"Floating" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... had a broad, level field for its roost; the duck, bobbing with the waves after it came down, had its wings folded as became a bird at rest, after its engines stopped, and, a dead thing, was lifted on board its floating home with a crane, as cargo is ...
— My Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... disease is frequently though not always of a bilious character—that is an abundance of bile is found floating in the stomach or intestines. There seems to be neither torpor nor enlargement of the liver which have characterized the diseases of this country for 21 years past; hence culomel especially in the beginning ...
— Seaport in Virginia - George Washington's Alexandria • Gay Montague Moore
... answered Brockton. "I may return day after to-morrow or I may be detained there a week or longer. It's a big job, you know—in connection with floating a big issue of railroad bonds. There's a barrel of money in it. I may not get back before ...
— The Easiest Way - A Story of Metropolitan Life • Eugene Walter and Arthur Hornblow
... only: roses, Pink and white and red, Shining down the warm rich garden closes; Quiet trees and lawns of dappled shadow, Silver lilies, whisper of mignonette, Cloth-of-gold of buttercups outspread; Good gold sun that kissed me when we met, Shadows of floating clouds on sunny meadow. In the hay-field, scented, grey, Loving life and love, I lay; By fresh airs blown, drifted into sleep; Slept and dreamed ...
— Many Voices • E. Nesbit
... paper, he said, might be set down as floating security, the value of which was so prospective, depending as it did upon his future good behavior as well as the fortunes of his party, that he did not feel inclined to purchase any very large amount of it. However, as he liked to be considered as a man of good parts, and as I had ...
— The Life and Adventures of Maj. Roger Sherman Potter • "Pheleg Van Trusedale"
... 4,000 meters; mountain ranges up to 5,140 meters; ice-free coastal areas include parts of southern Victoria Land, Wilkes Land, the Antarctic Peninsula area, and parts of Ross Island on McMurdo Sound; glaciers form ice shelves along about half of the coastline, and floating ice shelves constitute 11% of ...
— The 2001 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... saw a bamboo pole, floating on the surface several hundred feet away, suddenly up-end and start a very devil's dance. This was a diversion from the profitless discussion, and Kohokumu and I dipped our paddles and raced the little outrigger canoe to the dancing pole. Kohokumu caught the line ...
— On the Makaloa Mat/Island Tales • Jack London
... opening, and prevented the water from getting out as fast as before, that is, as fast as the spring rose. Therefore he now laid hold of the rope, which was still connected with the stone, and, not aware of how the water would help him by partly floating it, was astonished to find how easily he moved it. At once it swung away from the side into the middle of the well; the water ceased to run over the edge, with a loud gurgling began to sink, and sank down and down and down until the opening by which ...
— Gutta-Percha Willie • George MacDonald
... astonished, sprang from his horse, and looked everywhere to see if no one were hidden under the bridge; but no one was there. Then he noticed a yellow water-lily floating on the surface of the water, half hidden by its broad leaves; but flowers do not sing, and in great surprise he waited, hoping to hear more. Then again ...
— The Blue Fairy Book • Various
... said the manager with a smile; "he has a very good balance. In fact, too large a balance for a floating account. I wish you would see him and persuade him to put some of this money on deposit. The head office does not like big floating balances which may be withdrawn at any moment and which necessitates the keeping here of a larger quantity of cash ...
— The Man Who Knew • Edgar Wallace
... have been, and he seemed to look down into the sky, instead of up. He twisted his head about, and, looking Bellerophon in the face, with fire flashing from his eyes, made a terrible attempt to bite him. He fluttered his pinions so wildly that one of the silver feathers was shaken out, and floating earthward, was picked up by the child, who kept it as long as he lived, in memory of Pegasus ...
— Myths That Every Child Should Know - A Selection Of The Classic Myths Of All Times For Young People • Various
... productions made their appearance on board Bengalee budgerows; and are their leaves floating on the yellow banks of Jumna?" asks Warrington, that sceptic, who respects no work ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... had gained the forest—and finally, he told his own return to the castle, and the circumstances in which he found it. But he said nothing of the views with which it was plain the Lady Hameline had left the Castle of Schonwaldt, and as little about the floating report of her having fallen into the hands of William de la Marck. Delicacy prevented his even hinting at the one, and regard for the feelings of his companion at a moment when strength and exertion were most demanded of her, prevented him from ...
