"Contour" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... in the photograph, older, more beautiful—the same soft, sweet contour of face, the same dark eyes that had looked at him in MacGregor's office, filled with an indescribable sadness now, instead of the laughing joy of girlhood. In another moment he would have responded to her hesitation, to the pathetic tremble of her lips, ...
— Philip Steele of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police • James Oliver Curwood
... would have taken him to be some civilized and modernized Squire Western, nourished with beef and ale, and roughly hewn out of the most robust and least refined variety of human clay. Looking at him more narrowly, however, you would have reconsidered this judgment. Though his general contour and aspect were massive and sturdy, the lines of his features were delicately cut; his complexion was remarkably pure and fine, and his face was susceptible of very subtle and sensitive changes of expression. Here was a man of abundant ...
— Confessions and Criticisms • Julian Hawthorne
... were rather a pleasure to me than otherwise. They settled right down to the heart-softening business in such matter-of-fact fashion that their hearts must have lost contour before the voyage was half over. Polly dismissed them from her mind with a sigh of satisfaction, and I then hoped that she would find some time to devote to me, but I was disappointed. She assured me that those two were safely locked in the fold, but that she ...
— The Fat of the Land - The Story of an American Farm • John Williams Streeter
... The general physical contour of Africa has been likened to an inverted plate with one or more rows of mountains at the edge and a low coastal belt. In the south the central plateau is three thousand or more feet above the sea, while in the north it ...
— The Negro • W.E.B. Du Bois
... be about the age of eighteen. Her stature was tall; her motion graceful. A knot of artificial flowers restrained the luxuriancy of her fine black hair, that flowed in shining ringlets adown her snowy neck. The contour of her face was oval; her forehead remarkably high; her complexion clean and delicate, though not florid; and her eyes were so piercing, as to strike the soul of every beholder. Yet, upon this occasion, one half of their vivacity was eclipsed by a languishing air ...
— The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom, Complete • Tobias Smollett
... view has interested me, especially all about those wonderful moraines. I certainly think I quite realise the valleys, more vividly perhaps from having seen the valleys of Tahiti. I cannot doubt that the Himalaya owe almost all their contour to running water, and that they have been subjected to such action longer than any mountains (as yet described) in the world. What a contrast ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume I • Francis Darwin
... jack plane, cut the lateral surfaces down to this outline. The back must stand a tremendous tensile strain and the grain of the wood should not be injured in any way. But you may smooth it off very judiciously with a spoke shave, and later with a file. The transverse contour of this part of the bow remains as it was in the tree, ...
— Hunting with the Bow and Arrow • Saxton Pope
... innocence, the beautiful, direct gaze, the childlike fulness of mouth and contour of cheek and throat, left him spellbound. The very air around them seemed suffused with the vital glow of her youth and beauty; each breath they drew increased their wonder, till the whole rosy universe seemed thrilling and singing ...
— Iole • Robert W. Chambers
... had found its way through a filigree of boughs. Faintly its exploring ray lighted the contour of that shrouded head, touched the lovely curves of her arched brows and the tender pallor of the skin about those great wells of dark eyes.... From his own eyes a flame seemed to pass into hers.... Breathlessly they gazed at each other ... like dim shadows in ...
— The Fortieth Door • Mary Hastings Bradley
... softened face, illumined as by a last glow under her silky tresses, she resembled one of those sacred marbles whose features time has ravined, without, however, being able to efface from them the tranquil splendor of life. She seemed, indeed, like some fruitful Cybele, retaining all firmness of contour, and living anew in the broad daylight with gentle good humor sparkling in her ...
— Fruitfulness - Fecondite • Emile Zola
... made up to represent her own aunt at a fancy dress party. A face drawn a trifle fine, a little ascetic, but balanced by the humour of the large, shapely mouth, and really beautiful in bone and contour. The beauty of mignonette, and doves, ...
— Red Saunders • Henry Wallace Phillips
... been set off to the best advantage. I had put on a new wig, a splendid velvet cloak, silk doublet and hose; and as I surveyed myself for a second or two in the mirror, I felt the impossibility of recognition, mingled with pride at my handsome contour. The door opened, and Donna Celia came in, trembling with anxiety. I threw myself on my knees, and in a voice apparently choked with emotion, demanded her blessing. She tottered to the sofa overpowered by her feelings; and still remaining on my knees, I seized her hand, ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Frederick Marryat
... tilted a little to one side, her hair fluffed loosely at the sides, leaving her neck daintily slender where it showed above the turned-back collar of her gray sweater; her shoulders square and capable and yet not too heavy, and the slim contour of her figure reaching down to the ground. She studied it abstractedly, as she would study herself in her mirror, conscious of the ...
— Jean of the Lazy A • B. M. Bower
... had sat down to table he at first talked to Rosa somewhat with the air of a ruler in the land; but the woman lurking in the acquaintance soon brought him to his level, and the girl from Brussels saw him looking at her mouth, her hands, her contour, as if he could not quite comprehend how they got created: then he dropped into the more satisfactory stage ...
— Life's Little Ironies - A set of tales with some colloquial sketches entitled A Few Crusted Characters • Thomas Hardy
... wall were then replaced by an open viaduct, with the piers placed edgeways to the sea, the openings between them being spanned by ten cast-iron girders each 42 feet long. This accident induced the engineer to alter the contour of the sea wall, so that it should present a diminished resistance to the force of the waves. But the sea repeated its assaults, and made further havoc with the work; entailing heavy expenses and a complete reorganisation of the contract. ...
