastor in Tannenburg, and we led a very ...
— Uncle Titus and His Visit to the Country • Johanna Spyri
... Japan, is a great bell, which swings in a huge wooden tower. The bell is a large bronze cup, with nearly perpendicular sides and a flat crown; and is sounded by bringing a big beam against the rim. It needs twelve natives to ring it. It used to be rung once a year, but it may now be heard twice or thrice a month. It is 18 feet high, 9-1/2 inches thick, 9 feet in diameter, and weighs almost 74 tons. ...
— Little Folks - A Magazine for the Young (Date of issue unknown) • Various
... the enthusiasm in this country. I fail to see it. The nominations have fallen flat. It has been known for a long time that Cleveland was to be nominated. That has all been discounted, and the nomination of Judge Thurman has been received in a quite matter-of-fact way. It may be that ...
— The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Volume VIII. - Interviews • Robert Green Ingersoll
... to the west of the public garden that fronts the north side of the church. In the above-mentioned wall is an Early English doorway, with a dripstone adorned with the nailhead moulding. The door has a flat-arched wooden frame, the spandrels of which are carved with fleurs-de-lys, while the wooden tympanum above has Perpendicular panelling. This doorway is not, perhaps, a relic of the Palace. It is not in its original position, and indeed is said to have ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Ripon - A Short History of the Church and a Description of Its Fabric • Cecil Walter Charles Hallett
... pairs above and one pair below (i.), are simply employed in grasping the food; the cheek teeth— the premolars (pm.) and molars (m.) behind— triturate the food by a complicated motion over each. Their crowns are flat for this purpose, with ...
— Text Book of Biology, Part 1: Vertebrata • H. G. Wells
... men of Gotham were not much worse off when they went to sea in a bowl than was Dick Lee in that rickety little old flat-bottomed punt. ...
— Dab Kinzer - A Story of a Growing Boy • William O. Stoddard
... social trees— especially of pines and firs, where trees of one species, crowded together, and competing with equal advantages for the air and light, form themselves into one wilderness of straight smooth shafts, surmounted by a flat sheet of foliage, held up by boughs like the ribs of a groined roof, while underneath the ground is ...
— Literary and General Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... fires, Vaunt-couriers to oak-cleaving thunderbolts, Singe my white head! And thou, all-shaking thunder, Strike flat the thick rotundity o' th' world!"—Lear, Act ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... the hill urge him not; Down the hill drive him not; Cross the flat spare him not; To ...
— Rhymes Old and New • M.E.S. Wright
... east and west two large openings, which were both windows and (as I am inclined to think) doors, also in time of action to pass from this dungeon out upon the principal rampart, from which the chief defence was to be made; for it must be observed, that the second ward was covered with a flat roof, at the height of that rampart, which made the area very roomy and convenient for numbers. These openings, therefore, upon occasion, served as passages for the soldiers to go from one rampart to the other. In the upper room of the innermost building there was a chimney to the north; underneath ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 19, - Issue 553, June 23, 1832 • Various
... Antilochus rushed towards him and struck him on the temples with his sword, whereon he fell head first from the chariot to the ground. There he stood for a while with his head and shoulders buried deep in the dust—for he had fallen on sandy soil till his horses kicked him and laid him flat on the ground, as Antilochus lashed them and drove them off to the host of ...
— The Iliad • Homer
... way out from the town she could see it beginning, bending the pliant prairie grasses to earth, flinging them fiercely upward, crushing them flat again and pressing them there, whistling, ...
— The Way of the Wind • Zoe Anderson Norris
... is used for a short business letter to a business man, open the sheet out flat, turn it so that the left side becomes the top of the sheet, and use as you would a single large sheet of commercial paper. This enables the reader to see the ...
— The Etiquette of To-day • Edith B. Ordway
... the handsomest Figure in Fencing, the Thumb Nail and the Flat of the Foil being directly up, and the Wrist supported so as to cover the Body below as well as above. In Quinte, the Wrist is more turned and raised that in Quart, which uncovers the Body, and weakens the Point, and therefore is ...
— The Art of Fencing - The Use of the Small Sword • Monsieur L'Abbat
... she came to the outskirts of the town, the canal lay on her right, and on her left, flat green fields, cut up by innumerable ditches, and set with frequent windmills, all black and white, and mostly used for maintaining the water level. There were people busy in the fields, but to Julia they only gave the idea of ants, and did not intrude upon her mind in the least. It ...
