"Serpentine" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the Latin tongue, but the Greek characters, thus: [Greek: ROGERIOS RAEX].[a] The Renaissance has invaded this church too, and flowery inlaid marbles with gilded scroll balconies (it is a nuns' church) mingle with the bold discs and oblong panels of porphyry and green serpentine. In the nave of the small church sat in comfortable arm-chairs two monks, one black, one white, leaning their ears to gilded grates and receiving the confessions of the sisterhood. The paschal candlestick ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 34, August, 1860 • Various
... that our mythological Arcadias are flat and stale. Arcadia is in Burgundy, not in Greece; Arcadia is at Les Aigues and nowhere else. A river, made by scores of brooklets, crosses the park at its lower level with a serpentine movement; giving a dewy freshness and tranquillity to the scene,—an air of solitude, which reminds one of a convent of Carthusians, and all the more because, on an artificial island in the river, is a hermitage in ruins, the interior elegance of which is worthy of the luxurious financier ...
— Sons of the Soil • Honore de Balzac
... fantastic figures carousing around the other camp fire. One form, in particular, I seemed to distinguish from the others. He was gathering the Indians in line for some native dance and had an easy, rakish sort of grace, quite different from the serpentine motions of the redskins. By a sudden turn, his profile was thrown against the fire and I saw that he wore a pointed beard. He was no Indian; and like a flash came one of those strange, reasonless intuitions, which precede, ...
— Lords of the North • A. C. Laut
... room. Its size was not much less than that of the hall of audience; its decoration in the same grandiose style. Enormous pillars of granite supported the roof; statues stood, or had stood, all around; the pavement, composed of serpentine, porphyry, and Numidian marble in many hues, was a superb work of art. But Basil saw only the human figures before him. In a chair covered with furs sat a man of middle age, robust, fair-complexioned, with a keen look in his ...
— Veranilda • George Gissing
... Tiffles had quite uncoiled his serpentine arms from her, and while she was looking fiery indignation at him, the door was pushed open, and the ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... of Blue Mountains, they descended upon a vast plain, almost a dead level, sixty miles in circumference, Of excellent soil, with fine streams meandering through it in every direction, their courses marked out in the wide landscape by serpentine lines of cotton-wood trees, and willows, which fringed their banks, and afforded sustenance to great numbers ...
— Astoria - Or, Anecdotes Of An Enterprise Beyond The Rocky Mountains • Washington Irving
... and calico-printing; and its value is so great, the proprietor of a serpentine tract in Shetland, where chromate of iron was found by Professor Jameson, cleared, in a few years, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 13, No. 362, Saturday, March 21, 1829 • Various
... has rendered the rude hill which, covered chiefly with evergreens, overlooks Spa, a succession of beautiful promenades. Serpentine walks are led through its thickets, agreeable surprises are prepared for the stranger, and all the better points of view are ornamented by seats and summer-houses. One of these places was covered by a permanent protection against the weather that had a ...
— A Residence in France - With An Excursion Up The Rhine, And A Second Visit To Switzerland • J. Fenimore Cooper
... of trees. Here and there the timid, yellow flame of gas lamps struggled to assert itself against the all-embracing silver brightness. Here and there windows glowed warm, set in the pale, glistering facades of the adjacent houses. A cool, light wind, hailing from the direction of the unseen Serpentine, stirred the hanging clusters of the pink geraniums that fell over the curved lip of the stone vases, standing along the broad coping of the balcony, and gently caressed the girl's ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... for a pencil, produced the rump thereof, spread the letter upon his knee, and began writing on the back of it. It was like an internal surgical operation, for his tongue protruded as he wrote, marking his progress by a series of serpentine ...
— St. Cuthbert's • Robert E. Knowles
... mouth. As in languor and suffering he reclined upon his couch, all the beauty and bloom of May, in a delightful clime, were spread around him. The silent flood swept by, rushing down a distance of countless leagues in the north, until, after a serpentine course of more than a thousand miles, through the most wonderful scenes of nature, and fringed with the villages of innumerable savage tribes, it was lost in the great Mexican gulf. The Indians moved about in silence, seldom exchanging a word with ...
— The Adventures of the Chevalier De La Salle and His Companions, in Their Explorations of the Prairies, Forests, Lakes, and Rivers, of the New World, and Their Interviews with the Savage Tribes, Two Hu • John S. C. Abbott
... which separated the old parish of Chelsea from the City of Westminster was determined by a brook called the Westbourne, which took its rise near West End in Hampstead. It flowed through Bayswater and into Hyde Park. It supplied the water of the Serpentine, which we owe to the fondness of Queen Caroline for landscape gardening. This well-known piece of water was afterwards supplied from the Chelsea waterworks. The Westbourne stream then crossed Knightsbridge, and from this point formed the eastern boundary of St. Luke's parish, Chelsea. ...
— Chelsea - The Fascination of London • G. E. (Geraldine Edith) Mitton
... the lightness of a panther the Jam-wagon sprang into the centre of the ring. More than halfway he met Locasto, and now his intention seemed to be to draw his man on rather than to avoid him. I watched his every movement with a sense of thrilling fascination. He had resumed his serpentine movements, advancing and retreating with shadow-like quickness, feinting, side-stepping, pawing the air till he had his man baffled and bewildered. Yet he never ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service
... long may be called a toy ship, but it is a toy that can teach much to an Admiral, and I should not like to have as my comrade on a voyage the man of forty who can pass the Serpentine without a glance at the little ragged urchin there, who is half in the water himself while he reaches with a twig his tiny lugger after its long voyage across the lake among ducks, and row-boats, and billows two ...
