"Oval" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... called "the vestment" by way of distinction, is worn only at the celebration of the Holy Communion. It is oval in shape, without sleeves, with an opening in the middle through which the head may be passed. In front and behind it extends nearly to the ground, and on the sides to the hands. It is usually ornamented ...
— The Worship of the Church - and The Beauty of Holiness • Jacob A. Regester
... shape of the face was slightly more oval than is common to the sons of a northern race, but nothing really out of the ordinary, just as the eyes were an ordinary kind of brown, with a disconcerting way of looking suddenly into your face, sweeping it in an all-comprehensive lightning ...
— The Hawk of Egypt • Joan Conquest
... husband was very sad. When his approaching marriage was announced to him, he cried out, "Then I can play no longer!" When, after the first interview, he was asked how he liked his fiancee, whose fresh face, oval and full, was charming, he responded: "She is really very beautiful; she looks like me when I am eating plums." Listen to his story of the nuptials. "Imagine my extreme embarrassment," he says, "my stupid disappointment, with my excessive bashfulness ...
— The Duchess of Berry and the Court of Charles X • Imbert De Saint-Amand
... in the old days exhausted his vocabulary in praise of the Luneta, the old Spanish city's pleasure ground, which overlooked the bay and Corregidor Island. It was an oval drive, with a bandstand at each end, inclosing a pretty grass plot. Here, as evening came on, all Manila congregated to hear the band play and to meet friends. The Manilan does not walk, so the broad drive was filled with several rows of carriages passing slowly around the oval. ...
— The Critic in the Orient • George Hamlin Fitch
... appeared before them a small glade—oval in shape. Tall firs edged this open space as evenly as graceful columns in a magnificent salle. The blue of the sky above it seemed especially bright, pure and dominant. The glade was full of children of various ages. They were sitting and reclining ...
— The Created Legend • Feodor Sologub
... of the Spanish court. One recalls, too, Catharine de' Medici with her squadron, of young and brilliant amazons—Catharine de' Medici who In this palace brought forth her two sons, Francis II, and Henry III. At the end of the oval court is a dome of rich and picturesque construction, called the baptistery of Louis XIII, because that king was baptized there. Then there are the apartments of the queen mothers; Catharine de' ...
— The Court of the Empress Josephine • Imbert de Saint-Amand
... worked, as the phrase goes, for all it was worth. His dark red hair parted in the middle was literally like a woman's, and curved into the slow curls of a virgin in a pre-Raphaelite picture. From within this almost saintly oval, however, his face projected suddenly broad and brutal, the chin carried forward with a look of cockney contempt. This combination at once tickled and terrified the nerves of a neurotic population. He seemed like a walking blasphemy, a blend of the ...
— The Man Who Was Thursday - A Nightmare • G. K. Chesterton
... for a second; on other sides of the fire there were trees. Of the faces which came out fresh and vivid as though painted in yellow and red, the most prominent was a girl's face. By a trick of the firelight she seemed to have no body. The oval of the face and hair hung beside the fire with a dark vacuum for background. As if dazed by the glare, her green-blue eyes stared at the flames. Every muscle of her face was taut. There was something tragic in her thus staring—her age between ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf
... is situated near the end of West Street, it is peculiarly neat, both as respects its external and interior appearance: an inscription upon an oval tablet in front, informs us, that it was erected by voluntary subscription in the year 1814. At the distance of about a hundred yards from the above, is the Roman Catholic chapel, with an embattled front surmounted by a cross: service is performed here, only once a ...
— The History and Antiquities of Horsham • Howard Dudley
... islands, joined by the mile-wide isthmus of Taravao. The larger island is Poroiunu or Tahiti-nui (big Tahiti), and the smaller Taiarapu, or Tahiti-iti (little Tahiti). Tahiti-nui is almost round; and Tahitiiti, oval. Both are volcanic, distinct in formation. They are united by a sedimentary piece of land long after they were raised ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien
... spruces a denser mantle of darkness, yet not so thick that Venter's night-practiced eyes could not catch the white oval of a still face. He bent over it with a slight suspension of breath that was both caution lest he frighten her and chill uncertainty of feeling lest he find her dead. But she slept, and ...
— Riders of the Purple Sage • Zane Grey
... possessed considerable personal attractions. The younger of the two, who was seated next to Jack, and seemed to monopolize his attention, could not be more than seventeen, though her person had all the maturity of twenty. She had delicate oval features, light, laughing blue eyes, a pretty nez retrousse, (why have we not the term, since we have the best specimens of the feature?) teeth of pearly whiteness, and a brilliant complexion, set off by rich auburn hair, a very white neck and shoulders,—the latter, perhaps, a trifle ...
— Jack Sheppard - A Romance • William Harrison Ainsworth
... became so hard that, unable to cut it, they were obliged to use a saw. Still longer ago, they used to despatch a special cheese to London in the road-waggon; it was made in thin vats (pronounced in the dairy 'vates'), was soft, and eaten with radishes. Another hard kind was oval-shaped, or like a pear; it was hung up in nets to mature, and traded ...
