"Slab" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... attention. The dark mossy stem, over seventy feet high, was perfectly branchless for many feet above the ground, when it shot out in broad boughs laden with lustrous leaves of the deepest green. And all round the lower part of the trunk, thin, slab-like buttresses of bark, perfectly smooth, and radiating from a common centre, projected along the ground for at least two yards. From below, these natural props tapered upward until gradually blended ...
— Omoo: Adventures in the South Seas • Herman Melville
... do also plant oziers in their eights, like quick-sets, thick, and (near the water) keep them not more than half a foot above ground; but then they must be diligently cleansed from moss, slab, and ouze, and frequently prun'd (especially the smaller spires) to form single shoots; at least, that few, or none grow double; these they head every second year about September, the autumnal cuttings being ...
— Sylva, Vol. 1 (of 2) - Or A Discourse of Forest Trees • John Evelyn
... stopping till it was all before her; and here, on what struck her friend as the dizzy edge of it, she was seated at her ease. The path somehow took care of itself and its final business, but the girl's seat was a slab of rock at the end of a short promontory or excrescence that merely pointed off to the right into gulfs of air and that was so placed by good fortune, if not by the worst, as to be at last completely visible. For Mrs. Stringham stifled a cry on taking in ...
— The Wings of the Dove, Volume 1 of 2 • Henry James
... hand through a 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
... toil began, Parkinson experienced a great flare of hope for deliverance. They had just brought another slab to the surface, when a steamer appeared above the horizon. It was far away, but its crew must surely have seen ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, November, 1930 • Various
... you'll hear The doctrine of a gentle Johnian, Whose hand is white, whose voice is clear, Whose phrase is very Ciceronian. Where is the old man laid? Look down, And construe on the slab before you: "Hic jacet Gulielmus Brown, ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 4 (of 4) • Various
... to the inner side of a great slab that lay wedged against the wall of the chasm, and, stooping there, dragged out rock after rock, cunningly piled so that the waves could not displace them, until a small opening was disclosed behind ...
— Carette of Sark • John Oxenham
... I ran back again, and saw the men passing, one after another, through an opening in the stairs, formed by one of the marble steps being raised. When the last man had vanished, the slab that made the step was shut down, and there was not a sign of the secret door. It was the seventh step from the bottom, as I took care to count: and a splendid idea; for it was so solid that it did not ring hollow, even to a fairly heavy ...
— Carnacki, The Ghost Finder • William Hope Hodgson
... The body of St. Apollinare was originally laid beneath it, but was in a subsequent age removed to a more specially honourable position under the high altar at the eastern end of the church. There is still, however, the slab deeply carved with letters of ancient form, which tells how St. Romauld, the founder of the order of Camaldoli, praying by night at that altar, saw in a vision St. Apollinare, who bade him leave the world, and become the founder ...
— A Siren • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... the bishop said: "'My dream went on. I crossed the stable yard And passed into a place of tombs. And look! Before I knew I stepped into a hole, A sunken grave with just a slab at head, And "Jesus" carven on it, nothing else, No date, no ...
— Toward the Gulf • Edgar Lee Masters
... the control room before leaving. The plaster on the ceiling would need repairing where the Sten gun had chipped it down to the concrete roof slab, but there was little real damage to show the effect of last night's fight. Even the window broken by Youssef had ...
— The Egyptian Cat Mystery • Harold Leland Goodwin
... is of Lawrence Washington, the father of John Washington, who emigrated to America. It is a slab of bluish-gray sandstone, and measures five feet and nine inches long, and two feet and seven inches ...
— Washington and the American Republic, Vol. 3. • Benson J. Lossing
... soil within. A thick wall surrounded the cemetery, in which were rows of openings for coffins, one above the other, where the more opulent of the dead were entombed. The coffin is thrust in endwise, and the opening closed with a marble slab ...
— Letters of a Traveller - Notes of Things Seen in Europe and America • William Cullen Bryant
... seemed to start forward with extraordinary swiftness. The log rushed down on the circular saw. Instantly the wild, exultant shriek arose. The car went on, burying the saw, all but the very top, from which a stream of sawdust flew up and back. A long, clean slab fell to a succession of revolving rollers which carried it, passing it from one to the other, far into the body of the mill. The car shot back to its original position in front of the saw. The saw hummed an undersong of strong vibration. Again it ploughed its way the ...
— The Rules of the Game • Stewart Edward White
... has centred round an Anglo-Saxon cross-slab built into the west wall of Kirkdale church. At the time of its discovery the late Rev. Daniel H. Haigh[1] tells us that a runic inscription spelling Kununc Oithilwalde, meaning "to King AEthelwald," was quite legible. This would ...
— The Evolution Of An English Town • Gordon Home
... countries as might be desired showed in frames up and down which they followed one another by the silent turning of a handle. A blackboard on an easel looked across the desks at a wall into which was let a solid slab of blackboard. The window adjoining this display exhibited a miniature classroom in which the "F.E. & S." system of classroom ventilation maintained air so pure and fresh that the most comatose pupil could not but keep alert and receptive ...
— If Winter Comes • A.S.M. Hutchinson
... into this she put herself in it, after having made an island of it by placing it a few inches deep in the stream. Thus she could kneel and get at the water conveniently without wetting her knees or skirts. On a sloping slab of wood she manipulated the linen with such instrumentality as cold water, soap, a wooden mallet and a hard brush. Beside her, in a miniature tub, her little daughter conducted ...
— Rivers of Ice • R.M. Ballantyne
... dreamily we glide along, feeling our motion but in the resistance of the wind and in the trout-like pull of the ribands by the excited animal before us. Mark the color of the sand! White at high-water mark, and thence deepening to a silvery gray as the water has evaporated less, a slab of Egyptian granite in the obelisk of St. Peter's not more polished and unimpressible. Shell or rock, weed or quicksand, there is none; and, mar or deface its bright surface as you will, it is ever beaten down anew, and washed even of the dust of the foot of man by the returning sea. You may ...
— Initial Studies in American Letters • Henry A. Beers
... home again, with whom abiding 'tis like to be mali corvi mali ovum. Coming out of the church we met them carrying in a corpse, with the feet and face bare. This I then first learned is Venetian custom, and sure no other town will ever rob them of it, nor of this that follows. On a great porphyry slab in the piazza were three ghastly heads rotting and tainting the air, and in their hot summers like to take vengeance with breeding of a plague. These were traitors to the state, and a heavy price—two thousand ducats—being put on each ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... another in regular order, and cemented with snow— as bricks are with lime. The form of the wall was circular, and the slabs were so shaped that they sloped inwards, thus forming a dome, or large bee-hive, with a key-stone slab in the top to keep all firm. A hole was then cut in the side for a door—just large enough to admit of a man creeping through. In front of this door a porch or passage of snow was built. The only way of getting into the hut is by creeping ...
— Fast in the Ice - Adventures in the Polar Regions • R.M. Ballantyne
... commonly used, not unlike an Indian chapati. A ball of flour paste is well fingered and pawed until it gets to a semi-solid consistency. It is then flung several times from one palm of the hand into the other, after which it is spread flat with a roller upon a level stone slab. A few indentations are made upon its face with the end of the baker's fingers; it is taken up and thrown with a rapid movement upon the inner domed portion of a small oven, some three to four feet high, within which blazes a big charcoal fire. Several loaves are thus baked against ...