— Quentin Durward • Sir Walter Scott
... descendant of Bharata! she in order to compass the object of the king, prepared a floating hermitage, both because the king had ordered so, and also because it exactly accorded with her plan. And the floating hermitage, containing artificial trees adorned with various flowers and fruits, and surrounded by diverse shrubs and creeping plants and capable ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... basket in which the little prince was exposed was carried by the stream toward the garden of the palace. By chance the intendant of the emperor's gardens, one of the principal and most considerable officers of the kingdom, was walking by the side of this canal, and perceiving a basket floating called to a gardener, who was not far off, to bring it to shore that he might see what it contained. The gardener, with a rake which he had in his hand, drew the basket to the side of the canal, took it up, ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments • Anonymous
... first rays flashed directly into their cave, sparkling and glimmering upon the ice crystals and tingeing the whole grotto with a rich warm light. Never was a fairy's palace more lovely than this floating refuge which Nature had ...
— The Refugees • Arthur Conan Doyle
... computed to be about six thousand years ago, must be still in a similar anxious state, and progressively more anxious, because all expectation arising from desire produces anxiety, and being continued from time to time increases it; consequently, that they must still be either floating about in the universe, or be kept shut up in confinement, and thereby in extreme misery; and that must be the case with Adam and his wife, with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and with all who have lived ...
— The Delights of Wisdom Pertaining to Conjugial Love • Emanuel Swedenborg
... habit of tragical adventures had worn off almost all my terror for the dead, I took him by the waist as if he had been a sack of bran, and, with one good heave, tumbled him overboard. He went in with a sounding plunge; the red cap came off, and remained floating on the surface; and as soon as the splash subsided, I could see him and Israel lying side by side, both wavering with the tremulous movement of the water. O'Brien, though still quite a young man, was very bald. There ...
— Treasure Island • Robert Louis Stevenson
... news that is floating about," Farwell had comforted her. "Sleep, Priscilla. You are quite safe." Then ...
— The Place Beyond the Winds • Harriet T. Comstock
... within the Settlement was bush: and beyond the bush, stretching away and away on every side of it, those hundreds of thousands of square miles that constitute the Never-Never—miles sending out and absorbing again from day to day the floating population of the Katherine. ...
— We of the Never-Never • Jeanie "Mrs. Aeneas" Gunn
... a marvel," he would remark after every quotation. "Now, how in the world did you ever manage to think that up? I suppose just this minute, as you sit there looking so sweet in your white dress, just such things are floating ...
— The Butterfly House • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... October the golden month. Everything was quiet and still, and at night and in the morning the sun had a yellow, misty look. The trees in the orchard were loaded with fruit, and some of the leaves were floating down, making a ...
— Beautiful Joe - An Autobiography of a Dog • by Marshall Saunders
... had gone so smoothly, so exquisitely, that it was more like a dream than like actual life when she looked back on it. She saw herself in the floating lace veil of her grandmother, holding white roses in her hand, and she saw George's face—the face of her dreams come true—looking at her out of a starry mist, while in the shining wilderness that surrounded them she heard an organ playing softly "The Voice ...
— Life and Gabriella - The Story of a Woman's Courage • Ellen Glasgow
... more was the short distance we could see, and the fact that the night was coming on, and that we could not make a shift of a quarter of a league without finding a bank or some ice, and a great deal of floating ice, the smallest piece of which would have been sufficient to cause the loss of any vessel whatever. Now, while we were still sailing along amid the ice, there arose so strong a wind that in a short time the fog broke away, affording us a view, and suddenly giving us a clear ...
— Voyages of Samuel de Champlain V3 • Samuel de Champlain
... above the clouds, which, like multitudes of dark migratory birds, or flocks of white swans, were floating under it; and every leaf of the tree that had eyes could see. The stars became visible during the day, and looked so large and bright: each of them shone like a pair of mild, clear eyes. They might have recalled to memory dear, well-known eyes—the eyes of children—the ...
— The Sand-Hills of Jutland • Hans Christian Andersen
... which they call Snowdon, or mountains of snow; the latter of which are said to be of so great an extent, that if all the herds in Wales were collected together, they would supply them with pasture for a considerable time. Upon them are two lakes, one of which has a floating island; and the other contains fish having only one eye, as we have related in ...