— Lives of the Engineers - The Locomotive. George and Robert Stephenson • Samuel Smiles
... costumes showed them to be of station. The crinoline of the two filled all the body of the ample coach from seat to seat, and the folds of their figured muslins, flowing out over this ample outline, gave to the face of each a daintiness of contour and feature which was not ill relieved by the high head-dress of ribbons and bepowdered hair. Of the two ladies, one, even in despite of her crinoline, might have been seen to be of noble and queenly figure; the towering head-dress did ...
— The Mississippi Bubble • Emerson Hough
... more of an ash-dove color than anything else; her teeth were admirable, both for color and shape; her eyes equally mild and bright; and her face merely broad enough to give it all possible softness and grandness of contour: her air and countenance would have suited Yarico; but she reminded me most of Grassini in "La Vergine del Sole," only that Mary Wiggins was a thousand times more beautiful, and that, instead of a white robe, she wore a mixed dress of brown, white, and dead yellow, which harmonized excellently ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... new pleasant world, was the sense that she left her three-year-old boy, who died two years afterward, and whose first tones saying "mamma" retained a difference from those of the children that came after. But now the years had brought many changes besides those in the contour of her cheek and throat; and that Grandcourt should marry her had become her dominant desire. The equivocal position which she had not minded about for herself was now telling upon her through her children, whom she loved with a devotion charged with the added passion of atonement. She ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... our pleasantest trips was taken up South Platte Canyon, across South Park, and over the range to Breckenridge. The town lies in the valley of the Blue River, the famous Ten Mile Range, with its numerous peaks and bold and rugged contour, standing sentinel on the west. Here we found many birds, but as few of them were new, I need not stop ...
— Birds of the Rockies • Leander Sylvester Keyser
... triptych by Brea, 1495. Near the Cathedral, in the Sistina chapel, is the tomb of the parents of Pope Sixtus IV., the uncle of JuliusII. In the church of San Domenico there is in the first chapel, left on entering, a"Nativity" by A.Semini. The figure of the Virgin appears rather large, but the contour and expression of the others are admirable. In another chapel on the same side of the church is an "Adoration of the Magi" by Albert Durer, in the form of a triptych. In a small church, called the ...
— The South of France—East Half • Charles Bertram Black
... transition fell to contemplating her own face. It interested her. She looked at it critically, as at some face other than her own, some portrait, appraising and studying it. It was young and fresh, surely, as the morn—in its softness of contour and fine clear bloom; yet grave to the verge of austerity, owing partly to the brown hair which, parted in the middle and drawn down in a plain full sweep over the ears, hung thence in thick loose plait on either side to below her waist. She looked long and curiously into her ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... not be neglected; for what you effect in drawing by the contour of the figure, light and shade must effect with the projections of those parts which front you in the figure. Light and shade there produce what becomes outline to another drawing of the same object in a right angle to the ...
— The Life, Studies, And Works Of Benjamin West, Esq. • John Galt
... "and—How dy, Dick! is that you?" The interruption was caused by her recognition of the ostler, and she lounged into the room. In spite of a skimp, slatternly gown, whose straight skirt clung to her lower limbs, there was a quaint, nymph-like contour to her figure. Whether from languor, ill-health, or more probably from a morbid consciousness of her own height, she moved with a slightly affected stoop that had become a habit. It did not seem ...
— Snow-Bound at Eagle's • Bret Harte
... and livid, but the expression was not such as penitence or a conviction of crime could be supposed to have left behind it. On the contrary, the whole countenance had somewhat of a placid look, and the general contour was unquestionably ...
— The Evil Eye; Or, The Black Spector - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... raiment, displaying to her future husband, without hesitation, the poor harvest of which he would shortly be the reaper, for I think that the majority of the women of the West strive not to render themselves beautiful, develop not the portion of the body which maybe lacks contour from birth, bathes not her body in perfumed waters, feeds not her skin with delicious unguents, cares not if her hair reaches in wisps to her shoulders, or falls below her waist as a natural covering under which she may hide at the approach of her master, neither does she daily perfume it, nor ...
— Desert Love • Joan Conquest
... sunken cheeks were beginning to assume a graceful contour; the lips had taken on a decided tinge of scarlet, while an unaccustomed vigor in all her movements told of daily increasing strength, and the cheery ring in her voice was like ...
— Katherine's Sheaves • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... itself; he would have seen beneath the calmness of that brow a world of love; he would have felt, in the shape of the eyes, in the fall of the eyelids, the presence of the nameless something that we call divine. Her features, the contour of her head, which no expression of pleasure had ever altered or wearied, were like the lines of the horizon softly traced in the far distance across the tranquil lakes. That calm and rosy countenance, margined with light like a lovely full-blown flower, rested ...
— Eugenie Grandet • Honore de Balzac
... the Alps, and the picture was crowned by three snow-capped summits. Nothing could be more simple or more beautiful than this landscape. The valley resembled a lake of verdure and the eye followed its contour ...