— Across Coveted Lands - or a Journey from Flushing (Holland) to Calcutta Overland • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... art of making paste requires much practice, dexterity, and skill: it should be touched as lightly as possible, made with cool hands and in a cool place (a marble slab is better than a board for the purpose), and the coolest part of the house should be selected for the process ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... from the step, Sin Sin Wa set it on the cellar floor, which was black with coal dust, then closed and bolted the door. A heap of nondescript litter lay piled in a corner of the cellar. This Sin Sin Wa disturbed sufficiently to reveal a movable slab in the roughly paved floor. It was so ingeniously concealed by coal dust that one who had sought it unaided must have experienced great difficulty in detecting it. Furthermore, it could only be raised in the ...
— Dope • Sax Rohmer
... rough mahogany slab on which she had been sitting, handed him a puesta (twenty cents, Mexican), looked out of the window and said, "I'll tell you what I'll do: I'll trade you my hair for that quilas ...
— The Woman with a Stone Heart - A Romance of the Philippine War • Oscar William Coursey
... libitum, With postures energetical, One day (this is prophetical) His graces, to exhibit 'em. He straddled in each attitude, Four parallels of latitude— The slab-footed, crab-footed, galloping gregarian, of presence unaesthetical! An ancient cow, perceiving that His powers of agility Transcended her ability (A circumstance for grieving at) Upon her horns engrafted him And to the welkin wafted him— ...
— Black Beetles in Amber • Ambrose Bierce
... the suburbs of the city to find the place where the dead sleep, and I looked all along the line of the beautiful hills, the place where the dead might most blissfully sleep, and I saw towers and castles, but not a mausoleum or a monument or a white slab was to be seen. And I went into the chapel of the great town, and I said: 'Where do the poor worship, and where are the benches on which they sit?' And the answer was made me, 'We have no poor in ...
— T. De Witt Talmage - As I Knew Him • T. De Witt Talmage
... cleanliness. The linen was white as snow, the windows were transparent as air, the furniture shone like crystal, the walls were so clean that one could not have found a spot with a microscope. Besides this, there was a basket for waste paper, a little tablet on which to strike matches, a slab for cigar-ashes, a box for cigar-stumps, a spittoon, a boot-jack, in short, there was absolutely no ...
— Holland, v. 1 (of 2) • Edmondo de Amicis
... who was to grow to be a greater man even than his grandfather, though he could scarcely be a more lovable one, plucked a posy of the tulips and laid them on the plain marble slab which bore nothing but the words, "Heaven is the eternal home of the Emperor Babar." And when Bija, with many a little feminine ceremonial, had deposited her nosegay of sweet violets, and Head-nurse and Foster-mother ...
— The Adventures of Akbar • Flora Annie Steel
... said 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 ye, ...
— Rolling Stones • O. Henry
... the dead man, without honours, back of the town near the little bridge that spans the mangrove swamp; and for a real a boy will show you his grave. They say that the old woman in whose hut the barber shaved the president placed the wooden slab at his head, and burned the inscription upon ...
— Cabbages and Kings • O. Henry
... rather than miss the opportunity of halting for a few minutes on the vacant esplanade of Holyrood, or under the darkest shadows of the Castle rock, where it overhangs the Grassmarket, and the huge slab that still marks where the gibbet of Porteous and the Covenanters had its station. His coachman knew him too well to move at a Jehu's pace amidst such scenes as these. No funeral hearse crept more leisurely than did his landau up the Canongate or the Cowgate; and not a queer tottering gable but ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume V (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... York City, turn thou to the west out of Fifth avenue into Twenty-second street, to the distance of, perhaps, ten rods, and there on a little marble slab set in the wall of a house on the north side of the ...
— Notable Events of the Nineteenth Century - Great Deeds of Men and Nations and the Progress of the World • Various
... do I owe you, Adrien," said Lady Constance gravely, "but to another woman." Drawing him to the marble slab, which stood close to the porch, she bent down and placed her bridal bouquet of white roses on the grave of Jessica. "But for her, life would have ended for both of ...
— Adrien Leroy • Charles Garvice
... every eyelash is a sword * And every glance hath archery: Her liplets twain old wine contain, * And dews of fount-like purity: Her teeth resemble strings o' pearls, * Arrayed in line and fresh from sea: Her neck is like the neck of doe, * Pretty and carven perfectly: Her bosom is a marble slab * Whence rise two breasts like towers on lea: And on her stomach shows a crease * Perfumed with rich perfumery; Beneath which same there lurks a Thing * Limit of mine expectancy. A something rounded, cushioned-high * And plump, my lords, to high degree: To me 'tis likest royal throne * Whither ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 8 • Richard F. Burton
... signs, no street cars, no crowds, no glaring lights. Merely a gas lamp burning over the fanlight of a spotless white door, and the words "Bancroft's Hotel" in mosaic lettering set in a white stone slab in the pavement. ...
— Kent Knowles: Quahaug • Joseph C. Lincoln
... few steps, he paused idly a moment on the verge of this green "God's-acre" to read a perpendicular slab on a wall, and his face broadened into a smile as he followed the absurdly elaborate biography of a rich, self-made merchant who had taught himself to read. "Reader, go thou and do likewise," was the delicious bull at the end. As he turned away, the smile still lingering about ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill
... fashioned with art so wonderful, and with such power of genius, and being moved to reverent pity, caused a sepulchre of bricks to be built, and there within buried the statue, and covered it with a broad slab of stone, that it might not in any way be injured. It has very many sweet beauties which the eyes alone can comprehend not, either by strong or tempered light; only the hand by touching them ...
— The World I Live In • Helen Keller
... along with her. Come over, youngsters, and look her over. The fire in the parlor don't burn more than a half cord of wood on a Sunday, and you can come over Saturday afternoon and cut it against the Sabbath, with a welcome to any one of the spare rooms and a slab of Rufus's spare rib and a couple of both breakfast and supper muffins." All of the older men laughed at this sweeping invitation, and all the younger greeted it with ears that became instantly crimson. I verily believe they would one and all have fled and ...
— The Golden Bird • Maria Thompson Daviess
... way, but occasionally I have periods of wakefulness in the middle of the night. My sleep is then divided into two chapters, and between the chapters there is a slab of unmitigated dreariness. It is my hour of pessimism. The tide has ebbed, the water is dead-low, and there is a vista of endless mud. It is then that this tragi-comedy of life touches bottom, and I see the heavens all hung with black. I despair of humanity, I despair of the ...
— Pebbles on the Shore • Alpha of the Plough (Alfred George Gardiner)
... Hanover is building in memory of his consort, have been erected by the public; and in the instance only of the Princess Charlotte's monument, which was raised by subscription, has one been placed in church or chapel. There is absolutely nothing—not even an engraved slab—to tell where the ashes of George I., II., III., and IV., and William IV., or of any one of all their numerous progeny, repose. No doubt the world knows; and the omission is only remarkable or important from its being at variance with the custom of the country, from the ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... these recommendations, had only sufficient time to point out to his young successor a chimney, under the slab of which he had hidden a thousand ten-franc pieces, ...
