"Tapered" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... thereabouts the Mesa. High, precipitous, perpendicular, level, and dotted with farm-houses, this singular bit of land stretches several miles out southward to sea, bordered with a rocky beach, and tapered off into the wide ocean with Duxbury Reef—a dangerous rocky reef, curving down to the southward and almost always white with foam, save when the sea is calm, and then the great lazy green waves eddy noiselessly over the half-hidden rocks, or slip like oil over the dreadful ...
— Stories by American Authors (Volume 4) • Constance Fenimore Woolson
... population is engaged in farming and stock raising, activities that generate almost half the national income. The economy also depends heavily on exploitation of large uranium deposits. Uranium production grew rapidly in the mid-1970s, but tapered off in the early 1980s when world prices declined. France is a major customer, while Germany, Japan, and Spain also make regular purchases. The depressed demand for uranium has contributed to an overall sluggishness in the economy, a severe trade ...
— The 1992 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... a tall young man excessively slender and blonde, compressed into his uniform like a girl in her stays, and wearing, well over one ear, a flat black wax-cloth cap like the "Boots" of an English hotel. His preposterously long moustache, which was drawn out stiff and straight, and tapered away indefinitely to each side till it finished off in a single thread so thin that it was impossible to say where it ended, seemed to weigh upon the corners of his mouth and form a deep furrow in ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 1 (of 8) - Boule de Suif and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... the Rhode Island trees measured 3 feet 11 inches girth at the base, and gradually tapered to a height of more than 40 feet (L. W. Russell). The trees at New Haven are 15-20 feet in height, with a trunk diameter of 6-10 inches, trunk and limbs much twisted by the winds. Their branches, beginning to put out at a height of 6-8 feet, lie in almost horizontal planes, ...
— Handbook of the Trees of New England • Lorin Low Dame
... seemed less impregnable now, for upon two sides at least, the cliffs rose sheer from the gorge until they were joined by the heavy buttresses which tapered gracefully until they joined the walls of the crenelated towers and bastions. In the center of the mass of buildings rose the square solid mass of the keep, with its crenelated roof and small windows commanding every portion ...
— The Secret Witness • George Gibbs
... these valleys, so narrow that the sun seldom brightened the merry brook, made a deep cut in the rocks. The head of this valley tapered until the walls nearly met; it seemed to lose itself in the shade of fern-faced cliffs, shadowed as they were by fir trees leaning over the brink, as though to search for secrets of the ravine. So deep and dark and cool was this sequestered nook that here ...
— The Spirit of the Border - A Romance of the Early Settlers in the Ohio Valley • Zane Grey
... he ruminated this unpleasant truth for some time. Still chewing on it, he strolled pensively down towards the swimming-pool. A peacock and his hen trailed their shabby finery across the turf of the lower lawn. Odious birds! Their necks, thick and greedily fleshy at the roots, tapered up to the cruel inanity of their brainless heads, their flat eyes and piercing beaks. The fabulists were right, he reflected, when they took beasts to illustrate their tractates of human morality. Animals resemble men with all the truthfulness of a caricature. (Oh, ...
— Crome Yellow • Aldous Huxley
... Tolstoy and the comfort the harvest fields are said to have once brought to Luther when, much perturbed by many theological difficulties, he suddenly forgot them all in a gush of gratitude for mere bread, exclaiming, "How it stands, that golden yellow corn, on its fine tapered stem; the meek earth, at God's kind bidding, has produced it once again!" At least the toiling poor had this comfort of bread labor, and perhaps it did not matter that they gained it unknowingly and painfully, if only they walked in the path of labor. ...
— Twenty Years At Hull House • Jane Addams
... his chair or for him to keep his hands motionless for a single instant. Although he was of moderate build, with a fair suggestion of flesh, there were yet the marks of the artist and of the creative temperament in the fine sloping contours of his head and in his remarkably long fingers, which tapered to nails manicured immaculately. Kennedy seemed to pay particular attention to his eyes, which were dark, ...
— The Film Mystery • Arthur B. Reeve
... scientifically tempered, and proportioned. The strength of a perfectly tempered spring will always remain the same, whether in winter or summer, never losing its elasticity. The best of tempering, however, is useless in a spring badly formed or clumsily tapered. ...
— Camp Life in the Woods and the Tricks of Trapping and Trap Making • William Hamilton Gibson
... although outwardly forming a continuous structure round the entire vessel, extending well above and below the water-line, tapered off towards the bows and stern, and was subdivided into different compartments. In this way an explosion against one section did not necessarily damage any other part. The British monitors which so successfully bombarded the Belgian coast and the fortifications ...
— Submarine Warfare of To-day • Charles W. Domville-Fife
... splice. The scared or old-fashioned drivers have far more spring in them than the new ones, and it is my experience that I can constantly get a truer and a better ball with them. When the wood of the shaft and the wood of the neck are delicately tapered to suit each other, filed thin and carefully adjusted, wood to wood for several inches, and then glued and tightened up to each other with twine for several inches, there is no sharp join whatever but only such a gradual one as never makes itself felt in practice. ...