— The Confession of a Child of The Century • Alfred de Musset
... reading of the rules of correct minstrelsy is one of the exceptions, and the night-watchman's crying of the hour is another; but these, as Lamb said of Coleridge's philosophic preaching, are "only his fun." The melodies are often quite Weberesque in contour; the harmonies are either plain work-a-day ones or modern—so modern that no one had used them before. Nor it is by the sadness of the music alone that he gains his end: some of the merriest scenes belong, by reason of the music, to mediaeval times. By his art, the ...
— Richard Wagner - Composer of Operas • John F. Runciman
... contains a submerged territory is widely known, and strangely enough seems to be corroborated by the shape of the coast-line, the contour of which suggests the subsidence of a large body of land. Like their brothers of Ireland, the fishermen of Wales assert that at low tide they can see the ruins of ancient edifices far down beneath the clear waters ...
— Legends & Romances of Brittany • Lewis Spence
... has a large head, high cheek bones, in general, large lips and mouth; a contour of face inclining, on the whole, to undue breadth, and lacking that pleasantly-rounded appearance so characteristic of the white. He has usually a scant beard, his chin and cheeks seldom, if ever, asserting that sturdy and bountiful growth of whisker and moustache, ...
— A Treatise on the Six-Nation Indians • James Bovell Mackenzie
... protection and portage of field notes and maps. He raised the lid and took from the top a heavy paper, which he unfolded and spread before him. It was Weatherbee's landscape plan, traced with the skill of a draughtsman and showing plainly the contour of the tract in eastern Washington and his method of reclamation. The land included a deep pocket set between spurs of the Cascade Mountains. The ridges and peaks above it had an altitude of from one to six thousand feet. He found the spring, marked high ...
— The Rim of the Desert • Ada Woodruff Anderson
... admit that he was a handsome individual. Perhaps slightly less than average in height, and very slender, he had the close-knit build of an athlete. The contour of his head and the perfect regularity of rather large features made him an ideal type for the screen at any angle; in close-ups and foregrounds as well as full shots. In actual life there were little things covered by make-up in his work, such as the cold gray tint of his ...
— The Film Mystery • Arthur B. Reeve
... of the bay. The most important streets, such as Enramadas and Calle Baja de la Marina, extend up and down the slope at right angles to the water-front, and are crossed at fairly regular intervals by narrower streets or alleys running horizontally along the hillside, following its contour and dipping down here and there into the gullies or ravines which stretch from the crest of the hill to the shore of the bay. As a result of the natural configuration of the ground there is hardly a street in the city that is even approximately ...
— Campaigning in Cuba • George Kennan
... the point where, after walking or riding over a country, he can readily recall its physical features of the simpler sort, he will find it profitable to undertake the method of mapping with contour lines—that is, by pencilling in indications to show the exact shape of the elevations and depressions. The principle of contour lines is that each of them represents where water would come against the slope if the area were sunk step by step below the sea level—in ...
— Outlines of the Earth's History - A Popular Study in Physiography • Nathaniel Southgate Shaler
... on the stranger's mind—the voice, the eye, the gait were Cassier's. He was familiar with the family, and in the hurried glance he got of the youths rushing by the saloon door he thought he recognized the contour of Alvira's beautiful face. He hastened to communicate his startling discovery to the Superintendent of the Police, and the city was once more in a ...
— Alvira: the Heroine of Vesuvius • A. J. O'Reilly
... first of the shelf-like brinks, traversed a safer contour of the wall, and were presently isolated upon the second bridge of granite, which was also the last, much longer than the first, but perhaps not so narrow ...
— The Furnace of Gold • Philip Verrill Mighels
... What did he say? Any chance of beating him up? I've always had a longing, away down deep inside me, Donald, to place my fist violently against some portion of Walton's—er—facial contour. Say, that's good, isn't it? Facial contour's decidedly ...
— Left Guard Gilbert • Ralph Henry Barbour
... contour and nature of the island, that it is hard to say. If it were low and heavily covered with their green-blue vegetation, we might not be able to see even a rather large one, whereas if it were hilly and bare, we could probably see one only a few miles ...
— Skylark Three • Edward Elmer Smith
... continued until the rocky shores of the Isle of Skye were reached, and the boat was put into one of the many inlets that break its irregular contour. Silence, indeed, was maintained until they had landed on a rocky shelf, and the boat had pushed off on its return journey. Then ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 4 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... may perhaps surprise you, but the contour of my countenance is decidedly infantile—for when had a babby a bridge?—and the addition of a penny trumpet completes the full-blown expression of the light-headed things ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, August 7, 1841 • Various
... small, as if the intellect too much preponderated over all the animal qualities for strength in character and success in life. The eyes were soft, dark, and brilliant, but dreamlike and vague; the features in youth must have been regular and beautiful, but their contour was now sharpened by the hollowness of the cheeks and temples. The form, in the upper part, was nobly shaped, sufficiently muscular, if not powerful, and with the long throat and falling shoulders which always gives something of ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... sat back in his chair, musing. Lesley had surprised him a little. She had more force and fire in her composition than he had expected to find. She was, as he had said, very like her mother in face and figure; and the minute differences of line and contour that showed Lesley to be strong where Lady Alice had been weak, original where Lady Alice had been most conventional, intellectual where Lady Alice had been only intelligent, were not perceptible ...
— Brooke's Daughter - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... only one instance having been encountered by the writer in an experience of many years. The map seems to show more local relief to this terrace than the general view indicates, but it should be borne in mind that the contour ...