— The Good Comrade • Una L. Silberrad
... Atlantic gales, with never a tree for miles inward from the sea. Like a watch-tower above the moorlands stand. Slieve Callan, the crown of the mountain abruptly shorn. Under the shoulder of the great hill, with the rolling moorlands all about it, stands a solitary cromlech; formed of huge flat stones, it was at first a roomy chamber shut in on all four sides, and roofed by a single enormous block; the ends have fallen, so that it is now an open tunnel formed of three ...
— Ireland, Historic and Picturesque • Charles Johnston
... but we had had so many little differences of opinion upon this head that by a tacit understanding the subject was seldom referred to between us, and I did not know that he was actually publishing till one day he brought me a book and told me flat it was his own. I opened it and found it to be a series of semi-theological, semi- social essays, purporting to have been written by six or seven different people, and viewing the same class of subjects ...
— The Way of All Flesh • Samuel Butler
... planet; it was rather a dusky twilight, and as our eyes became accustomed to it, we could begin to discern something of the character of our surroundings. We flew within a hundred yards of the ground, which appeared to be perfectly flat, and soon we were convinced by the pitchy-black patches which frequently interrupted the continuity of the umbrageous surface beneath, that it was sprinkled with small bodies of water—in short, a gigantic Dismal Swamp, or Everglade. I need hardly say that it was Edmund who first drew this ...
— A Columbus of Space • Garrett P. Serviss
... silver. In some towns, only 50 cents was required, and in others, $1. The smirking Indian, with his wildness hidden away, or only peeping from his eye, entered. He disrobed with no shame. He was put flat on the floor, face down, on a little piece of matting. At this stage some objected. Then the Anglo-Saxon was down on the floor, wheedling, talking such sweetness as can be spoken without silliness only in ...
— In Indian Mexico (1908) • Frederick Starr
... (Ruth was surprised at his use of the word. It was as if he had studied at the university himself, instead of being ill-equipped from browsing at haphazard through the books in the library.) "But even the conventions must be real. Trees, painted on flat cardboard and stuck up on each side of the stage, we accept as a forest. It is a real enough convention. But, on the other hand, we would not accept a sea scene as a forest. We can't do it. It violates our senses. Nor would you, or, rather, ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London
... loves again. One's heart cracks and mends; one cracks the hearts of others, and these mend too. That is—inter alia—what life is for. If one day you want the tale of my life, Barry, you shall have it; though that's not what life is for, to make a tale about. So thrilling in the living, so flat and stale in the telling—oh let's get on and live some more of it, lots and lots more, and let the dead ...
— Dangerous Ages • Rose Macaulay
... unusual in such cases, it took another and more bodeful turn. That inextinguishable laughter of his was heard no more, or at best gave place to a feeble tittering; his stories dropped from his lips with but flat pungency; and instead of performing his lady-love's 'chores' with a mirthful readiness, he went through them in a heartsick way, the while directing towards her furtive looks of supplication. The true state ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I., No. IV., April, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... an indifferent Congress. "All would fall flat and dead if someone were not here to keep them in mind of their duty to us," she wrote a friend at this time, and to her diary she confided, "It is perfectly disheartening that no member feels any especial interest or earnest determination in pushing this question of woman suffrage, to ...
— Susan B. Anthony - Rebel, Crusader, Humanitarian • Alma Lutz
... course of time Adrian and Doria returned from Venice, their heads full of pictures and lagoons and palaces, and took proud possession of their spacious flat in St. John's Wood. They were radiantly happy, very much in love with each other. Having brought a common vision to bear upon the glories of nature and art which they had beheld, they were spared the little squabbles over matters of aesthetic ...
— Jaffery • William J. Locke
... is, that the adventure it celebrates never occurred. If it were a good anecdote, that seeming demerit would be its chiefest virtue, for creative power belongs to greatness; but what ought to be done to a man who would wantonly contrive so flat a one as this? If I were to suggest what ought to be done to him, I should be called extravagant—but what does the sixteenth chapter of ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... of Ethiopian north-south trending highlands, descending on the east to a coastal desert plain, on the northwest to hilly terrain and on the southwest to flat-to-rolling plains ...