— Ten Years Later - Chapters 1-104 • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... old pit amongst the Christian graves to the south-east of the camp, and below the left jamb of the "Gate." Here also the Bedawin had been at work; and, when unable to work deep enough, they told us wonderful tales of an alabaster slab, which doubtless concealed vast treasures. In Arabia, as in Africa, one must look out for what there is not, as well as for what there is. After spending a morning in sinking a twelve-feet shaft, we came upon a shapeless ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 1 • Richard Burton
... light were crowded many people in a vast, uneven circle ringing a great central fire, except at the southern end. And here, where the ring was open so that we could see the huge fire itself, stood a great, stone slab on end, between two round mounds of earth. It was the altar of Amochol, and we knew it instantly, where it stood between the ancient mounds raised ...
— The Hidden Children • Robert W. Chambers
... in the stone wall, in the hen ffordd, fronting to the west, just above the gorge at the bottom of which murmurs the brook Ceiriog, there it was, something like a half barrel chair in a garden, a mouldering stone slab forming the seat, and a large slate stone, the back, on which ...
— The Pocket George Borrow • George Borrow
... was interred, is now marked by a marble slab directly under the doorway leading from the choir into its south aisle. Over this was erected a superb monument to her memory, which remained perfect until the time of ...
— The New Guide to Peterborough Cathedral • George S. Phillips
... besides the framework of the house, but in one corner there was a stone slab laid down by way of hearth and an old rusty iron basket to contain ...
— Treasure Island • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Lesquereux found in beds in the United States leaves which he referred to the same genus. Later, I found in collections made on the Red Deer River of Canada my fruits and Lesquereux's leaves on the same slab. The presence of trees of the genera Carya and Juglans in the same formation was inferred from their leaves, and specimens have since been obtained of silicified wood with the microscopic structure of the modern butternut. Still we are willing to admit that ...
— Darwinism (1889) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... an earthquake passed across it, waving the heavy hangings and bringing a hot breath of some strange heady perfume to the nostrils. Laurence, with a beating heart, ensconced himself in a hidden nook behind the door. The niche was covered by a curtain and furnished with a grooved slab of marble placed there for some ...
— The Black Douglas • S. R. Crockett
... nearly as well developed as Piegan's. He picked his way through the sage-brush to the other side of the canyon, bringing us in the deepest gloom to a great slab of sandstone that had fallen from above, and lay a few feet from the base of the sheer wall. It was a natural breastwork, all ready to our hand. There, without another word, he left us. Crouching in the shelter of that rock, not daring to speak above a whisper, denied ...
— Raw Gold - A Novel • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... heard them coming back of her after while with the bloodhounds barking, she dropped with terror down flat on her stummick. She had suffered so much she couldn't stand anything more. The doctors said she was dead when they picked her up, and they buried her and stuck a little white slab on her grave, with 'Rosebud, aged sixteen' ...
— The Long Day - The Story of a New York Working Girl As Told by Herself • Dorothy Richardson
... that I had not come upon a false scent. This was certainly where the man lived. Some blankets rolled in a waterproof lay upon that very stone slab upon which Neolithic man had once slumbered. The ashes of a fire were heaped in a rude grate. Beside it lay some cooking utensils and a bucket half-full of water. A litter of empty tins showed that the place had been occupied for some time, and I saw, as my eyes became accustomed to the ...
— Hound of the Baskervilles • Authur Conan Doyle
... dead summers. The very statues seemed to drowse like watchers by a death-bed. Lizards shot out of the cracked soil like flames and the bench in the laurustinus-niche was strewn with the blue varnished bodies of dead flies. Before us lay the fish-pond, a yellow marble slab above rotting secrets. The villa looked across it, composed as a dead face, with the cypresses flanking ...
— Crucial Instances • Edith Wharton
... had been her home so long. In life and in death she had been made welcome in Florence. The Italians, as her husband said, seemed to have understood her by an instinct; and upon the walls of Casa Guidi is a marble slab, placed there by the municipality of Florence, and bearing an inscription from the pen ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume II • Elizabeth Barrett Browning
... slowly over the whole inclosure, shut in by the plain white railing, edged with black,—gleamed on every gray stone, white slab, and green hillock,—rested a moment on me, then turned towards heaven, with such ...
— Ernest Linwood - or, The Inner Life of the Author • Caroline Lee Hentz
... attention, leaped on to a chair beside her, his paws on the plate glass slab scattering brushes and bottles, and still laughing she smothered his damp eager nose with powder ...
— The Shadow of the East • E. M. Hull
... oxen, not giraffes!) The meat was indiscriminately chopped up in the shambles, and the odd one (in ten) who had not his legal complement of "neck" alloted him was just as likely to be given for his share—to take or leave—a nose, his due weight of tail, a teat or two, or a slab of suet, as any more esteemed ration from the rib. It was laid down that favouritism had no place in Martial Law; but we were not all Medes and Persians in Kimberley. The rush for meat between six and ...
— The Siege of Kimberley • T. Phelan
... more to do after this in the neighbourhood of Lidford, except to pay a pious visit to the Captain's grave, where a handsome slab of granite recorded the virtues of the dead. It lay in the prettiest, most retired part of the churchyard, half-hidden under a wide-spreading yew. Gilbert Fenton sat down upon a low wall near at hand for ...
— Fenton's Quest • M. E. Braddon
... leaving the colony we were led to a small concrete structure (near the furnace where all combustible waste is burned), and as the door was opened we saw before us on a concrete slab four bodies so wasted and shrivelled that they seemed scarcely human. These were those who had at last been cured in the only way that this dread disease admits of cure. About forty per month are released by ...
— Wanderings in the Orient • Albert M. Reese
... that remained of Fort Pitt, filling a space a few yards square. What claim has the past as against the needs of industry in the present? That was the attitude of that grimy individualism born in "barefoot square" or in "slab alley," in the land of smoke and flame and ...
— The French in the Heart of America • John Finley
... one occasion I captured HALF A BOY (the posterior half) who was hanging with legs dangling out of the window, his "forlorn-hope" or advance half vainly endeavouring to obtain a resting-place upon vacuity within (as the fall slab-table was down). I had no stick; but the toes of his boots had imprinted first impressions upon the faultless varnish. What became of that young Cypriote was ...
— Cyprus, as I Saw it in 1879 • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... (each of these unlovely cargo tanks carried tame lightning within its slab-sided body), when they switched on their lamps they spangled the night with the cheap, electric, shop-glitter, here, there, and everywhere, as of some High Street, broken up and washed out to sea. Later, Heligoland cut into the overhead darkness with ...
— Notes on Life and Letters • Joseph Conrad
... in will look just as well as if he had been straight. Dig it deep, old Martin, dig it deep,—and let it be as long as other folks' graves. And mind you get the sods flat, old man,—flat as ever a straight-backed young fellow was laid under. And then, with a good tall slab at the head, and a footstone six foot away from it, it'll look just as if there was ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... he seized a spade that stood near by, removed a few shovels full of earth and disclosed a large white stone slab, in the centre of which was an iron ring which enabled him to ...