— The Description of Wales • Geraldus Cambrensis
... the tumult, the great social trouble of which he was so unaccountably the axis. A text, irrelevant enough and yet curiously insistent, came floating up out of the darkness of his memory. This also a ...
— When the Sleeper Wakes • Herbert George Wells
... It had been a thick, foggy morning, but had warmed and brightened into one of the balmiest and sunniest of noons. As we entered the cathedral, the long bars of sunshine were falling from its upper windows through the great interior atmosphere, and were made visible by the dust, or mist, floating about in it. It is a grand edifice, and I liked it quite as much as on my first view of it, although a sense of coldness and nakedness is felt when we compare it with Gothic churches. It is more an external work than the Gothic churches ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... the Queen Charlotte were loudly echoed by those of the Leander, and the contents of her starboard broadside as quickly followed, carrying destruction into the groups of row-boats; as the smoke opened, the fragments of boats were seen floating, their crews swimming and scrambling, as many as escaped the shot, to the shore; another broadside annihilated them. The enemy was not slack in returning this warm salute, for almost before the shot escaped from our ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 13, - Issue 377, June 27, 1829 • Various
... indictments made against Claverhouse. Of the traditions that gathered in the following century about his name I have taken no notice, nor of the vague charges brought by writers of still later date on no better authority than those traditions.[66] It was inevitable that as time wore on these floating legends would be gathered to one common head, and that the most important figure would be selected to bear the sins of all. It is of course possible that many and more damning instances might be added to the foregoing list, of which ...
— Claverhouse • Mowbray Morris
... particularly the number of fine ships you are always sure of seeing by the way, there is nothing to equal it in all the rivers of the world. The yards of Deptford and of Woolwich are noble sights, and give us a just idea of the great perfection to which we are arrived in building those floating castles, and the figure which we may always make in Europe among the other maritime powers. That of Woolwich, at least, very strongly imprinted this idea on my mind; for there was now on the stocks there the Royal Anne, supposed to be ...
— Journal of A Voyage to Lisbon • Henry Fielding
... folly and madness to forsake this rock that is still above the floods; "he is mightier than the noise of many waters." It may reprove our unbelief,—we change our faith according to his dispensation, our faith ebbs and flows as the tide of his providence, and thus we are as sticks floating in the water, tossed up and down. But would ye be established as mount Sion? Would ye be unmoveable in the midst of great waters, that they shall not come near unto you? Then, by all means get upon this rock, that abides unmoved in the midst of the waves. Though they should ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... softened in recalling the tremor of her lip as she turned away—the indignant quiver of her eyelashes. Again came the thought: "I know in spite of everything I might have loved her, and yet I know still better that it is not love, but hate I now feel." Her fragrance, floating in the sunshine, filled his nostrils, and involuntarily he glanced over his shoulder, half expecting to find a dropped handkerchief in the road. None was there—only a scattered swarm of butterflies drifting like yellow ...
— The Deliverance; A Romance of the Virginia Tobacco Fields • Ellen Glasgow
... valleys, the sun lies hot, but here sings a breeze which freshens the forehead and fills the heart with gladness. My foot upon the short, soft turf has an unwearied lightness; I feel capable of walking on and on, even to that farthest horizon where the white cloud casts its floating shadow. Below me, but far off, is the summer sea, still, silent, its ever-changing blue and green dimmed at the long limit with luminous noontide mist. Inland spreads the undulant vastness of the sheep-spotted downs, beyond them the tillage ...
— The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft • George Gissing
... picturesque crews; men with the great three-cornered hat of the Breton salt-worker, and women whose great cushioned caps with butterfly wings were as white and glittering as the salt. Then there were coasting vessels like floating drays, their decks piled with sacks of flour and casks; tugs dragging interminable lines of barges, or perhaps some three-master of Nantes arriving from the other side of the world, returning to ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... decided he'd better clean the place up. There were several corpses floating around, and they were beginning to be noticeable. He had to tow them, one by one, to the rear starboard air lock and seal them between the inner and outer doors. He couldn't dump them, since the outer door was partially ...