— The 2001 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... find that there isn't a cave at all and that we are not sitting on a flat rock outside of it," suggested Bastin with heavy sarcasm, adding, "You are clever in your way, Bickley, but you can talk more rubbish than ...
— When the World Shook - Being an Account of the Great Adventure of Bastin, Bickley and Arbuthnot • H. Rider Haggard
... more radical. Neither of the Wartons would have ventured to pronounce the Gothic manners superior to the Homeric, as materials for poetry, whatever, in his secret heart, he might have thought.[1] To Johnson such an opinion must have seemed flat blasphemy. Hurd accounts for the contempt into which the Gothic had fallen on the ground that the feudal ages had never had the good fortune to possess a great poet, like Homer, capable of giving adequate artistic expression ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... the Lincolnshire fens in England, which has converted about 400,000 acres of marsh, pool, and tide-washed flat into ploughland and pasturage, is a work, or rather series of works, of great magnitude, and it possesses much economical, and, indeed, no trifling geographical, importance. Its plans and methods were, at least in part, borrowed from the example of ...
— The Earth as Modified by Human Action • George P. Marsh
... was just light enough to see the curtains of the terrible bed waving wide in the stream of wind that followed the opening of the door. He shut the windows, lighted his candle, and then saw the door he had set up so carefully flat on the floor: the chair he had put against it for a buttress, he thought, had not proved high enough, and it had fallen down over the top of it. He placed his candle beside it, and proceeded once more to raise it. But, casting his eyes up to mark the direction, he caught ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... Pampas in northern half, flat to rolling plateau of Patagonia in south, rugged Andes along ...
— The 2001 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... to ourselves at the idea of seeing the country, shut up in a close carriage and hardly daring to let the tips of our noses peep out to meet the bitter, biting cold. Besides, what was there to see? It was a flat, bare country, telling plainly of the near neighbourhood of the sea, and with its present mantle of snow, features of no kind were to be discerned. Roads, fields, ...
— Grandmother Dear - A Book for Boys and Girls • Mrs. Molesworth
... ringed with flowers and crowned with an imposing flagpole from which floated the Star-Spangled Banner. It was a note of gay melody struck athwart the discordant monotony of soiled tent houses, tumble-down huts and oblong, flat-roofed buildings stretching their disorderly array along the road. Coming closer he saw the name, "Pipesville," printed on the door, and knew that this must be the "summer home," as it was called, of San Francisco's beloved minstrel, Stephen Massett, otherwise "Jeems Pipes of Pipesville," ...
— Port O' Gold • Louis John Stellman
... were once more beginning to roll about on the grass, poking and pulling at each other in a manner which foretold the beginning of war. Clemence and Vie were gazing sentimentally through the branches. Plain Hannah, stretched flat along the ground, was barricading the movements of a tiny beetle, and chuckling over its persistent efforts to outwit her schemes. Dan sat with arms clasped around his knees, a picture of patience on a monument. The sight of his twisted lips, ...
— A College Girl • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... the greatest experience of his life, submerged in a sea wherein only a few islands of fact were visible, had to be content with this: his only friends were those who were firmly convinced of something which, he knew only too well, was a flat fraud! All this backing was based upon a ...
— The Blind Spot • Austin Hall and Homer Eon Flint
... manufactured by himself into "black salts" or impure potash, more often styled "Pots," which was the only strictly cash article in the country. It was necessary to haul the casks of potash to the mouth of Beaver river, or to Pittsburgh, from whence they drifted on flat boats down the Ohio and Mississippi to New Orleans, and from thence were shipped to New York. Much of the teaming ...
— Cleveland Past and Present - Its Representative Men, etc. • Maurice Joblin
... me; and it is only at intervals, when I act as the charioteer of my soul, that I have any difficulty with the resisting and unwilling horse that Plato has also described to us, the 'crooked, lumbering animal, put together anyhow, with a short, thick neck; flat-faced, and of a dark colour, with grey eyes and blood-red complexion; the mate of insolence and pride, shag-eared and deaf, hardly yielding to whip or spur.'[8] Just think how long I have lived at a distance from you, and how all those temptations you speak of have ...
— On the Future of our Educational Institutions • Friedrich Nietzsche
... cut illustrates the relation of the crystalline lens to sight. Lens Nearsight Focus shows the lens bulging forward and very convex; Lens Farsight Focus shows it flat and ...