— Aboriginal Remains in Verde Valley, Arizona • Cosmos Mindeleff
... and even stiff in its articulations, has its veins finely drawn, its sculptor having justly felt that the delicacy of the veining expresses alike dignity and age and birth. The Vendramin hand is far more laboriously cut, but its blunt and clumsy contour at once makes us feel that all the care has been thrown away, and well it may be, for it has been entirely bestowed in cutting gouty wrinkles about the joints. Such as the hand is, I looked for its fellow. At first I thought it had been broken off, but, on clearing away the dust, I saw ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume I (of 3) • John Ruskin
... The contour of the earth, the fences, trees, little elevations and other natural surroundings, all have their effect on a slight moving air current, and these inequalities affect the air and disturb it to a still greater extent as the wind increases. Even ...
— Aeroplanes • J. S. Zerbe***
... which, after a little, the eye so accustoms itself that it can see trees and rocks and even faces in contour. There is another darkness which seals the eyes and numbs the mind and even weights the feet as with lead. This was that night's darkness, so pall-like that I was simply lost ...
— The Black Colonel • James Milne
... deepened the charm of the soft, waving hair, whose rich and glinting chestnut strands swept low on her broad forehead and nestled against the nape of her neck; the slender patrician nose and wonderfully shadowed eyes; the smooth contour of cheek and rounded chin; and the tender glory which still trembled, as in the old days, on her sensitive lips. But, in her poise and speech, after the first rush of impetuous childlike eagerness had spent itself, he discovered a new maturity, and he realized that, where he had left ...
— 'Smiles' - A Rose of the Cumberlands • Eliot H. Robinson
... they went to examine it. The statue was a full-length figure, in the purest Carrara marble, representing Edmond Willowes in all his original beauty, as he had stood at parting from her when about to set out on his travels; a specimen of manhood almost perfect in every line and contour. The work had been carried ...
— A Group of Noble Dames • Thomas Hardy
... some well-known specimens still in existence of which the eyelids, lashes, eyebrows, and hair are still in their natural state, and this after an interval of thousands of years. In some mummies, for instance, the contour of the features is plainly discernible, and surely this is scientific "preparation of specimens" not to be excelled in ...
— Practical Taxidermy • Montagu Browne
... brings out this fact clearly. On a white sheet of paper is placed a card equally white; with a fine point, but without touching the paper, the contour of the card is followed while the idea of a line traced in black is suggested to the subject. The subject, when awakened, is asked to fold the paper according to these imaginary lines. He holds the paper at the distance at which it was at the moment of suggestion, and folds it in the form ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, July 1887 - Volume 1, Number 6 • Various
... and places her hand familiarly upon my knee. In defence I remove her hand. Then she says: 'But you have always had such beautiful eyes.'.... I then distinctly see something like two eyes as a sketch or as the contour of ...
— Dream Psychology - Psychoanalysis for Beginners • Sigmund Freud
... Contents enhavo. Contest disputi. Contest disputo. Continence sindetenemo. Continent (geog.) kontinento. Contingent (milit.) kontingento. Contiguity apudeco. Contiguous apuda. Continue (to last) dauxri. Continue (go on) dauxrigi. Contortion (of face) grimaco. Contour konturo. Contraband kontrabando. Contract kontrakto. Contract, make a kontrakti. Contract kuntirigxi. Contractor entreprenisto. Contradict kontrauxdiri. Contrariwise kontrauxe. Contrary kontrauxa. Contrary, on the male, kontrauxe. Contrast ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... red and light-coloured patches, showing where grass has been burned off recently and the red clay soil is exposed; the lighter portions are unburned grass or rocks. Large trees are here more numerous, and give an agreeable change of contour to the valleys and ridges of the hills; the boughs of many still retain a tinge of red from young leaves. We came to the Bua again before reaching Kanyenje, as Kanyindula's place is called. The iron trade must have been carried on for an immense time in ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume I (of 2), 1866-1868 • David Livingstone
... into smaller and smaller portions, until it is reduced to an aggregation of granules not too large to build withal the finest fabrics of the nascent organism. And, then, it is as if a delicate finger traced out the line to be occupied by the spinal column, and moulded the contour of the body; pinching up the head at one end, the tail at the other, and fashioning flank and limb into due salamanderine proportions, in so artistic a way that, after watching the process hour by hour, one is almost involuntarily possessed by the notion that some ...
— A Series of Lessons in Gnani Yoga • Yogi Ramacharaka
... line, as finely placed as the member of a Greek capital; the door-handles and the lines of the panels of the door, the two chairs, the framework of the bed, the writing-table, have all that exquisite finish of contour that is begotten of sustained artistic effort. The graciously shaped windows each frame a picture—since they are draughtless the window-seats are no mere mockeries as are the window-seats of earth—and on the sill the sole ...
— The Cost of Shelter • Ellen H. Richards
... up. Not an ill-chosen fancy, either, that of the moist, warm month. Some tranced summer's day might have drowsed down into such a human form by a dank pool, or on the thick grass-crusted meadows. There was the full contour of the limbs hid under warm green folds, the white flesh that glowed when you touched it as if some smothered heat lay beneath, the snaring eyes, the sleeping face, the amber hair uncoiled in a languid quiet, while yellow jasmines deepened its ...