— The Voyage Alone in the Yawl "Rob Roy" • John MacGregor
... and shut behind the undulating shape in the aperture. Then a low throaty ejaculation—the black's call of warning. And now with a quickness incredible, the wriggling movement of two blanket-shrouded serpentine shapes round the hide-house—in and out among the grass tussocks and the low herbage, now hidden for a moment by friendly gum shadows in the dimness, now dark moving blurrs upon the lesser darkness, and now ...
— Lady Bridget in the Never-Never Land • Rosa Praed
... There was no door visible. These tapestries were magnificently figured with golden dragons; and as the serpentine bodies gleamed and shimmered in the increasing radiance, each dragon, I thought, intertwined its glittering coils more closely with those of another. The carpet was of such richness that I stood knee-deep in its pile. ...
— The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu • Sax Rohmer
... that Kamein is several miles out of the route from the Mogoung river to Mogoung itself, we visited it en route to the Serpentine mines. ...
— Journals of Travels in Assam, Burma, Bhootan, Afghanistan and The - Neighbouring Countries • William Griffith
... of which he is equally proud,—he that has seen the St. Lawrence, the Hudson, the McKenzie, and many others, compared to which the Thames is but a rivulet, may be excused if he cannot view its not very limpid waters with the same extravagant admiration as the Londoner, who calls the Serpentine a river, and dignifies a pond of a few roods in extent with the name of a lake. Yet there is one feature about the Thames, of which he can scarcely be too proud, and which is unparalleled perhaps in the world,—the often-noticed ...
— Notes of a Twenty-Five Years' Service in the Hudson's Bay Territory - Volume II. (of 2) • John M'lean
... were fed by their sister battalion, the 2nd, and had begun to unwind their putties. But what a sight! Their putties were not soaked and not caked; say, rather, that there may have been a core of puttie inside, but that the men's legs were imbedded in a serpentine cast of clay. As for their boots, you could only infer them from the huge balls of stratified mud they bore round their feet. Red mud, yellow mud, black mud, brown mud—they lifted their feet toilsomely; they were land plummets ...
— Story of the War in South Africa - 1899-1900 • Alfred T. Mahan
... employ a metaphor—oh, but a tried and trusty metaphor—when one ship on the sea meets another in distress, it stops and comforts it, and forgets all about its previous engagements and the prison van and everything. Shall we cross to the north, and see whether the Serpentine is in its place? Or would you prefer to inspect the eastern front of the Palace? Or may I offer ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume X (of X) • Various
... all the zest of seeing London from a new standpoint, that of moneyed idleness, he strolled towards Hyde Park. He took the road known as the Ladies' Mile, crossed the Serpentine by the bridge, and came back by the Row. There, near the Albert Gate crossing, a lady had reined in her chestnut hunter and was talking to an old gentleman standing near the rails. Had Royson stared at her, he might have ...
— The Wheel O' Fortune • Louis Tracy
... is cultivated in the king's garden at Paris, a species of serpentine aloe without prickles, whose large and beautiful flower exhales a strong odor of the vanilla, during the time of its expansion, which is very short. It does not blow till towards the month of July—you then perceive it gradually open its ...
— Edgar Allan Poe's Complete Poetical Works • Edgar Allan Poe
... the seashore, at the southern end of Norfolk. The river Yare follows a serpentine course, and falls into the sea at the village of Gorleston, a short distance ...
— A Yacht Voyage Round England • W.H.G. Kingston
... the skies were clear and clean We bowled along a road that curved a spine Superbly sinuous and serpentine Thro' silent symphonies of summer green. Sudden the Forth came on us—sad of mien, No cloud to colour it, no breeze to line: A sheet of dark, dull glass, without a sign Of life or death, two spits of sand between. ...
— Poems by William Ernest Henley • William Ernest Henley
... which we had descended into the town—and upon which Bonaparte's army was formerly encamped—seemed to be more lofty than the spot whereon we stood. On the opposite side flowed the Danube: not broad, nor, as I learnt very deep; but rapid, and in a serpentine direction. The river here begins to be navigable for larger boats; but there is little appearance of bustle or business upon the quays. Few or no white sails, floating down the stream, catch the morning or the evening sun-beam: no grove of masts: no shouts of mariners: no commercial rivalry. ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Three • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... shown on very early drawings of the planet; but, up to the year 1877, little was known of the general surface details beyond the fact that the general colour was orange-red, diversified by dark patches of blue-green in some parts, and some narrow, serpentine markings here and there. All these markings are now much more accurately drawn, as the result of more careful and continuous observation. Sir William Herschel suggested that the red colour was attributable ...
— To Mars via The Moon - An Astronomical Story • Mark Wicks
... on the back of the book, with one knee bent and one leg hanging down—somewhat in the attitude of the amazons of Hyde Park or the Bois de Boulogne on horseback. She was so small that her swinging foot did not reach the table, over which the trail of her dress extended in a serpentine line. But her face and figure were those of an adult. The fulness of her corsage and the roundness of her waist could leave no doubt of that, even for an old savant like myself. I will venture to add that she was ...
— The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard • Anatole France
... had three months of this sort of thing. I came to London for pleasure and I have suffered slavery ever since. I hadn't been in town two days when looking over the Serpentine Bridge I beheld a man struggling in the water. I was weak enough to rescue him, and he immediately proved so oppressively grateful that I have never been able to escape from his clutches from that day to this. I would have gone back to Bristol long ago, but there's my dear ...
