"Slab" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... gray dawn after that midnight ride to Agua Fria a little Indian girl had slipped like a brown shadow across the Plaza. Stopping at the door of the Exchange Hotel, she leaned against the low slab of petrified wood that for many a year served as a loafer's roost before the hotel doorway. Inside the building Jondo caught the clear twitter of a bird's song at daybreak, twice repeated. A pause, and then it came again, fainter this time, ...
— Vanguards of the Plains • Margaret McCarter
... returned it to her mistress; after which she left the room, making a signal that she would soon return. After the lapse of a few minutes, she reappeared with a vessel of boiling water, which she placed upon a marble slab. Then taking from her pocket a piece of polished silver, and at the same time receiving the knife, she plunged them both into the hissing liquid. As the lady of Stramen, eagerly watching the experiment, stood bending over the water with her back to the door, she was not aware of ...
— The Truce of God - A Tale of the Eleventh Century • George Henry Miles
... slaves of all. Your men, for a little property, and your women, for a little amorous attention, let themselves be shorn even of the virtue of discontent, and for a paltry bait of sham freedom have consented to endure a tyrannous contumely which flattens them into the dirt like grass under a slab. I would rather be a runaway in the swamps than content myself with such a freedom. As your class stands before the world to-day—free in form but slaves in spirit—you are—I do not know but I was almost ready to ...
— The Grandissimes • George Washington Cable
... behind him; they have both snakes in their hands, and Siva has a large one round his loins as a waistband. There are several demons in human shape lying prostrate under the belly of the bull, and the whole are well cut out of one large slab of hard basalt from a dyke in the marble rock beneath. They call the whole group 'Gauri Sankar', and I found in the fair, exposed for sale, a brass model of a similar one from Jeypore (Jaipur), but not so well shaped and proportioned. On noticing ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... The heavy bombardment on the door was beginning to tell, and already there was a long crack in the oaken slab, and the splinters were ...
— For the Liberty of Texas • Edward Stratemeyer
... said he. "Leave it to me for that. I'll lay him out so stiff that a slab in the morgue'll be bent like a ...
— Ashton-Kirk, Criminologist • John T. McIntyre
... found open the iron grating of Christ Church graveyard, and passing through its wall of red and black glazed brick, he turned sharply to the right, and coming to a corner bade me look down where under a gray plain slab of worn stone rests the body of the greatest man, as I have ever thought, whom we have been able to claim as ours. Now a bit of the wall is gone, and through a railing the busy or idle or curious, as they go by, may look in and see the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XVII, No. 102. June, 1876. • Various
... with the resource of a man who had learned to take what came, threw the dry bedding onto the slab and set a match to it, brought in portions of the lean-to roof for further supply for the fire, opened a can of tomatoes and set it on the edge of the hearth to heat, and sliced bacon into his ...
— The Breaking Point • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... task. The tomb of the Turk consisted of a marble cover taken from some ancient sarcophagus, and sustained at the corners by four small pillars of masonry—the top was not higher than an ordinary table, and below the marble slab there was an empty space between the columns. It has long since disappeared; but that is not wonderful, since King Otho and his subjects have contrived to destroy almost every picturesque monument of the past in the new kingdom. The thousands of Turkish ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 344, June, 1844 • Various
... had nothing but that marble in his head; in short, he became in a manner so worn away upon the stone that he was at last as thin as the edge of a penknife; and this marble was a millstone which crushed his life, a slab of porphyry upon which the colours of his days were ground and mixed, a tinder-box which set fire to the brimstone match of his soul, a loadstone which attracted him, and lastly, a ...
— Stories from Pentamerone • Giambattista Basile
... back he made a great find. Some careless workman had left a mallet and chisel lying by a huge slab of stone. They were rusted by the weather but otherwise in good condition. Glen took them to his hiding place and spent a great deal of the afternoon cleaning off the rust. Then he began work on a rough block of stone which lay near and was greatly gratified at the result ...
— The Boy Scout Treasure Hunters - The Lost Treasure of Buffalo Hollow • Charles Henry Lerrigo
... bury the fair young dead, Pausing too drop on his grave a tear; Carve on the wooden slab at his head, "Somebody's ...
— McGuffey's Fourth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... away the dirt that covers the floor about there," she said, "you will find a large slab. This can be raised, and underneath there should still ...
— The Broncho Rider Boys with Funston at Vera Cruz - Or, Upholding the Honor of the Stars and Stripes • Frank Fowler
... tantalising, for there was absolutely no place where he could conceal it; and at last, biting his lips with vexation, he exclaimed, after vainly looking out for a slab that he could raise: ...
— In the King's Name - The Cruise of the "Kestrel" • George Manville Fenn
... removed, it was reinterred in the private cemetery of the Dominican order overlooking Suisun Bay, on the heights back of the old military barracks. Her grave is the innermost one, in the second row, of the group in the southwesterly corner of the cemetery. It is marked by a humble white marble slab, on which is graven a little cross with her name and the date of her death. This grave deserves to be as well known as that of Heloise and Abelard, in ...
— California, Romantic and Resourceful • John F. Davis
... separated from the company as she followed a trail of golden sunflowers down the edge of the wide space between the stream and the foot of the headlands towering far beyond it. The sun had disappeared suddenly and the gleam of the blossoms dulled a trifle. Leigh sat down on a slab of shale to study the effect of ...
— Winning the Wilderness • Margaret Hill McCarter
... this dictum, he removed a slab of cake from a near-by plate, steered it through the jungle, and began ...
— The Clicking of Cuthbert • P. G. Wodehouse
... entrance opened directly into the barroom. It was a handsome room, paved with marble flags. To the left was the bar, whose counter was a single slab of polished redwood. Behind it was a huge, plate-glass mirror, balanced on one side by the cash-register and on the other by a statuette of the Diving Girl in tinted bisque. Between the two were pyramids of glasses and bottles, liqueur flasks ...