— The Complete Golfer [1905] • Harry Vardon
... activity which had once belonged to that organ was now transferred to his eyes. He saw, amazedly, the sunshine bathing the hills and the valleys. A bird in the hedge held him—beak, head, eyes, legs, and the wings that tapered widely at angles to the wind. For the first time in his life he really saw a bird, and one minute after it had flown away he could have reproduced its strident note. With every step along the curving road the landscape was changing. He saw and noted ...
— The Crock of Gold • James Stephens
... woods with fine effect. The church has often been engraved, and is therefore tolerably familiar to the general reader. It consists of two barn-like structures, with tall roofs, set side by side, and the tower and finely tapered spire rising above them at the northwest corner. The church is thickly hung ...
— Select Poems of Thomas Gray • Thomas Gray
... characters required for printing were indented in the edges of a series of narrow brass bands, each band containing a full alphabet, and hanging, with spacers, side by side in the machine. The bands tapered in thickness from top to bottom, the characters being arranged upon them in the order of the width-space which they occupied. By touching the keys of a keyboard similar to a typewriter, the bands dropped successively, bringing the characters required ...
— The Building of a Book • Various
... revival of church Gothic and with the effort to make church music and ritual richer and more impressive. But, upon the whole, it was more intellectual than aesthetic, an affair of doctrine and church polity rather than of ecclesiology; while the later phase of ritualism into which it has tapered down appears to the profane to be largely a matter of upholstery, given over to people who concern themselves with the carving of lecterns and the embroidery of chasubles and altar cloths; with Lent lilies, antiphonal choirs, and what Carlyle ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... such command of materials as a civilized country could have afforded him. He had to put up with the best stone he could find. I think that the peculiar posture of the statue can be fairly explained by supposing that the original block tapered away toward the feet, and was only just about the breadth of the statue as we now see it. This seems fairly to explain the curious position of the left arm. The artist had to put it there because there was not breadth enough to put it in any other position. So of the ...
— The American Goliah • Anon.
... spaced amidships as shown in Fig. 4; then the points where they cross the bow and stern and all the moulds are marked, and notches one inch by one-fourth of an inch cut to receive them, the edges of the bow and stern being tapered off at the same time to half an inch; then all the parts are placed in position again, and fastened with one-inch screws, except where the keelson joins the bow, stern, and moulds, where one inch and a half screws are used. Each ...
— Harper's Young People, April 27, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... heads had a plucked, seedy appearance; and their long, strong, naked wings hung down by their sides till they touched the ground: power and ferocity in the first rude draught, shorn of everything but its sinister ugliness. Another curious thing was the gradation of the young in size; they tapered down regularly from the first to the fifth, as if there had been, as probably there was, an interval of a day or two between ...
— Bird Stories from Burroughs - Sketches of Bird Life Taken from the Works of John Burroughs • John Burroughs
... cleaned, opened, salted, and kept till wanted; a piece, being laid flat on a plate to be served, is cut in thin slices and spread on bread and butter by those who care to eat the luxury. At the bone it was red, and gradually tapered away to a white gelatinous-looking stuff. We never dared venture upon this choice raw dish. It had a particularly distasteful appearance. As there was no filbunke, made of sour unskimmed milk, which we had learnt to enjoy, we had to content ourselves ...
— Through Finland in Carts • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie
... long table in it, and benches. There was no blanket on the bed, only a sheet and a heavy patchwork quilt. Ah, yes, there was something else, carefully laid upon the quilt. This was a linen bag without an opening, which, when spread out, tapered towards the ends. Had I not known something about the old-fashioned nightcap, I should have puzzled a long time before discovering what I was expected to do with this object. The matter is simple to those who know that the cap is formed by turning one of the ends in. There were mosquitoes ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker
... corrugated concrete piles is somewhat similar to that for driving ordinary wooden piles by water jet, but a much heavier hammer with less drop is used. The jetting is accomplished by inserting a 2-in. pipe within the pile. This pipe is tapered at the bottom end to 1-in. diameter, forming a nozzle, and the water pressure used is about 120 lbs. per sq. in. As a rule, this pressure is obtained by the use of a steam pump which may be connected with the boiler which operates the pile driver, or with a separate steam supply. At the upper ...
— Concrete Construction - Methods and Costs • Halbert P. Gillette
... necessary to dam the stream to get head, sufficient supply or both. In sandy soils, ditches leak, and board flumes must be substituted. The larger ones are made of the boards at right angles and tapered so that one end of one trough rests in the upper end of the next lower section. The smaller, or lateral ...
— The Dollar Hen • Milo M. Hastings
... which they desecrated the true religion were worse in the eyes of Maieddine than the foolish faith of Christians, who, at least, were not backsliders. He would not even point out to Victoria the strange minaret of the Abadite mosque at Berryan, which tapered like a brown obelisk against the shimmering sky, for to him its very existence ...