— The Measure of a Man • Randall Garrett
... bench which was but dimly discernible in the dark hall, lighted only by a thin wick floating in a small pan of oil, and bid Ned seat himself, while he drew a mugful of ale from the barrel, which was supposed to keep up the porter's strength and spirits during the night-watch, and put it to ...
— Penshurst Castle - In the Days of Sir Philip Sidney • Emma Marshall
... from one to another, were instantly checked; and nothing now was felt but compassion for the terrible ordeal that they knew was before her mother. She rushed up to where her mother had sat down, her eyes flashing, and her long brown hair floating about her white shoulders, which were ...
— The Evil Eye; Or, The Black Spector - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... FOREVER: have not all nations conceived their God as Omnipresent and Eternal; as existing in a universal HERE, an everlasting NOW? Think well, thou too wilt find that Space is but a mode of our human Sense, so likewise Time; there is no Space and no Time: WE are—we know not what;—light-sparkles floating ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... cannot procure fish, they will land and destroy calves and young foals, dragging them to the water's edge to eat them. When once they have tasted human flesh, it is asserted that they will take great pains to obtain it, upsetting canoes, and seizing people asleep near the banks, or floating on their balsas. I have seen an Indian attack and kill an alligator in the water with a sharp knife. The Indian in one hand took a a fowl, and in the other his knife. He swam till it got opposite the alligator, when it made a spring at the fowl. On this he ...
— Manco, the Peruvian Chief - An Englishman's Adventures in the Country of the Incas • W.H.G. Kingston
... Lit up what seems so gloomy now. These grim oak walls even then were grim; That old carved chair was then antique; But what around looked dusk and dim Served as a foil to her fresh cheek; Her neck and arms, of hue so fair, Eyes of unclouded, smiling light; Her soft, and curled, and floating hair, Gems and ...
— Poems • (AKA Charlotte, Emily and Anne Bronte) Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell
... that, sir," agreed Hellyer. "Why, the tide covered her after-deck at Six Bells; and the cushions of the settees and a lot o' dunnage were floating about in the saloon below and ...
— Bob Strong's Holidays - Adrift in the Channel • John Conroy Hutcheson
... outcome of agony of mind, but none expressing it. Behind lay the ship, a picture not without its lighter side. The long-boat and the quarter-boat, lowered with a rush and seaborne by the mercy of Providence, were floating by the ...
— The Blue Lagoon - A Romance • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... waltz came floating down to them. She half closed her eyes. Her head moved slowly with ...
— The Tempting of Tavernake • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... leaves float on water.—Loosely floating on slow streams of the northern states, in water not the purest, may often be found the common bladderwort, Utricularia vulgaris, producing in summer a few yellow flowers on each stem, rising from six to twelve inches above the water. The lax, leafy branches in the water are from six ...
— Seed Dispersal • William J. Beal
... second boat, named the "Farnum," had just been launched and put in commission, ready at an hour's notice to take the sea in search of floating enemies of the ...
— The Submarine Boys and the Middies • Victor G. Durham
... they were nearly through the defile. Lanterns were placed in the bow of the boat and, until long after Fergus was asleep, the men continued to work at their poles. When he woke up in the morning the boat was floating down a quiet river, with the plains of Saxony on either side, and ...
— With Frederick the Great - A Story of the Seven Years' War • G. A. Henty
... the lodge in the apple orchard, just beyond Caroline's glorious garden, and report went that at almost any hour the sound of the tenor's voice and of Caroline's crashing accompaniment could be heard floating through the open windows, out among the snowy apple boughs. The Sound, steel-blue and dotted with white sails, was splendidly seen from the windows of the lodge. The garden to the left and the orchard to the right had never been so riotous with spring, and had burst into impassioned bloom, ...
— The Troll Garden and Selected Stories • Willa Cather
... Sometimes we go to the Viga at six in the morning, to see the Indians bringing in their flowers and vegetables by the canal. The profusion of sweet-peas, double poppies, bluebottles, stock gillyflower, and roses, I never saw equalled. Each Indian woman in her canoe looks as if seated in a floating flower-garden. The same love of flowers distinguishes them now as in the time of Cortes; the same which Humboldt remarked centuries afterwards. In the evening these Indian women, in their canoes, are constantly crowned with garlands of roses or poppies. Those who sit in the market, selling their ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca
... crowd against the banks of the river along this street, and form a kind of floating suburb, overflowing with a strange medley of Annamites, Hindoos, and Chinamen. At a little distance from the river, there appear a few massive buildings with roofs of red tiles, pleasing to the eye, and here ...
