"Float" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... said, swinging clear around in his seat to face her, "but I put it in the form of a request; will you be kind enough to let me row you part way to the float? This ...
— The Firing Line • Robert W. Chambers
... a moment, before he moved to stand at the food of her bed. With his eyes on her face he leaned, laying his palms over her feet; then, seeming to float backward to the wall, he sank slowly—to sit as ...
— Son of Power • Will Levington Comfort and Zamin Ki Dost
... absurdity of Italian opera transported in the "original package" (to speak commercially) to England and America seems to have been constant with the Anglo-Saxon peoples. Of this the legion of managerial wrecks which strew the operatic shores or float as derelicts bear witness. Bankers, manufacturers, and noblemen have come to the rescue of ambitious managers, or become ambitious managers themselves, only to go down in the common disaster. Mr. Delafield wrote his name high among his fellows across the water by losing ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... for the navy in all British North America, was issued. Under authority of this license, Mr. Paterson partly denuded the shores of Lake Champlain as well as the Thousand Islands, of their fine oak. Mr. Paterson was the first to float oak in rafts to Quebec. He built a large mill at Montmorency, having exchanged his St. George street house for the mill site at Montmorency. His mills have ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... ligaments to the bones of the head, and being a weighty affair, would easily be knocked off, or might drop away from the body as it floated in water in a state of decomposition. The jaw would thus be deposited immediately, while the rest of the body would float and drift away altogether, ultimately reaching the sea, and perhaps becoming destroyed. The jaw becomes covered up and preserved in the river silt, and thus it comes that we have such a curious circumstance as that of the lower jaws in the Stonesfield slates. So that, you see, faulty as these ...
— Lectures and Essays • T.H. Huxley
... to be part of a float. Stand on a high, wabbly pedestal, you know, and wave your arms about ...
— Patty's Butterfly Days • Carolyn Wells
... wharves, or perching on roofs and piles watching for food, and seeming very tame as they pick up bits of bread or the refuse floating in the water. They follow steamers for miles, scarcely moving their wings as they float in the air; and if you throw a cracker from the deck, some gull will make a swift swoop and snatch it before the ...
— Stories of California • Ella M. Sexton
... proved a true prophet, and Patty found that long before the summer term was over she was able to both dive and float, as well as swim easily round the bath. She was delighted with her new accomplishment, and began to plan already whether it would be possible to persuade her father to leave his patients and take his family to the seaside for a few weeks during the holidays, so that she might ...
— The Nicest Girl in the School - A Story of School Life • Angela Brazil
... old ones into stars. In times of drought, if properly propitiated, she would spin light summer clouds out of cobwebs and morning dew, and send them off from the crest of the mountain, flake after flake, like flakes of carded cotton, to float in the air; until, dissolved by the heat of the sun, they would fall in gentle showers, causing the grass to spring, the fruits to ripen, and the corn to grow an inch an hour. If displeased, however, she would brew up clouds black as ink, sitting in the midst of them like a bottle-bellied ...
— The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. • Washington Irving
... they send before; And up the champaign thunder from the shore: Thick, where they drive, the dusty clouds arise, And the lost courser in the whirlwind flies; Loose on their shoulders the long manes reclined, Float in their speed, and dance upon the wind: The smoking chariots, rapid as they bound, Now seem to touch the sky, and now the ground. While hot for fame, and conquest all their care, (Each o'er his flying courser hung in air,) Erect with ardour, poised upon the rein, ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer
... the laying open of the shores of the Mediterranean, from Turkey to Gibraltar, to the invasion of the Moslems. However, comrades, this is all in the future. Our share is but in the present, and I trust the flag of the Order will float over Rhodes as long, at least, as the lifetime of the youngest of us, and that we may bequeath the duty of upholding the Cross untarnished to those who come after us; and we can then leave the issue ...
— A Knight of the White Cross • G.A. Henty
... countenance; in sweet intoxication he inhales her youthful breath. Caressingly his arm encircles her sylphic waist. She gently inclines her head towards him, and both seemed overshadowed by the long beautiful tresses which float in wild luxuriance. From Don Lope's flashing eye the innocent Theodora drinks large draughts of sweet but deadly poison; a tear of tenderness starts to overwhelm her eye and falls on the lover's hand; a deep sigh escapes her bosom, ...
— Gomez Arias - The Moors of the Alpujarras, A Spanish Historical Romance. • Joaquin Telesforo de Trueba y Cosio
... the breath of the night wind. Nor did this horrid figure remain one moment still. There upon the very edge of the precipice, it would leap high into the air, flinging aloft long gaunt arms, even appearing to float bodily forth into the space above us, to disappear instantly, like some phantom of imagination, amid the shrouding gloom of those rock shadows—flitting swiftly, and as upon wings, along the crest; now showing directly in our front, looming like a threatening giant, mocking with wild, furious gestures; ...
— Prisoners of Chance - The Story of What Befell Geoffrey Benteen, Borderman, - through His Love for a Lady of France • Randall Parrish
... in the court, and set a foot on his throat. All the savage in him was awake, and his thoughts pursued Demedes. Hungering for that life more than this one, he forgot the monk utterly. Had he a plank—anything in the least serviceable as a float—he would go after the master. He looked the enclosure over, and the sedan caught his eye, its door ajar. The door would suffice. He took hold of the limp body of the keeper, drew it after him, set it on the seat, and was about wrenching the door away, when he saw the poles. They ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 2 • Lew. Wallace
... on the deep there are billows That never shall break on the beach; And I have heard songs in the silence That never shall float into speech; And I have had dreams in the valley Too lofty for language ...