— The Golden Silence • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... stood but thirteen hands and tipped the beam at scarcely twelve hundred weight, you might have guessed him to be taller by two hands. The deception lay in the way he carried his shapely head and in the manner in which his arched neck tapered from the well-placed shoulders. ...
— Horses Nine - Stories of Harness and Saddle • Sewell Ford
... so kind—such pretty flowers. Pray sit down," said the lady, with a sweet and grateful smile, as she took from the tapered fingers of the foreigner the little bouquet, which she had been at the ...
— The Evil Guest • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... composed of two horizontal oak frames, one at chine and one at sheer; each was about 1-1/2 inches thick. The outer faces of these frames were beveled. The planking around the stern on these frames was vertical staving that had been tapered, hollowed, and shaped to fit the flare of the stern. This vertical staving was usually 1-3/4 inches thick before it was finished. The raw edges of the deck plank were covered by a false wale 1/2 to 3/4 inch thick ...
— The Migrations of an American Boat Type • Howard I. Chapelle
... he used were in design much nearer approach to a streamline form than those previously adopted, but tapered to an extremely fine point both at the both and stem. For rigging he employed a long nacelle, in the centre of which was supported the car, and unusually long suspensions distributed the weight throughout practically the entire length of the envelope. To the name ...
— British Airships, Past, Present, and Future • George Whale
... knife, and is of pearly whiteness, more resembling cocoa-nut in appearance and texture than anything else I can compare it with. The interior cavity, containing the vital parts, terminates a little behind the large fins, where the cartilage was solid, to its tapered extremity, which is without a caudal fin. Within, and around the back part, lay the flesh, of a coarse fibrous texture, slightly salmon-coloured. The liver was such as to fill a common pail, and there was a large quantity of red blood. The nostril, top of the eye, and top of ...
— The Illustrated London Reading Book • Various
... 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 with the trunk itself. There were signs of the wild cattle having sheltered themselves behind them. Zeke called this the canoe tree; as in old times it supplied the navies of the Kings of Tahiti. For canoe building, ...
— Omoo: Adventures in the South Seas • Herman Melville
... the red-headed man's own "tump-line," a leather strap about twelve feet long, which tapered from the middle to both ends, tied this firmly round the angry live mummy, and left him lying ...
— Old Man Savarin and Other Stories • Edward William Thomson
... clouds. Some hailstones fell on board about this time, and the clouds looked exceedingly black and louring above us. Directly over the whirl-pool, if I may so call the agitated spot on the sea, a cloud gradually tapered into a long slender tube, which seemed to descend to meet the rising spiral, and soon united with it into a short column of a cylindrical form. We could distinctly observe the water hurled upwards with the greatest violence in a spiral, and it appeared that it left a hollow space ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 14 • Robert Kerr
... one hundred feet long and twenty feet in diameter at the widest part. It tapered to points at either end. It was attached to the lower hull by strong braces, at either end, while from the center there extended a pipe which connected with the lower section. This pipe was intended to convey the lifting gas to ...
— Five Thousand Miles Underground • Roy Rockwood
... of swamp forest tinged with their peculiar purple haze. Eastward the railroad's long causeway and telegraph-poles narrowed on the view through its wide axe-hewn lane in the overtowering swamp. New Orleans, sixty miles or more away, was in that direction. Westward, rails, causeway, and telegraph, tapered away again across the illimitable hidden quicksands of the "trembling prairie" till the green disguise of reeds and rushes closed in upon the attenuated line, and only a small notch in a far strip of woods ...
— Bonaventure - A Prose Pastoral of Acadian Louisiana • George Washington Cable
... seen the bay, and the talk tapered off desultorily to a final "So-long, see yuh later." Lone rode on, careful not to look back. So she was Brit Hunter's girl! Lone whistled softly to himself while he studied this new angle of the problem,—for a problem he was beginning to consider it. She was Brit Hunter's ...
— Sawtooth Ranch • B. M. Bower
... this terrible instrument was not much more than eighteen or twenty inches long, but the lash was upwards of six yards! Near the handle it was about three inches broad, being thick cords of walrus-hide platted; it gradually tapered towards the point, where it terminated in a fine line of the same material. While driving, the long lash of this whip trails on the snow behind the sledge, and by a peculiar sleight of hand its serpentine coils can be ...
— Ungava • R.M. Ballantyne
... group of Zoromes were assembled about the long cylinder, whose low nickel-plated sides shone brilliantly. With interest they regarded the fifteen-foot object which tapered a bit towards its base. The nose was pointed like a bullet. Eight cylindrical protuberances were affixed to the base while the four sides were equipped with fins such as are seen on aerial bombs to guide them in a direct, ...
— The Jameson Satellite • Neil Ronald Jones
... the day is almost as good for clear thinking as the early morning, especially if the day has not been overstrenuous and the activities have been gradually tapered off. ...