— The Clique of Gold • Emile Gaboriau
... against the theory of suicide, despite the medical evidence, despite the revolver in the dead man's hand, despite the detective's assurance. And floating about in his brain, like the gossamer on the glistening bushes in the gardens, were broken threads of vague suspicions, of half-formed theories, leading from his hasty observations ...
— The Yellow Streak • Williams, Valentine
... and palatable food. For the turtle being large, they generally weighing about 200 pounds weight each, those we took with us lasted us near a month, and by that time we met with a fresh recruit on the coast of Mexico, where we often saw them in the heat of the day floating in great numbers on the surface of the water fast asleep. When we discovered them, we usually sent out our boat with a man in the bow, who was a dexterous diver, and when the boat came within a few yards of the turtle, the diver plunged into the water, ...
— Anson's Voyage Round the World - The Text Reduced • Richard Walter
... the Advance sank from sight, the last glimpse Tom had of Berg and his men being a sight of them standing on the deck of their floating boat, gazing in the direction of their successful rival. The Wonder was left behind, while Tom and his friends were soon once more speeding ...
— Tom Swift and his Submarine Boat - or, Under the Ocean for Sunken Treasure • Victor Appleton
... information I can offer," answered I, "will be cheerfully given. My name is John Convert, late seaman aboard the schooner Brawl, bound from Sydney to London. Last night I was thrown overboard by my shipmates and after floating about the deep for several hours I landed upon this pile of ruins surrounded by the sea. In making an investigation of the exterior I lost my foothold, fell into a crevice and breaking through a thin crust I landed in the outer passageway which finally led me into this room. I must ...
— Born Again • Alfred Lawson
... kept it out of the papers," said the Admiral. "Said it was a derelict, and the wild messages floating about were from an inexperienced man, frightened and irresponsible. Bad advertising—very—for ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, June, 1930 • Various
... stand before the cunning of man—God has taught man the means of killing even it, and turning it to his own use. The whalebone which we use, the oil which we burn in lamps, comes from the bodies of those enormous creatures which wander in the far seas like floating houses, ten ...
— True Words for Brave Men • Charles Kingsley
... over his head, made a grab at a seemingly floating egg and, capturing it, laid it on the table. In like manner he proceeded until he ...
— Joe Strong on the Trapeze - or The Daring Feats of a Young Circus Performer • Vance Barnum
... open. When at last it swings wide on the dark tunnel what comes through is a storage rack, empty, floating ...
— The Lost Kafoozalum • Pauline Ashwell
... employees were all landed on the point, near York Factory, and were sheltered meantime in tents, and as they stood on the shore they saw on October 5th, the ships that had brought them safely across the stormy sea pass through a considerable amount of floating ice on ...
— The Romantic Settlement of Lord Selkirk's Colonists - The Pioneers of Manitoba • George Bryce
... four years in this manner, between music, magestry, projects, and journeys, floating incessantly from one object to another, and wishing to fix though I knew not on what, but insensibly inclining towards study. I was acquainted with men of letters, I had heard them speak of literature, and ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... a different brown from those that are dry, and the upper surface of the green growing leaf is different from the under surface. The yellow butterfly, if you meet one in October, has so toned down his spring yellow that you might fancy him a pale green leaf floating along the road. There is a shining, quivering, gleaming; there is a changing, fluttering, shifting; there is a mixing, weaving—varnished wings, translucent wings, wings with dots and veins, all playing over the purple heath; a very tangle of many-toned lights and hues. Then ...
— Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies
... colored girl with her wool "done" in innumerable pigtails, like tiny horns, and sticking out all over her brown head in every direction, came in with a tray on which was a plate piled high with fancy cakes and two tall glasses of yellow-gold beaten egg and milk with a dust of nutmeg floating upon the surface of ...