— Round About a Great Estate • Richard Jefferies
... blackness. A pair of hands as beautiful as ever a Greek sculptor added to the polished arms of a statue grasped Rodolphe's arm, and their whiteness gleamed against his black coat. The rash Frenchman could but just discern the long, oval shape of her face, and a melancholy mouth showing brilliant teeth between the parted lips, full, fresh, and brightly red. The exquisite lines of this face guaranteed to Francesca permanent beauty; but what most struck Rodolphe was the adorable freedom, the Italian frankness of this woman, ...
— Albert Savarus • Honore de Balzac
... shop, and turns upon me a pair of the finest black eyes I have ever seen,—like the eyes of a fawn. She is very simply clad, in a coolie robe leaving arms and ankles bare, and clinging about the figure in gracious folds; her color is a clear bright brown-new bronze; her face a fine oval, and charmingly aquiline. I perceive a little silver ring, in the form of a twisted snake, upon the slender second toe of each bare foot; upon each arm she has at least ten heavy silver rings; there are also large silver ...
— Two Years in the French West Indies • Lafcadio Hearn
... taking compassion on her doleful stories, had promised to keep her as long as he travelled with me, and in the end to send her back to her parents at Ujiji. She was a beautiful woman, with gazelle eyes, oval face, high thin nose, and fine lips, and would have made a good match for Saim, who had a good deal of Arab blood in him, and was therefore, in my opinion, much of the same mixed Shem-Hamitic breed. But as I did ...
— The Discovery of the Source of the Nile • John Hanning Speke
... Xanthe rarely looked into this liquid mirror, though she might have enjoyed gazing at it frequently, for her figure was tall and slender as the trunk of a cypress, her thick fair hair glittered like gold, the oval of her face was exquisitely rounded, long lashes shaded the large blue eyes that could conceal no emotion which stirred her soul, and when she was alone seemed to ask: "What have the gods allotted for my future?" Yet in their gaze might often be read the answer ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... brown, violet, and white. The former are sometimes of so dark a shade that they pass for black, and are double the price of the white. Having first sawed them into square pieces, about a quarter of an inch in length, and an eighth in thickness, they grind them round or oval upon a common grind-stone. Then, a hole being bored lengthways through each, large enough to admit a wire, whipcord or large thong, they are strung like beads, and the string of wampum is completed. Four or six strings joined in one breadth, and fastened to each other with ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 3 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... conversing. She was a dame whose beauty was mature, but still radiant. Her figure was superb; her dark hair crowned with a tiara of curious workmanship. Her rounded arm was covered with costly bracelets, but not a jewel on her finely formed bust, and the least possible rouge on her still oval cheek. ...
— Coningsby • Benjamin Disraeli
... between the two, and Ted, not wishing to be an eavesdropper, looked away again. But in the swift glance he had given the young girl—for now he saw that she was little else—he made a mental note of her. The gray eyes with the long, dark lashes, the oval face, beautiful in shape and of an ivory tint; the scarlet, curving lips, the slender, trim figure, and the strange, subtle perfume which she exhaled, one would ...
— Ted Strong's Motor Car • Edward C. Taylor
... an oval-shaped cavity situated at the very beginning of the canal. It is surrounded by the lips in front, by the cheeks on the sides, by the hard palate above and the soft palate behind, and by the tissues of the lower jaw below. The mucous membrane lining the mouth ...
— Physiology and Hygiene for Secondary Schools • Francis M. Walters, A.M.
... covering the parting of her full, wavy hair, proclaimed her of the neighboring town of Arles. She had all the Arlesienne's Roman beauty—the finely chiselled features, the calm, straight brows, the ripe lips, the soft oval contour, the clear olive complexion. She had also lustrous brown eyes; but these were full of tears. She only turned them on him for a moment; then she resumed her apparently interrupted occupation of sobbing. Aristide was a soft-hearted man. ...
— The Joyous Adventures of Aristide Pujol • William J. Locke
... detail of the knee-joint and the muscles of the calf are strongly marked beneath the skin; the long, thin, and low-arched feet are flattened out at the extremities owing to the custom of going barefoot. The head is rather short, the face oval, the forehead somewhat retreating. The eyes are wide and fully opened, the cheekbones not too marked, the nose fairly prominent, and either straight or aquiline. The mouth is long, the lips full, and lightly ridged along their outline; the teeth small, even, well-set, and remarkably ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 1 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... chimney corner, after their fur wrappings are removed, before the sound of wheels is again heard, and shouts of joy announce the arrival of the Greens. That tall, slender, intellectual girl, with pale oval face and expressive eyes, is Ellen. Her cousins are very proud of her, for she has just returned from boarding-school with a high character for scholarship, and has carried away the prize medal for poetry from all competitors; the children think ...