— Vandover and the Brute • Frank Norris
... the tiger it fitted exactly. I propped it with sticks to keep it in place. So arranged, it recalled vividly the Chaldean and Egyptian deities having heads of human beings and bodies of animals. The next object that called my attention was another slab on which was represented in bas-relief a dying warrior, reclining on his back, the head was thrown entirely backwards. His left arm was placed across his chest, the left hand resting on the right shoulder, ...
— Vestiges of the Mayas • Augustus Le Plongeon
... a granite slab, appeared two mysterious graven letters, half eaten away by time. They were the initials of the ...
— A Journey to the Interior of the Earth • Jules Verne
... Pavia. His task was probably finished before the close of the following year, and the tomb was set up in the Cappella maggiore of S. Maria delle Grazie, at a cost of upwards of 15,000 ducats. At the same time Lodovico placed a slab of black marble on the walls of the same chapel, in memory of the dead child whose birth had cost his mother her life, with the ...
— Beatrice d'Este, Duchess of Milan, 1475-1497 • Julia Mary Cartwright
... way into the cabin and put his writing tools at my disposal. Left to myself, I should have broken the seal of the packet; but my wise old ally, cool and collected now, showed me how to split the paper beneath the wax. Opened and spread before us on the rude slab table, the letter proved to be the briefest of military commands: a peremptory order to Ferguson to rejoin the main body at once, proceeding by forced marches if needful, and on no account to risk ...
— The Master of Appleby • Francis Lynde
... prisoner began to distinguish objects confusedly, and this is what he found: White-washed walls here and there turned green by various exhalations; in one corner a round hole guarded by iron bars, and exhaling a disgusting smell; in another corner a slab turning upon a hinge like the bracket seat of a fiacre, and thus capable of being used as a table; no bed; a straw-bottomed chair; under foot a brick floor. Gloom was the first impression; cold was the second. ...
— The History of a Crime - The Testimony of an Eye-Witness • Victor Hugo
... the square is sold, scarlet, amber, silks from Morocco, and tobacco, which looks like Levant tobacco, and comes by way of Tombuctoo. Adjoining this is the salt market, part of which occupies one corner of the square. A slab of salt is sold commonly for eight thousand cowries; a large butcher's stall, or shade, is in the centre of the square, and as good and fat meat sold every day as any in England. The beer market is at a little distance, under two large trees; and ...
— The Journal Of A Mission To The Interior Of Africa, In The Year 1805 • Mungo Park
... no further notice of his guests, and went about his culinary tasks as if he were alone. When he had warmed over a pot of beans and a slab of sour-dough bread, he set the table for ...
— Smoke Bellew • Jack London
... narrative of Mr. Pickwick's "BIL STUMPS" inscription, is altogether erroneous. Certainly it is open to anyone who wishes to be incredulous, for there is as much dissimilarity as possible between the massive cromlech near Aylesford and the small slab that ...
— Dickens-Land • J. A. Nicklin
... said, "and pass it on. This is something like water. Reg'lar strong slab stuff as has got plenty o' victuals in it as well as drink. Reg'lar ...
— The Black Bar • George Manville Fenn
... tower in the centre of the elevated plain, which he resolved to call Uraniburg, or The City of the Heavens. Having made the necessary arrangements, he repaired to the island on the 8th of August, and his friend Charles Danzeus laid the foundation stone of the new observatory, which consisted of a slab of porphyry, ...
— The Martyrs of Science, or, The lives of Galileo, Tycho Brahe, and Kepler • David Brewster
... weathered, it forms the best and ugliest of the local building materials. Embedded in the earth's surface are blocks and boulders apparently erratic, dislodged or washed down from the upper heights, where similar masses are seen. Many are scattered, as if by an eruption; others lie in slab or dome shape upon the shore. The shape is usually spheroidal, and the material hypersthene (a hard and close-grained bluish granite) or diorite, greenstone-trap blackened by sun and rain. In the few cuttings of the higher levels I afterwards remarked that detached 'hardheads' are puddinged into ...
— To the Gold Coast for Gold - A Personal Narrative in Two Volumes.—Vol. I • Richard F. Burton
... what bitter kind of jest Mad Destiny this tender stripling played: For a warm breast of ivory to his breast, She laid a slab of marble ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 6, April, 1858 • Various
... to Tokyo, the wing of the house in which the unfortunate son had lived, had been demolished. An ugly scar remained, a slab of charred concrete strewn with ashes and burned beams. Saddest sight of all was the twisted iron work of Takeshi's foreign bedstead, once the symbol of progress and of the haikara spirit. The fire was supposed to have been accidental; but the ravages had been carefully ...
— Kimono • John Paris
... three nights I pondered over my plan of operations, and then the great method came to me like the dawning of the sun after a night of abysmal darkness. I went to the royal tent and discovered His Majesty hard at work chiseling out an article on "How I Brought Down My First Proterosaurus" on a slab of granite he had brought with him. As I approached he smiled broadly, and with a wave of his hand called my attention to the previous day's bag. It covered ...
— The Autobiography of Methuselah • John Kendrick Bangs
... The great black marble slab on which Akbar sat to administer justice was pointed out. When one of the Jat chiefs seated himself upon it, the story goes, it cracked, and blood flowed from the fracture. Lord Ellenborough tried the experiment, and the stone ...