— The Home Medical Library, Volume II (of VI) • Various
... lifeless and flat, And, by the holy rood! A man all light, a seraph-man, 490 On every ...
— Coleridge's Ancient Mariner and Select Poems • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... method of making a rib in three parts is identical with the method of the Greeks and Romans. The chief points of difference are that Viking ships were sharp at both ends—like a canoe, were round-bottomed instead of flat, and had one steering oar instead of two. The typical Viking ship was only about 75 feet in length; but a royal vessel—the Dragon of the chief—sometimes attained a length of 300 feet, ...
— A History of Sea Power • William Oliver Stevens and Allan Westcott
... I know," growled the other; "and I've forgotten how to be a gentleman almost now, but—but I was one, once, and my father was one, and I'll not have this sort of talk from you, Sir F. Clavering, that's flat. I want to go abroad again. Why don't you come down with the money, and let me go? Why the devil are you to be rolling in riches, and me to have none? Why should have a house and a table covered with plate, and me be in a garret here in ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Mississippi, and the three regiments made such an impetuous attack as to drive back the enemy to the bluff, and their leader, Colonel Baker, having fallen, a panic seemed to seize the command, so that they rushed headlong down the bluff, and crowded into the flat-boats, which were their means of transportation, in such numbers that they were sunk, and many of the foe were drowned in their attempt to swim the river. The loss of the enemy, prisoners included, exceeded the number of our troops in the action. The Confederate ...
— The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government • Jefferson Davis
... easternmost, none of which are a mile long: the westernmost, which has an extensive reef stretching to the North-West, is more than three miles in diameter, and appears to be of different formation to the other, being low and flat, whilst the rest are scarcely better than a heap of stones, slightly clothed with vegetation. Between the easternmost islet and the land, there is a strait of a league in width. The tide prevented our trying its depth: a league and a half ...
— Narrative of a Survey of the Intertropical and Western Coasts of Australia] [Volume 2 of 2] • Phillip Parker King
... at one side, and struck at him with a dagger. The father warded it off, and protected himself from it with his hands, without a Spaniard offering to aid him. A lay brother, named Fray Andres Garcia, [109] was coming toward the convent; he was making a small flat-bottomed boat [chatilla] there for the house at Manila. He was truly a religious of great virtue and example. He had formerly been a soldier in Flandes and Italia, and was one of the chosen men sent to Ginebra [i.e., Geneva] by Felipe IV, to carry ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XXIII, 1629-30 • Various
... character he always makes up as a male brunette. His countenance is of great breadth and flexibility, ranging in its full compass from the Placid Babe to the Outraged Congressman. His voice extends from B flat profundo to the ut de poitrine piccolo. The emotional nature of HAMLET gives him opportunity to exhibit both of these wonderful organs, and in tutta forza passages, where he forces them to their utmost power, ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 2, April 9, 1870 • Various
... May to the East End, and on the day Mr. Rex Holland returned to London he called for the girl at her flat to drive her to ...
— The Man Who Knew • Edgar Wallace
... nothing, I suppose," said Morva, cutting herself a long slice of the flat barley loaf; "only 'tis the same old questions that are often troubling me. What is going to become of me? What is in the future for me? I used to think when I grew to be a woman I would marry Will, and settle down at Garthowen close to you here, mother fach, and ...
— Garthowen - A Story of a Welsh Homestead • Allen Raine
... wealth; Contemptuous of all honourable rule, Yet bartering freedom and the poor man's life For gold, as at a market! The sweet words Of Christian promise, words that even yet Might stem destruction, were they wisely preached, Are muttered o'er by men, whose tones proclaim How flat and wearisome they feel their trade: Rank scoffers some, but most too indolent To deem them falsehoods or to know their truth. Oh! blasphemous! the book of life is made A superstitious instrument, on which We gabble o'er the oaths we mean ...
— Poems of Coleridge • Coleridge, ed Arthur Symons
... wagon, if the vineyard is any distance from the cellar. This is made of thin boards, half-inch pine lumber generally; 3 feet high inside, 10 inches wide at the bottom, 20 inches wide at the top, being flat on one side, where it is carried on the back, and bound with thin iron hoops. It is carried by two leather-straps running over the shoulders, as shown in Fig. 29, and should contain about eight to ten pails, or a little over ...