— Three Hats - A Farcical Comedy in Three Acts • Alfred Debrun
... imaginable, for they fly from them when they come near them; and as they fly they are caught and devoured by them, as if it were done by the harts; but the ibes are tame creatures, and only enemies to the serpentine kind: but about these ibes I say no more at present, since the Greeks themselves are not unacquainted with this sort of bird. As soon, therefore, as Moses was come to the land which was the breeder of these serpents, he let loose the ibes, and by their means repelled the serpentine ...
— The Antiquities of the Jews • Flavius Josephus
... a background. It formed a most admirable setting for the inlaid marble mosaics which were laid in rebated panels in the marble slabs, making a perfectly smooth surface. In the floor mosaics green serpentine and red or purple porphyry are the usual colors besides the gray, while brighter reds, gold, blues, white, and a variety of other glasses (smalti) are employed with the serpentine and porphyry in the mosaics on walls, pulpits, ...
— The Brochure Series of Architectural Illustration - Vol 1, No. 9 1895 • Various
... of June once more,—June, which clothes our London in all its glory, fills its languid ballrooms with living flowers, and its stony causeways with human butterflies. It is about the hour of six P.M. The lounge in Hyde Park is crowded; along the road that skirts the Serpentine crawl the carriages one after the other; congregate by the rails the lazy lookers-on,—lazy in attitude, but with active eyes, and tongues sharpened on the whetstone of scandal,—the Scaligers of club windows airing ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... or force which moves in a serpentine or curved path. It is the universal life-principle which everywhere manifests itself in Nature. This force includes in itself the two great forces of attraction and repulsion. Electricity and magnetism are but manifestations of it. This is the power or force which brings about that ...
— Five Years Of Theosophy • Various
... thing about Mrs. May which, for some reason or other, Mrs. May did not want other people to know. So Theo sat on a green sofa and smoked a cigarette, hoping that she looked like a snake charmer with the sinuous, serpentine smoke-loops weaving ...
— The Port of Adventure • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... and Warren. At the end of fifteen minutes we halted between two hedges and rows of tall trees. The policeman told me the men could sit against the banks of the hedges, so that first rest was good. In ten minutes we were off again. The road seemed to wind in and out in serpentine curves. The land on either side was taken up with truck ...
— The Red Watch - With the First Canadian Division in Flanders • J. A. Currie
... Napoleon's Arch of Triumph; observed the inscriptions and remarkable figures on that elegant and extraordinary structure; ascended to the top, and there enjoyed one of the most magnificent views I ever beheld, embracing all Paris and its environs for many miles, the day being cloudless; the serpentine Seine, the richly cultivated country, its parks, its gardens, its arcades of trees, its villas, churches, colleges, hospitals, palaces, squares, and monuments, together with the elegant Tuileries, the noble ...
— The Story of My Life - Being Reminiscences of Sixty Years' Public Service in Canada • Egerton Ryerson
... momently through whorl and hollow, And form and line and solid follow Solid and line and form to dream Fantastic down the eternal stream; An obscure world, a shifting world, Bulbous, or pulled to thin, or curled, Or serpentine, or driving arrows, Or serene slidings, or March narrows. There slipping wave and shore are one, And weed and mud. No ray of sun, But glow to glow fades down the deep (As dream to unknown dream in sleep); ...
— Georgian Poetry 1911-12 • Various
... southward of the quaint, rambling, rose-covered city of New Orleans, the tawny flood of the Mississippi winds towards the gulf in huge serpentine curves. The shores between which it flows rise scarce higher than the surface of the river itself; and a slight increase in the volume of water, or a strong wind, will serve to turn the whole region into a great, watery marsh. From the mouth of the great river, the whole coast of Louisiana, extending ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 2 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... were, also sloped off to the left. The road to the ford skirted the hill to the left till it reached the bank, then ran parallel with the creek to a point about on a line with the farm house, where it turned to the left and, crossing the stream, took a serpentine course up the opposite slope. This latter was wooded and dotted on both sides of the road with piles of rails behind which were ...
— Personal Recollections of a Cavalryman - With Custer's Michigan Cavalry Brigade in the Civil War • J. H. (James Harvey) Kidd
... sat at her desk and, without any palpable hesitation, wrote to Stanley asking him to meet her within an hour by the bridge over the Serpentine in St. James's Park." ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 156, April 9, 1919 • Various
... herds a-fishing, and sun themselves on the rocks; and may be called alligators in miniature." It must not, however, be supposed that they live on fish. When in the water this lizard swims with perfect ease and quickness, by a serpentine movement of its body and flattened tail—the legs being motionless and closely collapsed on its sides. A seaman on board sank one, with a heavy weight attached to it, thinking thus to kill it directly; ...
— A Naturalist's Voyage Round the World - The Voyage Of The Beagle • Charles Darwin
... a pressure of nine atmospheres or more by direct heating. The flanges of the tubing are provided with a cut-off of angle iron identical with that of the tube, D. By means of this arrangement the cocks and the flanges, E, permit of communication between the serpentine tubing, R, and the boiler being interrupted; while the heat developed by the fire-place, F, causes an active circulation in both ...
— Scientific American Suppl. No. 299 • Various
... serpentine winding of a cable or other rope, that it may occupy a small space in the ship. Each of the windings of this sort is called a fake, and one range of fakes upon the same line is called a tier. There are generally from five to seven fakes in a tier, and three or four ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... a receipte for one Laste and a half of Serpentine powder broughte into her Ma{ties} Store and debenter made by Painter for the same as made of forraigne Peeter the xiiij{th} of Julie 1576, the which I will prooue vnto yo{r} Ho that yt was her Ma{ties} owen powder brought ...