— Across India - Or, Live Boys in the Far East • Oliver Optic
... are attached the tradition and ballad given by Dr Percy, under the name of Isabella, but here applied to a Lord Thomas and faire Ellenor, father and daughter, whose figures are supposed to be graven on a slab in the church, which the common people, concluding, I suppose, from its whiteness, that it was meant as an emblem of the innocence it is said to cover, have mutilated by breaking off small fragments, as amulets for the prevention or cure of disorders. Traditions, always erroneous in ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... space in the railing, Beryl dropped her mother's withered Arkja tribute on the marble slab. Her dress was caught by a sharp point of iron, and while endeavoring to disengage it, she heard the shrill whistle of the R. R. engine. Tearing the skirt away, she ran to the wall, climbed over, after some delay, ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... Alice looked about and hesitated. She knew the very puncheon that covered the flag; but she shrank from lifting it. There seemed nothing else to do, however; so, after some trouble with herself, she knelt upon the floor and turned the heavy slab over with a great thump. The flag did not appear. She peeped under the other puncheons. It was not there. The only thing visible was a little ball of paper fragments not larger ...
— Alice of Old Vincennes • Maurice Thompson
... D—-, I could always love thee, were it but for the sake of him who sleeps beneath the marble slab in yonder quiet chancel. It was within thee that the long-oppressed bosom heaved its last sigh, and the crushed and gentle spirit escaped from a world in which it had known nought but sorrow. Sorrow! do I say? How faint a word to express ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... apportion the clothing among themselves as relics of a martyr. Even the exact spot of the interment was intended to be unknown, but friends of the family were among the attendants at the burial and dropped into the grave a marble slab which had been furnished them, bearing the initials of the full baptismal name, Jose Protasio Rizal, ...
— Lineage, Life, and Labors of Jose Rizal, Philippine Patriot • Austin Craig
... there are jins, demons, and peris. You must go on along this road till it forks into three; take neither the right hand nor the left, but the middle path. Follow this for a day and a night. Then you will come to a column on which is a marble slab inscribed with Cufic characters. Do what is written there; beware of disobedience.' Then he gave his good wishes for the journey and his blessing, and the prince kissed his feet, said good-bye, and, with thanks to the Causer ...
— The Brown Fairy Book • Andrew Lang
... 'originality and grasp of mind'—his soul, that is to say, managed, when put in the scale, to turn it against those deficiencies which are made good to youths providentially directed to Eton and Oxford. According to the slab in the church, Poole died 8th September 1837, seventy-two years old. The house in which he lived in his later years is a pleasant place, but has been tortured into modern gentility. His revolving grate, which he turned round when he went out, has been replaced by an approved cast-iron 'register.' ...
— More Pages from a Journal • Mark Rutherford
... memory of a great Englishman, fare along the Avenue du Cimetire to the grave of John Stuart Mill, who with his wife lies buried within the cemetery under an elder-tree on the right and toward the end of Avenue 2. A plain stone slab bears the well-known inscription to Mrs. Mill's memory —the noblest and most eloquent epitaph ever composed by man for woman. It is pleasant to remember that Mill has left golden opinions of his gentleness ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 3 • Various
... keeping its way straight through every obstacle. It bent and twisted and turned. Often it crept underneath a great rock and lost itself. Fifty yards farther on one would find it, shy and retiring, slipping down the face of a slab of rock, always with the deceitful promise that over the next hill it would be better behaved. Instead it grew worse, until the column was walking in Indian file up steep hill sides and across the necks of the valleys. At 08.00 the 7th H.L.I. branched off to strike ...
— The Fifth Battalion Highland Light Infantry in the War 1914-1918 • F.L. Morrison
... ends whereto we pass— Let Him who Is, go call on Him who Was; And He shall see the mallie steals the slab For currie-grinder, and for goats ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... take his ease while he whipped that fishy place with his flies. The mystery was solved when we rounded the next point; for there we found the berry-pickers taking their nooning in a cluster of little slab-shanties. They were friendly folks, men, women, and children, but they knew nothing about the river; had never been up farther than the place where the boys had left their raft in the high water a week ago; had never been ...
— Days Off - And Other Digressions • Henry Van Dyke
... stood as motionless as the stones about him. Five minutes, perhaps, he remained thus, controlling himself by a mighty effort, regaining his capacity to think and reason. Then, to the girl's amazement, he tottered toward a large, shelf-like slab of stone and kneeling down, as before an altar, he bared his head, raised his arms on high and began ...
— Mary Louise in the Country • L. Frank Baum (AKA Edith Van Dyne)
... in helping to heat a very large tube. The charcoal block is provided with a stout wire handle, bent in such a manner that the block can be held close above a large glass tube on which the flames impinge. In some cases it is conveniently held by a clip stand. By the use of such a slab of charcoal the temperature obtainable over a large ...
— On Laboratory Arts • Richard Threlfall
... so I cannot tell, no more than I can explain other mysteries of creation, but I know it is so. I know they will come home more placider, more serener, and more settled-downer. Why I have known a short tower to Slab City or Loontown act like a charm on my pardner, when crossness wuz in his mean and snappishness wuz present with him. I have known him to set off with the mean of a lion and come back with the liniment of a lamb. Curious, ...
— Samantha at Saratoga • Marietta Holley
... but the slab immediately behind it, nearer the western door, is of the same style, but of later and inferior work, and bears date—I forget now of what early year in ...
— Mornings in Florence • John Ruskin
... moment I could with pleasure have slain Jorian and Boris for open-mouthed, unshaven, slab-sided Wendish pigs, ...
— Red Axe • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... those courtesies to which I had become accustomed, "I never thought I'd be glad to see your vapid face again, unless on a marble slab in some city morgue, but now youre here, moneybags slapping the insides of your thighs in place of the scrotum for which you could have no possible use, I am delighted to tell you in person to take my paper—my paper, sir, note that well, for all your dirty pawings could not make it anything ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... Midas, with the healthy appetite of the peasant-born, would have eaten largely of the savoury food that his cooks prepared, he found that his teeth only touched roast kid to turn it into a slab of gold, that garlic lost its flavour and became gritty as he chewed, that rice turned into golden grains, and curdled milk became a dower fit for a princess, entirely unnegotiable for the digestion of man. Baffled and miserable, Midas seized his cup of wine, ...