— Holidays at the Grange or A Week's Delight - Games and Stories for Parlor and Fireside • Emily Mayer Higgins
... earth or gravel. There were betwixt the trees, growing naturally on their own roots, some stakes fixed in the earth, which, with the trees, were interwoven with ropes, made of heath or birch-twigs, up to the top of the Cage, it being of a round or rather oval shape, and the whole thatched and covered over with bog. This whole fabric hung, as it were, by a large tree, which reclined from the one end, all along the roof to the other, and which gave it the name ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745. - Volume I. • Mrs. Thomson
... and relentless cruelty, has the face of a singularly beautiful young girl. Judge Jeffreys, whose delight in blood was only equalled by the foulness and extravagance of his profanity, looks in his picture the very type of spiritual wistfulness. Samuel Pepys, whose large oval eyes and clear-cut profile suggest a somewhat voluptuous and very fastidious aristocrat, was really a man of the people, sharp to a miracle in all the detail of the humblest kind of life, and apparently unable to keep from exposing himself to scandal in many sorts ...
— Among Famous Books • John Kelman
... the prairie. The fur coat has already been exchanged for the pea-jacket. No longer is the fur cap crushed down upon the head and drawn over the ears until little more than the oval of the face is exposed to the elements; it is still worn occasionally, but now it rests upon the head with the jaunty cant of ...
— The Story of the Foss River Ranch • Ridgwell Cullum
... have resembled in size and appearance that of the Scotch fir; the largest, which consisted from bottom to top, as seen in section, of from nine to ten scales, appears to have been more in the proportions of the oblong oval cones of the spruce family; while a cone of intermediate length, but of considerably greater breadth, assumed the rounded form of the cones of the cedar. I have found in the same deposit what seems to be the sprig ...
— The Testimony of the Rocks - or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed • Hugh Miller
... chair in front of the small oval mirror of her bureau, she unclasped the brooch which held her lace collar, and, seating herself, began to unfasten her hair. Suddenly she paused, her uplifted arms falling mechanically to ...
— The Two Vanrevels • Booth Tarkington
... queer things to have for ornaments; there were also some funny little figures carved in ivory and wood—dear little stumpy elephants amongst them, which she liked very much. The only picture in the room she presently noticed, hung over the fireplace in an oval frame. It was a portrait of a gentleman with powdered hair and a pig-tail; his eyes were as blue as the cups and dishes; he was clean shaven, and wore a blue coat and a very large white shirt frill. As Susan was looking up at him the door at the end ...
— Susan - A Story for Children • Amy Walton
... the platform, in a kind of long box, there was, as the old priest said, a woman whose beautiful, perfectly oval face, lighted up by splendid eyes, denoted no greater age than six-and-twenty. She was suffering from a frightful disease. The disappearance from her system of the calcareous salts had led to a softening of ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... rose to go; as he did so an exclamation of concern escaped him. Lying on the ground by the side of the bench was a small oval packet, wrapped and sealed with the solicitude of a chemist's counter. It could be nothing else but a cake of soap, and it had evidently fallen out of the youth's overcoat pocket when he flung himself down on ...
— Beasts and Super-Beasts • Saki
... of you lately, Sparks," he observed, applying a steady match flame to the oval butt. He spoke in his usual tones, with a gruffness that balanced on a razor edge between rough jocularity and official harshness. "What's new? Have one of ...
— Peter the Brazen - A Mystery Story of Modern China • George F. Worts
... get to Grandmama first, but sixty-three does not rise from low deck chairs so swiftly as forty-three. So she had to watch her daughter leading her mother, and to note once more with a familiar pang the queer, unmistakable likeness between the smooth, clear oval face and the old wrinkled one, the heavily lashed deep blue eyes and the old faded ones, the elfish, close-lipped, dimpling smile and the old, elfish, thin-lipped, sweet one. Neville, her Neville, flower of her flock, her loveliest, first ...
— Dangerous Ages • Rose Macaulay
... of this oval which serves for the refraction, namely, the part DK, ending at K, if AK is the tangent. As to the, other part, Des Cartes has remarked that it could serve for reflexions, if there were some material of a mirror of such a nature that by its means the force of the rays (or, as we ...
— Treatise on Light • Christiaan Huygens
... coffin, much decayed, and the body carefully wrapped in cerecloth, into the folds of which an unctuous matter mixed with resin had been melted, to exclude the external air. The skin was dark and discoloured—the pointed beard perfect—the shape of the face was a long oval—many of the teeth remained—the hair was thick at the back of the head, and in appearance nearly black—that of the beard was of a redder brown. The head was severed from the body. The fourth cervical vertebra was found to be cut through ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 20, Issue 558, July 21, 1832 • Various
... they looked at each other long and silently. The face on the pillow had still the remains of beauty. The powerful mouth and chin, the nose, which was long and delicate, the deep-set eyes, and broad brow under strong waves of hair, were all fused in a fine oval; and the modelling of the features was intensely and passionately expressive. That indeed was at once the distinction and, so to speak, the terror of the face,—its excessive, abnormal individualism, its ...
— Helena • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... unusually tall, and her figure had kept its undulating, stately grace. Her hair, dazzlingly white, was piled high above her ample brow, held in place with jewelled combs and glittering pins. Her face had lost its fine oval and youthful freshness, but who of any feeling or intelligence would not have far preferred the worn countenance, expressing in a thousand sensitive shades and emotions the story of her life and love? And if every other beauty had failed, ...
— The Maid of Maiden Lane • Amelia E. Barr
... caique, cigarette in hand, lounged the nephew of the Khedive, Mahmoud Bey; scarce twenty, slight, oval face with full lips, hair black as sealskin and as soft, and eyes that smouldered under heavy lids. Four rowers in blue and silver attended his Highness, the amber-colored boat skimming the waters as a tropical ...