— Which? - or, Between Two Women • Ernest Daudet
... grounds. The owner of the property, Mrs. Alfred Corning Clark, caused all the bones to be collected and buried at the foot of the mound. Some years afterward she marked the mound with the granite slab ...
— The Story of Cooperstown • Ralph Birdsall
... that can poach an egg," said the restaurant man. "And it isn't every egg that can be poached. Now, my eggs are the real thing. And I can poach 'em so you'd think they was done with one of them poaching machines. I don't have 'em with the yellow on a slab of white. I do it so that the white's all round the yellow, like in the shell. And I keep 'em tender, too. Did you say one egg or ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... floating shadows, should lend to it its own vague sadness, as it bent and shed about its soft, wan leaves, as if to protect and to caress my mortal spoils. The river, too, which in flood tide might almost come and kiss the border of the slab o'ergrown with reeds, should lull my sleep with pleasant music. And when some time had passed, and patches of moss had begun to spread over the stone, a dense growth of wild morning-glories, of those blue morning-glories with a disk of carmine in the center, ...
— Legends, Tales and Poems • Gustavo Adolfo Becquer
... to me, but presumably the laboratory, and, having received his instructions, retired, and presently returned carrying a box, which he laid on the table. From this receptacle Thorndyke drew forth a bright copper plate mounted on a slab of hard wood, a small printer's roller, a tube of finger-print ink, and a number of cards with very white and rather ...
— The Red Thumb Mark • R. Austin Freeman
... of the Quaker's pitching staff, walked out to the slab. He was a left-hander, and Chicago, having so many players who batted left-handed, always found a southpaw a hard nut to crack. Cogswell, field manager and captain of the Quakers, kicked up the dust around first base and yelled to his men: ...
— The Redheaded Outfield and Other Baseball Stories • Zane Grey
... 20, 1866, gave their lives in the service of their Emperor and country. The Italians screwed two marble slabs across the upper and the lower parts of this inscription, so that the German lettering of the central part remained visible; on the lower slab one read: "Novembre 1918" and on the upper one "Italia Vincitrice" (Victorious Italy). We were taken by several Italian officers to look at this. They were so proud of it that they presented us with photographs of the monument in its altered state. I fear that the ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 2 • Henry Baerlein
... of the pair, with light hair, blue eyes, and long arms, looked at a distance the better qualified to toe the slab in a baseball game; but Rodney Grant was a natural athlete, whose early life on his father's Texas ranch had given him abounding health, strength, vitality, and developed in him qualities of resourcefulness and determination. Grant had come to Oakdale late the ...
— Rival Pitchers of Oakdale • Morgan Scott
... flowers, but a little border of moss all around and a slip of pasteboard on a stick stuck into the ground with "a ma Mere" written on it. All the graves are very simple, generally a plain white cross with headstone and name. One or two of the rich farmers had something rather more important—a slab of marble, or a broken column when it was a child's grave, and were more ambitious in the way of flowers and green plants, but no show of any kind—none of the terrible bead wreaths one sees ...
— Chateau and Country Life in France • Mary King Waddington
... She went boldly to Morsfield and they conferred. He was led by her to the chariot, where she pointed to a small padded slab of a seat back to the horses. Turning to the bar, he said:—My friend will look to my horse. Both want watering and a bucketful. There!'—he threw silver—'I have ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... slab of a Hatteras went out to-night down the harbour. The old man brought home a lot of money bags, but what was ...
— A Bid for Fortune - or Dr. Nikola's Vendetta • Guy Boothby
... fields. The gate was bricked up, after the superstitious custom of many country burial places, but he climbed the old moss-grown wall, where poisonous ivy grew rank and venomous, and landing deep in the periwinkle that carpeted the ground, made his way rapidly to the flat oblong slab beneath which his father lay. The marble was discoloured by long rains and stained with bruised periwinkle, and the shallow lettering was hidden under a fall of dried needles from a little stunted fir-tree; ...
— The Deliverance; A Romance of the Virginia Tobacco Fields • Ellen Glasgow
... centre of this battery stands the tomb of Moore, built by the chivalrous French, in commemoration of the fall of their heroic antagonist. It is oblong and surmounted by a slab, and on either side bears one of the simple and sublime epitaphs for which our rivals are celebrated, and which stand in such powerful contrast with the bloated and bombastic inscriptions which deform the ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... it was a real victory. He wrenched a quid from his tobacco-slab, grasped the hatchet handle and arose. Dallas had lighted the lantern once more. Now she pinned one of the smaller blankets over his shoulders. When he put on his hat and knelt before the chopped-out place in the east wall, she wrapped a second blanket ...
— The Plow-Woman • Eleanor Gates
... Major Hiram M. Chittenden there has been erected at the junction of the Firehole and Gibbon rivers a large slab upon which is ...
— The Discovery of Yellowstone Park • Nathaniel Pitt Langford
... slaves, who tied the horses to a near-by tree. They sought in the dark for a hole that would do for a grave, since they had no burying tools, stumbling on a limestone slab at last, that lay amid rank weeds near a tomb hollowed out of the rock that had been rifled, very likely, centuries ago. They lowered the already stiffened body into it, with a coin in its fingers for Charon's ferry-fare across the Styx, then set the heavy slab in place, ...
— Caesar Dies • Talbot Mundy
... ordinance of secession had been read. Knives flashed, pistols barked, and blood was poured out upon the floor. Old Oliver's horses ate their oats at the marble altar of an ancient cathedral; and within these log walls, and at this long slab, this mourners' bench, tear-stained by a generation long since in the grave, the horses of the guerrillas ate their corn. Descendants of the same men, carrying on what might have seemed a continuation of ...
— The Starbucks • Opie Percival Read
... was interred in Westminster Abbey in the middle of the nave. The temple of honour was filled to overflowing, and among those who bore the pall was Henry Stanley. The grave was covered with a black stone slab, in which was ...
— From Pole to Pole - A Book for Young People • Sven Anders Hedin
... below the roof, which enabled me, by standing on it, to force up one of the slabs with my back. Knowing where the nails were driven in, I carefully cut around them, making as little noise as possible. It was, I calculated, about midnight when I had finished my preparations. The slab lifted even more easily than I had expected. I listened for some minutes, expecting to hear the tread of a sentry, but not a sound reached my ears. I had great hopes that he had fallen asleep. Creeping through, I replaced the slab, and dropped without noise to the ground. There were numerous Indians ...
— Villegagnon - A Tale of the Huguenot Persecution • W.H.G. Kingston
... 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 ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac
... this end there lies a large slab of blue marble, which is called 'Long Meg' of Westminster. Though it is inscribed to Gervasius de Blois, abbot, 1160 natural son of King Stephen, he is said to have been buried under a small stone, ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 39. Saturday, July 27, 1850 • Various
... until it is melted and slightly colored. Let stand for a few minutes, so it will be thoroughly melted, then turn in the hot almonds, mix them together quickly, not stirring long enough to grain the sugar, and turn it on to an oiled slab or tin. Spread it out in an even sheet an eighth of an inch thick. While it is still warm mark off into squares. ...