— A Book of Myths • Jean Lang
... heat, mother, did you say? Why, then, is not everything warm? Some things, mother, are very cold; as ice, and snow, and that marble slab. ...
— Parker's Second Reader • Richard G. Parker
... me to a smaller chamber, with a curious little door formed of a single slab of stone, and pointed once again disconsolately to more rifled boxes. These outer chests covered smaller boxes, which were of the size of the weights themselves. I had always heard that the biggest weight of all was a square block of gold equal to the weight of a full-grown man. I would like to ...
— Indiscreet Letters From Peking • B. L. Putman Weale
... said Mary philosophically. "I say, Beth," she went on, raising herself on her elbow—she was lying prone on a slab of rock in the sun—"what does ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... a big slab of stone, and the embers being swept away from one part the boy had there about a score of large garden snails, which he was pushing on to the hot stone, where they hissed and sent out a lot of foam and steam. Then he changed them about with a bit of stick into hotter or cooler parts, and all with ...
— Brownsmith's Boy - A Romance in a Garden • George Manville Fenn
... fashion—many of them things not known even by name to Thyrsis. There were costly wines as well, and at the end an ice in the shape of a great basket of fruit, wonderfully carved and colored like life, resting upon a slab of ice, which in turn was set in ...
— Love's Pilgrimage • Upton Sinclair
... the whole of the north of England; being, as I think, one that will go well in almost any wind, and is applicable at any part of the roof. It is also roughly built, consisting of a roof of loose stones, sometimes one large flat slab, supported above the flue by four large supports, each of a single stone. It is rather light in its appearance, and breaks the ridge of a roof very agreeably. Separately considered, it is badly proportioned; but, as it just equals the height ...
— The Poetry of Architecture • John Ruskin
... Phonograph, sternly, addressing the Marquis. "Air you willing to patch up the damage you've did this ere slab-sided but trustin' bunch o' calico by single-footin' easy to the altar, or will we have to rope ...
— Rolling Stones • O. Henry
... and head-rests for opium smokers. The walls were painted blue and hung with vertical Cantonese legends in red and silver, while all around the sides of the room small ebony tables alternated with ebony stools, each inlaid with a slab of mottled marble. A chandelier, all a-glitter with tinsel, swung from the centre of the ceiling over a huge ...
— Blix • Frank Norris
... vaulting which supports the lower courts and the Court of Appeals there is, close to the fourth arch, a stone slab, used by Saint-Louis, it is said, for the distribution of alms, and doing duty in our day as a counter for the sale of eatables to the prisoners. So as soon as the prison-yard is open to the prisoners, they gather round this stone table, which displays such dainties as jail-birds desire—brandy, ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac
... that of Tasso at Ferrara or Petrarch at Avignon. In spite of that thick—one is inclined to say rank—growth of miracles which at times confuse Adamnan's fine portrait of his hero—cover it thick as lichens some monumental slab of marble—we can still recognize his real lineaments underneath. His great natural gifts; his abounding energy; his characteristically Irish love for his native soil; for the beloved "oaks of Derry." We see him in his goings out and his comings in; we know his faults; his fiery Celtic temper, ...
— The Story Of Ireland • Emily Lawless
... his hound; they told him that the body of the dog had been found, horribly mangled as though by the teeth of some fierce animal, at the foot of the tower. The dog was buried in the garden, with a slab above him, on ...
— Paul the Minstrel and Other Stories - Reprinted from The Hill of Trouble and The Isles of Sunset • Arthur Christopher Benson
... frightened and, running as fast as he could, he finally came to the spot where it had once stood. The little house was no longer there. In its place lay a small marble slab, ...
— The Adventures of Pinocchio • C. Collodi—Pseudonym of Carlo Lorenzini
... the medium, "I am in very truth Chandrabai, who was, but am not now, of this world." As the last words die away the men dash forward, twist Krishna's hair into a knot behind, dress him, as he struggles, in the female attire which the midwife has been guarding, and place in his hand a wooden slab rudely carved into the semblance of a woman and child. "Away, away to the underworld" chant the singers; and at the command Krishna wrenches himself free from the men who are holding him and dashes out with ...
— By-Ways of Bombay • S. M. Edwardes, C.V.O.
... the dining-room. He heard the closing of the library door. Then there was a long silence, followed by the rattling of shutters, the shooting of bolts, the noise made by bars, and after another lapse, the murmur of deep voices in the hall, the clink of silver candlesticks on the marble slab, and ...
— Syd Belton - The Boy who would not go to Sea • George Manville Fenn
... came out again. He held half a loaf and a big slab of goat's-milk cheese between his huge thumb and finger. He paused exactly on the spot where he had stood so long, and seemed about to become absorbed in the contemplation of the empty fishing boats lying in the sun. Sebastiano watched him with hungry eyes, but Ruggiero again stared at ...
— The Children of the King • F. Marion Crawford
... long in reaching the hut. It was one of those slab huts which are used by shepherds. They are lonely enough, the stations being in some instances twenty miles from the nearest dwelling. This was a single dwelling, the home of one of the out keepers. The chief stations are usually an aggregation ...
— In A New World - or, Among The Gold Fields Of Australia • Horatio Alger
... then!" squalled Marie. "Prove it, you slab-sided hunk! Yah, you can't prove it, and you ...
— The Heart of the Range • William Patterson White
... They were to make more trouble but not again were they to imperil the foundations of law and order in the little community of New Salem. As they were starting away Bap McNoll turned to Harry Needles and shouted: "I'll git even with you yet—you slab-sided son of ...