— The Cultivation of The Native Grape, and Manufacture of American Wines • George Husmann
... the Posey is definitely larger than any of the others. It is a very fine type of nut, having a high kernel percentage. It is rather flat in shape, but is attractive in appearance. Were it not for the fact that the trees are consistently light producers, it would be a ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Forty-Second Annual Meeting • Northern Nut Growers Association
... the north, the bank of Eleanor was followed to the first camping-place, Plum Flat, an attractive clearing, where wild plums have been augmented by fruit and vegetables. Here, after a good dinner served in the open by the municipal cooks, the municipal sleeping-bags were distributed, and soft and level spots were sought for their spreading. The seasoned campers were ...
— A Backward Glance at Eighty • Charles A. Murdock
... was thrown flat, almost rolling from the bridge. Dave, fortunately, had taken a grip ...
— Dave Darrin After The Mine Layers • H. Irving Hancock
... Life. If such a use of history is indeed to be educative for us, we must avoid the conventional view of it, as a mere chronicle of past events; and of historic personalities as stuffed specimens exhibited against a flat tapestried background, more or less picturesque, but always thought of in opposition to the concrete thickness of the modern world. We are not to think of spiritual epochs now closed; of ages of faith utterly separated from us; of saints as some peculiar species, ...
— The Life of the Spirit and the Life of To-day • Evelyn Underhill
... invented a special symbol {g} with a flat top projecting on both sides for the guttural stop g, reserving the continental g for the dzh sound in such words as egge (edge), leggen, seggen: the latter occurs in this extract only in gluternesse 167, ...
— Selections from early Middle English, 1130-1250 - Part I: Texts • Various
... point to notice is that these cells are always made at that degree of nearness to each other that they would have intersected or broken into each other if the spheres had been completed; but this is never permitted, the bees building perfectly flat walls of wax between the spheres which thus tend to intersect." It occurred to Darwin that certain changes in the architecture of the Melipona comb would produce a structure "as perfect as the comb of the hive-bee." He made a calculation, therefore, to show how this structural ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin Volume II - Volume II (of II) • Charles Darwin
... absolutely the most beautiful creature in existence, that the tale had lost its interest. The champagne of flattery, its creaming foam long ago melted into the brain, stood untasted before her, dull and flat as the subsided fountain poured by the last rain-shower into the tulip's cup. And so the fairy princess stood listless and apart from the joyous revel, her little form swaying lightly to and fro, with the undulations of the ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 4 October 1848 • Various
... of fire. On the east of the town, broken by the loops of the Klip River, is a broad green plain, some miles in extent, which furnished grazing ground for the horses and cattle of the besieged. Beyond it rises into a long flat-topped hill the famous Bulwana, upon which lay one great Creusot and several smaller guns. To the north, on Pepworth Hill, was another Creusot, and between the two were the Boer batteries upon Lombard's Kop. The British naval guns were placed upon ...
— The Great Boer War • Arthur Conan Doyle
... which Esclairmonde is presented to Henri? The meeting of Mr. Tigg and Martin Chuzzlewit at the pawnbroker's shop is full of pathos. Look at the poor, wasted but still handsome mother waiting her turn whilst the gin-drinking laundress pawns her flat-irons to gratify her passion for the deadly drink; note the insouciance of the thoughtless musician as he twangs the guitar which he is about to pledge, though probably dependent on it for bread. ...
— English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century. - How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times. • Graham Everitt
... Pat here?" suddenly asked Sylvia. "I'd rather have someone besides Pat, but the others are either away or worse than Pat. You're good for Pat if she isn't for you. You sort of stiffen her up—she told me so. Pat needs whalebone. When her purse gets flat her morals dwindle; mine always get scared stiff. I'll write twice a week, Joan, my lamb, Sunday and Wednesday. ...
— The Shield of Silence • Harriet T. Comstock
... last managed to say, his eyes gleaming with embarrassment. "I trust you have not found your first judgment a faulty one." He felt very foolish after this flat remark. ...
— Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... Mary Bell down in the path at the corner, she stood still, upon a flat rock by the side of the road, to see him turn the wagon and set ...