— The Palace of Pleasure, Volume 1 • William Painter
... grass blades in groups of three slightly radiated vertical strokes (No. 2, p. 177[f096b]). A pattern of two elements, again, may be formed in a still more simple way by linear contrast, as in No. 3, where the pyramidal trees are formed by a continuous serpentine stroke of the pen terminating in a spiral stem. The diagonal arrangement of the trees produces a chequer, the intervals of which can be varied by the contrasting black ...
— Line and Form (1900) • Walter Crane
... soft, sweet air. The magnificent groves of trees all round; and far off in the terminus, the towers and pinnacles of the Parliament Houses, and Westminster Abbey towers, rise into the clear sky over the blue waters of the Serpentine. A pretty yacht, with one white wing, slowly moved along. Large, princely lambs grazed on the sunny lawns. I think that thou wouldst have asked no more in the way of a park. We sat down on a felled ...
— Memories of Hawthorne • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop
... up the dry river bed, with the Great Wall on the left stretching its serpentine length across the hills, and on the right picturesque cliffs two hundred feet in height. At their bases nestle mud-roofed cottages and Chinese inns, but farther up the river the low hills are all of loess—brown, wind-blown ...
— Across Mongolian Plains - A Naturalist's Account of China's 'Great Northwest' • Roy Chapman Andrews
... landscape. Green and mossy meadow, rich, cultivated upland, luxurious gardens, sweet shady grottos and cozy dells, orchards, forests, farms, with almost every variety of natural scenery, enliven the prospect beyond description; and last, though not least of all, a beautiful river pursues its serpentine course through dusky everglades and grass-grown valleys, as if an unearthed mine, fused by subterranean fires, were pouring forth its vast treasures in a stream of molten silver. The scene ...
— The Bobbin Boy - or, How Nat Got His learning • William M. Thayer
... and quarries of marble, granite, onyx, serpentine, limestone and sandstone—beds of fire clay, kaolin, fire and potter's clays, talc and asbestos ...
— A Review of the Resources and Industries of the State of Washington, 1909 • Ithamar Howell
... studded with groups of astounding trees which were all scarlet and gold. Mountains, deep-green, purple, pale-violet, framed the valley, and through its midst was flung a bright blue necklace of long lakes and serpentine rivers. In the nearest and largest lake, towering castles of white cloud came continuously and went. Very far off, browsing among lily pads, Mr. Cotter could see a cow moose and her calf. And, high over his head, there passed presently a string of black duck. ...
— If You Touch Them They Vanish • Gouverneur Morris
... minutes. I've lost count of time and everything else, since I've slept out here. They talked of going to the Serpentine." ...
— The Sorcery Club • Elliott O'Donnell
... Adiesen appeared at his own door laden with blocks of serpentine, fragments of lichen, moss, seaweed, and shells. Yaspard followed him into a little room which was doing duty as a study until the Den was restored to order, and as the scientist put down his treasures the lad said—in a trembling voice, be it confessed—"I want to tell ...
— Viking Boys • Jessie Margaret Edmondston Saxby
... heart chilled, his teeth were set chattering; but he thought of Annadoah and the grim need of food, and he gripped the upstander of his sled more determinedly. When the moon again unclosed its pearly sheen over the ice, the serpentine chasms moved their tortuous backs and writhed about them, the icy hummocks billowed, and the glittering ice-peaked horizon swam in a dizzy circle ...
— The Eternal Maiden • T. Everett Harre
... be very cold. Some people do not mind the cold. There are people bathing in the Serpentine at this moment, I suppose, and apparently nothing can be done about it. They ju-just break the ice and ju-jump in. And yet it is not their ice; it is the KING'S. It seems to me that it ought to be made illegal, this breaking of the KING's ice, like ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, December 22, 1920 • Various
... and produces admiration and awe. The beauty of proportion he resolves into the needs of fitness. Hogarth applies these principles to the determination of the degrees of beauty in lines, figures and groups of forms. Among lines he singles out for special honour the serpentine (formed by drawing a line once round from the base to the apex of a long slender ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... lunch in this drab hotel, Geoffrey and his wife started once more on their voyage of discovery. Nagasaki is a hidden city; it flows through its narrow valleys like water, and follows their serpentine meanderings ...
— Kimono • John Paris
... rather than seated on the easy chair; everything from the curves of his smooth limbs to the coils of his silvered hair suggesting the circles of a serpent more than the straight limbs of a man—the unmistakable, splendid serpentine gentleman we had seen walking in North London, his ...
— The Club of Queer Trades • G. K. Chesterton
... compulsion, and his Will to Life had to be increased to the unconditioned Will to Power—we believe that severity, violence, slavery, danger in the street and in the heart, secrecy, stoicism, tempter's art and devilry of every kind,—that everything wicked, terrible, tyrannical, predatory, and serpentine in man, serves as well for the elevation of the human species as its opposite—we do not even say enough when we only say THIS MUCH, and in any case we find ourselves here, both with our speech and our silence, ...
— Beyond Good and Evil • Friedrich Nietzsche
... Indian names, Alatahama, Savanna, Santee and Pedee. Among the hills these rivers are composed of different branches, and run in a rapid course; but lose their velocity when they reach the plains, through which they glide smoothly along, in a serpentine course, to the ocean. Up these large rivers the tide flows a considerable way, and renders them navigable for ships, brigs, sloops and schooners, and smaller craft force their way still higher than the tide flows. Besides these large ...