— The Veiled Lady - and Other Men and Women • F. Hopkinson Smith
... to the revealing dawn, was like and yet curiously unlike the face into which John a Cleeve had looked and taken his dismissal; a woman's face now, serener than of old and thoughtfuller. These two years had lengthened it to a perfect oval, adding a touch of strength to the brow, a touch of decision to the chin; and, lest these should overweight it, had removed from the eyes their clouded trouble and left them clear to the depths. The elfin Diane, the small ...
— Fort Amity • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... fashion of a kerchief close across her head and under her chin; and over that she drew the cowl. She lifted the candle to the mirror. Surely her disguise would be complete to any one who had not lived very near to her. To herself she looked strangely like her brother Dino: the full oval of the cheek had only to be wasted; the eyes, already sad, had only to become a little sunken. Was she getting more like him in anything else? Only in this, that she understood now how men could ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... in violet silk without ornaments or jewels of any description. Her face was slightly flushed, and the colour intensified the pale gold diadem of her blonde hair. The expression—sweet-tempered, yet a little arrogant—of her countenance and its long oval form bore a striking resemblance to the early portraits of Marie Antoinette. Her under-lip had also a slight outward bend, which seemed an encouragement when she smiled, and contemptuous when she frowned. Her figure—though too slight ...
— Robert Orange - Being a Continuation of the History of Robert Orange • John Oliver Hobbes
... his hand, lifted the object out, and examined it. Inside was something of a strange, yet familiar shape, oval, and flattened at the ends. He lifted it out of its wrappings, and there, in his hand, he saw a ...
— Golden Stories - A Selection of the Best Fiction by the Foremost Writers • Various
... only be perfectly steady at all times, but that the rims should not be so near to the centre of vision as to interfere with it under any circumstances. The sporting spectacles which I recommend are similar to those used for billiards and shooting. The rims and the glasses are circular and not oval in shape, and they are unusually large—about 1-1/2 inches in diameter. By the use of them the player is afforded a field of vision as wide as with the naked eye, so that practically he is not conscious that he is wearing glasses at all. The eye ...
— The Complete Golfer [1905] • Harry Vardon
... on the following page is from an example in the same museum, shewing a different decoration, the oval plaques of figures and coats of arms being of carved ivory let into the surface of the coffer. This is an early specimen, and belongs as much to the last chapter as ...
— Illustrated History of Furniture - From the Earliest to the Present Time • Frederick Litchfield
... him, and he tottered after him down the drive. They entered the hall—just such a high light hall as such a house should own. A slim-balustered staircase, wide and shallow and once creamy-white, climbed out of it under a long oval window. On either side delicately moulded doors gave on to wool-lumbered rooms, whose sea-green mantelpieces were adorned with nymphs, scrolls, and Cupids in ...
— Actions and Reactions • Rudyard Kipling
... the smell of his eels. So, making out his bill he presented it to Kisaburo, who seemed to be much pleased. He called to his wife to bring his iron-bound money box, which was done. Emptying out the shining mass of kobans (oval gold pieces, worth five or six dollars), ichi-bu and ni-bu (square silver pieces, worth a quarter and a half dollar respectively) he jingled the coins at a great rate, and then touching the eel-man's bill with his fan, bowed, low and said with ...
— Japanese Fairy World - Stories from the Wonder-Lore of Japan • William Elliot Griffis
... dimmest corner of her boudoir, amid a profusion of delicate and distinguished objects, hung one of the familiar oval canvases, in the inevitable garlanded frame. The mere outline of the frame called up ...
— The Hermit and the Wild Woman and Other Stories • Edith Wharton
... The Indian stood looking upon Annette as if endeavouring to scan her features; and as if to help him in his object, a flash of flame from a burning building in the Fort shone for a moment upon the boy, and showed the cowardly warrior a pair of large, soft eyes, fringed with long lashes; a sweet oval face, and a delicate little hand. The sudden observation seemed to fill him with contempt and courage, and turning he bounded away with another ...
— Annette, The Metis Spy • Joseph Edmund Collins
... going to get such and such a hat?" or, "Have you seen the new gloves with the oval pearl buttons?" were but sample phrases out of a ...
— Sister Carrie • Theodore Dreiser
... district of Mianwali. In addition to the Indus the other streams flowing through the district are the Kurram (which falls into the Indus) and its tributary the Gambila. The valley of Bannu proper, stretching to the foot of the frontier hills, forms an irregular oval, measuring 60 m. from north to south and about 40 m. from east to west. In 1901 the population was 231,485, of whom the great majority were Mahommedans. The principal tribes inhabiting the district are: (1) Waziri Pathans, recent immigrants from the hills, for the most part peaceable ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 3 - "Banks" to "Bassoon" • Various
... Sir Hugh," heartily answered the visitor, with a fine forgetfulness as to the title. When he rode away, Major Hawke caught sight of a womanly figure at a window above him, watching his retreat in due state, and there was the flutter of a handkerchief as his carriage drove around the oval. "I wonder if Ram Lal knows about the jewels. I must buy him out and out, or make Berthe Louison do it unconsciously for me," so mused the victorious renegade. "He is afraid of me! Now to dispatch Ram Lal to Allahabad. I must only see Berthe ...