— Stevenson Memorial Cook Book • Various
... pigeons, and the back and thighs of a brace of juicy hares. Fill up the whole with beaten eggs, and the rich contents will resemble, as a poet might say, 'fossils of the rock in golden yolks embedded and enjellied!' Season as you would a saint. Cover with a slab of pastry. Bake it as you would cook an angel, and not singe a feather. Then let it cool, and eat it! And then, Jules, as the Reverend Father de Berey always says after grace over an Easter pie, ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... the stones in the neighborhood would have sufficed. Still nearer the center were five groups of three great stones each, and immediately within these a horseshoe of smaller stones. Finally, near the head of the horseshoe, a great slab of sandstone is supposed to have served for an altar. The date of the two structures just described has been a matter of ...
— The Prehistoric World - Vanished Races • E. A. Allen
... George and pointed. Sheltered, as they kneeled, they looked for more knowledge, but the rest of the slab ...
— Actions and Reactions • Rudyard Kipling
... take a set of fingerprints, a small daub of ink should be placed on the inking glass or slab and thoroughly rolled until a very thin, even film covers the entire surface. The subject should stand in front of and at forearm's length from the inking plate. In taking the rolled impressions, the side of the bulb of the finger is placed upon the inking plate and the finger is ...
— The Science of Fingerprints - Classification and Uses • Federal Bureau of Investigation
... he 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
... yellowing trees. Benches with mossy feet stood against the mossy edges of the path, and at its farther end it widened into a circle about a basin rimmed with stone, in which the opaque water strewn with leaves looked like a slab of gold-flecked agate. The path, growing narrower, wound on circuitously through the woods, between slender serried trunks twined with ivy. Patches of blue appeared above them through the dwindling leaves, and presently the trees drew back ...
— The Reef • Edith Wharton
... two slabs of johnnycake at five dollars a slab. And a cup of coffee at five dollars a ...
— The Depot Master • Joseph C. Lincoln
... who married my husband's brother, Daniel Haviland. He continued his remarks, by making suggestions as to the course we would feel it best to pursue about a burying-place for our little daughter, in case of a refusal of Friends to allow a plain marble slab, with her name and date of birth and death in their burying-ground; and suggested the corner of our orchard as a pleasant place, to which I assented. After spending half an hour in this conversation, he went out to his work. I prayed for my Savior's hand to lead me in whatever ...
— A Woman's Life-Work - Labors and Experiences • Laura S. Haviland
... paved with Purbeck, Sicilian, and black Derbyshire marbles. The spaces between the steps are decorated with a series of scriptural subjects in inlaid work in black and white marble, with distinctive inscriptions. The Altar is of oak, with a single slab of Belgian marble for its top. On the sides of the Altar are deeply carved panels; that in the centre represents the Lamb with the Banner, the other panels contain the emblems of ...
— St. John's College, Cambridge • Robert Forsyth Scott
... employment was carrying dinners out to the men at work; and for an hour or two at noon the little store was entirely free from customers. The day after the doctor's visit, Dermot came in at this time to speak to Harold, and as soon as Alice knew of his presence (there was a mere partition of slab between her bed and the shop), she eagerly and nervously bade him stay and keep watch that no one should come near to see or hear. Then, when certain that she was alone with her son, she produced from hiding-places about her person what appeared to ...
— My Young Alcides - A Faded Photograph • Charlotte M. Yonge
... little lovely naked boys, geniuses, loves, cherubs—call them what we will—support his helmet and gloves, and charming statuettes after the same dainty pattern stand at each corner of the sarcophagus supporting his shield and various pieces of armour. Underneath, on a slab of black marble, lies the figure of the dead Prince, the finely modelled limbs only partially draped, the long hair curling round the bare shoulder, the beautiful face turned, as in the first instance, towards the ...
— Holidays in Eastern France • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... seemed so important, is taken down from his too large pedestal and carted off to the dumping-ground of inadequate things. To be sure, if he chances to have been not entirely unworthy, and on cool examination is found to possess some appreciable degree of merit, then he is set up on a new slab of appropriate dimensions. The late colossal statue shrinks to a modest bas-relief. On the other hand, some scarcely noticed bust may suddenly become a revered full-length figure. Between the reputation of the author living and the reputation of the same author dead there ...
— Ponkapog Papers • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... jettisoning all 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
... sudarium, or hot room, your first sensations only occur about half a minute after entrance, when you feel that you are choking. I found myself in that state, seated on a marble slab; the bath man was gone; he had taken away the cotton turban and shoulder shawl: I saw I was in a narrow room of marble, with a vaulted roof, and a fountain of warm and cold water; the atmosphere was in a steam, the choking sensation went off, and I felt a sort of pleasure presently ...
— Notes on a Journey from Cornhill to Grand Cairo • William Makepeace Thackeray
... there are ancient funeral mounds near there, and that the burying-place of Aliab is older than the invasion of the Arab Jaalin. There were fragments of sculptured stones, granite, and blocks of sandstone, and I noticed one broken memorial slab covered with Greek characters. Farther on we had to turn aside to avoid wadies and khors, up which the Nile had flowed. We were able to water the animals at some of those places. The mules and horses buried their noses in the flood and drank greedily, and the camels also had ...
— Khartoum Campaign, 1898 - or the Re-Conquest of the Soudan • Bennet Burleigh
... and cold-bloodedly that on the instant I saw my stark and mutilated cadaver stretched upon a slab where cool waters trickle ceaselessly, and him I saw bending over and sadly and patiently identifying it as the body of the insane American who would ...
— The People of the Abyss • Jack London
... the barbed wire fence. (Some of the marks caused by this episode remain with me to this day.) We had one or two nice walks weekly, on parole, escorted by a German officer. One day, during a long walk through some pine woods, we had reached the top of a hill when we came upon a large slab of rock, about four feet thick, resting on two smaller ones, with a broad crack right through it near the centre. The German officer told us a legend about this, which affirms that at this spot somewhere about the eighth century Emperor Charlemagne met some heathen chieftain, ...
— 'Brother Bosch', an Airman's Escape from Germany • Gerald Featherstone Knight
... lips. "Say, Buddie," he said, "it was too bad you hit young Steadman; he's an overgrown slab of a boy, and I don't mind you lickin' him, but they'll take the 'law' on ye every time; and ten dollars was a terrible fine. Maybe they'd have let you off with five ...
— The Second Chance • Nellie L. McClung
... this part of Africa is very great. One slab, about two feet and a half in length, fourteen inches in breadth, and two inches in thickness, will sometimes sell for about two pounds ten shillings sterling, and from one pound fifteen shillings to two pounds, may be considered as the common price. Four of these ...
— Life and Travels of Mungo Park in Central Africa • Mungo Park
... period of fifty years—a fact which was celebrated a few months ago by the presentation of numerous congratulatory addresses from various learned and agricultural societies to the distinguished investigators, and the erection of a memorial granite slab at Rothamsted. What increases the feeling of gratitude due to Sir John Lawes by the agricultural community, is the fact that the entire expense of conducting these experiments has been borne by himself, and he has further most generously handed over to the nation ...