— Poems with Power to Strengthen the Soul • Various
... their heads Late by the deep waves hid, and countless seem The scatter'd Cyclades. Deep crouch the fish;— The crooked dolphins dare not leap aloft, As, custom'd in the air; with breasts upturn'd The gasping sea-calves float upon the waves: Nereus, with Doris and her daughter-nymphs Deep plung'd to seek their low, but tepid caves. Thrice Neptune ventur'd to upraise his arms Grim frowning,—thrice the flames too fierce he found, And shrunk beneath the waters. Earth at length, (By ...
— The Metamorphoses of Publius Ovidus Naso in English blank verse Vols. I & II • Ovid
... Fuller telegraphed you, as you say, that "the Stars and Stripes float over Vicksburg and the victory is complete." Did he know what he said, or did he say it without knowing it? Your despatch of this afternoon throws ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... inevitable is where companies admit their inability to be their own financiers by giving some influential contractor his price, and allowing him to "do his own engineering," in consideration of his taking such securities as they have to offer, and which he undertakes to float by means of his superior connections. Having the thing his own way, and being naturally anxious to build his road for as little money as possible, he pares down everything even below the standard of embarrassed railway-boards. If the road will only hold together until he has sold ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various
... our stand the face of the black rock rose perpendicular for a hundred and fifty feet; and over its brow waved a grove of lofty trees and graceful flowering shrubs, forming together a plume befitting such a crest, and worthy to float above such ...
— Impressions of America - During the years 1833, 1834 and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Tyrone Power
... may be blown so far that we can not get back while our power holds out, and then—" Tom did not finish, but Mr. Damon knew what he meant—death in the tossing ocean, far from land, when the WHIZZER, unable to float in the air any longer, should drop ...
— Tom Swift and his Wireless Message • Victor Appleton
... astonishing distinctness, and the sharply-defined lines of distinct objects surprise the Northern eye. Marseilles is always a picturesque city. No commercial town in the world can compare with it in this respect. On the water float the Mediterranean craft, rakish boats, with enormous latteen sails; long, low, sharp, black vessels, with a suspicious air redolent of smuggling and piracy. No tides rise and fall—advance and retreat. The ...
— The Dodge Club - or, Italy in 1859 • James De Mille
... Did I not imply at the meeting that we commence our journal with politics the mildest? Though revolutions are not made with rose-water, it is rose-water that nourishes their roots. The polite cynicism of authors, read by those who float on the surface of society, prepares the way for the social ferment in its deeps. Had there been no Voltaire, there would have been no Camille Desmoulins; had there been no Diderot, there would have been no Marat. We start as polite cynics. Of all cynics Savarin is the politest. ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... bow, and to flatter, than to be manly, resolute, and magnanimous; and to yield to prejudices than run counter to them. It requires strength and courage to swim against the stream, while any dead fish can float with it. ...
— Character • Samuel Smiles
... upon it, an intruder on its musing self-engrossment. He moved, secure and solitary, seeing no living thing but the game he shot and the hawk hanging poised in the blue. Sometimes he sat for hours watching its winged shadow float over the tree tops. ...
— Treasure and Trouble Therewith - A Tale of California • Geraldine Bonner
... our departure this day, a sealed tin-case, sufficiently buoyant to float, was thrown overboard, containing a short account of our proceedings, and the position of the most conspicuous points. The wind blew off the land, the water was smooth, and as the sea is in this part more free from islands than in any other, ...
— Narrative of a Journey to the Shores of the Polar Sea, in the years 1819-20-21-22, Volume 2 • John Franklin
... de Janeiro, stands on the finest harbor of the world, in which float ships from all nations. Proudest among these crafts are the large Brazilian gunboats. "It is a curious anomaly," says the Scientific American, "that the most powerful Dreadnought afloat should belong to a South American republic, but it cannot be denied ...
— Through Five Republics on Horseback • G. Whitfield Ray
... imagine this ether filling every corner of space, so that it is everywhere and passes through everything, ask yourselves, what must happen when a great commotion is going on in one of the large bodies which float in it? When the atoms of the gases round the sun are clashing violently together to make all its light and heat, do you not think they must shake this ether all around them? And then, since the ether stretches on all sides from the sun to our earth and all other planets, must not this quivering ...
— The Fairy-Land of Science • Arabella B. Buckley
... above again some way distant at our stern. To shoot hippopotami properly, one must have time to wait for the receding of the tide, when, if killed, their bodies would be left exposed on the sandy bottom; or, if in deep water, to wait until, being filled with gases, they would float by the ...
— What Led To The Discovery of the Source Of The Nile • John Hanning Speke
... spruce and watched a hawk float in easy circles round the blue emptiness above. He felt physically indolent; at one with the silences. Shoop's voice came to him clearly, but as though from a distance, and as Shoop talked Lorry visualized the theme, forgetting where he was in the vivid ...