— Industrial Progress and Human Economics • James Hartness
... as I have said, an enormous man, of prodigious bodily strength, heavy, yet of good proportions. Of his face one gathered the impression of a blazing furnace. His cheeks and nose were of a vivid red, and still more fiery was the hair, now hidden 'neath his morion, and the beard that tapered to a dagger's point. His very eyes kept tune with the red harmony of his ferocious countenance, for the whites were ever bloodshot as a drunkard's—which, with no want of truth, men ...
— The Shame of Motley • Raphael Sabatini
... the approach of the canoes, rose in wheeling flight over their heads. The willows waved their feathery boughs in the sun and gleamed bright against the dark background of the pines. Migwan noted down the different contours of the trees, how the elms spread out wide at the top, how the pines tapered to a point, how the maples spread out irregularly. A flock of wild ducks passed them. In some places the banks of the river were honeycombed by the holes of bank swallows. A turtle, sitting on a half-sunken log, stretched his neck and looked after them as long as he could see them. All these things ...
— The Camp Fire Girls in the Maine Woods - Or, The Winnebagos Go Camping • Hildegard G. Frey
... slot and is held tight by the tapered ferrule. This can be pulled off by hand and the blade lengthened by pulling it forward ...
— Wood-Block Printing - A Description of the Craft of Woodcutting and Colour Printing Based on the Japanese Practice • F. Morley Fletcher
... even the Last Redoubt was but a small thing beside them. An hundred miles deep lay the lowest of the Underground Fields, and was an hundred miles from side to side, every way; and above it there were three hundred and six fields, each one less in area than that beneath; and in this wise they tapered, until the topmost field which lay direct beneath the lowermost floor of the Great Redoubt, was but four ...
— The Night Land • William Hope Hodgson
... little to the left, Aston Hall, in the clear atmosphere, seemed only about a mile away. Beyond, on a gentle eminence, Coleshill was distinctly visible, and in the far distance the tower of St. Mary's Church at Coventry reared to the dim and hazy sky its exquisitely tapered and most graceful spire. ...
— Personal Recollections of Birmingham and Birmingham Men • E. Edwards
... does not perceive the theft, until, a little way above, it feels the loss; and in the upper parts of the tree, the ramifications take place so constantly and delicately, that the effect upon the eye is precisely the same as if the boughs actually tapered, except here and there, where some avaricious one, greedy of substance, runs on for two or three yards without parting with anything, and becomes ungraceful in ...
— Modern Painters Volume I (of V) • John Ruskin
... long with broad and tapering points would be best. He saw too, that if the leaves had their veins running parallel with the midrib they would be stronger. He made search and at length found leaves that seemed made for his purpose. They were thick and leathery and tapered from base to apex like ...
— An American Robinson Crusoe • Samuel B. Allison
... completely enclosed except for one circular opening or doorway. From the midsection, which was about five feet in diameter and provided with heavily-cushioned seats capable of carrying four passengers in comfort, the hull tapered down smoothly to a needle point at each end. As Seaton entered and settled himself into the cushions, Rovol touched a lever. Instantly a transparent door slid across the opening, locking itself into position flush with the surface of the ...
— Skylark Three • Edward Elmer Smith
... closed. The finely tapered fingers tangled themselves in the masses of thick, luxuriant hair which lay outspread all over and about her. The ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... Daffy's Elixir was packaged in a globular bottle, according to a picture in a 1743 advertisement.[58] Speculation regarding the size and shape of the Stoughton bottle varies.[59] At least one Stoughton bottle was described as "Round amber. Tapered from domed shoulder to base. Long 5 in. bulged neck. Square flanged ...
— Old English Patent Medicines in America • George B. Griffenhagen
... moodily and in silence, to the palpable astonishment of Mike, who could not help regarding me as one from whom fortune met the most ungrateful returns. At every new turn of the road he would endeavor to attract my attention by the objects around,—no white-turreted chateau, no tapered spire in the distance, escaped him; he kept up a constant ripple of half-muttered praise and censure upon all he saw, and instituted unceasing comparisons between the country and his own, in which, I am bound to say, Ireland rarely, if ever, had ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 2 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... the picture. The total length of these fibres is from one-twentieth to one-fifth inch, being the smallest near the pith, and is fifty to one hundred times as great as their width (see Fig. 3). They are tapered and closed at their ends, polygonal or rounded and thin-walled, with large cavity, lumen or internal space in the spring-wood, and thick-walled and flattened radially, with the internal space or lumen much reduced in the summer-wood (see right-hand portion of Fig. 2). ...
— Seasoning of Wood • Joseph B. Wagner
... J.G.K. Gourdin. The two Gourdins, Robert and John Gaillard Keith, were dashing young fellows as I recollect them, belonging to Charleston, South Carolina. The "Southerners" were the reigning College elegans of that time, the merveilleux, the mirliflores, of their day. Their swallow-tail coats tapered to an arrow-point angle, and the prints of their little delicate calfskin boots in the snow were objects of great admiration to the village boys of the period. I cannot help wondering what brought Emerson and the showy, fascinating John Gourdin together ...