— A Man for the Ages - A Story of the Builders of Democracy • Irving Bacheller
... brought down from the village. It's pretty evident there is no opening between the great rocks or we must have found it. We must examine the smaller bowlders. They may have one so placed that it can be dropped down over the entrance. That flat slab is a likely-looking place, for instance. Three or four of you get hold of it and ...
— One of the 28th • G. A. Henty
... that ... that stuff!" Henry said, pointing to a great slab of thick pudding, padded ...
— Changing Winds - A Novel • St. John G. Ervine
... forth and gathered together the stone-cutters and took marble and ashlar from the stores and set the material on the backs of beasts with all other needs and he repaired to the hall,[FN136] and entered with his company. Hereat the old woman asked "What is't ye want?" "We would slab the floors and walls of this dwelling with marble!" "And who was it sent you?" "Thy son-in-law!" "And what may be his business?" "We know not." "Then what is his name?" "A1- Bundukani," they replied. So she said to herself, "He is naught but a Robber and Captain of thieves." Then the masons ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... Fr. abaque, tailloir), in architecture, the upper member of the capital of a column. Its chief function is to provide a larger supporting surface for the architrave or arch it has to carry. In the Greek Doric order the abacus is a plain square slab. In the Roman and Renaissance Doric orders it is crowned by a moulding. In the Archaic-Greek Ionic order, owing to the greater width of the capital, the abacus is rectangular in plan, and consists of a carved ovolo moulding. In later ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... proudly, and his noble features impressing those who gaze upon them from age to age with a sense of scornful power and melancholy calm, such as does not belong to the countenance of the men of their own time. And all around, under this solemn guardianship, each upon a polished slab of marble, and enclosed in a case of thick glass, lay the corpses of the Egyptian dead, swathed in numberless wrappings, as in their day the true religion that they held was swathed ...
— Dawn • H. Rider Haggard
... however, and I felt the same in regard to the authenticity of the verses on Shakespeare's marble slab. It is fortunate that Miss Bacon's purpose of opening the tomb at Stratford was not carried out, but that is no reason why it should not be opened in a properly conducted manner, for scientific purposes—in order to discover all that is possible concerning so ...
— The Life and Genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne • Frank Preston Stearns
... boyish laugh rang in from the garden, and his face softened suddenly. In the sun-scorched, honest-eyed little figure before him he saw his own boy—the single child of his young wife, who was lying beneath a marble slab in the churchyard. Her face, mild and Madonna-like, glimmered against the pallid rose leaves in ...
— The Voice of the People • Ellen Glasgow
... altar of the chapel when the Duke's message came; the Duke himself and Vittoria were already in the little winding stair that leads down from the apartments; there was not a moment to be lost; the frightened chaplain and the messenger hurriedly raised a marble slab which closed an unused vault, dropped the murdered man's body into the chasm, and had scarcely replaced the stone when the ducal pair entered the church. The priest married them before the altar in fear and trembling, and when ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 1 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... only ornament of the place. No sarcophagus, no urn, and even no inscription to feed the devotion of the classical pilgrim. The epitaph which though not genuine is yet ancient, was inscribed by the order of the Duke of Pescolangiano, then proprietor of the place, on a marble slab placed in the side of the rock opposite the entrance of the tomb, where it still remains. Every body is ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 14, No. 406, Saturday, December 26, 1829. • Various
... Country. The cluster of gray stone houses nestled beneath the scarred face of a crag, and, because mining operations had lately been suspended and work was scarce just then, pale-faced men in moleskin lounged about the slate-slab doorsteps. Above the village, and beyond the summit of the crag, the mouth of a tunnel formed a black blot on the sunlit slopes of sheep-cropped grass stretching up to the heather, which gave place in turn to rock out-crop on the shoulders of the fell. The loungers glanced at the tunnel regretfully, ...
— Thurston of Orchard Valley • Harold Bindloss
... was buried with simple village honors, and laid to rest beneath the floor of the Cathedral where he had so long ministered, side by side with a long line of priests. On the little slab that marked his resting-place no mention was made of the mighty work he had done for truth. There were fears that when the character of his book was known, the grave of Copernicus would not remain undisturbed, and so the inscription on the headstone was simply this: "I ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 12 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Scientists • Elbert Hubbard
... apparatus of easels, sketching-stools, umbrellas, and painting-boxes, the most elaborate and beautiful that Messrs. Soap and Isaac could supply. It made J. J.'s eyes glisten to see those lovely gimcracks of art; those smooth mill-boards, those slab-tinted sketching-blocks, and glistening rows of colour-tubes lying in their boxes, which seemed to cry, "Come, squeeze me." If painting-boxes made painters, if sketching-stools would but enable one to ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... the tribune with slow and deliberate tread, he drew up his tall figure, and resting his left hand, which grasped a roll of papers, upon the marble slab, glanced around on the turbulent billows of upturned and excited faces, as if at a loss how to address them. Having read the bill, after the usual prefatory remarks, he began by laying down the platform which he proposed occupying in its advocacy and support, consisting, of course, ...
— Edmond Dantes • Edmund Flagg
... made a great roarin' fire, 'cause, ye see, Cack allers had slab-wood a plenty from his mill; and a roarin' fire is jest so much company. It sort o' keeps a fellow's spirits up, a good fire does. So Cack he sot on his old teakettle, and made a swingeing lot o' toddy; and he and Cap'n Eb were havin' a tol'able comfortable time there. Cack was a pretty good hand ...