— Jim Waring of Sonora-Town - Tang of Life • Knibbs, Henry Herbert
... scaffolds or trees used as burial places; if so, describe construction of the former and how the corpse is prepared, and whether placed in skins or boxes. Are bodies placed in canoes? State whether they are suspended from trees, put on scaffolds or posts, allowed to float on the water or sunk beneath it, or buried in the ground. Can any reasons be given for the prevalence of any one or all of the methods? Are burial posts or slabs used, plain, or marked, with flags or other insignia of position of deceased. ...
— An introduction to the mortuary customs of the North American Indians • H. C. Yarrow
... proposed that they should take the balloon back along the road to the town, which could easily be done. So the drag rope was tied to the axle of a heavy wagon with a number of men riding on it, and the balloon was allowed to float about a hundred feet from the ground. Charley still rode with the Professor in his basket, and so they reached his home. He was the hero of the day, and, to crown all, the town newspaper printed Charley's story of his trip, just ...
— Harper's Young People, June 15, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... hear, Lesbia? Shall I tell you what this man is—what trade he followed yonder, on his native island—this Spanish hidalgo—this all-accomplished gentleman—lineal descendant of the Cid—fine flower of Andalusian chivalry? It was not enough for him to cheat at cards, to float bubble companies, bogus lotteries. His profligate extravagance, his love of sybarite luxury, required a larger resource than the petty schemes which enrich smaller men. A slave ship, which could earn nearly twenty thousand pounds on every ...
— Phantom Fortune, A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... octaves high, Whose notes like circling swallows fly; And ring, each old sonorous bell,— "Jesu," "Maria," "Michael!" Weave in and out, and high and low, The magic music that you know, And let it float and flutter down To cheer the heart of the troubled town. Ring out, "Salvator," lord of all,— "Roland" in Ghent may hear ...
— The Red Flower - Poems Written in War Time • Henry Van Dyke
... Vandyck which is there, as in reveling amid the familiar rococo splendors of the temple. Every swaggering statue of a saint, every rope-dancing angel, every cherub of those that on the carven and gilded clouds above the high altar float— ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... surface—as is usual with all swollen bodies—bringing up the sleigh again. In this condition, the wreck was overtaken by a downward bound sloop, the men of which saved the sleigh, harness, skins, foot-stoves, and such other articles as would not float away. ...
— Satanstoe • James Fenimore Cooper
... wicked face was tugging hard at a chain which she had fastened to the ship with a grappling iron, and was dragging it bit by bit beneath the waves. Seizing her arms in both his hands, he forced her to drop the chain, and the ship above remaining steady, the sailors were able gently to float her off the rock. Then taking a rusty knife from a heap of seaweed at his feet, he cut the rope round his waist and fastened the sea-maiden firmly to a stone, so that she could do no more mischief, and bidding ...
— The Olive Fairy Book • Various
... the trouble of translating it for the benefit of others. I am for this synthetical method on a journey in preference to the analytical. I am content to lay in a stock of ideas then, and to examine and anatomise them afterwards. I want to see my vague notions float like the down of the thistle before the breeze, and not to have them entangled in the briars and thorns of controversy. For once, I like to have it all my own way; and this is impossible unless you are alone, or in such company as I do not covet. I have no objection to argue a point with any ...
— The Bed-Book of Happiness • Harold Begbie
... upon us. Indeed, one could not look upon her advance without envy of her form, or of the terrifying manner in which she cut the seas. Churning the foam until it mounted its banks on each side of her great ram, she rode the Atlantic like a beautiful yacht, with no vapour of smoke to float above her; and not so much as a sign that any engines forced her onward with a velocity unknown, I believe, in the whole history of navigation. And so she came straight in our wake, and I knew that we should have little breathing time before we should ...
— The Iron Pirate - A Plain Tale of Strange Happenings on the Sea • Max Pemberton
... her head, smiling. "Undine. They are Undine's—her necklaces and tiaras. No mortal woman's jewel-case contains anything half so brilliant. But look at them—look at the long chains of them—how they float for a minute—and are then drawn down. They are Undine's—Undine and her companions are sporting with them just below the surface. A moment ago I caught a glimpse of a ...
— The Cardinal's Snuff-Box • Henry Harland
... "Soap, too, left to float in the wash-tub, and—salt water I declare! Caleb, empty this and get some soft water from the old butt by the back door. Oh, you poor, ...
— The Astonishing History of Troy Town • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... a high state of delight, and, novice though he was in fishing, he succeeded in pulling out nearly as many as his cousins. Both he and Philip fished by means of tying a piece of twine round the middle of a worm, and letting the ends dangle down; but Harry had brought a float and line, and secured his worm by ...
— Hollowdell Grange - Holiday Hours in a Country Home • George Manville Fenn
... skill which the creature truly deserves. In constructing these ingenious dams the beavers, by the aid of their powerful teeth, gnaw down trees sometimes of large size, and after cutting them into smaller pieces float them on the water to the spot selected for the embankment. In swift streams this embankment is built so as to arch against the current, thus securing additional strength, and evincing an instinct on the part ...