— Manures and the principles of manuring • Charles Morton Aikman
... withered grass. During the day we had been fortunate enough to find a puddle of water in a hollow of the rock left by yesterday's rain, at which we watered the horses, and then lading out the remainder into our bucket carefully covered it up with a stone slab until our return, as I well knew, if exposed to the sun and wind, there would not be a drop left in a very few hours. Kangaroos had been seen in great numbers during the day, but we had not been able to get a shot at one. Our provisions ...
— Journals Of Expeditions Of Discovery Into Central • Edward John Eyre
... porches of the temples; the owl roosts in the casements of the palaces; the jackal roams among the ruins in vain; there is not a bone left for him to gnaw of the multitudes which have passed away. There is their handwriting upon the temple wall, upon the granite slab which has mocked at Time; but there is no man to decipher it. There are the gigantic idols before whom millions have bowed; there is the same vacant stare upon their features of rock which gazed upon the multitudes of yore; but they no longer stare upon the pomp of the glorious city, but ...
— Eight Years' Wandering in Ceylon • Samuel White Baker
... the children ran up to the parlor, which was on the second story of the house, to take another look at their precious statue, which had been placed on the marble slab in front of one of the long mirrors. Then they went into the small room which was to be the oratory. The only furniture it contained was the square table which they had brought there the evening before. Abby got the muslin, and began to drape the table to resemble an altar; Larry looking ...
— Apples, Ripe and Rosy, Sir • Mary Catherine Crowley
... salt-sea shark, Root of hemlock digg'd i' the dark, Liver of blaspheming Jew, Gall of goat, and slips of yew Sliver'd in the moon's eclipse, Nose of Turk, and Tartar's lips, Finger of birth-strangl'd babe Ditch-deliver'd by a drab,— Make the gruel thick and slab: Add thereto a tiger's chaudron, For the ingredients of ...
— Macbeth • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... central head of the slab found near Wessobrunn, in the neighborhood of the Cloister of the Three Holy Bournes, is bearded. This has puzzled our archologists. Some of them fancied that what appears to be a beard might after all be the hair of one ...
— The Younger Edda - Also called Snorre's Edda, or The Prose Edda • Snorre
... that Mehetabel had discovered, and in which she had spent many a summer hour, opened out of the side of one of the most profound of the trenches cut in the surface after ore. The entrance was beneath a projecting slab of ironstone, and was concealed by bushes of furze and bramble. It did not penetrate beyond thirty feet into the sand rock, or if it had done so formerly, it was choked when known to Mehetabel, with the falling in of the ...
— The Broom-Squire • S. (Sabine) Baring-Gould
... did use their eyes. They saw Britt uncover a section of the basement floor of concrete. They saw him locate an iron ring that was cunningly concealed under a little square of concrete which he pried up with his finger nails. He tugged at the ring and lifted a slab. The men with the lanterns raised them high. The light glinted on gold—gold coins in ...
— When Egypt Went Broke • Holman Day
... 37). Within each chamber are usually several sleeping-places or alcoves more or less completely screened or walled off from the central space. The chamber contains a fireplace, generally merely a slab of clay in a wooden framework placed near the centre. The outside wall of this side of the house is carried up to meet the roof. The entrance of light and air and the egress of smoke are provided for by the elevation on a prop of one corner ...
— The Pagan Tribes of Borneo • Charles Hose and William McDougall
... slab—and all were uncurtained—in the palace of ivory. The sounds were those of a triumphant dance. Very haunting indeed was the booming of a bassoon, and like the dangerous advance of some galloping beast were the blows wielded ...
— Tales of Three Hemispheres • Lord Dunsany
... thee in a sallow dab, Margarina! Upon the grubby marble slab, Margarina! O sickening stodge! O greasy shine! O "Dairy Produce" miscalled "Fine"! O haunt of all blue-flies that blow, There on ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 104, February 4, 1893 • Various
... the south transept is a flat slab, with a long inscription, in memory of Sir William Penn, father of William Penn, the great founder of Pennsylvania. The column is adorned with his banner ...
— Young Americans Abroad - Vacation in Europe: Travels in England, France, Holland, - Belgium, Prussia and Switzerland • Various
... fire in the Commune; but during my childhood I frequently begged Julie to take me to the spot, that I might gaze, with an aching heart, upon the handsome courtyard adorned with green shrubs, the wide, carpeted staircase, and the slab of black marble, encrusted with gold, that marked the entrance to the place whither my father wended his way, while my mother was talking with M. Termonde, and I was playing in the room with them. My father had left us at a quarter-past twelve, and he must have taken ...
— Stories of Modern French Novels • Julian Hawthorne
... gate we may fitly make a digression, and in pious 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 and generosity behind ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 3 • Various
... into the water, and Billy straightens out his little curly tail and waves it in the air like a flag. And holler! I wisht you could have heard that pig! Nothing could been more human. "I've got the deady-deady on you, you hook-nosed, slab-sided, second cousin of a government mule!" says he. "Oh! I've got you where I want you and the way I want you, and it's up to you to convert yourself into cash at the earliest opportunity, for you won't be worth much in the market when ...
— Red Saunders' Pets and Other Critters • Henry Wallace Phillips
... gates were of hewn stone, turning in sockets at their outer corners above and below. They swung as easily as if hung upon hinges, and when closed a slab of stone came down to bar them. I made them fast, and then called out to ...
— Pharaoh's Broker - Being the Very Remarkable Experiences in Another World of Isidor Werner • Ellsworth Douglass
... father's pulpit having been denied to him, he stood outside upon his father's tomb and preached evening after evening in the warm June weather the gospel of Justification by Faith to the listening crowd. Visitors are shown the grit slab, now recut and resting on a handsome structure of stone, but then upon plainest brickwork; and are bidden to notice, in the blank space below the words "Their works do follow them," two rough pieces of ironstone which mark where ...
— Hetty Wesley • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... way 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
... the house, leaving Saul pondering. Girls were queer cattle. Had Mattie given her word to this slab-sided, lanky fellow? Had she given Sam Sleeny the mitten for him? Perhaps she wanted the glory of being Mrs. Professor Bott. Well, she could do as she liked; but Saul swore softly to himself, "If Bott comes to live offen me, he's ...
— The Bread-winners - A Social Study • John Hay
... in a stream of costly viands, served in outre and fantastic 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 a silver tray ...
— Love's Pilgrimage • Upton Sinclair
... shelving rock I found a pack of food, carefully protected by a heavy slab. There was also a canteen full of water. I lost no time getting myself some breakfast, and then, hiding my own pack, I set off at a rapid ...
— The Rustlers of Pecos County • Zane Grey
... and a half miles narrows down between walls of basaltic rock 130 feet across. In the flood-tides of the spring the water in this chasm has risen 126 feet. The word "Dalles" is rather misleading. The word is French, "dalle," and means, variously, "a plate," "a flagstone," "a slab," alluding to the oval or square shaped stones which abound in the river bed and the valley above. But the early French hunters and trappers called a chasm or a defile or gorge, "dalles," meaning in their vernacular "a trough"—and "Dalles" ...