— Ralph Waldo Emerson • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... tumblers into which he pours his poison. Though true cylinders without—within, the villanous green goggling glasses deceitfully tapered downwards to a cheating bottom. Parallel meridians rudely pecked into the glass, surround these footpads' goblets. Fill to THIS mark, and your charge is but a penny; to THIS a penny more; and so on to ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... dispersed in London, Berlin, Carlsruhe, Munich, Athens, and Mycenae itself. In the decoration of this facade rosettes and running spirals played a conspicuous part, and on either side of the doorway stood a column which tapered downwards and was ornamented with spirals arranged in zigzag bands. This downward-tapering column, so unlike the columns of classic times, seems to have been in common use in Mycenaean architecture. Inside ...
— A History Of Greek Art • F. B. Tarbell
... and their seats, B, bored with a countersink bit, are plainly shown. The valves were made by threading a copper washer, 3/8 in. in diameter, and screwing it on the end of the valve rod, then wiping on roughly a tapered mass of solder and grinding it into the seats B with ...
— The Boy Mechanic: Volume 1 - 700 Things For Boys To Do • Popular Mechanics
... smooth, round, delicately tapered shaft, mostly without limbs, and colored rich purplish-brown, usually enlivened with tufts of yellow lichen. At the top of this magnificent bole, long, curving branches sweep gracefully outward and downward, sometimes forming a palm-like crown, but far more ...
— The Mountains of California • John Muir
... lassitude. It had taken ten generations to produce that finished article, and the man from the "Wilds" wondered what was the real nature of the animal. Physically he was a degenerate. His hands were long and tapered, and his limbs were exceeding small. But he possessed grace of movement. Jim felt a sneaking admiration for the hundred-and-one little tricks of movement that characterized the Immaculate One. But was it only ...
— Colorado Jim • George Goodchild
... until it was travelling no faster than a walking man, but the irregularity of its movements continued. It was shaped rather queerly. About twenty feet long, its straight sides tapered off from a flat bow, four feet broad, to a sharp-angled stern. The flat bottom was not above ten feet from the ground. It was undecked, and carried only one living occupant; the other object they had distinguished was really the carcass of an animal, of about the size of a large sheep. The blue haze ...
— A Voyage to Arcturus • David Lindsay
... of placing the butt of one wale-plank nearly over the middle of the other; and the planks being broadest in the middle, and tapered to the ends, they resemble an anchor-stock, with which it is more in keeping than is the method called top-and-butt; also pursued in fishing spars, ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... walked a few minutes we saw that the island tapered down to a narrow point; we saw, too, that the strip of land was about three quarters of a mile long, perhaps a quarter of a mile broad, and lay pretty well north and south. Arriving at the southern extremity, ...
— The Birthright • Joseph Hocking
... Viking raids into Europe tapered off following the adoption of Christianity by King Olav TRYGGVASON in 994. Conversion of the Norwegian kingdom occurred over the next several decades. In 1397, Norway was absorbed into a union with ...
— The 2005 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... highest that can be produced on earth. If the German gun that bombarded Paris were loaded with a solid steel projectile of suitable dimensions, a muzzle velocity of 6,000 feet per second could be reached. Suppose this to be fired into a tapered hole in a great block of steel. The instantaneous pressure, according to Cook, would be about 7,000 tons per square inch, only 1/150000 of that possible through the collision of ...
— The New Heavens • George Ellery Hale
... calmness, like the whittler's stick, tapered up instead down. He who had, at five o'clock on that never-to-be-forgotten day, come upon us with the insinuating placidity of hunyadi janos—he who had addressed us in the tone of prehistoric centuries—he who ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... or pins of ivory, bone, or steel. The latter are most commonly used, and should have tapered points, without the least ...
— Enquire Within Upon Everything - The Great Victorian Domestic Standby • Anonymous
... or six inches in length; make stoppers of wood to fit both ends, two and a half or three inches long; with your nail-gimlet make a hole through them lengthwise: when put together it should be about ten inches. The ends may be tapered. On one end leave a notch, that it may be held with the teeth, which is the most convenient way, as you will often want to use both hands: it is also always ready, without any trouble to blow through, and also to keep the tobacco burning. When ready to operate, fill ...
— Mysteries of Bee-keeping Explained • M. Quinby
... He had thus been led to construct wings with a slightly rounded surface whose coefficient of yield was nearly double that of wings with flat surfaces. The width of these wings was about five feet and their length about sixteen. They tapered a little, were drawn out in front and widened at the opposite end, so as to get a more powerful hold of the air. They were made of double-milled canvas, stretched on curved ash and fastened to the ...
— The Bill-Toppers • Andre Castaigne
... the hall, asking him to kiss her. At such times she often looked quite bright, keen, alert and amused. Towards the end she would give at times playful answers, such as "I came to-day," or "This is the Hall of Fame." This tapered off, so that by December, ...