— An Historical Account Of The Rise And Progress Of The Colonies Of South Carolina And Georgia, Volume 1 • Alexander Hewatt
... intricate and elaborate a thing as "reality" by means of so intricate and elaborate an instrument, as the complex vision, the most genuine and the least artificial of philosophies must appear to be following a devious and serpentine path. ...
— The Complex Vision • John Cowper Powys
... caught the clue to Death. What solace have the gods for such as thou, That is not stabbed by this one thrust through me? From this black hour, this curse anointing hour, The currents of thy heart are all corrupt; The motions of thy thoughts are serpentine; And thy death-doing and bedabbled soul Is maculate with spots of Erebus. Aye me!—and yet—Oh that I should say so! Thou wast a noble scroll of Beauty's pen, Where every turn was grandly charactered. Hadst thou ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various
... Diamantino, was proclaimed regent. The Queen-dowager was wise and good, and tried her best to make her people happy. The only thing she had to vex her was the absence of her daughter; for the fairies, for reasons of their own, determined to bring up the little Princess Serpentine among themselves. ...
— The Yellow Fairy Book • Various
... which you approach by taking the right hand road, opposite a house of entertainment, the Scott's arms, and then taking the second turning to the left conducts you to the lodge. On entering the park, a circular coach drive leads to the holly wood, through which you proceed by a serpentine road near half a mile, when a beautiful sheet of water presents itself to view, along whose banks you pass near a mile before you ...
— A Description of Modern Birmingham • Charles Pye
... at length. 'How different from those Cyclopean blocks and walls along the Exmoor cliffs are these rich purple and olive ironstone layers, with their sharp serrated lines and polished slabs, set up on edge, snapped, bent double, twisted into serpentine curves, every sheet of cliff scored with sharp parallel lines at some ...
— Prose Idylls • Charles Kingsley
... he saw old Lord Thrapston tottering along on his stick. Lord Thrapston hated a parson, and scowled at poor Mr. Taylor as he went by. Mr. Taylor shrank from meeting his eye, and hurried along till he reached the Serpentine, where he stood still for a few minutes, drinking in the fresh breeze. But the breeze could not blow his puzzle out of his brain. Was it a crime, or merely an escapade? What had she said to the young man? What had her feelings been or become towards the ...
— Comedies of Courtship • Anthony Hope
... said, "if I marry six wives, I shall still be in love with my cousin—a little fair girl, with great grey eyes and the prettiest ways and a heart of the purest gold. And now shall we cry here or by The Serpentine?" ...
— Berry And Co. • Dornford Yates
... Hume had found a serpentine sheet of water to the north which he was inclined to think was the continuation of the elusive Macquarie. He had pushed on past it, but had been checked by another body of reed beds. It was decided to shift camp to this lagoon and launch the boat once more; but without result, for the boat was ...
— The Explorers of Australia and their Life-work • Ernest Favenc
... cloudily,—curling like smoke of phosphorus. Great sharp lights burst up momentarily through it like meteors. Weirder than this strange wake are the long slow fires that keep burning at a distance, out in the dark. Nebulous incandescences mount up from the depths, change form, and pass;—serpentine flames wriggle by;—there are long billowing crests of fire. These seem to be formed of millions of tiny sparks, that light up all at the same time, glow for a while, disappear, reappear, and swirl away ...
— Two Years in the French West Indies • Lafcadio Hearn
... think, ARTHUR, we belonged to that society of lunatics who make a point of taking a matutinal plunge in the Serpentine every morning, all the year round, even if they have to break the ice to do ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 102, March 26, 1892 • Various
... that Aunt Ellen had taken all the three out walking, when Jock and Armine, with the remains of their money burning in their pockets, had insisted on buying two little ships, which must necessarily be launched in the Serpentine. Their aunt could by no means endure this, and Janet did not approve, so there seemed to have been a battle royal, in which Jock would have been the victor, if his little brother had not been led off captive between his aunt and sister, when Jock went along on the opposite side of the ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge
... children to let the ants alone and not tease them, for 'thaay be God's creeturs.' Or possibly the pastor himself may be overheard discoursing to a bullet-headed woman, with one finger on the palm of his other hand, 'That's their serpentine way; that's their subtlety; that's their casuistry; which arguments you may imagine to refer, as your fancy pleases, to the village curate, or the tonsured priest of the monastery over the hill. For the tonsured priest, and the monastery, and the nunnery, and the ...
— Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies
... knowledge, which is scarcely possible unless they be educated by the same pursuits as men. For they are now made so inferiour by ignorance and low desires, as not to deserve to be ranked with them; or, by the serpentine wrigglings of cunning they mount the tree of knowledge and only acquire sufficient ...
— A Vindication of the Rights of Woman - Title: Vindication of the Rights of Women • Mary Wollstonecraft [Godwin]
... its invariable burden of parasites and other encumbrances—but the variety of such tenants never fails to excite curiosity. That which is illustrated accommodated another oyster of delicate texture, a thorny clam (which has the reputation of being poisonous), a mass of seaweed, a serpentine mollusc, two species of coral—the red organ-pipe and a mushroom—three burrowing crabs, besides a number of smaller animals, fixed and mobile, in addition to the congregation of less obvious life critical examination would undoubtedly ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... Deflecting from the serpentine course of the Kingani a little, we crossed a small bitter rivulet, and entered on the elevated cultivation of Kiranga Ranga, under Phanze Mkungu-pare, a very mild man, who, wishing to give no offence, begged for a ...