— Camp Life in the Woods and the Tricks of Trapping and Trap Making • William Hamilton Gibson
... occasions, while pretending to fix my attention on my float upon the river, I often watched him from afar, till I was terrified by the frantic vehemence of his gestures. There was almost reason to fancy that the evil influences of the old Hall were extending their power over the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXVI. October, 1843. Vol. LIV. • Various
... coffee filled the air. The pine-scented smoke from the campfire hung low in the valley, and every sound carried plainly in the morning air. The squirrels were out in great numbers and at their morning play, while every now and then the harsh, rasping cry of a bewildered bluejay would float up the canyon. ...
— Buffalo Roost • F. H. Cheley
... thought; "I am condemned to float here below, like a waif which no one wants; no shore is henceforward accessible, for if the world refuses me, I disgust God. Ah! Lord, remember the garden of Gethsemani, the tragic defection of the Father whom Thou didst implore in unspeakable pangs." In the silence which ...
— En Route • J.-K. (Joris-Karl) Huysmans
... out, and Cis was more restless than usual. She would not hunt in goat skins with Johnnie and Crusoe, nor capture the drifting Hispaniola along with Jim Hawkins. She had no taste even for a lively massacre. And as Johnnie was equally determined neither to bury Cora again nor float upon a death barge with the Maid of Astolat, they compromised upon Aladdin and the Princess Buddir ...
— The Rich Little Poor Boy • Eleanor Gates
... Naval Flying School at that place. The same year Commander O. Swann purchased from Messrs. A. V. Roe a 35 horse-power biplane and began to carry out experiments with different types of floats, as a result of which a twin-float seaplane was produced—the first to rise off the water ...
— Aviation in Peace and War • Sir Frederick Hugh Sykes
... house; it came slowly, stealing warily up the snow-clad hill. There was no scrunch of footsteps, the snow muffled all such sounds. It drew nearer, nearer, a tall, grey, ghostly shadow that seemed to float over the white carpet which was everywhere spread out upon the earth. And as it came the wind rose, gusty and patchy, and the hiss of rising snow sounded stingingly upon the night air, and often beat with the force of hail against ...
— In the Brooding Wild • Ridgwell Cullum
... would be to discontinue the building of ships of the first and second class, and look rather to the possession of ample materials, prepared for the emergencies of war, than to the number of vessels which we can float in a season of peace, as the index of our naval power. Judicious deposits in navy yards of timber and other materials, fashioned under the hands of skillful work-men and fitted for prompt application to their various purposes, would enable us at all times to construct vessels as fast as they ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Andrew Jackson • Andrew Jackson
... found great quantities of dye-wood, enough to load all the ships that float, and costing nothing. The same may be said of cassia, crystals, spices, and drugs; but the qualities of the last are unknown. The inhabitants of the country tell of gold and other metals; but I am one of those who, like St. ...
— Amerigo Vespucci • Frederick A. Ober
... looking for ferns. In some parts we hardly dare step, for fear of crushing something beautiful. We look down upon a bank of green moss, and find snowy, shell-like fungi, so delicate that we hold our breath lest they should float away. Farther on are orange-colored ones, and some shaped like callas, translucent, and in color a pale pink carnelian. Wandering on, we enter a grove of pine-trees, in the midst of which a spring is bubbling up, and the ground is covered with a carpet of ferns, ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, January 1878, No. 3 • Various
... might have been a patch of sky outlined in the gently moving branches, or the blue smoke rising up. But I saw the figure of a woman, all white, come down, down, nearly to the limbs of the trees, point on up the main road, and then float up and up and vanish, still pointing. I thought Mary was dead! Then it ...
— Joe Wilson and His Mates • Henry Lawson
... to think," said Belle, slowly. "A bread board wouldn't float, you know, even if the baby would sit on it. We've not got a ...
— Poor, Dear Margaret Kirby and Other Stories • Kathleen Norris
... walk. Just behind the trenches to the left was a small lake. When there was sufficient artillery fire to mask their attack, soldiers would toss a hand grenade into this lake, thus stunning hundreds of fish which would float to the surface, where they were gathered in by the sackful. The Salvation Army dugout was never without its share of ...
— The War Romance of the Salvation Army • Evangeline Booth and Grace Livingston Hill
... was a wretchedly small vessel in which to traverse fifteen thousand miles of ocean. She was "something less than a Gravesend passage boat" and hardly better suited for the effort than a canal barge. But, given anything made of wood that would float and steer, inconvenience and difficulty never baffled Matthew Flinders when there was service to perform. She was the first vessel that had been built in Australia. Moore, the Government boat-builder, had put her together for colonial ...
— The Life of Captain Matthew Flinders • Ernest Scott
... an approval which she would value, naturally, more than anything he could say to her. This episode had imparted animation to the assembly; a certain gaiety, even, expressed in a higher pitch of conversation, seemed to float in the heated air. People circulated more freely, and Verena Tarrant was presently hidden from Ransom's sight by the close-pressed ranks of the new friends she had made. "Well, I never heard it put that way!" Ransom heard one of the ladies exclaim; to which another replied ...
— The Bostonians, Vol. I (of II) • Henry James
... strained the scales at two hundred and twenty. There was a good deal of horse-sense in his contention that if all this additional weight was country air, she'd have to be pretty securely anchored or she'd float away ...
— Anderson Crow, Detective • George Barr McCutcheon
... not, I am living it and I rather enjoy it. Your vexing problems of life never disturb me. I do not think I am called to turn this great world 'right side up with care,' and so I float ...
— Sowing and Reaping • Frances Ellen Watkins Harper
... washed away and drowned; however, thank goodness, all hands were saved. The whale-boat was afterwards picked up, having been washed out to sea, but we lost all tents, spare guns, &c.; the pigs remained in the boat, as they were stowed under the thwarts, and hadn't room to float out; so, friends, take warning of the bar of ...
— Sketches From My Life - By The Late Admiral Hobart Pasha • Hobart Pasha
... lieutenant and myself; he to float along the stream of fashion in its most sparkling current—I to tread the twilight paths of the green park in helplessness and heaviness ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 337, November, 1843 • Various
... space, electricity of any desired potential and of any polarity, and that without danger to the experimenter or to the material experimented upon. It is gravitation, as everybody knows, that makes man a prisoner on the earth. If he could overcome, or neutralize, gravitation he could float away, a free creature of interstellar space. Mr. Edison in his invention had pitted electricity against gravitation. Nature, in fact, had done the same thing long before. Every astronomer knew it, but none had been able to imitate or to reproduce this miracle of nature. When a comet ...
— Edison's Conquest of Mars • Garrett Putnam Serviss
... sixth century Antoninus Martyr visited the Dead Sea region and described it, but curiously reversed a simple truth in these words: "Nor do sticks or straws float there, nor can a man swim, but whatever is cast into it sinks to the bottom." As to the statue of Lot's wife, he threw doubt upon its miraculous renewal, but testified ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... built to contain the several generations of the families which in patriarchal fashion inhabit these spacious dwellings. Huge clouds of smoke from the majestic volcano curl perpetually above the surrounding peaks, and float slowly westward, the thunderous roar of the colossal crater echoing in eternal menace through the rarefied air, and regarded as the voice of the god who inhabits the fiery Inferno. These lonely hills, ravaged ...
— Through the Malay Archipelago • Emily Richings
... can't hear me, I may as well say that, on the whole, his majesty is much better dead than alive—if we can only get somebody in his place. There'll be such a row in the city presently. Suppose we float up again and see it all—at a safe distance, though. It ...
— The Little Lame Prince - And: The Invisible Prince; Prince Cherry; The Prince With The Nose - The Frog-Prince; Clever Alice • Miss Mulock—Pseudonym of Maria Dinah Craik
... this manner that, in the blindness of a poor political economy, we drown and allow to float down stream and to be lost in the gulfs the well-being of all. There should be nets at Saint-Cloud for ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... painful thoughts by the harsh voice of the commissary, saying. "In the name of the law I arrest you," his mind, completely upset, was a long time in recovering its equilibrium, Everything that followed appeared to him to float indistinctly in a thick mist, like those dream-scenes represented on the stage behind a quadruple ...
— The Widow Lerouge - The Lerouge Case • Emile Gaboriau
... form the first public features of Class-Day, but, arriving late, I could only eddy on the surge that swept around the door. Strains of distant eloquence would occasionally float musically to my ear; now and then a single word would steer clear of the thousands of heads and come into my port unharmed. Frequent waves of laughter beat and broke into the vestibule; but what is more "trying" to a frail temper than ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, August, 1863, No. 70 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... Slowly we float over the dark water—not a river, as I had at first supposed, but a lake—until we reach the shores of a little island; a flat, lonely, barren patch of ground. I am carried along a rough pathway made of great flat stones, until we reach ...
— The Two Destinies • Wilkie Collins
... Jack, and the sound of their axes followed. Ropes were severed with a blow, but the wire shrouds were tougher, and it was not until several minutes had passed that the mast, with its tangle of sails and ropes, was chopped free to float away on ...
— The Moving Picture Girls at Sea - or, A Pictured Shipwreck That Became Real • Laura Lee Hope
... pillars of the nave, on a level with their capitals. Few of the congregation noticed her, for the sermon was a stirring one; only one or two children, perhaps, were interested—and the man I write of. He saw her pass over his head and float up into the chancel. ...
— Noughts and Crosses • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... have moored, the bamboo poles of fishermen are planted. Kites hover ready to snatch up fish from the nets. On the ooze at the water's edge stand the saintly-looking paddy birds in meditation. All kinds of waterfowl abound. Patches of weeds float on the water. Here and there rice-fields, untilled, untended,[1] rise from the moist, clay soil. Mosquitoes swarm ...
— Glimpses of Bengal • Sir Rabindranath Tagore
... land, while we are engaged in political metaphysics, and, amidst our filth and vermin, like the Spaniard and Portuguese, look down with contempt on other nations,—England and France especially. We hug our lousy cloak around us, take another chaw of tub-backer, float the room with nastiness, or ruin the grate and fire-irons, where they happen not to be rusty, and try ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton
... much," Hugh said modestly, "you should see my raft—that is worth seeing. I have invented a way of arranging corks so that it will float in the severest storm. It could not sink if it tried, unless, of course, it became waterlogged. But I can only work at that when we are down ...
— The Happy Adventurers • Lydia Miller Middleton
... on getting into the water, had forgotten or not cared to put in again. He took it in his hands and looked at it with a singular emotion. He had an instinct to keep it, but his sentimentality irritated him, and he flung it away. It gave him quite a little pang to see it float down the stream. ...
— The Trembling of a Leaf - Little Stories of the South Sea Islands • William Somerset Maugham
... seen, through the clouds of dust, the armorial bearings, which seemed to float in the dark glossy panels of the carriage, and she observed, "It is an earl's coronet, but they are not the Bolton arms." Mrs. Wilson and Emily had noticed a gentleman reclining at his ease, as the owner ...
— Precaution • James Fenimore Cooper
... cussed fool as ter git stuck fer?" replied the two heads; and in spite of the disapproval conveyed by the question, the stranger boat was driven as rapidly as possible close beside the packet, the result being a long wave or "swell," enabling that luckless craft to float off into the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various
... torpedo was anchored at the bottom of the river by means of a rope, one end of which was tied to the torpedo, the other end to a staple fastened in the centre of the surface of a hemisphere of iron six inches in diameter, resting at the bottom of the river. The rope was sufficiently long to float the torpedo just beneath the surface of the water. The torpedoes were made of tin, each about eighteen inches long and ten inches in diameter, and divided into two separate apartments, one for air, the other ...
— Reminiscences of Two Years in the United States Navy • John M. Batten
... in pale high autumn skies The swallows float and play, His restless thoughts pass to ...
— Collected Poems 1901-1918 in Two Volumes - Volume I. • Walter de la Mare
... SWANS float upon the waters blue; How beautiful the sight! Their snowy plumage, graceful form, And neck so arched ...
— The Tiny Picture Book. • Anonymous
... of this hemisphere, and at an elevation of about 3000 feet above the surface of the clouds, we continued to float in solitary magnificence; attended only at first by our counterpart—a vast image of the balloon itself with all its paraphernalia distinctly thrown by the sun upon the opposite masses of vapour, until we had risen so high that even that, outreaching the material basis of its support, ...
— The Rain Cloud - or, An Account of the Nature, Properties, Dangers and Uses of Rain • Anonymous
... knowing that he is watching you from his mountain-top, do and say the things that hurt, and wrong, and disappoint him? Sailors on the waters that surround this globe, though there be no great mountain that overlooks the little lake on which you float, not the less does he behold you, and care for you, and watch over you. Will you do that which is unpleasing, distressful to him? Will you be irreverent, cruel, coarse? Will you say evil things, lie, and delight in vile ...
— The Seaboard Parish Volume 1 • George MacDonald
... much obliged to you, if you will direct me where I shall find the best information of what is to be said on both sides. It is a subject vast in its present extent and future consequences. The imperfect hints which now float in my mind, tend rather to the formation of an opinion that our government has been precipitant and severe in the resolutions taken against the Bostonians[867]. Well do you know that I have no kindness for that race. But nations, or bodies of men, ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... when ruin fell upon Cuckoo Valley. Its head rested on the slope of a high and sombre moorland, scattered with granite and china-clay; and by the small town of Ponteglos, where it widened out into arable and grey pasture-land, the Cuckoo river grew deep enough to float up vessels of small tonnage from the coast at the spring tides. I have seen there the boom of a trading schooner brush the grasses on the river-bank as she came before a southerly wind, and the haymakers stop and almost crick their necks staring up at her top-sails. ...
— The Delectable Duchy • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... belonging to merchants and travellers.... The raftmen impel these rude vessels by long poles, to the ends of which are fastened a few pieces of split cane. (See Fig. 14.) ... During the floods in spring, or after heavy rains, small rafts may float from Mosul to Baghdad in about eighty-four hours; but the larger are generally six or seven days in performing the voyage. In summer, and when the river is low, they are frequently nearly a month in reaching their destination. When they ...
— Chaldea - From the Earliest Times to the Rise of Assyria • Znade A. Ragozin
... counterbalancing the good. Each new improvement in machinery deprives hundreds of food. Civilization is the eternal sacrifice of one generation to the next. An awful sense of the impotence of human agencies has crushed down the sublime aspirations for mankind which I once indulged. For myself, I float on the great waters, without pilot or rudder, and trust passively to the winds, that ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Book II • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... touched, owing to its peculiar sterility and the shoals about it, and from which all other parts of the group were hidden—this man, feeling that it was sure death to remain there, and that nothing worse than death menaced him in quitting it, killed seals, and inflating their skins, made a float, upon which he transported himself to Charles's Island, and ...
— The Piazza Tales • Herman Melville
... the same twilight, dear, The hour of love and tear When in raiments of shadows Fancies, fears, hopes, and sorrows Tread the path of sunset, While like barks of jet Float the ...
— Sandhya - Songs of Twilight • Dhan Gopal Mukerji
... temple, similar to all Egyptian temples, a shrine in which the statues of the goddess continued her mysterious existence, and, in the midst of the sacred lake, the little island of Khemmis, which was said to float hither and thither upon the waters. Herodotus did not venture to deny this absolutely, but states that he had never seen it change its position or even stir: perhaps his incredulity may have been quickened by the fact that this miracle had already been inquired into by ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 9 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... is composed of small pieces of marble, stone, glass or pottery, laid as paving or wall lining, usually in some ornamental pattern or design. A firm bed of concrete is required, the pieces of [v.04 p.0528] material being fixed in a float of cement about half or three-quarters of an inch thick. Roman mosaic is formed with cubes of marble of various colours pressed into the float. A less costly paving may be obtained by strewing irregularly-shaped ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various
... creep along a communication trench to the enemy front line, jump across it in a gap between the sentries, and chance getting by the barbed wire and across No Man's Land. Or we would steal to the Somme, float down-stream, and somehow or other pass the entanglements placed across the river by the enemy. Wouff! wouff! Archie ...
— Cavalry of the Clouds • Alan Bott
... impossible to realize in life, which is termed dethronement, imprisonment, and insult towards a sovereign who formerly wielded unlimited power. To be present at—an actual witness, too—of this bitterness of death; to float, indecisively, in an incomprehensible mystery, between resemblance and reality; to hear everything, to see everything, without interfering in a single detail of agonizing suffering, was—so the king thought within himself—a torture far more terrible, since it might last forever. ...
— The Man in the Iron Mask • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... up to a float beside a wharf. Twenty other boats floated about the platform, and a boy was ...
— Frank Merriwell's Cruise • Burt L. Standish
... a certain obliviousness here; a mental haze, amid which the mingled airs of "Rule Britannia" and the "Marsellaise" float indistinctly. But above all, and through all, with terrible distinctness, tones the voice of Pimblebeck; his boyish form dilated into the dimensions of a Goliath, as he pours forth the words of a Prussian revolutionary song, some few of which stand ...
— A Tramp's Wallet - stored by an English goldsmith during his wanderings in Germany and France • William Duthie
... Austrian—I forget his name—whom we met at Stuttgart, Baron Holdenberg's nephew; he was charming, to say nothing of Lohengrin and Tannhauser. I have quite a long list of loves, Ada. Oh, I should like to dance again! To float round to the music of a delightful Austrian band ...
— A Crooked Path - A Novel • Mrs. Alexander
... books of a general sort—travel, fiction, poetry. Many of them did not pay. Their business from a march of triumph had become a battle. They undertook a "Library of American Literature," a work of many volumes, costly to make and even more so to sell. To float this venture they were ...
— The Boys' Life of Mark Twain • Albert Bigelow Paine
... hours, or have missed the interview altogether. Sailors are tried much in the same way, I fancy, as you will learn when making a voyage. Sometimes they get a fair breeze, and run before it for many days; and then they fall into a calm, and have to float about doing nothing, or they are driven back by contrary winds, and lose all the ground they have gained. Such is our voyage through life, Mr Ralph; and it is better to know beforehand what we are likely to meet with, and be prepared for it. That is the reason ...
— My First Voyage to Southern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston
... lay within half a mile of the entrance, protected by some occasional batteries erected on the shore, and by two large frigates moored across the mouth of the harbour. Thus they were effectually secured from any attempts of small vessels; and as for large ships, there was not water sufficient to float them within fighting distance of the enemy. On the whole, this battle, in which a very considerable number of lives was lost, may be considered as one of the most perilous and important actions that ever happened in any war between the two nations; ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... men and women who, to use a natural but not flippant simile, take it for granted that the soul is cast into the troubled waters of life without the power to swim, or even the possibility of learning to float, dependent upon the bare chance that some one may throw it the life-buoy of ritual religion as its only conceivable means of salvation. And the opponents of each particular form of faith invariably take just such good men and women, with all their limitations, as the only true exponents of that ...
— Casa Braccio, Volumes 1 and 2 (of 2) • F. Marion Crawford
... load goat roam float road moan toad roam throat oar boat oat meal croak soar foam loaf soap coarse loaves groan board goal boast ...
— How to Teach Phonics • Lida M. Williams
... state. When ready, they climb up the stem of some plant, and sit in the sun till the ugly brown shells drop away, and the lovely winged creatures appear. They grow in an hour to be perfect dragon-flies, and float away to lead happy lives in the sunshine ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag VI - An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott
... visions of pleasure shall float on our sight, While light bounding our spirits shall flow; And the god shall impart a fine sense of delight Which in vain sober mortals ...
— A Sicilian Romance • Ann Radcliffe
... is, and even only tolerably watchful of events, he would regain his authority," but "what would you have," he continues scornfully "from a creature who, in his situation, eats, drinks, and sleeps well, and laughs, and is as merry a grig as lives. He must float along on the current of events and is absolutely a cypher." Nor would the court forego its crooked ways. "The queen is even more imprudent," Morris writes in 1791, "and the whole court is given up to petty intrigues worthy only of footmen and chambermaids." ...
— The Story of Paris • Thomas Okey
... the World, who rules the forests and the orchards and the groves; and Kern, the Master Husbandman of the World, who rules the grain fields and the meadows and the gardens; and Bo, the Master Mariner of the World, who rules the seas and all the craft that float thereon. And all other immortals are more or less subject ...
— The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus • L. Frank Baum
... whaling voyage, upon which there was a heavy job of calking and coppering to be done. I had some skill in both branches, and applied to Mr. French for work. He, generous man that he was, told me he would employ me, and I might go at once to the vessel. I obeyed him, but upon reaching the float-stage, where others [sic] calkers were at work, I was told that every white man would leave the ship, in her unfinished condition, if I struck a blow at my trade upon her. This uncivil, inhuman, and selfish treatment was not so shocking and scandalous in my eyes at the time ...
— Collected Articles of Frederick Douglass • Frederick Douglass
... That will please Miss Mills best. I 'll leave the doors open, and play you a lullaby that you can't resist. Good night, dear." And with another kiss, Polly went away to sit in the darkness of her own room, playing her softest airs till the tired eyes below were shut, and little Jane seemed to float away on a sea of pleasant sounds, into the happier life which ...
— An Old-fashioned Girl • Louisa May Alcott
... They float into the ward bearing the sense of heat and dust, and of the bumping of the saddle. The dairyman has perhaps put me a bit against the camp across ...
— A Diary Without Dates • Enid Bagnold
... you that glaciers are fields of ice, or snow and ice, formed in the regions of perpetual snow, and moving slowly down the mountain slopes or valleys. Many people say the glaciers are the fathers of the icebergs which float at sea, and that these are broken off the glacial stream, but others deny this. When the glacial ice and snow reaches a point where the air is so warm that the ice melts as fast as it is pushed ...
— Kalitan, Our Little Alaskan Cousin • Mary F. Nixon-Roulet
... to commit myself entirely to Him in whose school I sit as learner. Oh, that I were a better scholar But I do not half learn my lessons, I am heedless and inattentive, and I forget what is taught. Perhaps this is the reason that weighty truths float before my mind's eye at times, but do not fix ...
— Stepping Heavenward • Mrs. E. Prentiss
... beaming cordiality. Braith's constraint was even more marked. He had turned quite white. Bulfinch and Gethryn, who had risen to receive him, remained standing side by side, stranded on the shoals of an awkward situation. The little Mirror man made a grab at a topic which he thought would float them off, and laid hold instead on one which upset ...
— In the Quarter • Robert W. Chambers
... and efficient organization. And the skill and self-devotion of the Navy assure you that you may take the performance of the past as a pledge for the future, and may confidently expect that the flag which has waved its untarnished folds over every sea will still float in undiminished honor. But these, like many other subjects, will be appropriately brought at a future time to the attention of the coordinate branches of the Government, to which I shall always look with ...
— United States Presidents' Inaugural Speeches - From Washington to George W. Bush • Various
... rill, that may be crossed at a single step, whenever God shall give permission. The Sun of Righteousness has been gradually drawing nearer and nearer, appearing larger and brighter as He approached, and now He fills the whole hemisphere, pouring forth a flood of glory, in which I seem to float, like an insect in the beams of the sun; exulting, yet almost trembling, while I gaze on this excessive brightness, and wondering, with unutterable wonder, why God should deign thus to shine upon a sinful worm"-(Cheever). ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... the 4th of July, accompanied by Nicholas Capella, and crossed the river Mare on a float. That day and the next, we travelled through a considerable portion of Mingrelia, always among woods and mountains. Towards the evening of the 5th, we came to the habitation of prince Bendian, whom we found, with all his court, reclining on a plain, under the shade of some trees. ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. II • Robert Kerr
... My friend Lady Hervey,[1] too, is greatly happy; her son Augustus distinguished himself particularly, brought home the news, and on his way took a rich French ship going to Newfoundland with military stores. I do not surely mean to detract from him, who set all this spirit on float, but you see we can conquer, though Mr. Pitt ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume I • Horace Walpole
... will cause distress if you do not chew them to a cream. I would swell up like a toad if I ate only one apple hurriedly. I don't dare think what might happen to me if I ate three or four in that way. I might possibly find myself transformed into a human balloon and float away into space. But I don't eat apples that way—not now. Some who read these pages may think it very strange, yet it is quite true that there really are persons suffering with "nerves" who have not gumption enough to follow this simple rule of chewing all food to a cream. I despair of ever ...
— How to Eat - A Cure for "Nerves" • Thomas Clark Hinkle
... skipper, "God help us all! She will not float till the turning tide!" Said his wife, "My darling will hear MY call, Whether in sea or heaven she bide;" And she lifted a quavering voice and high, Wild and strange as a sea-bird's cry, Till they shuddered ...
— Complete Poetical Works of Bret Harte • Bret Harte
... physical body, heat currents stream up to him; a sea of air is sounding round him and water pours into and out of him. When man is out of his body the images of the higher beings in whose care he is, float through his soul. ...
— An Outline of Occult Science • Rudolf Steiner
... where do you go shading your lamp with your mantle? My house is all dark and lonesome,—lend me your light!" She raised her dark eyes for a moment and looked at my face through the dusk. "I have come to the river," she said, "to float my lamp on the stream when the daylight wanes in the west." I stood alone among tall grasses and watched the timid flame of her lamp uselessly drifting ...
— Lighted to Lighten: The Hope of India • Alice B. Van Doren
... warbling their songs joyfully and feasting upon these wild fruits of nature; and in these waters the fishes were so plentiful that as you lift up the anchor- stone of your net in the morning, your net would be so loaded with delicious whitefish as to fairly float with all its weight of the sinkers. As you look towards the course of your net, you see the fins of the fishes sticking out of the water in every way. Then I never knew my people to want for anything to eat or to wear, as we always had plenty of wild meat and plenty of fish, corn, vegetables, ...
— History of the Ottawa and Chippewa Indians of Michigan • Andrew J. Blackbird |