— A Fascinating Traitor • Richard Henry Savage
... square is regular in shape, and the central portion is laid off as a park, and ornamented with shrubbery, flowers, walks, and a fountain. It is one of the prettiest parks in the city, and covers an area of several acres. It is oval in form, ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... himself that he had never seen finer features than were possessed by this fair young stranger. Her nose was straight, her upper lip was short, and might have been modelled from Cupid's bow; her chin did not form a perfect oval after the cold and severe Grecian type, but was slightly firm and prominent, receding with decided yet exquisite curves to the full white throat. Her cheeks had a transparent fairness, in which the color came and went instead of lingering in any conventional ...
— A Face Illumined • E. P. Roe
... ligaments to the walls of the middle ear. The tympanum moves the malleus, the malleus the incus, and the incus the stapes, the last pressing into the opening O of Fig. 133, which is scientifically known as the fenestra ovalis, or oval window. As liquids are practically incompressible, nature has made allowance for the squeezing in of the oval window membrane, by providing a second opening, the round window, also covered with a membrane. When the stapes pushes the oval membrane in, the round membrane bulges out, ...
— How it Works • Archibald Williams
... smoke of the engine-fire rising in the mid-sea. An ugly reef is this of the Dhu Heartach; no pleasant assemblage of shelves, and pools, and creeks, about which a child might play for a whole summer without weariness, like the Bell Rock or the Skerryvore, but one oval nodule of black-trap, sparsely bedabbled with an inconspicuous fucus, and alive in every crevice with a dingy insect between a slater and a bug. No other life was there but that of sea-birds, and ...
— Memories and Portraits • Robert Louis Stevenson
... reassured me vastly. A small wood fire was crackling in one of those old-fashioned country grates, and beside it was seated a strikingly handsome young man, who was reading earnestly out of a fat little book. He had an oval, olive-tinted face, with long black hair, ungathered in a queue, and there was something of the poet or of the artist in his whole appearance. The sight of that refined face, and of the warm yellow firelight which beat upon it, was a very cheering one ...
— Uncle Bernac - A Memory of the Empire • Arthur Conan Doyle
... the small tins of a round or oval shape are most convenient. Fill them but little ...
— Seventy-Five Receipts for Pastry Cakes, and Sweetmeats • Miss Leslie
... arch was bent according to the same inflection. The two semicircles could have fitted one into the other, both very narrow, both a little long-shaped and oval and of a restricted radius which was the very ...
— The Teeth of the Tiger • Maurice Leblanc
... side of the present Place du Chateau. It was, and is, a truly grand apartment, with diamond-paned windows, and rich, dark wall decorations on which Catherine's device, a crowned C and her monogram in gold, frequently appears. There was, moreover, a great oval window, opposite which stood her altar, and a doorway led to her writing-closet, with its secret drawers and wall panels, which well served her purpose of intrigue ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 4 (of 10) • Various
... of the face's oval was perhaps Unduly gaunt and a trifle overweighted by the broad brow. The whole body stood a thought too high for its breadth, with a hint of coltishness in the thin arms and thick elbow-joints. So judged the Collector, as he would have appraised a ...
— Lady Good-for-Nothing • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... some cigarettes?" cried Lully, a small man with a very brown oval face to which long eyelashes and a little bit of silky black moustache gave almost a winsomeness. When he laughed he showed brilliant, very regular teeth. As he handed the cigarettes about he looked searchingly at Martin ...
— One Man's Initiation—1917 • John Dos Passos
... very plain, very neat. On the bed lay folded a white night gown; a pair of knitted pink slippers stood close together on the floor beside it. There was a cheap curtain across the alcove; she drew it, turned, looked at him; and slowly her oval face crimsoned. ...
— Ailsa Paige • Robert W. Chambers
... affectionate as in childhood. I could hardly believe my eyes when I saw them, yet I soon traced the same dear countenances, and marvelled that though changed from the round, dimpled ones of infancy, to the more delicate oval of maidenly beauty, the expression of gaiety and innocence of their faces is still ...
— The Idler in France • Marguerite Gardiner
... little awkward. While they talked he tried to fix her permanently in his memory. When he learned that the young girl beside her was her daughter he judged her to be a year or so younger than himself. Her face, which must have been handsome, had remained intelligent. It was an oval face with strongly marked features. The eyes were very dark blue and steady. Their gaze began with a defiant note but was confused by what seemed a deliberate swoon of the pupil into the iris, revealing for an instant a temperament ...
— Dubliners • James Joyce
... of tiger and leopard skins lie in wait to cherish the cool feet of students, but there is nothing to trip up my own, along the long diameter of the long oval room, if sometimes the fancy seizes me to walk up and down there for hours alone, listening to the 'voices' ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 3, September 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... love with Elizabeth Thorley ever since one night, almost a year ago, when he had looked across a room and seen her red-brown hair, her oval face with its uplifted pointed chin, and met her laughing eyes. He had held her gaze for the fraction of a moment and in that time his heart had stopped beating. When it began again the world was a very different place to him. But, alas, it was not a different place to her. She had ...