— Oregon, Washington and Alaska; Sights and Scenes for the Tourist • E. L. Lomax
... Dollars. All their cares, hopes, joys, affections, virtues, and associations, seemed to be melted down into dollars. Whatever the chance contributions that fell into the slow cauldron of their talk, they made the gruel thick and slab with dollars. Men were weighed by their dollars, measures gauged by their dollars; life was auctioneered, appraised, put up, and knocked down for its dollars. The next respectable thing to dollars ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... people to write you of the noble side, the heroic side, the exalted side of war. I must write you of what I have seen, the other side, the backwash. They are both true. In Spain, they bang their silver coins upon a marble slab, accepting the stamp upon both sides, and then decide whether as a whole they ...
— The Backwash of War - The Human Wreckage of the Battlefield as Witnessed by an - American Hospital Nurse • Ellen N. La Motte
... rising on the knoll, a square of logs, log roofed, with a door of woven saplings over which canvas was nailed. They built a chimney of stones rounded by the water's action, and for a hearth found a slab of granite which they sunk in the earth before the fireplace. The bunk was a frame of young pines with canvas stretched across, and cushioned with spruce boughs and buffalo robes. She watched as they nailed up shelves ...
— The Emigrant Trail • Geraldine Bonner
... to the right, then to the left. As I expected, they opened on me, and the bullets flew thick and fast about me. The first turn I got a bullet through my right leg just above the ankle. It felt like the stinging cut of a whip and rather accelerated my speed. About fifty yards back was an old slab fence to my right, and I plunged headlong behind that, hoping to find shelter from those bullets. I fell directly behind several other wounded men, two of whom rolled over dead from bullets that came through the slabs and which were probably aimed at ...
— War from the Inside • Frederick L. (Frederick Lyman) Hitchcock
... thank you for the complimentary manner in which you have mentioned my work. Since the notice appeared, we have done a deal of heavy work in this mill; and a plate large enough to shear 11' 0" and 10' 2" and 1/2" thick has been rolled in five minutes. The slab went through the roll 17 times before being rolled to the width and turned round, and 18 times after turning and of the full width; making a total of 35 passes—the turning occupying 20 seconds. When it is ...
— James Nasmyth's Autobiography • James Nasmyth
... tent, they saw that they were in a little wooden room which was built right against the tent. In fact, it was part of the tent, there being no wooden side against the back of the cloth house. Bunny and Sue had slipped underneath the tent and were in a little slab-sided room which had a door, and through the chinks and cracks of it ...
— Bunny Brown and His Sister Sue and Their Shetland Pony • Laura Lee Hope
... 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 ...
— The Fifth Battalion Highland Light Infantry in the War 1914-1918 • F.L. Morrison
... for the gallery. Emerging half a minute later he blurted out his tale of woe: "Every time I blows myself an' don't drink it all in town some slab-sided maverick freezes to it. It's ...
— Hopalong Cassidy's Rustler Round-Up - Bar-20 • Clarence Edward Mulford
... much the same as that of the present day in Egypt: a small stool, supporting a round tray, on which the dishes are placed; but it differed from this in having its circular summit fixed on a pillar, or leg, which was often in the form of a man, generally a captive, who supported the slab upon his head; the whole being of stone, or some hard wood. On this the dishes were placed, together with loaves of bread, some of which were not unlike those of the present day in Egypt, flat and round as our crumpets. Others had the form of rolls ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... 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, ...
— Syd Belton - The Boy who would not go to Sea • George Manville Fenn
... A slab or plank 6 or 7 feet long, with one end tapered and half rounded, on 2 or 4 legs of such length as to bring the end against the workman's chest, makes ...
— Home Taxidermy for Pleasure and Profit • Albert B. Farnham
... readers will picture, with roses and honeysuckle hiding its walls, but a dreary little house with nothing green to cover the brown stones of which it was built, and having an open ditch in front of it with a stone slab over it for a bridge. Did I say there was nothing on the walls? This morning there was the loveliest sunshine, and that I was going to leave behind. It was very bitter, especially as I had expected to go with my elder brother to spend the day at ...
— Ranald Bannerman's Boyhood • George MacDonald
... fencing, hut-building and shingle-splitting; he had had a year or two at sawing, too, but after he was married he dropped that. But I've heard mother say that he took great pride in the hut when he brought her to it first, and said it was the best-built hut within fifty miles. He split every slab, cut every post and wallplate and rafter himself, with a man to help him at odd times; and after the frame was up, and the bark on the roof, he camped underneath and finished every bit of it—chimney, flooring, doors, windows, and partitions—by himself. Then he dug up a little ...
— Robbery Under Arms • Thomas Alexander Browne, AKA Rolf Boldrewood
... surged back against the walls, leaving the centre space vacant. At the same time certain men wearing the garb and the air of jailers or executioners came forth and stood in the midst of the open space—one of them bearing the glowing brazier and the branding iron, which he placed on a slab of stone in the ...
— The Secret Chamber at Chad • Evelyn Everett-Green
... done it, then!" squalled Marie. "Prove it, you slab-sided hunk! Yah, you can't prove it, and ...
— The Heart of the Range • William Patterson White
... without doubt, but whether sympathetically or otherwise I could not determine. And indeed I hardly know yet. My vestry door opened upon a little group of graves, simple and green, without headstone or slab; poor graves, the memory of whose occupants no one had cared to preserve. Good men must have preceded me here, else the poor would not have lain so near the chancel and the vestry-door. All about and beyond were stones, with here and there a monument; for mine was a large parish, and there ...
— Annals of a Quiet Neighbourhood • George MacDonald
... death. After a week of sleeplessness, he arose one morning to find a bright red spot upon his handkerchief. "That is arterial blood," said he; "that drop is my death-warrant; I shall die." And so, when he was one-and-twenty, friends lifted above the boy's dust a marble slab, upon which was written: "Here lies one whose name was writ in water." Now his name shines like a star, while low down and bespattered with mud are the names of those whose cruel criticisms helped to kill the boy and whose only claim ...
— The Investment of Influence - A Study of Social Sympathy and Service • Newell Dwight Hillis
... pavements are practically unique, as far as we are able to learn. They are marble inlay, the pattern having been cut out in a slab of white marble and pieces of black marble carefully fitted in to form the figure. This is not true mosaic, and differs essentially in design from the mosaic work of the same period which was derived from the ...
— The Brochure Series of Architectural Illustration, Volume 01, No. 05, May 1895 - Two Florentine Pavements • Various
... eastern wall of the room, the visitor should first notice the fossil remains of various carnivorous animals, including the skulls and other osseous wrecks of hyenas, bears, &c., and also, carefully screened in an additional glass case, hereabouts, the lower jaw of a marsupial animal on a slab of oolitic limestone—an early deposit, in which the highest class fossils generally ...