— Mary Erskine • Jacob Abbott
... of profanity. Hence, Ovid could never be a popular poet, for a poet to be really popular must be either serious or genuinely humorous; whereas Ovid is neither. His irony, exquisitely ludicrous to those who can appreciate it, falls flat upon less cultivated minds, and the lack of strength that lies beneath his smooth exterior [53] would unfit him, even if his immorality did not stand in the way, for satisfying or even ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... parchment glue, or gelatine and coarse brown sugar. Take pure glue and add one-quarter or one-third of its weight of brown sugar. Put both into a sufficient quantity of water to boil and reduce the mass to a liquid, then cast into thin cakes on a flat surface very slightly oiled, and, as it cools, cut up into pieces of a convenient size. When you wish to use it moisten one end in the mouth, and rub it on any substance you wish to join; a piece kept in ...
— The Christian Foundation, Or, Scientific and Religious Journal, Volume 1, January, 1880 • Various
... the room and arranged all the furniture in the house tidily. But hardly had they finished doing so when the Rakshas and his wife returned home. Then the two Princesses were so frightened that they ran up to the top of the house and hid themselves on the flat roof, from whence they could look down on one side into the inner courtyard of the house, and from the other could see the open country. The house-top was a favourite resort of the Rakshas and his wife. Here they would sit upon the hot summer evenings; here they winnowed the grain and hung ...
— Tales of Wonder Every Child Should Know • Various
... Rammekens, not far from Flushing, at the mouth of the Scheld, to superintend the great movement. So large a fleet as was there assembled had never before been seen or heard of in Christendom. Of war-ships, transports, and flat-bottomed barges there were at least thirteen hundred. Many eye-witnesses, who counted however with their imaginations, declared that there were in all at least three thousand vessels, and the statement has been reproduced by grave and trustworthy chroniclers. ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... small army of machines would spring savagely at a field of wheat. The one that could cut the allotted area in the shortest time was regarded as the winner. The harvester would rush on all kinds of fields, flat and hilly, dry and wet, and would cut all kinds of crops, and even stubble. All manner of tests were devised to prove one machine stronger than its rival; a favorite idea was to chain two back to back, and have them pulled apart by ...
— The Age of Big Business - Volume 39 in The Chronicles of America Series • Burton J. Hendrick
... subscribed faithfully to the great canons of publication—for instance, it was written on "one side only of the paper"; it was pinned together at the "left-hand top corner"; no publisher had ever found it necessary to gnash his teeth because it reached him rolled instead of flat. ...
— In the Mist of the Mountains • Ethel Turner
... the reflexed edges, at first reaching to the midrib, or nearly so; later opening out nearly flat; fruiting pinnules pod-like; sterile fronds ...
— The Fern Lover's Companion - A Guide for the Northeastern States and Canada • George Henry Tilton
... even more numerous, but consisting chiefly of a light-armed infantry, containing a large proportion of mercenaries whose hearts would not be in the fight, deficient in cavalry, and apt to trust mainly to its chariots. In the flat Egyptian plains lightly accoutred troops fight at a great disadvantage against those whose equipment is of greater solidity and strength; cavalry are an important arm, since there is nothing to check the impetus of a charge; and personal strength is a most important element in ...
— Ancient Egypt • George Rawlinson
... chin, flat like a plowshare, into the trough of his bronze hand. He stood for some moments in reflection, then he turned to Mr. ...
— The Sleuth of St. James's Square • Melville Davisson Post
... tell you the truth. You ask me why I don't care for Jim; this is the reason. I like you too much to care for any other man that way. I don't want you to say anything now, Owen,' I said, 'or to think I expect you to tell me that you have always cared for me. That'd be too FLAT. And I'm not going to say that I'll never care for anyone else, for I'm only twenty, and I don't know. But I couldn't see so much of you, Owen,' I said, 'and not care for you, and it seems as natural to tell you so as it would for me to tell another ...
— The Treasure • Kathleen Norris
... through places which had been the villages of Sermaize, Heiltz-le-Maurupt, Blesmes, and Huiron. Sermaize was utterly wiped out. As far as I could see, not one house was left standing. Not one wall was spared. It was laid flat upon the earth, with only a few charred chimney-stacks sticking out of the piles of bricks and cinders. Strange, piteous relics of pretty dwelling-places lay about in the litter, signifying that men and women with some love for the arts of life had lived here in decent comfort. A ...
— The Soul of the War • Philip Gibbs |