— Mary Rose of Mifflin • Frances R. Sterrett
... oval, obscurely toothed Tupelo A C Ovate to oval Persimmon A C Also 3-lobed Sassafras A C Sometimes opposite, clustered at the ends of the branchlets Dogwoods A D Tremulous habit, oval Poplars A D Lanceolate, finely serrate, sometimes entire Willows A ...
— Handbook of the Trees of New England • Lorin Low Dame
... and floated on through the windows into the moonlight; one by one the older part of my guests left me; only a few of the gayest and youngest still persevered in that indefatigable waltz, the oval room looking as if a score of bubbles were playing hop and skip,—for in the crinoline expansions the gentlemen's black pen-and-ink outlines were all lost. At length even these went; the music died; its soul ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... figure had the intensely feminine curves which artists have caused to be associated with women of the Latin races; her eyes were like those of her elder sister, but larger and more brilliant. So big and splendid they were that they made the smooth oval of her olive face seem small. Quantities of heavy black hair rippled away from a forehead which would have been square if the hair had not grown down in a point like a Marie Stuart cap. Her chin was pointed, with a deep ...
— The Golden Silence • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... in size very much, and at about two and a half miles the creek ran out in a lot of small watercourses. At the upper end of the creek we found in its bed what appeared to be an arrangement for catching fish: it consisted of a small oval mud paddock about twelve feet by eight feet, the sides of which were about nine inches above the bottom of the hole, and the top of the fence covered with long grass, so arranged that the ends of the blades overhung scantily by several inches the sides of the ...
— Successful Exploration Through the Interior of Australia • William John Wills
... to look at the "lay-out." "What a woman!" he thought. She was not too tall, with smoothly rounded bust and hips, and long waist, all well displayed by her perfectly fitting garments. Her face was oval, the mouth rather large, the eyes of dark, dark-blue, prominently outlined under thin, silken lids. Her dull-gold hair was combed low over the ears, and her smile showed rows of sparkling teeth before it dived into twin dimples. Strangest of all, it was an innocent face, ...
— The Spoilers • Rex Beach
... pleasant than to look at the many troops of children assembled on the plain to play; and to watch them as they were dragged about in little queer arobas, or painted carriages, which are there kept for hire. I have a picture of one of them now in my eyes: a little green oval machine, with flowers rudely painted round the window, out of which two smiling heads are peeping, the pictures of happiness. An old, good-humoured, grey- bearded Turk is tugging the cart; and behind it walks a lady ...
— Notes on a Journey from Cornhill to Grand Cairo • William Makepeace Thackeray
... much more beautiful example. It is of oak, covered with plates of silver. The lower or more ancient side bears a cross within a rectangular frame. In the centre of the cross is a crystal set in an oval mount. The decoration of the four panels consists of metal plates, the ornament being a chequer-work of squares and triangles. The lid has a similar cross and frame, but the cross is set with pearls and metal bosses, ...
— Old English Libraries, The Making, Collection, and Use of Books • Ernest A. Savage
... over the river from the Waterfoot of the Rhone the sound of a voice calling. Grace Allen sat thoughtfully looking out of the rose-hung window of the boathouse. Her face was an oval of perfect curve, crowned with a mass of light brown hair, in which were red lights when the sun shone directly upon it. Her skin was clear, pale as ivory, and even exertion hardly brought the latent under-flush ...
— Bog-Myrtle and Peat - Tales Chiefly Of Galloway Gathered From The Years 1889 To 1895 • S.R. Crockett
... hands ceremoniously with the punghulo's oldest wife, and tabeked to the rest of his big family, the old man scrambled down the ladder, and sent a boy up a cocoanut tree for some fresh nuts. In a moment half a dozen of the great, oval, green nuts came pounding down into the sand. Another little fellow snatched them up, and with a sharp parang, or hatchet-like knife, cut away the soft shuck until the cocoanut took the form of a pyramid, ...
— Tales of the Malayan Coast - From Penang to the Philippines • Rounsevelle Wildman
... insect's breathing; they are protruded out of the water and conduct the air to the spiracles at the end of the body, about which I must tell you more at another time. The eggs of the water-scorpion I have frequently found; they are of an oval form, with seven long hair-like projections at one end. But it is time to go home, our walk to-day is over; let us look forward to another ...
— Country Walks of a Naturalist with His Children • W. Houghton
... wrist, as the rose-tinted rays fell on those natural and artificial charms, produced a dazzling effect in the shady corner. On plainer persons, this display might have seemed, in Maltboy's eyes, a glaring instance of bad taste. But, looking at that small, oval face, those large, flashing black eyes, complexion of red and white, so beautifully blended that it hardly seemed a work of nature, pouting lips, even, white teeth, and heavily braided hair, Maltboy thought that no ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... passionate love of amusement," bringing him into the world, a seven-months' child, on the 29th October, 1795, instead of the 29th of December, as would have been conventionally proper. Lord Houghton describes her as "tall, with a large oval face, and a somewhat saturnine demeanour." This last circumstance does not agree very well with what he had just before told us of her liveliness, but he consoles us by adding that "she succeeded, however, ...