— Oldtown Fireside Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... how it was, Sieur de Mauprat," said he. "I was crossing the Place du Vier Prison when a rascal threw a cleaver at me from a window. If it had struck me on the head—well, the Royal Court would have buried me, and without a slab to my grave like Rullecour. I burst open the door of the house, ran up the stairs, gripped the ruffian, and threw him through the window into the street. As I did so a door opened behind, and another cut-throat came at me with a pistol. He fired—fired wide. ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... most perfect which I saw, were the Ruinas de Tambillos, in the Uspallata Pass. Small square rooms were there huddled together in separate groups: some of the doorways were yet standing; they were formed by a cross slab of stone only about three feet high. Ulloa has remarked on the lowness of the doors in the ancient Peruvian dwellings. These houses, when perfect, must have been capable of containing a considerable number of persons. Tradition says, that they were used as halting-places ...
— The Voyage of the Beagle • Charles Darwin
... a reformed temperance lecturer. I went to his shop to get shaved, but he was absent. I could smell hair oil through the keyhole, but the Colonel was not in his slab-inlaid emporium. He had been preparing another lecture on temperance, and was at that moment studying the habits of his adversary at a neighboring gin palace. I sat down on the steps and devoured the beautiful landscape till he came. Then I sat down in ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye
... hands to mark the last resting-place of some departed friend or hero. By the aid of some of the Comrie masons the stones were placed in a standing position. Curious to know what lay beneath the surface, we dug up the earth in front of the largest slab, and came upon a stone cist placed north and south, 7 inches long, 1 foot 8 inches broad, and 1 foot 3 inches deep. The only remains discovered was a thigh-bone, but whether it at one time formed a part of the leg of a Celt, a Roman, or a Saxon ...
— Chronicles of Strathearn • Various
... a lower step—as Smith, bringing all his weight to bear upon the ring, turned the huge stone slab upon its hidden pivot, so that it fell back upon the stair ...
— The Hand Of Fu-Manchu - Being a New Phase in the Activities of Fu-Manchu, the Devil Doctor • Sax Rohmer
... throat with an alacrity and dispatch that augured well for the thorough "vittling" he intended, while Sary went about folding chunks of boiled ham, thick slices of brown bread, solid rounds of "sody biskit," and slab-sided turnovers in a newspaper, filling a flat bottle with whiskey, and now and then casting a look at the low bed where young Harry McAlister lay, very much whiter than the sheets about him, and ...
— The Wit of Women - Fourth Edition • Kate Sanborn
... left a taper burning on a slab outside the door. Walter had but half closed it behind her when she reappeared with the taper in one hand and the volume he had given her in the other. He took the book without a word, and again she went; but he had hardly thrown it on the hot coals when once more she ...
— Home Again • George MacDonald
... in a crucible at a white heat; the proportion of clay employed is greater as the pencil is required to be harder, the average being equal parts of both. The ingredients are ground with a muller on a porphyry slab and then made into balls, which are preserved in a moist atmosphere in the form of paste. The paste is pressed into grooves cut in a smooth board, and another board, previously greased, is pressed down upon it. When the paste has had time to ...
— Forty Centuries of Ink • David N. Carvalho
... widen the clearing in the forest. Inspection of the details of our domain was reserved as a sort of reward for present task and toil. According to the formula neatly printed in official journals, the building of a slab hut is absurdly easy—quite a pastime for the settler eager to get a roof of bark or thatch over his head. The frame, of course, goes up without assistance, and then the principal item is the slabs for walls. When you have fallen your tree and sawn off a block of the required length, you ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... southwest from our winter quarters was the memorial headboard of Petersen, the Danish interpreter of the English expedition of 1875-76. He died as the result of exposure on a sledge trip, and was buried there abreast of the Alert's winter quarters. The grave is covered with a large flat slab, and at the head is a board covered with a copper sheet from the boiler room of the Alert, with the inscription punched in it. There may be a lonelier grave somewhere on earth, but if so I have no knowledge of it. ...
— The North Pole - Its Discovery in 1909 under the auspices of the Peary Arctic Club • Robert E. Peary
... Standing broadside to the entrance, it was the height of an ordinary man, and twice as long as high. The exterior had been polished smoothly as the material would allow; otherwise it was of absolute plainness, looking not unlike a dark brown box. The lid was a slab of the finest white marble carven into a perfect model of Solomon's Temple. While the master surveyed the lid he was visibly affected. He passed the lamp over it slowly, letting the light fall into the courts of the famous building; ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 1 • Lew. Wallace
... intelligent man led us through the pretty gardens and grounds, up and up and up innumerable steps in successive short flights, through many wickets, till I began to think we could never reach our goal. Finally we came to a spot of constant shade where was a singularly shaped rock—a kind of slab—thrusting itself out from the wall, in which a brass plate was inserted with an inscription by Wordsworth, which we read. It expressed that he had pleaded for this rock as often as he had for other ...
— Memories of Hawthorne • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop
... sheltering his brother. Waltheof was elected to be Bishop of St. Andrews, and Aelred, as head of the Cistercians in Britain, came to Melrose, to order him, on his canonical obedience, to accept the see. But Waltheof was weak in health, and knew that another call had gone forth. He pointed to a stone slab on the floor of the chapter-house. "There," said he, "is the place of my rest. Here will be my habitation, ...
— Cameos from English History, from Rollo to Edward II • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... were shoved home; the barbarous cacophony of the clanking pump rose in the waist; and streams of ill-smelling water gushed on deck and made valleys in the slab guano. Nares leaned on the rail, watching the steady stream of bilge as though he found some ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... up. "Cornell, I can see your point. You don't like U.S. 40. So I'll help you good people. If you don't want to drive along such a lousy slab of concrete, just say the word and we'll arrange for you to take it in style, luxury, and without a trace of pain or strain. I'll be seein' you. And a very pleasant trip ...
— Highways in Hiding • George Oliver Smith
... said Zeke; and, taking a bucket and a wooden bowl from under the hemlock, he produced a slab of johnny-cake from the former, and, pouring out something like a quart of maple sirup into the latter, ...