— Benign Stupors - A Study of a New Manic-Depressive Reaction Type • August Hoch
... screen of lavender foliage stretched a glistening, scale-armored neck, as thick as a man's body at its thinnest point, which was just behind a tremendous-jawed crocodilian head. It tapered back for a distance of at least thirty feet, to merge into a body as big as that of a terrestial whale, that was supported by four squat, ...
— Astounding Stories, April, 1931 • Various
... to be tapered, as is the side A, in Figure 138, and that the hole is not central, and both facts will be shown by the centre lines 1 and 2 in the figure. The measurement of face A would be marked from A to line B at each end, but the distance ...
— Mechanical Drawing Self-Taught • Joshua Rose
... that is called the swallow-tail butterfly, because each of its wings tapered to a point, something like the tail of a swallow. We will call the butterfly, Miss Swallow-tail, and now let us see what ...
— New National Fourth Reader • Charles J. Barnes and J. Marshall Hawkes
... and, in short, a roof closed on it. A straight pole was set up in the centre of this building, the upper end fixed by a wooden pin to the top of the couple, and the lower end in an oblong trink in the earth or floor; and lastly, another pole was set across horizontally, having both ends tapered, one end of which was supported in a hole in the side of the perpendicular pole, and the other end in a similar hole in the couple leg. The horizontal stick was called the auger, having four short arms or levers fixed in ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 323, July 19, 1828 • Various
... the tips of his tapered fingers trembling on an empty table, straining forward and staring into the stranger's face; "no, Jack Ramsey has not been here; and if what you say be true—he sleeps alone in yonder fastness. Alas, poor Ramsey!—Ah knew 'im well"; and he sank on a seat, ...
— The Last Spike - And Other Railroad Stories • Cy Warman
... our attention, was the very surprising size of the anthills, or nests. I measured one, the height of which was 13 feet, and width at the base 7 feet; from whence it tapered gradually to the apex. They are composed of a pale red earth; but how it is sufficiently tempered, I am unable to state; certain is it, that it has almost the consistence of mortar, and will bear the tread of a man upon ...
— Discoveries in Australia, Volume 1. • J Lort Stokes
... tapered for the purpose of passing it readily through a loop. To make this, we unlay the rope for the necessary length, reducing a rope diminishing in diameter towards the end, which is finished by interlacing the ends without cutting them, as it would weaken the work; it is lastly "whipped" ...
— Scientific American, Volume XXIV., No. 12, March 18, 1871 • Various
... continued gazing on the object which had elicited her remarks. In addition to the bright and circular flame, was now to be seen a fainter, though a vivid light, of an equal diameter to the other at the upper end, but which, after extending downward for many feet, gradually tapered to a point at its lower extremity. A dark space was plainly visible between the two, and the new illumination was placed beneath the other, the whole forming an appearance not unlike an inverted note of admiration. It was soon evident that the latter was nothing but the reflection, ...
— The Pioneers • James Fenimore Cooper
... The tapered choir, at the late hour of prayer, Oft let me tread, while to th' according voice The many-sounding organ peals on high The clear slow-dittied chant or varied hymn, Till all my soul is bathed in ecstasies And lapped in Paradise. Or let me sit Far in sequestered ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum
... lines for fly fishing are made of braided enamelled silk. Some fly lines are tapered but this is not necessary and is a needless expense. Twisted lines are much cheaper ...
— Outdoor Sports and Games • Claude H. Miller
... of wine. The landlord would sell nothing less than a pint bottle. Well then he would have a bottle; but when he came to compare the contents of the bottle with its size, great was the discrepancy: on this he examined the bottle keenly, and found that the glass was thin where the bottle tapered, but towards the bottom unnaturally thick. He pointed this out ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... species of fish none of us had ever before seen, a fish about ten to sixteen inches long, slim, with fine scales and large fins. Their heads came down with a sudden curve to the mouth, and their bodies tapered off to a very small circumference just before the tail spread out. They were good to eat, and formed a welcome addition to our larder. We were all eager for something fresh, and when we saw a couple of deer run across the bluffs just before we reached our fourth camp, our hopes ...
— A Canyon Voyage • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh
... then conceal the slight chinks, and the boat might be examined in every possible way without any trace of this hiding-place being observed. The canoe was some eleven feet long, and nearly three feet in the beam; it tapered at either end, so that it might be propelled backwards or forwards without turning, and stem and stern (interchangeable definitions in this case) each rose a few inches higher than the general gunwale. The sides were about two inches thick, the bottom three, so ...
— After London - Wild England • Richard Jefferies
... as long, or nearly so, as mine, and even thicker close to the roots, but tapered up to a small pointed knob, so that for the enculage he had greater facility, than my huge-knobbed affair, whose head was as thick as any part of it. This difference of formation made the dear creatures both prefer my prick in front while the Count attacked them in the rear. ...
— The Romance of Lust - A classic Victorian erotic novel • Anonymous
... morning of the fourth day, and lo! at the first leap of the sun of that day the flame of the Identical abated in its fierceness, and it dwindled and darkened, and tapered and flickered feebly, descending from its altitude in the heavens and through the ceiling of the Hall, and lay down to sleep among the intricate lengths and frizzled convolutions and undulating weights flowing from Shagpat, an undistinguished hair, even as the common hairs of ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... a smile crosses her lips. She lays her knitting on her knee for an instant, that she may the more readily let her tapered fingers droop until they touch the pale brow of the child at her feet; then she resumes it again, with a face ...
— Rossmoyne • Unknown
... in the search for the pleasing objects of the past. Considered too utilitarian, their decorative appeal—the mellow patina of the wood plane or the delicately tapered legs of a pair of dividers—often goes unnoticed. Surprisingly modern in design, the ancient carpenter's or cabinetmaker's tool has a vitality of line that can, without reference to technical significance, make it an object of ...
— Woodworking Tools 1600-1900 • Peter C. Welsh
... being people of high quality and much respect, (I never judge men from what they seem on the outside, not I!) shall give me your confidence, I warrant you shall see I am no unscrupulous politician!" Here the throng sent up a loud cheer, and tapered it off with three tigers. "Ah! that is what I like," resumed the major; "I always did like the music of the Democracy. It sounds as if it was the free offering of hearts innocent, and not given to retrieve." "Intrigue," whispered Don Fernando, ...
— The Life and Adventures of Maj. Roger Sherman Potter • "Pheleg Van Trusedale"
... of the ceja for two or three miles they approached a spur of the cliff that ran out into the plain, and gradually tapered to a point, sinking lower as it receded from the Llano. It ended in a clump, or rather several clusters, of isolated rocks and boulders that stood near each other. The place was not timbered, but the dark rocks irregularly ...
— The White Chief - A Legend of Northern Mexico • Mayne Reid
... 140 horse-power. This machine was the first in which the refinement of 'stream-lining' the pilot's head, which became a feature of subsequent racing machines, was introduced. This consisted of a circular padded excresence above the cockpit immediately behind the pilot's head, which gradually tapered off into the top surface of the fuselage. The object was to give the air an uninterrupted flow instead of allowing it to be broken up into eddies behind the head of the pilot, and it also provided a support ...
— A History of Aeronautics • E. Charles Vivian
... of the body tapered birdlike to the horizontal rudder twenty feet in the rear. The truss work of the body was covered with diagonally crossing strips of veneer, so that, as a whole, with the rigid planes, the monoplane had a substantial appearance. This frame, covered with waterproof canvas, made the body ...
— On the Edge of the Arctic - An Aeroplane in Snowland • Harry Lincoln Sayler
... breathed, but Val was shielding her face from the searing heat with her arms, and so did not see what happened then. A burning branch like a long, flaming dagger flew straight with the wind and lighted true as if flung by the hand of an enemy. A long, neatly tapered stack received it fairly, and Kent's cry brought Val's arms down, and her scared eyes staring ...
— Lonesome Land • B. M. Bower
... the oval indicated the design of the face. The perpendicular line marked the position of the brow, the nose, the mouth, and the chin; the horizontal line passed through the eyes, and was parallel to the mouth. The hands of youth were beautifully rounded, and the dimples given; the fingers were tapered, but the articulations were not generally indicated. In the male form the chest was high, arched, and prominent. In the female form, especially in that of goddesses and virgins, the form of the breasts is virginal in the extreme, since their beauty was generally made ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... of a man in clerical garb. On the other, a broad-brimmed hat overshadowed a sort of olive-green cone terminating in a scanty beard; and on the wall could be seen the shadow of a nose so distinctly tapered that nothing in the world might compare with it except, perhaps, a long rapier lying across the knees of the personage in question, and a little dog's face which, from its pointed shape, might have been mistaken for that of a gigantic rat. In fact, ...
— Mauprat • George Sand
... noted by Atkinson which is worth including for the guidance of future expeditions. Six new sledges came down per "Terra Nova" from Messrs. Hagen of Christiania, with tapered runners—the breadth of the runner in front being 4 inches, diminishing to 2 1/2 on the after part of the sledge. Compared with our original 12-foot pattern the new sledges contrasted to great advantage over the old. ...
— South with Scott • Edward R. G. R. Evans
... forward. He was attired as a mountaineer. His hat tapered to the top, and was crowned by a single heron feather. Hussars might have envied him his moustaches. From his right side protruded a couteau de chasse; and his legs were not a little set off by the tight-laced boots, which, coming up some way beyond the ancle, displayed ...
— A Love Story • A Bushman
... its light and elegant proportions and the taste with which it was fitted up. The benches were covered with cushions, and its long streamer was of silk. On one of the cushion's lay a lady's glove, of delicate size and shape, with beautifully tapered fingers. I instantly seized it and thrust it in my bosom; it seemed a match for the fairy footstep that had so ...
— The Crayon Papers • Washington Irving
... has a point and is called 'lance-shaped.' The 'oblong' is like the linear, the same size up and down, but it's much wider than the linear. The 'elliptical' is what the oblong would be if its ends were prettily tapered off. The apple tree has a leaf whose ellipse is so wide that it is called 'oval.' Can you guess what ...