— Among My Books • James Russell Lowell
... brown and speckled weevils at the approach of any object roll off the leaf they are sitting on, at the same time drawing in their legs and antennae, which fit so perfectly into cavities for their reception that the insect becomes a mere oval brownish lump, which it is hopeless to look for among the similarly coloured little stones and earth pellets among ...
— Contributions to the Theory of Natural Selection - A Series of Essays • Alfred Russel Wallace
... in past the Banksia roses, touched the edge of a giant amethyst which the Master wore, by inheritance of office, on his forefinger; and, because his hand trembled a little with age, the gem set the reflected ray dancing in a small pool of light, oval-shaped and wine-coloured, on the white margin of the sermon. He stared at it for a moment, tracing it mistakenly to a glass of Rhone wine—a Chateau Neuf du Pape of a date before the phylloxera—that stood neglected on the writing-table. (By his doctor's orders he took a glass ...
— Brother Copas • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... requisite when we see in the last memoir of the poet the statement that "John Keats was born on the twenty-ninth of October, 1795, in the upper rank of the middle class." His two brothers—George, older, and Thomas, younger than himself—were like the mother, who was tall, of good figure, with large oval face and sensible deportment. The last of the family was a sister—Fanny, I think, much younger than all,—and I hope still living (in 1874)—of whom I remember, when once walking in the garden with her brothers, my mother speaking ...
— Stories of Authors, British and American • Edwin Watts Chubb
... surprise; but the signal for the banquet was given, and the guests were marshalled to the board. As was the custom then, the feast took place not long after mid-day. It was a long, oval hall, the whole of one side opening by a marble colonnade upon a court or garden, in which the eye rested gratefully upon cool fountains and statues of whitest marble, half-sheltered by orange-trees. Every art ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... before, but most curiously framed, carved, and painted with exquisite art, and purposely for this service and occasion. The form of it was after that of the Roman triumphant chariots. The seats in it were made of oval form in the back end of the chariot, so that there was no precedence in them, and the faces of all that sat in it might be seen together. The colors of the first chariot were silver and crimson, given by the lot to Gray's Inn: the chariot was drawn with four horses ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson
... hallway, I found the aforesaid Maison to be a lad some fifteen years old, who might easily have passed for twelve, so slight was his build. His long, pale, oval face, which seemed almost unhealthy, was relieved by a pair of ...
— With Those Who Wait • Frances Wilson Huard
... one spot at this present moment which was enclosed by an agricultural labourer fully sixty years ago. It is an oval piece of ground of considerable size, situated almost exactly in the centre of a very valuable estate. He and his descendants continued to crop this garden of theirs entirely unmolested for the whole of that time, paying no rent whatever. It soon, however, became necessary ...
— The Toilers of the Field • Richard Jefferies
... slashed, and around the neck is the broad linen collar of the period, fastened in front with cord and tassels. On the left, in the background, is the promontory of Quebec, with the representation of several turreted buildings both in the upper and lower town. On the border of the oval, which incloses the subject, is the legend, Moncornet Ex c. p. The engraving is coarsely executed, apparently on copper. It is alleged to have been taken from an original Moncornet in France. Our inquiries as to where the original ...
— Voyages of Samuel de Champlain, Vol. 1 • Samuel de Champlain
... women he had ever known seemed pale and colorless beside this girl standing near, her head a little aside as she looked at him. There was not a detail of her that escaped him, that failed to make its appeal, from the perfect oval of her face down to the small feet in bead-ornamented moccasins. A woman's eyes, her hair, her hands, her bearing—these things had never obtruded upon his notice before. Yet he saw now that a shaft of sunlight on her hair made it shimmer ...
— Burned Bridges • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... ceiling were painted golden clouds, in the midst of which appeared, upon the blue vault of the sky, an eagle holding the lightning, and guided towards England by a star, the guardian star of the Emperor. In the middle of this chamber was a large oval table with a plain cover of green cloth; and before this table was placed only his Majesty's armchair, which could be taken to pieces, and was made of natural wood, unpainted, and covered with green morocco stuffed with hair, while upon the table was a boxwood writing-desk. ...
— The Private Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Constant
... with two oval palettes of wood, resembling those used by painters, ten inches long and six broad. A hole was cut in each for the thumb, so that they could be bound to the palms of the hands. A kind of sandal, shaped somewhat like the palettes, was fastened tightly to each foot. When rigged for ...
— From Boyhood to Manhood • William M. Thayer
... a perpetual fascination for him. He was considering the tints in Bessie's hair and in the delicate, downy rose-oval of her cheeks, and the effect upon them of the sunshine flickering through the vine leaves. When the after-glow was red in the west, the dark green cloth of the window-curtain, faded to purple and orange, made a rich background for her fair ...
— The Vicissitudes of Bessie Fairfax • Harriet Parr
... an oblique cast to them, would make a difference. The general shape of the head was unalterable, but the Burmese nose and mouth did not differ very greatly from the European; except that the nostrils were smaller and, in shape, were round rather than oval. ...
— On the Irrawaddy - A Story of the First Burmese War • G. A. Henty
... a horizontal blue stripe in the center superimposed on a vertical red band also centered; five white five-pointed stars are arranged in an oval pattern in the center of the blue band; the five stars represent the five main islands of Bonaire, Curacao, Saba, Sint Eustatius, ...
— The 1995 CIA World Factbook • United States Central Intelligence Agency
... oval and lifted the least bit at the outer corners. The bow of her upper lip drew up a little most engagingly at the middle (like Teresa Durbeyfield's), an irregularity more endearing to the eye than any flawlessness. There was the possibility of tenderness in this mouth; ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... is very fine and large, of a semi-oval form, entering several leagues into the land, and may be about nine leagues in circuit; but the anchorage is not every where equally good, and there is some danger near the shore. The middle of the bay is commanded ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 11 • Robert Kerr
... sell. What would an amateur give me for that?" She unfolded the white paper and made a motion for me to take from her a small oval portrait. I possessed myself of it with a hand of which I could only hope that she did not perceive the tremor, and she added, "I would part with it only for ...
— The Aspern Papers • Henry James
... odd was the various shapes of their coifs. Some had soft flapping blinkers, others wore them goffered and stiffened with starch; these hid their face at the bottom of a deep white tunnel; others, on the contrary, showed their countenance set in an oval frame of pleated cambric, prolonged behind into conical wings of starched linen lustrous from heavy irons. As he looked over this expanse of caps, Durtal was reminded of the Paris landscape of roofs, in shapes resembling the funnels worn by these nuns and the cocked ...
— The Cathedral • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... that the Chinese eggs now arriving are nearly all brown and resemble those laid in this country by the Cochin China fowl. This, however, is not the only graceful concession to British prejudice, for the eggs, we notice, are of that oval design which is so popular ...
— Punch, or The London Charivari, Vol. 152, February 21st, 1917 • Various
... ethnological antipodes. A line drawn at right angles, or nearly so, to this polar line through Europe and Southern Asia to Hindostan, would give us a sort of equator, around which round-headed, oval-headed, and oblong-headed, prognathous and orthognathous, fair and dark races—but none possessing the excessively marked characters ...
— Lectures and Essays • T.H. Huxley
... alone, Watched by secret oval eyes, Where the ruby wishing-stone Smouldering in the darkness lies, Anyone that wanted things Touched the jewel and they came; We were wealthier than kings Could ...
— Collected Poems - Volume One (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... the silent and lonely night-watches had flooded my infant soul with such an ecstasy of rapture and delight. The portrait, which is before me as I write, was that of a young and beautiful girl. The complexion was clearest, faintest, most transparent olive; the face a perfect oval, crowned with luxuriant masses of wavy, deep chestnut hair, the colour almost merging into black; indeed it would have been difficult to decide that it was not black but for the lights in it, which were of a deep dusky golden tone. The eyebrows were beautifully arched, ...
— The Rover's Secret - A Tale of the Pirate Cays and Lagoons of Cuba • Harry Collingwood
... a sudden crash, and all three stood in blank affright and astonishment as the oval, gilt-framed mirror, which hung between the front windows, fell to the floor in the midst of them, and shivered into a dozen pieces. It had been one of the proud possessions of their own mother when she came to the house as a bride, and was the ...
— Sara, a Princess • Fannie E. Newberry
... she had beheld, more plainly, so that it definitely assumed life, with lines and hues from which the child, in her after-descriptions, never departed. The lady's eyes were blue and very mild, her mouth was rosy and smiling, the oval of her face expressed both the grace of youth and of maternity. Below the veil covering her head and falling to her heels, only a glimpse was caught of her admirable fair hair, which was slightly curled. Her robe, which ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... small student's stomach and relieving agitation of his backward heels. I make out that it had decidedly been given to Mlle. Delavigne to represent to my first perception personal France; she was, besides not being at all pink or shy, oval and fluent and mistress somehow of the step—the step of levity that involved a whisk of her short skirts; there she was, to the life, on the page of Gavarni, attesting its reality, and there again did ...
— A Small Boy and Others • Henry James
... upon a "chest of drawers," and now that that particular piece of furniture stood proudly in her room, much of her day was given to polishing it and the half-dozen stuffed bottomed chairs, which were the envy of every housewife in the village. A large oval mirror stood upon the top of the drawers, and was draped with a piece of cheap curtain cloth, bleached to the ...
— The Underworld - The Story of Robert Sinclair, Miner • James C. Welsh
... they are retained for a time. They are then transferred to a kind of marsupial pouch, analogous to that of the kangaroo, where their development proceeds. After passing through certain changes here, the egg issues from the maternal pouch as an oval body, clothed with cilia—an animalcule in external aspect, and as unlike its parent as can well be imagined. For awhile the little creature dances freely through the water, and leads a gay, roving ...
— Chambers' Edinburgh Journal - Volume XVII., No 423, New Series. February 7th, 1852 • Various
... instant, Mrs. McAlister gazed at her guest, at the slender figure and the small oval face crowned with its masses of red-gold hair. Then, to the surprise of every one but Theodora, she gave ...
— Teddy: Her Book - A Story of Sweet Sixteen • Anna Chapin Ray |