— Margret Howth, A Story of To-day • Rebecca Harding Davis
... was a black shape, lost in the blackness of the mountain sky, that was blocking out the stars. But it was a shape, and from near the horizon the pale gleams of the rising moon picked it out in softest of outline; a vague ghost of a curve that reflected a silvery contour to ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, November, 1930 • Various
... original. This is memory of touch and of the muscular sense, entirely equivalent to the visual memory of the portrait painters mentioned above. Practical knowledge of design and modeling—i.e., of contour and relief—though resulting from natural or acquired disposition, depends on cerebral conditions, the development of definite sensory-motor regions and their connections; and on psychological conditions—the acquisition and organization of appropriate images. ...
— Essay on the Creative Imagination • Th. Ribot
... coverts," the "middle coverts," and the "lesser coverts." Forming a vast expansion of the bony and fleshy framework are the quills, or flight-feathers, called collectively the "remiges." These plumes mainly determine the contour of the wing, and constitute a thin, elastic surface for striking the air—one that is sufficiently resilient to give the proper rebound and yet firm enough to support the bird's weight. The longest quills are ...
— Our Bird Comrades • Leander S. (Leander Sylvester) Keyser
... to awe than anything else, Sim Gage bent over, looking down at the clear oval face, the piled dark hair, the tender contour of cheek and chin of Mary Warren, as beautiful a young lady as any man is apt ever to see; so beautiful that this man's inexperienced heart stopped in his bosom. This picture once had been buttoned in the tunic of an aviator who flew for the ...
— The Sagebrusher - A Story of the West • Emerson Hough
... he fully recognised the limits of his powers, he had great faith in his own critical judgment; and with good reason, for his perception of the beautiful in contour and attitude and grouping was almost unerring. All the drawings which Miss Thomson made for his "Three Sunsets" were submitted to his criticism, which descended to the smallest details. He concludes a letter to her, which contained the most elaborate and minute suggestions ...
— The Life and Letters of Lewis Carroll • Stuart Dodgson Collingwood
... flood of golden hair, in the style permitted to Jewish brides, fell unconfined down her back to the pillion on which she sat. The throat and neck had the downy softness sometimes seen which leaves the artist in doubt whether it is an effect of contour or color. To these charms of feature and person were added others more indefinable—an air of purity which only the soul can impart, and of abstraction natural to such as think much of things impalpable. Often, with trembling lips, she raised her eyes to heaven, itself not more deeply blue; ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace
... Miss Herrick did not suffer by the comparison. She was doing just what thousands of other girls were doing in New York, with no more patience and no more self-sacrifice than they, but the childish vagaries of his visitor, still fresh in his memory, seemed to endow Dorothy Herrick with a firmer contour, a stronger claim on ...
— Madcap • George Gibbs
... J.A. Cossins, who chose the 13th century style, with elaborations of a French character, its stone balconies, lofty gables, oriel and dormer windows, picturesque turrets, and numberless architectural enrichments, forming a contour quite unique in the Birmingham district, though much of its beauty is lost through the narrowness of the thoroughfare. The College is built in two blocks communicating by corridors, and contains several lecture and ...
— Showell's Dictionary of Birmingham - A History And Guide Arranged Alphabetically • Thomas T. Harman and Walter Showell
... the golden hue of her tresses. Her dress was without a plait or a wrinkle, and fitted the form with an exactitude that might lead one to imagine the arch girl more than suspected the beauties it displayed. A tucker of rich Dresden lace softened the contour of the figure. Her head was without ornament; but around her throat was a necklace of gold clasped in front with ...
— The Spy • James Fenimore Cooper
... wide, of which width the boiler house takes 83 feet and the operating section 117 feet. The operating room occupies the northerly side of the structure and the boiler house the southerly side. The designers were enabled to employ a contour of roof and wall section for the northerly side that was identical with the roof and wall contour of the southerly side, so that the building, when viewed from either end, presents a symmetrical appearance with both sides of the building ...
— The New York Subway - Its Construction and Equipment • Anonymous
... consists of a broadish pathway, with a wall on the river side, breast high; the masonry is good and solid, of the usual Bactrian materials, but well cemented; it has mostly been ruined by the river, only one end being perfect. Although the materials are Bactrian, the contour is Mussulman, and I was told by some people that it was a Mussulman erection: originally it perhaps extended all along this part, as slight traces here and there are discernible; for what use the original structure was intended I know not, as there ...
— Journals of Travels in Assam, Burma, Bhootan, Afghanistan and The - Neighbouring Countries • William Griffith
... a face of plastic contour, rich full lips, soft interfused outlines, intense purple eyes, and heavy waving hair, dark indeed, but harmonized curiously with the narrow gold fillet that bound it. "It is no pain to die for love," said the low, deep voice, with an echo of rolling ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... gently for an old town-bird, ignorant of nature. "This country life will make me young again," he sighed. They reached the top of the hill towards the first hour of evening; the sun was descending heaven, the colour had all drawn into the west; the hills were modelled in their least contour by the soft, slanting shine; and the wide moorlands, veined with glens and hazelwoods, ran west and north in a hazy glory of light. Then the painter ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume XXI • Robert Louis Stevenson
... inert, sleeping on a downy couch of forgetfulness, closely curtained, the silent forces of physical life, in her deep tranquillity, were doing an artist's work. The hollow cheeks were gradually rounded and given the faintest possible bloom. Her form was gaining a contour that might satisfy ...