— Ethel Morton's Enterprise • Mabell S.C. Smith
... right. It was an extension-table, but the spare leaves had been removed, and it was reduced to a circle. A mellow western light from that portion of the sky unswathed in clouds streamed through the window, and did duty as a lamp. The cloth was white, and tapered down in soft folds at the corners; a pleasant profusion of sparkling china and silver, and of savory eatables, filled the circumference of the board, leaving just space enough to operate in, and no more. In the centre of the table, and perceptible ...
— Bressant • Julian Hawthorne
... servant, Smooth, took up his position, riding a female jackass, an animal domesticated by Monsieur Souley, under whose saddle she had borne up until the flesh was nearly off her bones. This was tapered off with an everlasting string of seedy citizens, for whom an innumerable quantity of goats seemed to have a fellow sympathy, so close did they follow. At the hotel, from the balcony of which streamed the stars and stripes, the ...
— The Adventures of My Cousin Smooth • Timothy Templeton
... had found a pathway through the bog. It helped us to realize the horror of this woman's life when we saw the eagerness and joy with which she laid us on her husband's track. We left her standing upon the thin peninsula of firm, peaty soil which tapered out into the widespread bog. From the end of it a small wand planted here and there showed where the path zigzagged from tuft to tuft of rushes among those green-scummed pits and foul quagmires which barred the way to the stranger. Rank reeds ...
— The Hound of the Baskervilles • A. Conan Doyle
... a year younger than himself, and had well outgrown girlishness. She was of very slight build, looked indeed rather frail; but her face, though lacking colour, had the firmness of health. It was very broad at the forehead, and tapered down into narrowness; the eyes seemed set at an unusual distance from each other, though the nose was thin and of perfect form, its profile making but a slight angle away from the line of the brows. Her lips were large, but finely curved; the chin was prominent, the throat long. She had ...
— A Life's Morning • George Gissing
... There was no mention made of the wealthy aunt and her mansion after the day dawned. The invitation to spend a few days, "as many as you like," amid the luxuries of Paris and the Seven Seas had tapered down to the warmed eggs and black coffee, the only real food I ate being that I had bought in a house-to-house canvass in the morning. I had distributed pills to most of the family and several neighbors and photographed them, at the request of the man of many ...
— Tramping Through Mexico, Guatemala and Honduras - Being the Random Notes of an Incurable Vagabond • Harry A. Franck
... another hour, and since still no acknowledgment had come he strolled along the road himself. He came to a large white house. A flagpost tapered from its roof but no flag blew out its folds. There was a garden about the house, the trim well-ordered garden of the English folk with a lawn and banks of flowers, and a gardener with a hose was busy watering it. Thresk stopped before the hedge. The windows ...
— Witness For The Defense • A.E.W. Mason
... disadvantages of the thrusting stroke, the modern hand-saw, Fig. 86, has been gradually improved as the result of much experience and thought. The outline of the blade is tapered in width from handle to point; it is thicker also at the heel (the handle end) than at the point; its thickness also tapers from the teeth to the back. All these tapers gives stiffness where it is most needed. It is made wide for the sake of giving steadiness in sawing. The fact that it ...
— Handwork in Wood • William Noyes
... suspected Mr. Drew's profession, I think I should not have remarked that he gave each of us a keen look as he raised his head. He had reddish-brown hair, and a pair of bushy red whiskers, each of which tapered to a long point. He was broad in the shoulders, and the clothes he wore rather enhanced this breadth. His suit was gray and almost new, the trousers perceptibly bagging at the knee, and he had a felt hat, a necktie of the white and flowery pattern, and square-toed ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... Harson as they stood near a tall, beautiful tree that tapered to a point, "has, you see, a straight, smooth trunk and tapers regularly and rapidly to the top. You will notice, too, that the leaves, which are needle-shaped and nearly flat, do not grow in clusters, ...
— Among the Trees at Elmridge • Ella Rodman Church
... His riding-trousers, close-fitting and corded, were buttoned over the calves of his legs. Soft, highly polished leather boots reached to his knees. His shirt was of silk, deeply embroidered down the front and at the collar. His jacket gave him ample breathing-room about the chest, but tapered at the waist and clung closely over the hips. He wore a sombrero and a knotted silk handkerchief. His face was deeply sunburned, except a spot shaped like crescent just below the hairline on the forehead, which was protected from the sun by the hat and the shade of the brim. A similar ...
— The Round-up - A Romance of Arizona novelized from Edmund Day's melodrama • John Murray and Marion Mills Miller
... as large as a cathedral, and possessed a steeple which was a landmark for the neighbourhood. It was possible to ascend as far as the flying buttresses, and to walk round a stone causeway that encircled the tower just where the spire tapered up. The entrance was in the nave, through a small oak door studded with nails. The verger, aged, wheezy, and inclined to conversation, ...
— A harum-scarum schoolgirl • Angela Brazil |