— The Discovery of the Source of the Nile • John Hanning Speke
... the experts of the Board of Explosions at the British War Office. Another bomb detonated on the steel rails of the Walthamstow tram-line and sent them curling skyward from their rivetted foundations like serpentine wisps of paper. Great cobblestones were heaved through shop windows and partitions and out into the flower-beds of rear gardens; some of the cobbles were flung through solid attic blinds and others were catapulted through brick walls a foot in thickness. A hole as big as a moving-van ...
— World's War Events, Vol. I • Various
... heart was full of the sense of growing life and strength, and Hugh was delighted with his own success. He caught sight of a serpentine motion in Euphra's eyebrows, as she bent her face again over the work from which she had lifted it on their ...
— David Elginbrod • George MacDonald
... structure, and when this is pronounced the sheen has a certain resemblance to that of cat's-eye. Masses sufficiently large for cutting are found in the norite of the Kupferberg in the Fichtelgebirge, and in the serpentine of Kraubat near Leoben in Styria. In this connexion mention may be made of an altered form of enstatite or bronzite known as bastite or schiller-spar. Here, in addition to schillerization, the original ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various
... wedges for the Opus Alexandrinum. I don't think we saw one natural looking stone upon that beach; everything seemed vaguely, precious and outlandish, basalt, porphyry, agate, Rossoantique, and serpentine still bearing its original polish; also fine white marble, Mme. B. possessing a beautiful piece of salty Parian found there, and shaped delicately, curved and bossy, into a perfect heart, the heart of a marble Artemis or Amazon. This ...
— The Spirit of Rome • Vernon Lee
... audibly utters, with bared head, some growl of rugged prayer, far from orthodox at times, but much in earnest: that lifting of his hat for prayer, is his last signal on such occasions. He is very cunning as required, withal; not disdaining the serpentine method when no other will do. With Friedrich Wilhelm, who is his second-cousin (Mother's grand-nephew, if the reader can count that), he is from of old on the best footing, and contrives to be his Mentor in many things besides War. Till his quarrel with ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Volume IV. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Friedrich's Apprenticeship, First Stage—1713-1728 • Thomas Carlyle
... the Park, the Serpentine River, the cottages on its bank, and seemed highly diverted by the horsemen and carriages in the ring. The pertinence of his remarks afforded Thaddeus a ray of hope that his senses had not entirely lost their union with ...
— Thaddeus of Warsaw • Jane Porter
... made his way, turning his giant shoulders sideways that they might enter at all. Behind him trailed his black warriors. At the turn in the cleft the stairs ended, and the path was level; but it wound and twisted in a serpentine fashion, until suddenly at a sharp angle it debouched upon a narrow court, across which loomed an inner wall equally as high as the outer. This inner wall was set with little round towers alternating along its entire summit with pointed monoliths. In places these had fallen, and the ...
— The Return of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... descry him one day in the Park, I remarked that his countenance wore an ominous and tragic appearance, which seemed to deepen as he neared me. I thought he had been toying affably with a nursery-maid the moment before, who stood with some of her little charges watching the yachts upon the Serpentine. Howbeit, espying my approach, F. B. strode away from the maiden and her innocent companions, and advanced to greet his old acquaintance, enveloping his face with shades ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... experienced an unfamiliar chill as his uncompromising stare met the cold hatred which blazed out of the black eyes, narrowed, now, and serpentine, of Zani Chada. ...
— Tales of Chinatown • Sax Rohmer
... court a tall, graceful palm-tree shot up its slender stem to break into a crown of drooping green leaves some fifty feet above their heads. All round were a series of Moorish arches, in jade and serpentine marble, with heavy curtains of the deepest purple to cover the doors which lay between them. In front, to right and to left, a broad staircase of marble, carpeted with rich thick Smyrna rug work, led upwards to the upper storeys, which were arranged around the central ...
— The Doings Of Raffles Haw • Arthur Conan Doyle
... master of every spot where one another is writing, or reading, or sauntering. This view of the castle(397) is what I have just finished, and is the only side that will be at all regular. Directly before it is an open grove, through which you see a field, which is bounded by a serpentine wood of all kind of trees, and flowering shrubs, and flowers! The lawn before the house is situated on the top of a small hill, from whence to the left you see the town and church of Twickenham encircling a turn of the river, ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole
... which had been hired at a rental of L20 from a Turkish merchant, had been greatly enlarged, and the gardens, with their summer-houses, covered alleys, and serpentine walks, were superior to most English gardens of the same size. Lady Hester's constant outlay in building arose from her idea that people would fly to her for succour and protection during the revolutions that ...
— Little Memoirs of the Nineteenth Century • George Paston
... luxuriant, and unearthly. Floating in the sky were serpentine tendrils as thick as a man's wrist, purplish flowers and ropy fungus growths. They twisted and writhed and shot out in all directions, creating a tangle immediately beneath him and curving up toward the ship amidst a welter of ...
— The Sky Trap • Frank Belknap Long
... forest. Near the entrance of the other division stands the house where we were entertained, and beyond the enclosures of that farm there are no other. A few old trees remain, relics of the forest, a little stream hastens, though with serpentine windings, through the uncultivated hollow, where many cattle were pasturing. The cattle of this country are generally white, or light-coloured; but these were dark brown, or black, which heightened the resemblance this scene bears to many parts of the Highlands of Scotland.—While we ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... trail—a faint, meandering trail that would swing from the road, dip into a sand arroyo, edge slanting up the farther bank, wriggle round a cluster of small hills, shoot out across a mesa, and climb slowly toward those hills to the west, finally to contort itself into serpentine switchbacks as it sought the crest—and once on the crest (which was in reality but the visible edge of another great mesa), there would be grass for a horse and cedar-wood for a fire, and water with which ...
— The Ridin' Kid from Powder River • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... of the speaker, sometimes showing itself in an unusually deep guttural, sometimes in an unusually serpentine sibilant, lurked the frenzy of hatred which in the past had revealed itself occasionally in wild outbursts. Momentarily I expected such an outburst now, but it ...
— The Devil Doctor • Sax Rohmer
... were of jasper, agate, chalcedony, serpentine, nephrite, steatite, quartz, crystal, glass, jade (white and green), and chrysoprase. Mention is also made of rakan, but the meaning of the term is obscure. Probably it was ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... little rum about the fixtures even, about the ceiling, about the floor, about the casually distributed chairs. I had a queer feeling that whenever I wasn't looking at them straight they went askew, and moved about, and played a noiseless puss-in-the-corner behind my back. And the cornice had a serpentine design with masks—masks altogether too ...
— Twelve Stories and a Dream • H. G. Wells
... first flicker of the acetylene through a maze of hurrying figures, but as his eyes grew accustomed to the light, the plot would thicken: books orderly and disorderly, on bracketed shelves, cameras great and small in motley confusion, guns and a gramophone-horn, serpentine yards of gas-tubing, sewing machines, a microscope, rows of pint-mugs, until—thud! he has obstructed a wild-eyed messman staggering into the kitchen with a ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson
... where Saul and his sons were slain; that range of mountains forming the southern wall of Esdraelon is Carmel, where Elijah held his trial with the priests of Baal; here below us, winding in its serpentine course, is the Jordan in its great trough or Ghor; in the center of the picture are the mountains of Samaria, with Ebal and Gerizim; to the south are the mountains of Judea, where lies Jerusalem; and that broad expanse of water beyond all these is the Mediterranean, ...
— My Three Days in Gilead • Elmer Ulysses Hoenshal
... Unfortunately, their identification generally presents more or less difficulty, on account of the absence of indications of their identity. On a small cylinder-seal in the possession of the Rev. Dr. W. Hayes Ward, Merodach is shown striding along the serpentine body of Tiawath, who turns her head to attack him, whilst the god threatens her with a pointed weapon which he carries. Another, published by the same scholar, shows a deity, whom he regards as being Merodach, driven in a chariot drawn by a winged lion, upon whose shoulders stands a naked goddess, ...
— The Religion of Babylonia and Assyria • Theophilus G. Pinches
... attempt to rise, but she twisted very gracefully on her seat, smiling on the poet, who was not a little fluttered by the serpentine quiverings; her manner was distinguished, he thought. For Mme. de Bargeton, she was impressed with Lucien's extreme beauty, with his diffidence, with everything about him; for her the poet already was poetry incarnate. Lucien scrutinized his hostess with discreet side ...
— Two Poets - Lost Illusions Part I • Honore de Balzac
... Kieff he came, and Kieff waited for him, quite motionless, with thin lips drawn back, showing a snarling gleam of teeth. But just as Burke reached him he moved. His right arm shot forth with a serpentine ferocity, and in a flash the muzzle of ...
— The Top of the World • Ethel M. Dell
... deserted. The thick white dust upon it looked ghastly at their feet. Now they could hear the faint and regular murmur of the oily sea by which the fishermen's boats were drawn up, and discern, far away on the right, the serpentine lights ...
— The Call of the Blood • Robert Smythe Hichens
... serpentine glance at Harry. "Am I to live quietly at home with a creature like him?" ...
— The Perils of Pauline • Charles Goddard
... of porphyry—I believe there are three—in Cornwall, lying one on serpentine, one, I think, on slate, which—so I was always informed as a boy—were the stones which St. Kevern threw after St. Just when the latter stole his host's chalice and paten, and ran away with them to the Land's ...
— Scientific Essays and Lectures • Charles Kingsley
... deemed it prudent to make a precipitate retreat. And the upshot of the matter was, that a lawyer's letter came next day, and an action was commenced next week; and that Mr. Augustus Cooper, after walking twice to the Serpentine for the purpose of drowning himself, and coming twice back without doing it, made a confidante of his mother, who compromised the matter with twenty pounds from the till: which made twenty pounds four shillings and sixpence paid to Signor Billsmethi, exclusive ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... that she was fresh from the country, and that she still retained part of her prudish ideas, so while walking with her yesterday on the Serpentine, I offered her a pension, to which she is justly entitled, adorning our court as she does. But I fear she took my honest efforts at gallantry too seriously. My dear baron, the girl shall have her pension without the slightest return on ...
— The Touchstone of Fortune • Charles Major
... have been my eloquence, the power of my dramatic art to so vividly portray the hideous Hosley that she became quite as much affected as if she had intimately known the criminal, and had followed his creeping, serpentine ways for bringing the next creature into his power. It rather pleased me to find that I could exercise this wonderful influence—a force so long latent in a superior intellectual equipment, obscured by a disenchanting personal appearance, especially unconvincing then, for I never ...
— Cupid's Middleman • Edward B. Lent
... south aisle of the Choir. A little further southward is a monument erected over the grave of Dr. Mill, Canon of Ely, and Regius Professor of Hebrew in the University of Cambridge, who died in 1853. It is an altar tomb of serpentine and alabaster, ornamented with marble mosaic and polished stones, bearing a recumbent effigy of Dr. Mill in his robes; at the feet are two kneeling figures, one an oriental character, and the other a student; the figure is in copper ...
— Ely Cathedral • Anonymous
... high, and it is the great drive of the people of fashion. If you want to see London, you must come here on a fine summer day in June, at about four o'clock, and you will gaze on the finest and gayest equipages of England. A very pretty piece of water is in this park, which is called "the Serpentine River." The best skating of London is to be seen here, we are told, in hard winters. The entrance from Piccadilly is by a fine threefold arch. Here is the great Achilles of bronze, in honor of Wellington, made out of the cannon which ...
— Young Americans Abroad - Vacation in Europe: Travels in England, France, Holland, - Belgium, Prussia and Switzerland • Various
... gentlemen of about the same age went down in a body to Kew one Saturday, with the idea of hiring a boat there, and pulling to Richmond and back; one of their number, a shock-headed youth, named Joskins, who had once or twice taken out a boat on the Serpentine, told them it was jolly ...
— Three Men in a Boa • Jerome K. Jerome
... Bredon Hill hides the sight both of it and Tewkesbury smoke: just below on either side the Broadway lie the grey houses of the village street ending with a lovely house of the fourteenth century; above the road winds serpentine up the steep hill-side, whose crest looking westward sees the glorious map I have been telling of spread before it, but eastward strains to look on Oxfordshire, and thence all waters run towards Thames: all about lie the sunny slopes, lovely of outline, flowery and sweetly grassed, dotted with the ...
— Hopes and Fears for Art • William Morris
... reached it. The gate was locked, but the keeper let him in, declaring, however, that there was nobody within the precincts. Although it was not late, the autumnal darkness had now become intense; and he found some difficulty in keeping to the serpentine path which led to the quarter where, as the man had told him, the one or two interments for the day had taken place. He stepped upon the grass, and, stumbling over some pegs, stooped now and then to discern if possible a ...
— Wessex Tales • Thomas Hardy
... the doorway of a house in the rue Serpentine, was speaking angrily. He said he didn't care whether Hartman liked it or not; he was telling him, ...
— The King In Yellow • Robert W. Chambers
... him," she said to herself proudly, then, with a brusque movement, she disengaged the garment from her shoulders and it slipped to the ground and lay there in a soft heap. The spectators then became aware that, save for a sort of transparent web of floating serpentine drapery, it had been her sole covering, and Cleo herself remained gazing into the mirror, regarding her gleaming reflection with evident admiration, whilst the other mirrors likewise gave back the sinuous grace and ...
— Cleo The Magnificent - The Muse of the Real • Louis Zangwill
... make an indelible impression on the mind of one gazing upon it, perhaps for the last time. The Laramie Plains extend northward and westward, like a billowy green sea. Emerging from a black canon behind Jelm Mountain, the Laramie River winds its serpentine course in a northeast direction until lost to view behind the abutting mountains of the range, on which I now stand, receiving tribute in its course from the Little Laramie and numbers of smaller streams that emerge from the mountainous bulwarks ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... splendid forest, there was fire,—at first nothing but a thin, serpentine trail of ashes through moss and bedded needles; then, scarcely six inches in width, a smouldering, sinuous path from which fine threads of smoke rose straight upward, vanishing in ...
— A Young Man in a Hurry - and Other Short Stories • Robert W. Chambers
... precipices near Fort William. Copper[155] abounds in this region to an extent, perhaps, unsurpassed any where in the world. At the Coppermine River, three hundred miles from the Sault de St. Marie, this metal, in a pure state, nearly covers the face of a serpentine rock, and is also found within the stone in solid masses. Iron is abundant in many parts of Upper Canada; at Charlotteville, eight miles from Lake Erie, the metal produced is of a very fine quality. The Marmora Iron Works, about thirty-two miles north of the Bay of Quinte, ...
— The Conquest of Canada (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Warburton
... Poor Phil was fourteen when he was drowned. Under the ice on the Serpentine. He had just been licking me for boning a strap of his skate. I was doing the best way I could without it ... to get mine on, you see ... when I heard a stop in the grinding noise—what goes on all day, you know—and a sort of clicky ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... white between its gouts of blood; his eyes were strained open to their uttermost expansion. There was froth upon his lips; it dropped off in flakes. Strong convulsions ran through his body, making almost serpentine undulations. He bent himself at the waist, shifting his legs from side to side. And every movement left him a little nearer to the snake. He thrust his hands forward to brace himself back, yet constantly advanced upon ...
— Stories by Modern American Authors • Julian Hawthorne
... guiding the others to do the same. At last, at a sharp turn of one of these rocky eminences, they perceived an enormous cloud of white vapor rising up like smoke from the earth, and twisting itself as it rose, in swaying, serpentine folds, as though some giant spirit-hand were shaking it to and fro like a long flowing veil in the air. Sigurd paused and ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli
... twinkling through them—the quaint wooden roofs— The little white houses. The clatter of hoofs, And the music of wandering bands, up the walls Of the steep hanging hill, at remote intervals Reached them, cross'd by the sound of the clacking of whips, And here and there, faintly, through serpentine slips Of verdant rose-gardens deep-sheltered with screens Of airy acacias and dark evergreens, They could mark the white dresses and catch the light songs Of the lovely Parisians that wander'd in throngs, Led by Laughter and Love through ...
— Lucile • Owen Meredith
... round and drove through the Park. But I was puzzled about him and looked back at him once or twice pretending that I was looking to see if a cab or car was coming up behind. And as we passed over the Serpentine Bridge I saw him throw ...
— The Hampstead Mystery • John R. Watson |