— Happy Days for Boys and Girls • Various
... wondering how they were to see through the thick snow, when from one of the sledges a large slab of fresh-water ice was produced; and the builder cutting a round hole in one side of the roof, it was let into it to ...
— Peter the Whaler • W.H.G. Kingston
... two-storey brick house with wide balconies and verandahs all round, and a double row of pines down to the front gate. Parallel at the back was an old slab-and-shingle place, one room deep and about eight rooms long, with a row of skillions at the back: the place was used for kitchen, laundry, servants' rooms, &c. This was the old homestead before the new house was built. There was a wide, old-fashioned, brick-floored verandah ...
— Joe Wilson and His Mates • Henry Lawson
... our places of resort was the old cemetery on Congress street, which in those days was very retired. Our favorite spot here was the summit of a tomb, which stood on the highest point in the grounds. It was the old style of tomb—a broad marble slab, supported by six small stone pillars on a stone foundation, and surrounded by two steps raised above the soil. It was a very quiet retreat. We could hear the distant hum of the city and at the same time enjoy a view of the water and shipping, as the land sloped ...
— The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss • George L. Prentiss
... economical use of coal fuel, and, if carefully used, consumes little more than 1/2 lb of coal per man per day. The cook-house is well lighted and ventilated by a top lantern; tables, dressers, and pastry slab are provided for preparing and serving the meals, and a sink for washing kitchen utensils. Under the kitchen block is a basement containing the boiler for heating the dining-rooms and another for the supply of hot water to baths and sinks, with in some cases also a hot-air furnace for heating ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 3 - "Banks" to "Bassoon" • Various
... certain number of squirrels and crows every year. [Footnote: Michaux, 215, 236; Collins, I., 24.] The settlers possessed horses and horned cattle, but only a few sheep, which were not fitted to fight for their own existence in the woods, as the stock had to. On the other hand, slab-sided, long-legged hogs were the most plentiful of domestic animals, ranging in great, ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Four - Louisiana and the Northwest, 1791-1807 • Theodore Roosevelt
... there was little light and Blake, looking out from behind a slab of rock in the shelter of which a few junipers clung, thought that three or four miles would be the longest distance that he could see. This was peculiarly unfortunate, because he understood that their course led across a wide untimbered stretch, on the opposite side of ...
— Blake's Burden • Harold Bindloss
... almost completely at ease, in the depths of a huge, comfortable, old-fashioned Morris chair. Three similar chairs were clustered around a squat, massive coffee table, made of a single slab of dark wood set on short, curved legs. Malone looked around at the other three with a relaxed feeling of recognition: Andrew J. Burris, Sir ...
— Occasion for Disaster • Gordon Randall Garrett
... the bases are hidden by a square wooden boxing. The eleven arches of the nave arcade are round. The round-headed windows of both nave and aisles had pierced slabs of stone in them, but in 1740 the openings were made lunette-shaped. One pierced slab of the ninth century has been found, and is now placed high up in the apse above the patriarch's throne. Under Fortunatus and John the Younger, about the beginning of the ninth century, the church appears to have been beautified; and again, in the second half of the ...
— The Shores of the Adriatic - The Austrian Side, The Kuestenlande, Istria, and Dalmatia • F. Hamilton Jackson
... should exactly meet on the eve of the day. The excavations for the new house were already done; the rock was blown away with gunpowder; and a fair foundation-stone had been hewn, with a hollow chamber, and a flat slab adjusted ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. II • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... which is so little understood, stones were preserved as sacred objects in various places, even to late times, and had no doubt originally been worshipped. The god Hermes was represented in every period by a slab of stone set upright, a human head and other human features being indicated on it. Even in later Greece, boards or blocks of wood were in some places exhibited on rare occasions, which were the oldest images of the Artemis or the Aphrodite there adored. Though for the public ...
— History of Religion - A Sketch of Primitive Religious Beliefs and Practices, and of the Origin and Character of the Great Systems • Allan Menzies
... with which they have intruded into the charmed circle of his poetry such compositions as "Lines on the Ruins of Lincluden College," "Verses on the Destruction of the Woods of Drumlanrig," "Verses written on a Marble Slab in the Woods of Aberfeldy," and those entitled "The Tree of Liberty." These productions, with the exception of the last, were never seen by any one even in the handwriting of Burns, and are one and all wanting in that original ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... 6), or almost equally rude examples of art, as in Plate IX, Fig. 1, which represents the fetich of the white Mole (Mai-tu-pu ko-ha-na) of the Eastern Lower regions. It consists merely of a natural slab of fine white limestone. ...
— Zuni Fetiches • Frank Hamilton Cushing
... called the sachem, and two young men stepped forward, toe on the line, glanced each at a framed picture, drew up an arm, and, "Whut-t-t t-e-e-p," whined two knives that flittered through the light and struck quivering, one with its cool kiss on McElroy's cheek, the other just in the edge of the slab at De ...
— The Maid of the Whispering Hills • Vingie E. Roe
... following lines were transcribed by me, and form part of an epitaph upon a tombstone or mural slab, which many years past was to be found in (if I mistake not) the churchyard of Old ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 213, November 26, 1853 • Various
... guiding her. Another moment, and she stood beside him. But now, how were they to descend? She dared not attempt to leap back to the spot from whence she had sprung in her terror, and there was no regular descent from the slab on which they were perched, but only a few projecting stones down the perpendicular face of the wall, and these at ...
— Frank Oldfield - Lost and Found • T.P. Wilson
... of houses to the corner of the street. Behind the chimney on the very last roof, something was lurking. It was the fugitive Baby. He was covered with dust and dirt and fragments of glass. But he was sitting on his hind-legs, and was eating an enormous slab of peanut candy, with a look of mingled guilt and infinite satisfaction. He even, I fancied, slightly stroked his stomach with his disengaged fore-paw as I approached. He knew that I was looking for him; and the expression of ...