— How to See the British Museum in Four Visits • W. Blanchard Jerrold
... 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
... over their morning coffee, Scott had a wayward longing to open the day's arena to her, to force her to look in upon the fight he waged. Then he gave up the idea disdainfully. As well try to leave his hand-print on an iron bar or a gray granite slab as to seek to impress on Kathryn's mind the vital nature of the questions that were haunting him, taunting him, turning his life into a purgatory of uncertainties whether his choice of profession had been aught but a selfish ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray
... Haschogan made the lodge of stone and covered it with earth, erecting double walls on the northern side with a space between, into which he provided an entrance from the inside, concealed with a flat stone slab. ...
— The North American Indian • Edward S. Curtis
... be uniform in length—not more than six inches—and should show the bark at one side. The side showing the bark should be two inches wide at most, six inches long, and running in a V-shaped, radial section toward the pith. A tangential section also shows well the annual layers. A piece of slab as cut lengthwise off a round stick is tangential. Also visit wood-working factories for specimens of rare or foreign woods. In securing these specimens, care should be taken not ...
— Ontario Teachers' Manuals: Nature Study • Ontario Ministry of Education
... long yellow hair of his beard flowing over the strings of the guitar lying on the table; Karain's upright and motionless pose, his tone—all this made an impression that cannot be forgotten. He faced us across the table. His dark head and bronze torso appeared above the tarnished slab of wood, gleaming and still as if cast in metal. Only his lips moved, and his eyes glowed, went out, blazed again, or stared mournfully. His expressions came straight from his tormented heart. His words sounded low, in a sad murmur as of running water; at times they rang loud like the clash ...
— Tales of Unrest • Joseph Conrad
... cliff, under whose lee the hut was erected, so as to gain shelter from the southward and westward winds, which seemed to be the most prevalent on the coast, presented a flat and even face, just like a slab of black slate standing up perpendicularly from the ground. The wall of rock, which was of a hard volcanic material that was evidently not porous, was made to serve for the back of the building, a niche or groove being excavated along it, about ten feet from the bottom, for the ...
— The Wreck of the Nancy Bell - Cast Away on Kerguelen Land • J. C. Hutcheson
... at Bou-Merzoug, on the plateau of the Atlas, in Northern Africa, in a bare, deserted, stony place among the mountains, a collection of fifteen hundred tombs, made of rude limestone slabs, set up with one slab to form a roof, so as to make perfect dolmens—closed chambers—where the bodies ...
— Ragnarok: The Age of Fire and Gravel • Ignatius Donnelly
... settled herself upon a slab of a rock, whipped out the sketch-book, that hung permanently in a flat leather bag at her waist, and plunged headlong into her picture. For in her case, impression and expression were almost simultaneous: the most distinctive quality of her work being the rapidity and certainty ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver
... (1891-1897) had been Canon of Windsor, and previously of Worcester. He was translated to London when Bishop Temple became Archbishop of Canterbury. He died in 1901, and is buried in the crypt of S. Paul's; an inlaid marble slab copied from the one over his grave is in the south choir aisle ...
— The Cathedral Church of Peterborough - A Description Of Its Fabric And A Brief History Of The Episcopal See • W.D. Sweeting
... of bark. On each slab Nancy put a piece of fried squirrel and a hunk of cornbread. The children sank down on one of the bearskins to eat their first meal in their new home. By this time it was quite dark. They could see only a few feet beyond the circle of light made by ...
— Abe Lincoln Gets His Chance • Frances Cavanah
... other Malay words, the tenor of which was, that I recommended His Majesty to put his seal forthwith." And he did so. Captain MUNDY hoisted the British Flag at Labuan on the 24th December, 1846, and there still exists at Labuan in the place where it was erected by the gallant Captain, a granite slab, with an inscription recording the fact of the formal taking possession of the island ...
— British Borneo - Sketches of Brunai, Sarawak, Labuan, and North Borneo • W. H. Treacher
... would come one Sally, sister of its swarthy tenant, swarthy herself, shady-lipped, sad-voiced, and, bending over her flower-bed, would gather a "posy," as she called it, for the little boy. Sally lies in the churchyard with a slab of blue slate at her head, lichen-crusted, and leaning a little within the last few years. Cottage, garden-beds, posies, grenadier-like rows of seedling onions,—stateliest of vegetables,—all ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 4, February, 1858 • Various
... Stark and immense it pointed up at the sky, a mass of steel and glass, set in a huge slab of concrete. Even as they watched the gun moved on its swivel base, whirring underneath. A slim vane turned with the wind, a network of rods ...
— The Gun • Philip K. Dick
... 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 Wrecker • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... in the sack. All outdoor men know that trick. An Injun would take a stick and roll around in that white dough and roast that dough ball before the fire along with his meat," he said, "but I think by taking a slab of bark we can cook our bannock somehow, a little bit, at least, as though we had a pan to lean up ...
— The Young Alaskans on the Trail • Emerson Hough
... the Ticking Stone," said my companion, pointing to a recumbent slab, worn smooth and scarcely showing a trace of former lettering; "put your ear upon it while I pull away the weeds, and then note if you hear ...
— Tales of the Chesapeake • George Alfred Townsend
... 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 for ...
— The Voyage of the Beagle • Charles Darwin
... the meal ground, the wife proceeds to make it into bread; an extempore oven is often constructed by scooping out a large hole in an anthill, and using a slab of stone for a door. Another plan, which might be adopted by the Australians to produce something better than their "dampers", is to make a good fire on a level piece of ground, and, when the ground ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... think of those full lengths in the New Gallery and the Academy, which I have not seen this year, but whose every detail is familiar to me. You will find that a uniform light stretches from their chins to their toes; in all probability the background is a slab of grey into whose insensitive surface neither light nor air penetrates; or perhaps that most offensive portrait-painter's property, a sham room in which none of the furniture has been seen in its proper relation of light to the face, but has been muzzed ...
— The Mind of the Artist - Thoughts and Sayings of Painters and Sculptors on Their Art • Various
... 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 ...
— The Grandissimes • George Washington Cable
... 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 there are ...
— The Journal Of A Mission To The Interior Of Africa, In The Year 1805 • Mungo Park
... the door closed, the young girl sank back into her chair, pressed her forehead against the marble slab and let it remain there a long time. Then she rose as suddenly and hastily as if obeying some urgent summons, raised the lid of her trunk, tossed the stockings, bodices and shoes, that came into her way, out on the floor, and did not rise until she had found a few sheets of ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... vault near the sovereign's stall lie the remains of the Duke of Gloucester, who died in 1805, and of his duchess, who died two years after him. And near the entrance of the south door is a slab of grey marble, beneath which lies one who in his day filled the highest offices of the realm, and was the brother of a king and the husband of a queen. It is inscribed with the great ...
— Windsor Castle • William Harrison Ainsworth
... right of this dome, and in front of the burial-place of Queen Catharine of Aragon, Mary of Scotland's sepulchre had been dug: it was a grave of brick, arranged to be covered later with a slab or a marble tomb, and in which was to be deposited the coffin, which the Bishop of Peterborough, in his episcopal robes, but without his mitre, cross, or cope, was awaiting at the door, accompanied by his dean and several other clergy. The body ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - MARY STUART—1587 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE |
