"Uneven" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the project for beautifying the city; the execution of which according to draughts and plans, began in the strangest fashion to pass from sketches and plans into reality. Intendant Gayot had undertaken to new-model the angular and uneven lanes of Strasburg, and to lay the foundations of a respectable, handsome city, regulated by line and level. Upon this, Blondel, a Parisian architect, drew a plan, by which an hundred and forty householders gained in room, eighty lost, and the rest remained ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... drove at about a three-minute gait; but after traversing some four or five miles, we turned south into a narrow road, which soon became hilly and tortuous; yet even here it was only on particularly rough or uneven portions of the way that the doctor moderated our speed to ...
— A Strange Discovery • Charles Romyn Dake
... clung to the hope that treasure of some sort was hidden about the old house, for he was often seen lurking about its walls, and at last his fate overtook him, poor fellow, in the pursuit; for climbing near the summit one day, his holding gave way, and he fell upon the hard uneven ground, fracturing a leg and a rib, and after a short interval died, and he, like the other heroes of these true tales, lies buried in the little ...
— J. S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 4 • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... not many walnuts south of that point, however. In the province of Shanshi the soil is of a washed nature, subjected to rains, and we found there huge gorges that had evidently been forming for centuries. All of the soil there, that is not too uneven to be cultivated, is terraced; and along the sides of the terraces walnut trees are planted. We usually found tunnels along the sides of the terraces. These were dug around the bank so that the water would run through the tunnels instead ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Fourteenth Annual Meeting • Various
... seat to get a look at her, then shifted the clutch and slowly started the car. The woman sat quiet. While bumping over the uneven road at a reckless speed the driver turned at times to cast stealthy glances at the person beside him. Finally he asked ...
— Mary Louise in the Country • L. Frank Baum (AKA Edith Van Dyne)
... would strive to their own sore detriment. For as in the beginning the sons of Adam were equal, and as of their descendants some rose to be of ruling classes through mental and physical fitness, so if all men were to be levelled again to-day, to-morrow they would be uneven once more, and the next day more uneven, the weak getting trampled under foot, and the strong fighting a red path upward with their ...
— The Recipe for Diamonds • Charles John Cutcliffe Wright Hyne
... an odd figure, sitting loosely on an old white mare which held her nose to the ground and cautiously single-footed over the uneven road. Unconcerned, perhaps unconscious that he bestrode a horse, his head was thrown back and his gaze penetrated the lace-work of branches to a sky exquisite blue where a few white, puffy clouds were aimlessly suspended. ...
— Sunlight Patch • Credo Fitch Harris
... An uneven number of players are required for this game. Enough chairs are placed in a circle to allow one chair to each two players and one for the odd player, that is, half as many chairs as there are players, with one player over. A player sits in each chair, all facing ...
— Games for the Playground, Home, School and Gymnasium • Jessie H. Bancroft
... seat; the time so craves; Rest your good heart on earth, the roof of graves: You see the floor of greatness is uneven; The cricket and high throne alike near heaven.— Now, daughters, you that like to branches spread, And give best shadow to a private house, Be comforted, my girls; your hopes stand fair: Virtue breeds gentry, ...
— Sir Thomas More • William Shakespeare [Apocrypha]
... toll the alarm. Then the strokes follow each other in more rapid succession; hasty, disquieting, uneven, they blend with the noise of the street and seem to creep ...
— Savva and The Life of Man • Leonid Andreyev
... still being sung ahead of me, and then it suddenly ceased. In dead silence and in pitchy darkness I struggled up the stone steps, wondering what I should find at the next turning. The place was black as night, the steps were uneven, and the stairs corkscrewed most wonderfully. I wished with all my heart that I had not come, as I ...
— Salute to Adventurers • John Buchan
... admirable dinner we have had in the Ancient King's Arms, with great oaken staircases, uneven floors, and very thin oak panels, plaster-filled outer walls, but capital new furniture, and the brightest glass, linen, spoons, and china you ever saw. It is the same house in which I once slept about fifty years ago, with the whole company of an ancient ...
— A Hundred Years by Post - A Jubilee Retrospect • J. Wilson Hyde
... we proceeded. The wagons were to follow, but at a slow pace, the ladies being compelled to abandon them on account of the ruggedness of the ways, which would have rendered their motion not easy to be borne. Our cavalcade and train of footmen made a respectable display along the uneven road, which soon became very little more than a line cut through the forest, with an occasional wheel-track, but without the least attempt to level the surface of the ground by any artificial means. This was the place where ...
— Satanstoe • James Fenimore Cooper
... to raise her voice in that awful silence, and in the dark. When she glanced around her, she made out vague forms through the dimness that might be the uneven walls of the cave, or might be strange ...
— The Seventh Man • Max Brand
... towns. The first part of this road taken in hand was the worst—that lying to the north of Catterick Bridge, in Yorkshire. A new line was surveyed by West Auckland to Hexham, passing over Garter Fell to Jedburgh, and thence to Edinburgh; but was rejected as too crooked and uneven. Another was tried by Aldstone Moor and Bewcastle, and rejected for the same reason. The third line proposed was eventually adopted as the best, passing from Morpeth, by Wooler and Coldstream, to Edinburgh; saving rather more than fourteen miles between the two points, and securing a line of road ...
— The Life of Thomas Telford by Smiles • Samuel Smiles
... it. They take the water from the Moselle (which is here broad and torrential and falls in steps, running over a stony bed with little swirls and rapids), and they lead it along at an even gradient, averaging, as it were, the uneven descent of the river. In this way they have a continuous stream running through fields that would otherwise be bare and dry, but that are thus ...
— The Path to Rome • Hilaire Belloc
... overfalls, dangerous to small craft. They may be produced by narrow channels, crossing of tides, or uneven bottoms. Such are the races of Portland, Alderney, &c. Also, ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... Vallorbes picked her steps. The pavement was uneven, the heat great. Destournelle's hands twitched with agitation, yet he contrived not only to replace his Panama hat, but opened his white umbrella as a precaution against sunstroke. And this diverted, even while exasperating, ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... immense but extremely uneven and unkempt. Around it the Warhoons had piled building stone from some of the ruined edifices of the ancient city to prevent the animals and the captives from escaping into the audience, and at each end had been constructed cages to hold them until their turns came to meet some horrible ...
— A Princess of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... boys broke into a run, giving no further heed to the fact that the ground was uneven and that their feet were bare. They had heard stories of vicious rams many times, and knew that only the year before a girl had been almost mauled to death by such ...
— Young Hunters of the Lake • Ralph Bonehill
... and even high up the hillsides among the huge granite boulders, there is a continuous succession of small villages. Many of these, lying far from railway or highroad, can only be reached by narrow and uneven paths, along which no carriage can pass except the heavy creaking carts drawn by the beautiful large long-horned oxen whose broad and splendidly carved yokes are so remarkable a feature of the country lying ...
— Portuguese Architecture • Walter Crum Watson
... political tensions weaken Pakistan's commitment to lender-recommended economic reforms. GDP growth will continue to hinge on crop performance; dependence on foreign oil leaves the import bill vulnerable to fluctuating oil prices; and efforts to open and modernize the economy remain uneven. ...
— The 2003 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... forgot to freeze during the long two hours we stayed in the icy-cold building, open to wind and weather above and full of piercing draughts below. The marble pavement, which has collected damp and mold since 27 B.C., has long since become so wavy and uneven that you walk very unsteadily over it; the costly marbles of which the pavement is made in fine mosaic-work have sunken away from their contours centuries ago, so that now you only realize how beautiful it must have ...
— The Sunny Side of Diplomatic Life, 1875-1912 • Lillie DeHegermann-Lindencrone
... feet. Through the dark streets sped the three machines. The smooth asphalt became a rough road as the suburbs were reached. Then came a stretch of open country, with the Chehalis river bridge only a short distance ahead. The cars lurched over the uneven road with increasing speed, their headlights playing on each other ...
— The Centralia Conspiracy • Ralph Chaplin
... much for it, causing it to sag quite perceptibly at the base-board. But this seemed too improbable to consider. Old as the house was, it was not old enough for its beams to have rolled. Yet the floor was certainly uneven, and, what was stranger yet, had, in sagging, failed to carry the base-board with it. This I could see by peering around the side of the cabinet. Was it an important enough fact to call for explanation? Possibly not; yet when I ...
— The Mayor's Wife • Anna Katharine Green
... mill and store, and went clambering along the trail toward the northern coves. The driver ran cautiously enough, despite Zeke's impatience, but, at the best, the trip was a strain on the men and on the mechanism that bore them, for the car lurched and bounced over the uneven surface, and more than once was near to being overturned. Their ultimate safety was due, in great measure, to Zeke himself. Familiar with every foot of the way, he was able to advise the chauffeur ...
— Heart of the Blue Ridge • Waldron Baily
... mountain in one day, for like the winds he was gifted with the speed of the mind, in consequence of his ascetic austerities. And having crossed the Himavat, as also the Gandhamadana, he passed over many uneven and dangerous spots, walking night and day without fatigue. And having reached Indrakila, Dhananjaya stopped for a moment. And then he heard a voice in the skies, saying, 'Stop!' And hearing that voice, the son of Pandu cast his glances all around. And Arjuna, capable of using his left ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... to cross the woodland and cornfields that for about a league intervened between their position and the highway. They commenced the tedious tramp, Arthur and Harold exerting themselves to the utmost to protect Oriana from the brambles, and to guide her footsteps along the uneven ground and among the decayed branches and other obstacles that beset their path. Their rude companions, too, with the exception of Rawbon, who walked moodily apart, seemed solicitous to assist her with their rough attentions. To add to the disagreeable ...
— Fort Lafayette or, Love and Secession • Benjamin Wood
... she came to King's side at the gloomy entrance of Gus Ingle's cave. The formless black void before her which under other circumstances would have repelled, now invited. It offered shelter and rest and protection. She crept by King with never a backward glance, and threw herself face down on the uneven floor. ...
— The Everlasting Whisper • Jackson Gregory
... the picture again. Why should this masterpiece not have been properly mounted and glazed? The edges of the canvas were jagged and uneven, as though it had been cut from its frame with a not oversharp knife. We sat down to our ...
— The Gates of Chance • Van Tassel Sutphen
... evidences of a pathetic struggle to make scanty resources furnish at least an appearance of luxury. The walls were adorned with amateur china painting in the shape of dreadful placques and plates in livid hues; there was abundance of embroidery that should have been impossible, in garish tints and uneven stitches; much shift had been made to produce an imposing appearance by means of cheap Japanese fans and the inexpensive wares of which the potteries at Kioto, corrupted by foreign influence, turn out such vast quantities for the foreign market. Against the ...
— The Philistines • Arlo Bates
... bath gaping for him in a smaller room adjoining. Out of that you came into another passage, where there were back-stairs and where you could hear the horses being rubbed down outside the stable and being told to "Hold up" and "Get over," as they slipped about very much on the uneven stones. Or you might, if you came out at another door (every room had at least two doors), go straight down to the hall again by half-a-dozen steps and a low archway, wondering how you got back there or had ever got out ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... two miles across the common to Stephen's farm and it took the boy nearly an hour, because the ground was uneven and there were walls to climb, and also because he was thinking of what his grandfather had said. Would his father one day be old and silly like his grandfather? Did every one get old and silly like that? and, if so, ...
— Fortitude • Hugh Walpole
... gasp from within, and a skinny, gnarled little man suddenly appeared in the guard's light, like a grotesque, twisted ghost out of the blackness. Wide blue eyes regarded Meyerhoff from beneath uneven black eyebrows, and then the little man's face broke into a crafty grin. "Paul! So they sent you! I knew I could count on it!" He executed a deep, awkward bow, motioning Meyerhoff into the dark cubicle. "Not much to ...
— Letter of the Law • Alan Edward Nourse
... sob, and pulled open the door again, and trotted out into the darkness. Her heavy shawl rather impeded her, so she could not go very fast, and the road was rough and uneven for her small feet. She looked up to see if she could find any comfortable twinkling star for a companion, but the sky was all black and overcast, and there was no moon. Then she said her evening prayer to herself, but it was very short and did not last long, ...
— Our Frank - and other stories • Amy Walton
... the island,' said Father Piret, 'this was the residence par excellence. The old house was brave with green and white paint then; it had candelabra on its high mantles, brass andirons on its many hearthstones, curtains for all its little windows, and carpets for all its uneven floors. Much cooking went on, and smoke curled up from all these outside chimneys. Those were the days of the fur trade and Mackinac was a central mart. Hither twice a year came the bateaux from the Northwest, loaded ...
— Castle Nowhere • Constance Fenimore Woolson
... lurched forward over uneven cobbles. He had forgotten his design upon the two houses, but a light shone at the end of this dark lane, and he made for it, gained it, and found himself in a wider street. And there the enchantment ...
— The Laird's Luck • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... resources and rich agricultural areas. Growth has been uneven because of natural disasters, fluctuations in global oil prices, and government policies designed to curb inflation. Banana exports, second only to oil, have suffered as a result of EC import quotas and banana blight. The new President Sixto DURAN-BALLEN, has a much more favorable attitude toward ...
— The 1993 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... and paced the floor with nervous, uneven strides. He plunged his hand into his coat pocket and drew out the letter again. He re-read it, with hot eyes and straining thought. Every word seemed to sear itself upon his poor brain, and drive him to the verge of distraction. ...
— The Twins of Suffering Creek • Ridgwell Cullum
... formed the most direct communication between the pavilion and the mansion- house; and, as I cast my eyes to that side, I saw a spark of light, not a quarter of a mile away, and rapidly approaching. From its uneven course it appeared to be the light of a lantern carried by a person who followed the windings of the path, and was often staggered and taken aback by the more violent squalls. I concealed myself once more among the elders, and ...
— New Arabian Nights • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Thompson nodded very slowly. "I—I only wanted you to respect me," she said. "To treat me properly." Her voice sounded uneven, and her eyes were glistening with unspilled tears. Lady Barbara tightened her arm about the ...
— Brain Twister • Gordon Randall Garrett
... had the honor to say here last year, has been an exceptionally uneven one. There have been many very good men in it, and there have been many men in it who were simply passing the remainder of their days in dignified retirement. That came along naturally enough when we did not have much foreign trade ...
— Latin America and the United States - Addresses by Elihu Root • Elihu Root
... been wet all the winter, and was now full of rough hardened wheel-ruts and holes made by slipping horses. Elizabeth thought that Robert Bruce's calthorps could hardly have made the ground more uneven, and she was just going to say so, when Helen groaned out, 'What a horrid place! I slip and bruise my ancle every minute.' Upon which she immediately took the other side of the question, and answered, 'It is not nearly ...
— Abbeychurch - or, Self-Control and Self-Conceit • Charlotte M. Yonge
... gibbering, swarthy foreigners, Aaron Thurnbrein, bent double over his ancient bicycle, sped on his way towards the Commercial Road and eastwards. With narrow cheeks smeared with dust, yellow teeth showing behind his parted lips, through which the muttered words came with uneven vehemence, ragged clothes, a ragged handkerchief around his neck, a greasy cap upon his head—this messenger, charged with great tidings, proclaimed himself, by his visible existence, one of the submerged clinging to his last spar, ...
— A People's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... back over the uneven mass, let myself down between the boulders and crawled under a dark ridge, and finally with Jim catching my rifle and camera and then lending his shoulders, I reached the bench below. Jones came puffing around a corner of the cliff, and soon all three of us ...
— Tales of lonely trails • Zane Grey
... method by which the plan of a pyramid was laid out by the ancient Egyptians was discovered in this excavation, and the designs show considerable mechanical ingenuity in their execution, and afford a perfect system for maintaining the symmetry of the building itself, no matter how uneven the ground on which it ...
— History Of Egypt From 330 B.C. To The Present Time, Volume 12 (of 12) • S. Rappoport
... definite doctrine, worthy of being preached with all aggressiveness. We have already said that his essays fall into four classes, literary, social, religious, and political, though they cannot always be sharply distinguished. As a literary critic he is uneven, and, as elsewhere, sometimes superficial, but his fine appreciation and generally clear vision make him refreshingly stimulating. His point of view is unusually broad, his chief general purpose being to ...
— A History of English Literature • Robert Huntington Fletcher
... waves—like running water.'" (That was just the way her hair looked, especially over the temples and at the nape of her neck—Jove, what a tempting white neck it was!) "Um-m. 'Ripple; wave; undulate; uneven; irregular.'" (Lord, what fools are the men who write dictionaries!) ...
— The Lure of the Dim Trails • by (AKA B. M. Sinclair) B. M. Bower
... for angelic perfection or purity on this earth; but do not make too many allowances, on the other hand, for frailty. A close examination, as with the microscope, will disclose irregularity and roughness on the most polished or smooth surface: how then will that surface appear which is uneven without the microscope? If it were possible for your associate for life to come apparently near celestial purity and excellence, a closer acquaintance would, most undoubtedly, convince you that he was of terrestrial origin. Do the best you can, ...
— The Young Woman's Guide • William A. Alcott
... and the pipe line there could be no electric power on which the mill depended. The mill had been stripped of all smaller stuff, and its dynamos had been chipped with an ax until the copper windings showed frayed and useless. The shoes of the huge stamps were worn down to a thin, uneven rim, battering on broken surfaces. The Venners rattled on their foundations, and the plates had been scarred as if by a chisel in the hands of ...
— The Plunderer • Roy Norton
... put the troops to flight with great slaughter. Then, to encourage the king's army further, to bring them all upon the enemy while he was in confusion, he quitted his horse, and fighting with extreme difficulty in his heavy horseman's dress, in rough, uneven ground, full of water-courses and hollows, had both his thighs struck through with a thonged javelin. It was thrown with great force, so that the head came out on the other side, and made a severe though not a mortal wound. There ...
— The Boys' and Girls' Plutarch - Being Parts of The "Lives" of Plutarch • Plutarch
... many thousands of square miles in extent, the monotony of whose dusky superficies is often unrelieved for great distances by any prominent object; while the remainder, everywhere manifestly brighter, is not only more rugged and uneven, but is covered to a much greater extent with numbers of quasi-circular formations, differing widely in size, classed as walled-plains, ring-plains, craters, craterlets, crater-cones, &c. (the latter bearing a great outward resemblance to some terrestrial volcanoes), ...
— The Moon - A Full Description and Map of its Principal Physical Features • Thomas Gwyn Elger
... given on even ground; but practice should also be had on uneven ground, especially in the ...
— Manual for Noncommissioned Officers and Privates of Infantry • War Department
... have been run away with in a dust-cart through Fenchurch Street, or some other London pavement, the gas pipes being up at the time, might form some idea of our sensations as we pounded along, at full gallop, over some thirty miles of uneven, UNCOOKED road; but to anybody who has not had this advantage, description would be impossible. About half way, it appeared that it was written in my miserable destiny that the off fore-wheel of my shay was to come ...
— Diary of a Pedestrian in Cashmere and Thibet • by William Henry Knight
... nine a. m. being then in the latitude of 43 deg. 37' S. longitude, by lunar observation, 145 deg. 36' E., and by account 143 deg. 10' E. from Greenwich, we saw the land bearing N.N.E., about eight or nine leagues distance. It appeared moderately high, and uneven near the sea; the hills farther back formed a double land, and much higher. There seemed to be several islands, or broken land, to the N.W., as the shore trenched; but by reason of clouds that hung over them, we could not be ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 14 • Robert Kerr
... letter "Y" and in a great open space they saw a placid lake on the bosom of which the moon was shining. On all sides the towering walls rose for hundreds of feet. Speechless with wonder and with quickly-beating hearts they stumbled forward over the uneven road till they reached the shore of the lake. The water was so clear and still that the moon and stars were reflected in it as if in a ...
— The Land of the Changing Sun • William N. Harben
... uneven. If one might be permitted to enter and leave at one's pleasure I would advise you to miss out the desultory First Act. But if you insist on seeing it then take care to read your programme before the lights go down and find out that the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, April 22, 1914 • Various
... shaking, his words were uneven. "I'm sorry for Bell, but not for you. I'll never forget nor forgive what you did to me. Nothing can undo that. Disgrace clings to a man. You're going to get yours, now, and you can't squirm out of it, or lie ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach
... addressed as usual to Susan. Keith had explained in his second letter that he was always going to write to Susan, so that she might read it to his father, thus saving him the disagreeableness of seeing how crooked and uneven some of his lines were. His father had remonstrated—feebly; but Keith ...
— Dawn • Eleanor H. Porter
... and meekness. It is the opposite of harshness, roughness, etc. It is sweetness of disposition, mildness of temper, softness of manner, kindness, tenderness, etc. Those who are of a gentle disposition act and speak without asperity. They are not morose, sour, crabbed, and uneven, but are smooth, mild, and even. Good manners are intimately connected with gentleness, and good manners ...
— How to Live a Holy Life • C. E. Orr
... into one work short chapters by many hands have not been altogether happy; the results have usually been encyclopaedic, uneven, and abounding in gaps. Hence in this series the whole work is divided into twenty-six volumes, in each of which the writer is free to develop a period for himself. It is the editor's function to see that the links ...
— European Background Of American History - (Vol. I of The American Nation: A History) • Edward Potts Cheyney
... Krakatoa, four and a half miles long and three miles broad, its volcanic summit reaching to a height of 2623 feet above the sea-level, about ten times higher than the surrounding sea was deep. Between it and Java, although the floor of the strait was uneven, the channel was clear of dangers; on the Sumatra side were several islands and rocks, the two largest of which, Bezee and Sebooko, rose respectively 2825 feet and 1416 feet above the sea. The tremendous ...
— The Penang Pirate - and, The Lost Pinnace • John Conroy Hutcheson
... again for minutes, only the friendly undertone of the crackling fire stirred the silence of the great room. The sound brought steadiness to the two who sat there, the old hand on the young shoulder yet. After a time, the older man's low and strong tones, a little uneven, a little hard with the effort to be commonplace, which is the first readjustment from deep feeling, seemed to catch the music of the homely accompaniment ...
— The Militants - Stories of Some Parsons, Soldiers, and Other Fighters in the World • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews
... began to grow frightened; he arose from his couch, and with uneven steps went out into the anteroom. There he found his chamberlain waiting for him with a crowd of attendants and courtiers. "Tell me," said Aben Hassen the Fool, "why are you all ...
— Twilight Land • Howard Pyle
... the field in small piles and allowed to remain so for some time, losses from fermentation take place, and the rain washes plant food from the pile into the soil under and immediately about it. This results in an uneven distribution of plant food over the field, for when the manure is finally scattered and plowed in, part of the field is fertilized with washed out manure while the soil under and immediately about the location of the various piles is often so strongly fertilized that nothing can grow there unless ...
— The First Book of Farming • Charles L. Goodrich
... shady lane to the old graveyard, and wandered, peacefully, contentedly, among the old graves. Margaret gathered her thin gown from contact with the tangled, uncut grass; they had to disturb a flock of nibbling sheep to cross to the crumbling wall. Leaning on the uneven stones that formed it, they looked down at the roofs of the village, half lost in tree-tops; and listened to the barking of dogs, and the shrill voices of children. The sun sank lower, lower. There was a feeling of dew in the air as ...
— Mother • Kathleen Norris
... symmetrical. Throughout western Europe and in English and Latin countries, the accents fall as a rule on the stressed syllables of the spoken tongue and on the regular beats of the music. The opposite is the case in Negro songs: here the rhythms are uneven, jagged, and, at a first hearing, eccentric, for the accents fall most frequently on the short notes and on the naturally unstressed beats, producing what we call 'syncopation' of a very intricate and highly developed order. The peculiarity of this syncopation is best explained to the layman ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 3, 1918 • Various
... defects and then I returned to Europe and for two years I devoted myself almost exclusively to technical study along the individual lines I had devised. To my great delight details that had always defied me, the rebellious trills, the faltering bravura passages, the uneven runs, all came into beautiful submission and with them came a ...
— Great Pianists on Piano Playing • James Francis Cooke
... him then to try it on different ground; on an uneven slope, over little tussocks; and at last the agent for Fowler's would have it that it should be tried on a patch of stony ground. But that would spoil the shears? Very likely, but Fowler's would ...
— The Great Hunger • Johan Bojer
... blossoms, but regretted it instantly, as a swarm of mosquitos rose and enveloped him. He thought to escape their vicious attacks by paddling faster, but it was no use; they had come to stay. Trailing after him a long uneven stream, they seemed to take turns in tormenting him, and as the leaders became satiated, they fell back, allowing the rear rankers to buzz forward and renew the attack. Piang longed for a certain kind of moss that grows at the roots of trees, but his keen ...
— The Adventures of Piang the Moro Jungle Boy - A Book for Young and Old • Florence Partello Stuart
... piece of duty to the burgh, and my road lying the same way with the honest magistrate's, I profited by the light of his lantern, and he by my arm, to find our way through the streets, which, whatever they may now be, were then dark, uneven, and ill-paved. Age is easily propitiated by attentions from the young. The Bailie expressed himself interested in me, and added, "That since I was nane o' that play-acting and play-ganging generation, whom his saul ...
— Rob Roy, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... large barren room into which he rushed with so much pleasure, and the bricks were bare and uneven. It had a walnut-wood press, handsome and very old, a broad deal table, and several wooden stools for all its furniture; but at the top of the chamber, sending out warmth and color together as the lamp shed its rays upon it, was a tower of porcelain, ...
— The Nuernberg Stove • Louisa de la Rame (AKA Ouida)
... since 1997, nearly two-thirds of the population continue to live in abject poverty. Economic growth reached 10.6% in 2004, but dropped to 8% in 2005, and to 7% in 2006. Tajikistan's economic situation, however, remains fragile due to uneven implementation of structural reforms, weak governance, widespread unemployment, and the external debt burden. Continued privatization of medium and large state-owned enterprises could increase productivity. A debt restructuring agreement was reached ...
— The 2007 CIA World Factbook • United States
... two or three holes in the plate of bone attached to the antlers, arrange them evenly on this block and screw fast, using screws which will not protrude from the back of the block. If the bone is uneven or the antlers do not hang right, small pieces of wood may be inserted at one side or the other until the desired effect is had. Now put a half pint of water in some old dish and mix in plaster of paris ...
— Home Taxidermy for Pleasure and Profit • Albert B. Farnham
... fireside, fumbled in the box, and drew out a doll. She was an ugly, old-fashioned doll, with bruised waxen face of no particular color. Her mop of flaxen hair was straggling and uneven, much the worse for the attention of generations of moths. She wore a faded green silk dress in the style of Lincoln's day, and a primitive bonnet, evidently made by childish hands. She was a strange, dead-looking figure, with pale eyelids closed, as ...
— The Christmas Angel • Abbie Farwell Brown
... only on one side progress becomes impossible. When placed on the smooth wood of my table, the animal wriggles slowly; it lengthens and shortens without advancing by a hair's-breadth. Laid on the surface of a piece of split oak, a rough, uneven surface, due to the gash made by the wedge, it twists and writhes, moves the front part of its body very slowly from left to right and right to left, lifts it a little, lowers it and begins again. These are the most extensive movements made. The ...
— The Wonders of Instinct • J. H. Fabre
... fuddle, For this had the taste and complexion of puddle. From thence then we marched, full as dry as we came, My guide before prancing, his steed no more lame, O'er hills and o'er valleys uncouth and uneven, Until 'twixt the hours of twelve and eleven, More hungry and thirsty than tongue can well tell, We happily came to Saint Winifred's well: I thought it the pool of Bethesda had been, By the cripples lay there; but I went to my inn To speak for some meat, for so stomach did motion, Before I did ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... dazzling and superb contrast of color. Early in the afternoon we climbed the Ras Nakhura, not so bold and grand, though quite as flowery a steep as the Promontorium Album. We had been jogging half an hour over its uneven summit, when the side suddenly fell away below us, and we saw the whole of the great gulf and plain of Acre, backed by the long ridge of Mount Carmel. Behind the sea, which makes a deep indentation in the line of the coast, extended the plain, bounded on the east, at two leagues' distance, ...
— The Lands of the Saracen - Pictures of Palestine, Asia Minor, Sicily, and Spain • Bayard Taylor
... An uneven straggling village street, mottled with patches of dead grass and weeds. Along it, here and there, like kernels of seed scattered on fallow ground, a sprinkling of one-story houses. This the background. In the midst of it all, covering his lawn, overflowing into the yards of his neighbours, ...
— Where the Trail Divides • Will Lillibridge
... beams. The stairs also were a great glory. In fact, the house was in its way unique. A discreet decorator, too, had made it comfortable. Save in the Cromwell room, electric light was everywhere. And in the morning chambermaids led you by crooked passages over uneven doors to white bathrooms. It was ...
— The Brother of Daphne • Dornford Yates
... collection of hovels built round a dirty, open yard, filled with carts and animals, and the home of pigs and fowls, while I found accommodation on a brick bed in a comfortless room, or rather shed, with torn paper windows and uneven mud floor. ...
— Life and sport in China - Second Edition • Oliver G. Ready
... formerly enveloped in a thicket, which showed little facility to the feet of any but the martens and wild cats. Along the west side of the pass lies a wall of sheer and barren crags. From behind they rise in rough, uneven, and heathy declivities, out of the wide muir before mentioned, between Loch Eitive and Loch Awe; but in front they terminate abruptly in the most frightful precipices, which form the whole side of the pass, and descend at one fall into the water which fills its trough. At the north end of the barrier, ...
— Chronicles of the Canongate • Sir Walter Scott
... only a muddy cell—you may see again on the level of your eyes the stony ballast of the ex-road, cut to the quick, or even the roots of the bordering trees that have been cut down to embody in the trench wall. The latter is as slashed and uneven as if it were a wave of earth and rubbish and dark scum that the immense plain has spat out and pushed against the edge of ...
— Under Fire - The Story of a Squad • Henri Barbusse
... substantial oil resources and rich agricultural areas. Growth has been uneven in recent years because of fluctuations in prices for Ecuador's primary exports - oil and bananas - as well as because of government policies designed to curb inflation. President Sixto DURAN-BALLEN launched a series of macroeconomic ...
— The 1995 CIA World Factbook • United States Central Intelligence Agency
... the consequences of this weather phenomenon. So long as the view ahead from the flight deck of an aircraft flying over snow under a solid overcast does not exhibit any rock, or tree, or other landmark which can offer a guide as to sloping or uneven ground, then the snow-covered terrain ahead of the aircraft will invariably appear to be flat. Slopes and ridges will disappear. The line of vision from the flight deck towards the horizon (if there is one) will actually portray a white even ...
— Judgments of the Court of Appeal of New Zealand on Proceedings to Review Aspects of the Report of the Royal Commission of Inquiry into the Mount Erebus Aircraft Disaster • Sir Owen Woodhouse, R. B. Cooke, Ivor L. M. Richardson, Duncan
... lady's mood to be by herself; and so, noiselessly, Hazel flitted along through the starlight, without however being able to reach a point which looked straight down into the Hollow beyond the bend. The uneven ground, the unknown distances, baffled her. Standing still, she heard nothing. The starry sky overhead was not more calmly quiet than this portion of the darksome earth appeared to be. A little frosty, the air did not stir enough to rustle the leaves on the trees. Crickets and some other ...
— The Gold of Chickaree • Susan Warner
... the changeful green and azure of a peacock's breast. The depth appeared immeasurable. San Salvadore had receded into insignificance: the houses and churches and villas of Lugano bordered the lake-shore with an uneven line of whiteness. And over all there rested a blue mist of twilight and of haze, contrasting with the clearness of the peaks above. It was sunset when we first came here; and, wave beyond wave, the purple Italian hills tossed ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds
... the younger of them, who came from Ralstone, was a taking creature, with deep black, or rather violet, eyes, small features framed in curly hair, and the bloom of ripe fruit. She was naturally full of laughter and talk, and only spoilt by her discoloured and uneven teeth, which showed the usual English neglect ...
— Harvest • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... up the wall. Further progress was checked, not so much by lack of desire to go to the top, but by an involuntary glance over his shoulder. He was not more than ten feet above the trail, but the trail was shockingly narrow and uneven. So down he came, quite thrilled by his discovery, to lean against the rock and laugh scornfully over the silly tales about Quill's Window and its eerie impregnability. Anybody could climb up there! All that one needed was a stout heart and a good pair of ...
— Quill's Window • George Barr McCutcheon
... and pockets as full as I could carry. Nothing but a few old rags and twelve old blankets were sent to us. Ordered down to the cable tier. Almost suffocated. Nothing but the bare cable to lie on, and that very uneven. ...
— American Prisoners of the Revolution • Danske Dandridge
... anxiety on Emmeline's account did not decrease. She still remained pale and thin, and her spirits more uneven, and that energy which had formerly been such a marked feature in her character appeared at times entirely to desert her; and Mr. Maitland, discovering that the extreme quiet and regularity of life which he had formerly recommended was not quite so beneficial as he had hoped, changed ...
— The Mother's Recompense, Volume II. - A Sequel to Home Influence in Two Volumes • Grace Aguilar
... did not long continue thus. The wolf turned into some low-lying uneven track, and Martha, falling over the jagged trunk of a tree, found herself lying on the ground with only a little piece of torn clothing tightly clasped in her hand. Hitherto, comforted by Martha's presence, ...
— Werwolves • Elliott O'Donnell
... carpenter. Between the lozenge-shaped shafts of the choir arches, the worm-riddled parclose screens dripped sawdust in little heaps. Down in the nave, bench-ends leaned askew or had been broken up, built as panels into deal pews, and daubed with paint; the floor was broken and ran in uneven waves; the walls shed plaster, and a monstrous gallery blocked the belfry arch. Upon this gallery Parson Jack had spent most of his careful, unsightly carpentry, for the simple reason that it had been ...
— The White Wolf and Other Fireside Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... curious,—but Helen did certainly recognize sounds, during the lull of the storm, which were not of falling rain or running streams,—short snapping sounds, as of tense cords breaking,—long uneven sounds, as of masses rolling down steep declivities. But the morning came as usual; and as the others said nothing of these singular noises, Helen did not think it necessary to speak of them. All day long she and the humble relative of Elsie's mother, who had appeared ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... rough and uneven field in which the laborer works, rising here and there in small hillocks, and thickly overgrown with brambles and coarse tufts of herbage. When these weeds are loosened from the soil, they are raked in little heaps ...
— Jean Francois Millet • Estelle M. Hurll
... many Goyas; the museum is the home of this remarkable but uneven painter. We confess to a disappointment in his colour, though his paint was not new to us; but time has lent no pleasing patina to his canvases, the majority of which are rusty-looking, cracked, discoloured, dingy or dark. There are several exceptions. The nude and dressed full-lengths of ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker
... of feet began to die away, and the uneven groping tread of the twelve Americans to sound more distinctly for the lessening of the surrounding turmoil. And in another few seconds Bruce came to a halt—not to an abrupt stop, as when he had allowed an enemy squad to pass ...
— Bruce • Albert Payson Terhune
... counter. She went in and asked him where "The Sea Dog" might be. He explained to her that it was close at hand, on the right, looking over the Promenade. She found it at last because it had an old-fashioned creaking wooden sign with a blue sailor painted on it. Timidly she stepped into the dark uneven passage. To the right of her she could see a deserted room with wooden trestles and a table. The bar must be near because she could hear voices and the clinking of glasses, but, in spite of those ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole
... the other's benefit, and assisted understandingly. The bunk was built against a side and end of the cabin. It was a rude affair, the bottom being composed of drift-wood logs overlaid with moss. At the foot the rough ends of these timbers projected in an uneven row. From the side next the wall Uri ripped back the moss and removed three of the logs. The jagged ends he sawed off and replaced so that the projecting row remained unbroken. Fortune carried in sacks of flour from the cache and piled them on the floor beneath the aperture. On these Uri laid ...
— The God of His Fathers • Jack London
... croquet. He and Leslie, with Etty Thoresby, against Imogen and the Haddens, swept triumphantly around the course, and came in to the stake, before there had been even a "rover" upon the other side. Except, indeed, as they were sent roving, away off over the bank and down the road, from the sloping, uneven ground,—the most extraordinary field, in truth, on which croquet was ever attempted. But then you cannot expect a level, velvet lawn on the side of ...
— A Summer in Leslie Goldthwaite's Life. • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... lottery, where, however uneven the chances, there are some prizes; but in dissipation, every one draws a ...
— Pelham, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Marburg. The meadows were of the purest emerald, through which the stream wound its way, with even borders, covered to the water's edge with grass so smooth and velvety, that a fairy might have danced along on it for miles without stumbling over an uneven tuft. This valley is one of the finest districts in Germany. I thought, as I saw the peaceful inhabitants at work in their fields, I had most probably, on the battle-field of Brandywine, walked over the bones of some of their ancestors, whom a despotic ...
— Views a-foot • J. Bayard Taylor
... your 'Iya' means no, little lady, and I say 'Iya' too," said Merrit, taking the cat into his arms and smoothing its uneven back. "You are not going to put it into the ditch. Why don't you give it to me? I am getting up a collection of cats and things at the school, and I'd like to take this queer specimen along. Ask her ...
— Little Sister Snow • Frances Little
... canoe high up the shelving shore, and then he helped Kate to get out. It was not an easy job, for she could see nothing and floundered terribly; but he seemed to like it, and half led, half carried her over a considerable space of uneven ground, until he came to the door of a small house, where stood an elderly ...
— Kate Bonnet - The Romance of a Pirate's Daughter • Frank R. Stockton
... complete, was suspended from the ceiling in its proper place, and so arranged that when a person was sitting, this sheet of glass could be moved to and from, the object of which was to prevent shadows on the face of the sitter produced from the uneven surface of the glass. This latter contrivance was used until a perfect plate of ...
— American Handbook of the Daguerrotype • Samuel D. Humphrey
... slowly, he taking curiously uneven steps. She was tall, but he had to stoop a little to keep ...
— Blue Aloes - Stories of South Africa • Cynthia Stockley
... a cut which at once parried the attack and confused the striker. Once or twice Rex's long blade shot out above his adversary's head with tremendous force, but Bauer was tall, quick and accomplished, and the attempt did not succeed. Greif began to feel that the match was by no means an uneven one, and he breathed ...
— Greifenstein • F. Marion Crawford
... Sir Basil and Unani Assu were fighting upon the blood-spattered floor. The struggle was uneven: the scientist's emaciated body was no match for the splendid ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, December 1930 • Various
... sometimes of large size, of quartz,— from any other section hitherto described in Chile. From these peculiarities and from the lens-form of the strata, it is probable that this great pile of strata was accumulated on a shallow and very uneven bottom, near some pre-existing land formed of various porphyries and quartz-rock. The formation of porphyritic claystone conglomerate does not in this section attain nearly its ordinary thickness; this may be PARTLY ...
— South American Geology - also: - Title: Geological Observations On South America • Charles Darwin
... fell back from sheer exhaustion, still following, as he lay there, the battalion that had sprung forward with that charging yell. Gray, obscured in smoke, curved in the centre, uneven as the Confederate line of battle always was—he saw it sweep onward over the September field. At the moment to have had his place in that charge beyond the river, he would have cheerfully met his death when ...
— The Battle Ground • Ellen Glasgow
... directly up to the edge of the old well. He saw that the coping was uneven, some of the stones being loose. It looked very much as if what Bristles had suggested might be the truth, and that some person, when striving to raise a heavy bucket, had lost his balance, slipped on the treacherous footing, ...
— Fred Fenton on the Track - or, The Athletes of Riverport School • Allen Chapman
... found no fault with it, except that it was in my stable. Then, trying to lift it by the silver-shod shoulder- pole, I laughed. The road from Dearsley's pay-shed to the cantonment was a narrow and uneven one, and, traversed by three very inexperienced palanquin-bearers, one of whom was sorely battered about the head, must have been a path of torment. Still I did not quite recognise the right of the three musketeers to turn me into a ...
— Life's Handicap • Rudyard Kipling
... she can't open her mouth, and whines out everything; but this is nothing new to us. The seconda donna looks like a grenadier, and has a very powerful voice; she really does not sing badly, considering that this is her first appearance. Il primo uomo, il musico, sings beautifully, but his voice is uneven; his name is Caselli. Il secondo uomo is quite old, and does not at all please me. The tenor's name is Ottini; he does not sing unpleasingly, but with effort, like all Italian tenors. We know him very well. The name of the second I don't know; ...
— The Letters of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, V.1. • Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
... her best, declared, "she was as pretty as Ella any day if she'd break herself of putting her hand to her mouth whenever she saw one looking at her," a habit which she had acquired from being so frequently told of her uneven teeth. ...
— The English Orphans • Mary Jane Holmes
... and set jaws, determined to die with his men. In an instant he was surrounded by a half-dozen grinning natives, brandishing their shining knives in his face. He fought like a madman, effectively using his revolver, but it was an uneven fight, and he fell by a heavy blow which barely missed his head, landing on his right shoulder and sinking deep into his body. He sunk heavily to the ground. Another boloman raised his weapon to administer the final cut which would end his ...
— Bamboo Tales • Ira L. Reeves
... two men were sitting in wicker chairs on a small flat space on the roof of the American Embassy in Ormonde Square. Vine's host, tall, with shrewd, kindly face, the stoop of a student, and the short uneven footsteps of a near-sighted man, was the ambassador himself. He had been more famous, perhaps, in his younger days, as Philip Deane, the man of letters, than as a diplomatist. His appointment to London had so far been a complete success. He had shown himself possessed ...
— The Governors • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... determined to swim in quest of it, as soon as he had collected a little refreshment from among the sea-weed. On taking a look at his rock by daylight, he saw that its size was quadrupled to the eye by the falling of the tide, and that water was lying in several of the cavities of its uneven surface. At first he supposed this to be sea-water, left by the flood; but, reflecting a moment, he remembered the rain, and hoped it might be possible that one little cavity, containing two or three gallons of the fluid, would ...
— Jack Tier or The Florida Reef • James Fenimore Cooper
... one walking in a garden curiously coloured and illuminated by the sun, digesting his food, with elaborate chemistry, breathing, circulating blood, directing himself by the sight of his eyes, accommodating his body by a thousand delicate balancings to the wind and the uneven surface of the path, and all the time, perhaps, with his mind engaged about America, or the dog-star, or the attributes of God—what am I to say, or how am I to describe the thing I see? Is that truly a man, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... mile or more of rugged, blinding ice—the sky blue in every part, the sun shining warm, the wind blowing light and balmy from the south. What with the heat, the glare, the uneven, treacherous path—with many a pitfall to engulf us—'twas a toilsome way we travelled. The coast lay white and forsaken beyond—desolate, inhospitable, unfamiliar: an unkindly refuge for such castaways ...
— Doctor Luke of the Labrador • Norman Duncan
... ) is known to his countrymen as a professor of literature at Rio de Janeiro. His career has covered the fields of journalism, politics, education and fiction. Although his work is of uneven worth, no doubt because of his unceasing productivity, he is reckoned by so exacting a critic as Verissimo as one of Brazil's most important writers,—one of the few, in fact, that will be remembered by posterity. Among his best liked stories are ...
— Brazilian Tales • Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis
... on a black T-shirt and blue jeans and old sneakers, and her hair is in a long braid, with uneven ...
— It's like this, cat • Emily Neville
... words, "Ye are my friends, if ye do these things which I command you." Thence to the Docke and by water to view St. Mary Creeke, but do not find it so proper for a wet docks as we would have it, it being uneven ground and hard in the bottom and no, great depth of water in many places. Returned and walked from the Docke home, Mr. Coventry and I very much troubled to see how backward Commissioner Pett is to tell any of the faults of the officers, and to see nothing in ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... ostentation of fine-built chariots objectionable, as tending to divert the attention of spectators away from the great temple and its wealth. From such inconveniences the god was protected by placing his sanctuary "in the rocky Pytho"—a rugged and uneven recess, of no great dimensions, embosomed in the southern declivity of Parnassus, and about two thousand feet above the level of the sea, while the topmost Parnassian summits reach a height of near eight thousand feet. The situation was extremely ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1 • Various
... wings sweeping more slowly because of their strength and gear, yet he was making the pace. Then came his second in command, also alone, and as far back again, the point of the V. In this case, the formation was uneven, the left oblique being twice as extended as the right.... They were all cackling, as I imagined, because of the open water ahead, for geese either honk or are silent in passage. They began to break just above, the formation shattering ...
— Child and Country - A Book of the Younger Generation • Will Levington Comfort
... chief judge, hurled down and dashed violently against the rough uneven masonry, by the mad careering of the Wehr-Wolf as the monster burst from his cell. On, on he sped, with the velocity of lightning, along the corridor, giving vent to howls of the ...
— Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf • George W. M. Reynolds
... even width of some two hundred yards, the deepest water being close alongside the western shore, which was very steep, and wooded clear down to the water's edge. Here, with the assistance of the hand-lead, I found a minimum depth of two fathoms; but the bottom was very uneven, and in a few places I found as much as five fathoms of water. From these depths the bottom seemed to slope pretty uniformly upward towards the opposite or eastern bank, the slope of which was much more gentle, a narrow margin of very fine white sand ...
— The Cruise of the "Esmeralda" • Harry Collingwood
... servant happened to know the somewhat distant and elevated spot which we used as a range, and had carried our pistols there in advance. The spot lay near the upper border of the wood which covered the lesser heights behind Rolandseck: it was a small uneven plateau, close to the place we had consecrated in memory of its associations. On a wooded slope alongside of our shooting-range there was a small piece of ground which had been cleared of wood, and which made an ideal halting-place; from it ...
— On the Future of our Educational Institutions • Friedrich Nietzsche |