— His Sombre Rivals • E. P. Roe
... accursed, and to purify the air, as a safeguard against pestilence, the offal was consumed by bonfires that were constantly renewed and never extinguished. At its extremity was an elevation, a hilly contour which to the popular fancy suggested a skull. To the west it fell steeply away. It was ...
— Mary Magdalen • Edgar Saltus
... patient auditor of my most secret aspirations, you are becoming quite a work of art. A few more touches of the knife, and something like perfection shall have been attained! Look here, Dick, when I turn it towards the light—so—isn't there a beauty about the contour of that upper ...
— Personal Reminiscences in Book Making - and Some Short Stories • R.M. Ballantyne
... attention I closed the door, went out in the street and gave George the pre-arranged signal that all was well. Just then our partner appeared but with telltale face. It was flushed with chagrin and vexation, and there was gone from the contour of his body that indescribable port that tells, better than words, of confidence ...
— Bidwell's Travels, from Wall Street to London Prison - Fifteen Years in Solitude • Austin Biron Bidwell
... at the extreme left of the first balcony, facing the arch of our own and the balcony above us, veritable hanging gardens, brilliant as tulip beds. The matinee audience was made up chiefly of women. One lost the contour of faces and figures—indeed, any effect of line whatever-and there was only the color of bodices past counting, the shimmer of fabrics soft and firm, silky and sheer: red, mauve, pink, blue, lilac, ...
— The Troll Garden and Selected Stories • Willa Cather
... botanical form of the European black poplar, it is nevertheless widely distributed in America. When it has been properly placed, it introduces truly a note of distinction into the landscape. Towering high in the air, and carrying the eye along its narrowly oval contour to a skyward point, it is lofty and pleasing in a park. It agreeably breaks the sky-line in many places, and is emphatic in dignified groups. To plant it in rows is wrong; and I say this as an innocent offender myself. ...
— Getting Acquainted with the Trees • J. Horace McFarland
... "balm in Gilead" in store for Bob; for, hardly had the long face that he pulled on learning the unwelcome news of Hellyer's absence merged again into the ordinary round contour with which his friends were familiar, than, whom should he see coming along the beach, only a little way off, but—who should you think? ...
— Bob Strong's Holidays - Adrift in the Channel • John Conroy Hutcheson
... the blue, the billowing fields sailed away the gray steamer, cutting a path that sprayed and sang after. Sunlight danced and lay whitely as far as the eye could reach. It prolonged for those on shore the contour of the line of faces above each deck; it picked points of light from off everywhere—off smokestacks and polished railings, off plate-glass and brass-bound port-holes and even down the ship's flank, to where ...
— Humoresque - A Laugh On Life With A Tear Behind It • Fannie Hurst
... more beauty and dignity, as he looked over the mass of hotel buildings, upon the park set with a wonderful variety of dark green foliage, upon the elevated rows of galleried cottages marked by colonial simplicity, and the soft contour of the hills, which satisfy the eye in their delicate blending of every shade of green and brown. And after an acquaintance of a couple of weeks the place seemed to him ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... stooped shoulders. His deeply grooved, narrow, thin face was yet more elongated by the extension of a high forehead into a bald crown, for he wore his broad wool hat on the back of his head. There was something in his countenance not dissimilar to the facial contour of a grasshopper, and the suggestion was heightened by his persistent, ...
— Wolf's Head - 1911 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... high-bridged and fierce, the chin aggressive. There lay over all this a mask of reckless humor and gaiety. It was the face of a man who, had he curbed his desires and walked with circumspection, would have known enduring greatness as a captain, as an explorer, as a theologian. Not a contour of the face hut expressed force, ...
— The Grey Cloak • Harold MacGrath
... people can attain a good lung capacity and good chest contour in a very reasonable time. Persistence in proper breathing and proper exercise will have remarkable results in even two or three months, and at the same time nature will be painting roses on pallid cheeks. It is easy to ...
— Maintaining Health • R. L. Alsaker
... the forest high above the plain, and to our right the whole panorama lay snoozing in haze. The path by which we had turned our backs on Monty and Kagig went winding away and away below, here and there an infinitesimal thin line of slightly lighter color, but more often suggested by the contour of the hills. Our Zeitoonli in their zeal to return to their leader had been evidently cutting corners. If the smudge of smoke to the right front overhung Marash, then we were probably already nearer Zeitoon than when ...
— The Eye of Zeitoon • Talbot Mundy
... surprise the approach of the man, who was an utter stranger to him, and yet who bore a resemblance to some one seen before. A certain something about the shape of the nose and general contour of the face seemed slightly familiar. He had time to notice, also, that the hair was auburn in color, and inclined to curl, and that back of him sat a female form. By the time he had made these ...
— That Girl Montana • Marah Ellis Ryan
... bound train and were soon off on what Uncle Henry called the "longest lap" of their journey. The train swept them up the line of Lake Michigan, sometimes within sight of the shore, often along the edge of estuaries, particularly following the contour of Green By, and then into the Wilderness of upper Wisconsin and ...
— Nan Sherwood at Pine Camp - or, The Old Lumberman's Secret • Annie Roe Carr
... ivory, for use over the face and neck, for preventing and removing wrinkles, and restoring its contour ...
— No Animal Food - and Nutrition and Diet with Vegetable Recipes • Rupert H. Wheldon
... ran upstairs and came forward to the window. She was a woman of sanguine mouth and eye, unheroic manner, and pleasant general appearance; a little more tarnished as to surface, but not much worse in contour than the ...
— The Trumpet-Major • Thomas Hardy
... Her contour is more rounded, her neck is longer, her skin smoother, her voice softer, her hair less generally distributed over the body, but stronger in growth than in man. She breathes with the muscles of her chest—he ...
— The Physical Life of Woman: - Advice to the Maiden, Wife and Mother • Dr. George H Napheys
... most respectful language, while Kerry made idiotic love to her on the other side, and she giggled and grinned. Amory was content to sit and watch the by-play, thinking what a light touch Kerry had, and how he could transform the barest incident into a thing of curve and contour. They all seemed to have the spirit of it more or less, and it was a relaxation to be with them. Amory usually liked men individually, yet feared them in crowds unless the crowd was around him. He wondered how much each one contributed to ...
— This Side of Paradise • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... It may indeed be likened to an enormous many- limbed organism of an antediluvian time—partaking of the cephalopod in shape—lying lifeless, and covered with a thin green cloth, which hides its substance, while revealing its contour. This dull green mantle of herbage stretches down towards the levels, where the ploughs have essayed for centuries to creep up near and yet nearer to the base of the castle, but have always stopped short before reaching it. The furrows of these environing attempts show themselves distinctly, ...
— A Changed Man and Other Tales • Thomas Hardy
... incomparable; the position and the regular proportion of her nose added to her beauty such an air of dignity, as inspired a respect for her equal to the love that might be inspired by her beauty; the rounded contour of her face, produced by a becoming plumpness, exhibited all the vigour and freshness of health; to complete her charms, her glances, the movements of her lips and of her head, appeared to be guided by the graces; her shape corresponded to the beauty of ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - THE MARQUISE DE GANGES—1657 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... speculation; that looks at an oak or elm with no artist's reverence; that darts a hard, dry, timber-estimating glance at the trunk and branches; that looks at the circumference of its cold shadow on the earth beneath, not at the grand contour and glorious leafage of its boughs above. The farmer who was taking us over his large and highly-cultivated fields, was a man of wide intelligence, of excellent tastes, and the means wherewithal to give them free ...
— A Walk from London to John O'Groat's • Elihu Burritt
... plateau rising from Brush Creek, would have been regarded as the abode of some spirit and would be worshipped accordingly. That such objects are worshipped the world over we have abundant testimony, and it will be found in all such cases that there is some peculiarity about the contour of the land on which are placed these objects, that would be sure to catch the eye of ...
— See America First • Orville O. Hiestand
... the Grazing Region.—This region includes the high plains approximately west of the 2,000-foot contour of level, together with a part of the plateaus of the western highland region. It is essentially one of grazing. Formerly there was an attempt to make wheat-growing the chief industry, but on account of the limited rainfall not ...
— Commercial Geography - A Book for High Schools, Commercial Courses, and Business Colleges • Jacques W. Redway
... were somewhat older, yet the three were considered the most beautiful debutantes of the city, the youngest, if in anything, the more renowned for grace and manner. Her face was of that plumpness to give it charm, delicate in contour, rich with the freshness of the bloom of youth. Her carriage betrayed breeding and dignity. And all was sweetened by a magnetism and vivacity that charmed all who came within her influence. Still her attitude was the ...
— The Loyalist - A Story of the American Revolution • James Francis Barrett
... the river, over rocks and along narrow ledges, was hard work; the climb out was even more so. The contour maps which we carried credited these walls with 1300 feet height. If we had any doubt concerning the accuracy of this, it disappeared before we finally reached the top. What we saw, however, was worth all the discomfort we had undergone. Close the top, three ...
— Through the Grand Canyon from Wyoming to Mexico • E. L. Kolb
... principal stream; but in the present day that channel is insignificant in comparison to the one which passes by Ta Hsien, Yung-Chia Chong, and Hsin-Chin Hsien. Of course, these channels are stopped up or opened as occasion requires. As a general rule, they follow such contour lines as will allow gravitation to conduct the water to levels as high as is possible, and when it is desired to raise it higher than it will naturally flow, chain-pumps and enormous undershot water-wheels of bamboo are freely employed. Water-power is used for driving mills through the medium ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... considerably crowded. I contrived, however, to establish myself as well as another, and in consequence of my black, dress and the garrulous industry of my epicene companion, who stuck close to me all along, was treated with more than common respect. And here I was deeply impressed with the remarkable contour of many visages, which I had now a better opportunity of examining than while on the road. There seemed every description of guilt, and every degree of religious feeling, mingled together in the same mass, and all more or less subdued by ...
— The Station; The Party Fight And Funeral; The Lough Derg Pilgrim • William Carleton
... additional measurements being taken when necessary. The heights of standing walls were measured from both sides, and openings were located on the plan and described in a notebook, as was done in the survey of the inhabited villages. The entire site was then leveled, and from the data obtained contour lines were drawn with a 5-foot interval. Irregularities in the directions of walls were noted. In the later plans of ruins a scale of symbols, seven in number, were employed to indicate the amount and distribution of the debris. The plans, as ...
— Eighth Annual Report • Various
... especially noteworthy for their musical beauty. The third (Lento ma non troppo, in E major) and the sixth (Andante, in E flat minor) may be reckoned among Chopin's loveliest compositions. They combine classical chasteness of contour with the fragrance of romanticism. And the twelfth study (Allegro con fuoco, in C minor), the one composed at Stuttgart after the fall of Warsaw, how superbly grand! The composer seems to be fuming with rage: the left hand rushes impetuously along and the right hand strikes ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... the features, but it lays an ugly emphasis on the most charming lines, pushing the smile to a grin, the curve of good-nature to the droop of slackness. And it was precisely into the flagging lines of extreme weakness that Denis's graceful contour flowed. In the terrible talk which had followed his avowal, and wherein every word flashed a light on his moral processes, she had been less startled by what he had done than by the way in which his conscience had already become a passive surface ...
— Sanctuary • Edith Wharton
... we live were it not for maps! If I chance on the name of a town I have visited, I locate it on a map. I may not actually get down the atlas and put my finger on the name, but at least I picture to myself its lines and contour and judge its miles in inches. And thereby for a thing of ink and cardboard I have banished from the world its immensity and mystery. But if there were no maps—what then? By other devices I would have to locate ...
— Journeys to Bagdad • Charles S. Brooks
... gem—emerald or turquoise as the light changes it—set in the virgin forest. It is not a large body of water, is irregular in form, and about a mile and a half in length; but in the sweep of its wooded shores, and the lovely contour of the lofty mountains that guard it, the lake is probably the most charming in America. Why the young ladies and gentlemen who camp there occasionally vex the days and nights with hooting, and singing sentimental songs, is a mystery even ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... natural phenomenon, identical with that produced on the moon when she is in her octants, the contour of the terrestrial globe could be traced. Its entire disc appeared slightly visible through an effect of pale light, less appreciable than that of the moon. The reason of this lessened intensity is easy to ...
— The Moon-Voyage • Jules Verne
... her head, faultless in form, and perfectly inexpressive. She had a nose equally straight, but perhaps a little too coarse in dimensions. She had a mouth not over large, with two thin lips and small whitish teeth; and she had a chin equal in contour to the rest of her face, but on which Venus had not deigned to set a dimple. Nature might have defied a French passport officer to give a description of her, by which even her own mother or a detective policeman might ...
— The Three Clerks • Anthony Trollope
... fictitious gravity, engendered by the centrifugal force of its rotation, ceased, so that passengers, most of whom were assembled in the main salon, which occupied the entire midship section, drifted away from the curved floor, whose contour followed that of the outer skin, to flounder ...
— In the Orbit of Saturn • Roman Frederick Starzl
... say, a certain absolute and unique manner of expressing a thing, in all its intensity and colour. For him the form was the work itself. As in living creatures, the blood, nourishing the body, determines its very contour and external aspect, just so, to his mind, the matter, the basis, in a work of art, imposed, necessarily, the unique, the just expression, the measure, the rhythm—the form in all ...
— Appreciations, with an Essay on Style • Walter Horatio Pater
... the true course of leads. Only by a careful consideration of all the geological surroundings can an approximate idea be obtained from surface inspection alone; and the whole probable conditions which led to the present contour of the country must be carefully ...
— Getting Gold • J. C. F. Johnson
... we could not see where we were going, as the sand had covered up the track. We were among a lot of confused sand hills, and the high mountains stood directly in front like a formidable black barrier, their contour line just distinguishable against ...
— Across Coveted Lands - or a Journey from Flushing (Holland) to Calcutta Overland • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... to sleep and Vose Adams assumed his place as sentinel, the moon was near the zenith, but the contour of the canyon shut out its beams. While Vose was striving to pierce the gloom, over and about the four animals, he noted a flickering tremor against the vast wall which formed the other side of the canyon. A faint, fleecy veil of ...
— A Waif of the Mountains • Edward S. Ellis
... cottonwoods two miles away we found other men with scrapers throwing up the irrigation checks along the predetermined contour lines. By means of these irregular meandering earthworks the water, admitted from the ditch to the upper end of the field, would work its way slowly from level to level instead of running off or making channels for itself. This job, too, was a dusty ...
— The Killer • Stewart Edward White
... bridge of granite, connecting the city in the centre with the northern quarters of the town: immediately at one extremity rises the royal palace, a large square edifice, with extensive wings, and of the most simple and elegant contour; the other extremity is terminated by an equestrian statue of Gustavus Adolphus, forming the chief object of a square, that is bounded on the sides by handsome edifices of the Corinthian order; one the palace of the Princess Sophia, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 10, No. 277, October 13, 1827 • Various
... on the table, covered as it was with the curious drapery of black and clinging cobwebs which I have seen adhering to bottles of old wine. It lay there between the dish of medlars and the decanter, veiled indeed with thick dust as with a mantle, but revealing beneath it the shape and contour of a violin. ...
— The Lost Stradivarius • John Meade Falkner
... the entire field of vision, i. e., "round," or unlike them, i. e., "angular." If, now, the obstacle is suddenly removed, the patient (even if he did not before the operation distinguish angular and round by the eye) must yet perceive which of the objects before him resemble in contour the previous field of vision, i. e., are round, and which do not; for the round contour of his field of vision is familiar to him. But W. had learned, through the sense of touch, that what is not round is angular. He would, therefore, even if he could ...
— The Mind of the Child, Part II • W. Preyer |