— Tales of the Argonauts • Bret Harte
... stink. I don't think any of them dreamt of the man inside. I was just a wonderful leathery great joss that had come up with luck out of the water. But the fatigue! the heat! the beastly closeness! the mackintosheriness and the rum! and the fuss! They lit a stinking fire on a kind of lava slab there was before me, and brought in a lot of gory muck—the worst parts of what they were feasting on outside, the Beasts—and burnt it all in my honour. I was getting a bit hungry, but I understand now how gods manage to do without eating, ...
— Twelve Stories and a Dream • H. G. Wells
... managed to effect by rubbing grease over the inner surface of the skins with a hard piece of lava slab selected from the volcanic debris at the foot of the cliff, in the same way, as Eric explained, that sailors holystone the decks of a ship; and, after the pelts of the seals were subjected to this process, they underwent a species of tanning by being steeped in a decoction of tea ...
— Fritz and Eric - The Brother Crusoes • John Conroy Hutcheson
... 10th of November, Captain Bonneville visited a place in the neighborhood which is quite a region of natural curiosities. An area of about half a mile square presents a level surface of white clay or fuller's earth, perfectly spotless, resembling a great slab of Parian marble, or a sheet of dazzling snow. The effect is strikingly beautiful at all times: in summer, when it is surrounded with verdure, or in autumn, when it contrasts its bright immaculate ...
— The Adventures of Captain Bonneville - Digested From His Journal • Washington Irving
... allegory From these damp walls, and taken but the form. Know ye not these?' and Gareth lookt and read— In letters like to those the vexillary Hath left crag-carven o'er the streaming Gelt— 'PHOSPHORUS,' then 'MERIDIES'—'HESPERUS'— 'NOX'—'MORS,' beneath five figures, armed men, Slab after slab, their faces forward all, And running down the Soul, a Shape that fled With broken wings, torn raiment and loose hair, For help and shelter to the hermit's cave. 'Follow the faces, and we find it. Look, ...
— Idylls of the King • Alfred, Lord Tennyson
... to Ursula): Ah! forgive me, Lady Abbess, Bless me ere I go; She who under sod and slab is Lying, cold and low, Scarce would turn away in anger From a child so frail; Not dear life, but deadly danger, Makes ...
— Poems • Adam Lindsay Gordon
... any Saxon annals accessible to the author.]—and that's as much, as twelve hundred and fifty years ago think of it! Twelve hundred and fifty years! Now yonder is the last one—Charles Dickens—there on the floor, with the brass letters on the slab—and to this day the people come and put flowers on it.... There is Garrick's monument; and Addison's, and Thackeray's bust—and Macaulay lies there. And close to Dickens and Garrick lie Sheridan and Dr. Johnson—and here ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... allowed to express my opinion on the subject I would have supported the latter mode of treatment; but a convict dare not utter a word with respect to medical treatment. I was accordingly obliged to lie in one position for three months with my leg strapped to a long slab, and to use a lotion which proved very injurious to it. During these three months I suffered the most intense pain. I not only could not get out of bed, but I could not change my position in it; and, to add to the wretchedness ...
— Six Years in the Prisons of England • A Merchant - Anonymous
... and caring for destitute children, is popularly considered due to the parishes of St. Botulph, Aldgate, and St. Margaret's, Westminster: and if he would farther satisfy himself upon that point, he will see it claimed by the first named; a slab in front of their schools, adjoining the Royal Mint, bearing an inscription to the purport that it was the first Protestant charity-school, erected by voluntary ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 210, November 5, 1853 • Various
... large boat with sails and oars. The members of the procession then took their places in other richly decorated sailing boats, and all crossed the lake together. The procession was then reformed and went in the same order to the tomb. Here the mummy-case was placed on the slab prepared for it, and a sacrifice with libation and incense offered. The door of the tomb was then closed, but not fastened, as sacrificial services would be held there periodically for many years. The procession then returned on foot to ...
— The Cat of Bubastes - A Tale of Ancient Egypt • G. A. Henty
... after the golden day has come and the war is at an end, A slab of bronze on the chapel wall will tell of the noble dead. And every name on that radiant list will be the name of a friend, A name that shall through the centuries in grateful prayers ...
— Main Street and Other Poems • Alfred Joyce Kilmer
... slab near an arcaded opening Roy sat gratefully down; while Terry, bored to extinction with the whole affair, curled himself up in a shadowed corner and went fast asleep. "Unfriendly little beast," thought Roy; and promptly forgot ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... The delicate white things marshaled there were waiting, stirred by the leaves and the breeze; so that Spring lent them frail shape and sweetness—and life. I remember, too, a gaunt house, scorching in the sun, and a window which flashed and then shut! The window stayed shut, like a slab. All the world was silent; and that splendid living being was walled up there. And last, I have recollection of an evening when, in the bluish and dark green and chalky landscape of the town and its rounded gardens, I saw that window lighted up. ...
— Light • Henri Barbusse
... temple of Denbo-In, in Asakusa; and a beautiful example at Zojoji in Shiba. These are not cut out of a single block, but are composed of fragments cemented into the irregular traditional shape, and capped with a heavy slab of Nebukawa granite, on the polished surface of which the design is engraved in lines about one-tenth of an inch in depth. I should judge the average height of these pedestals to be about two feet four inches, and their greatest diameter about three ...
— In Ghostly Japan • Lafcadio Hearn
... studying each successive slab of stone as he ascended. The muscles of his jaw were working. He seemed to have formed a habit of jamming his hands far down ...
— The Rose in the Ring • George Barr McCutcheon |