— Ruth Fielding of the Red Mill • Alice B. Emerson
... and its regular English colony of residents, had a floating population that constantly changed. And every day new faces were to be found drinking tea with Mr. Beresford Duff—and all these faces were well known in society at home, you may be sure; and Barty made capital caricatures of them all, which were treasured up and carried back to England; ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... ambitious wooden channel on the north shore, supported on high stilts of timber, dripped all the way from a hill stream to the fourth story of Petit Cap mill. The miller had watched it escape burning thatches, yet something had happened at the dam. Shreds of moss, half floating and half moored, reminded him to close the reservoir, and he had just moved the chains when La Vigne startled him by speaking ...
— The Chase Of Saint-Castin And Other Stories Of The French In The New World • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... my fingers at the fire my eyes were arrested by a beautiful portrait hanging above the mantelpiece. It represented a lovely girl in the prime of youth and beauty, and attired in floating white ...
— My Brilliant Career • Miles Franklin
... baskets, and the other rubbish, reminded him that he had not a room of his own, that he had no refuge in which he could get away from his mother, from her visitors, and from the voices that were floating up from the "general room." The satchel and the books lying about in the corners reminded him of the examination he had missed. . . . For some reason there came into his mind, quite inappropriately, Mentone, ...
— The Lady with the Dog and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... effect of these animated sounds floating over the waters, as the common sailors united their rough voices to take up the rich tones of Boldheart, may be more easily ...
— Holiday Romance • Charles Dickens
... rushing in over the bar: not a leaf remained on the bare ground, the naked trees tossed their arms wildly to and fro, and the pines were coated with ice. A short distance to the west a boy pointed out some timbers floating in the surf. "Them's the schooner that come ashore last night," he explained. "This here beach is a bad place in a storm. The crew's all drownded: guess the bodies will be coming ashore in a few days." We turned away with a shudder. The story of the silver-haired ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 12, No. 32, November, 1873 • Various
... am assured, can pass up the Gandaki, or Narayani, all the way to Rerighat, except at a narrow rapid between two rocks at a place called Gongkur, a little above Dewghat. There they must be unloaded and dragged up empty. Timber in floating down this passage is apt to fall across the channel, and to stick between the rocks; but this may be obviated by tying a rope to one end of the logs so as to allow them to float end on. Canoes can ascend to Dewghat with little difficulty. ...
— An Account of The Kingdom of Nepal • Fancis Buchanan Hamilton
... these warlike castles, on the banks of solitary lakes, and far in the midst of woods. The Indian, paddling his birch-canoe on Lake Champlain, looked up at the high ramparts of Ticonderoga, stone piled on stone, bristling with cannon, and the white flag of France floating above. There were similar fortifications on Lake Ontario, and near the great Falls of Niagara, and at the sources of the Ohio River. And all around these forts and castles lay the eternal forest; and the roll of the drum died ...
— True Stories from History and Biography • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... who was a noted seal hunter and, therefore, able to guide us among the ice-floes of the mysterious Glacier Bay of which we had heard. Vancouver's chart gave us no intimation of any inlet whatever; but the natives told of vast masses of floating ice, of a constant noise of thunder when they crashed from the glaciers into the sea; and also of fearsome bays and passages full of evil spirits which made them ...
— Alaska Days with John Muir • Samual Hall Young
... delayed the homeward journey of Captain Horn and his party, for Cheditafa and Mok were needed as witnesses, but did not delay it long. It was early in August, when the danger from floating icebergs had almost passed, and when an ocean journey is generally most pleasant, that nine happy people sailed from Havre for New York. Captain Horn and Edna had not yet fully planned their future life, but they knew that they had enough money to allow them to select any sphere ...
— The Adventures of Captain Horn • Frank Richard Stockton
... finally matured when he reached Switzerland and settled the family at the Hotel Beau Rivage, Ouchy, Lausanne, facing Lake Leman. He decided to make a floating trip down the Rhone, and he engaged Joseph Very, a courier that had served him on a former European trip, to accompany him. The courier went over to Bourget and bought for five dollars a flat-bottomed boat and engaged ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... umbrella. Then there was a rainbow, or a large segment of one, so exceedingly brilliant and of such long endurance that I almost fancied it was stained into the sky, and would continue there permanently. And there were clouds floating all about,— great clouds and small, of all glorious and lovely hues (save that imperial crimson which was revealed to our united gaze),—so glorious indeed, and so lovely, that I had a fantasy of heaven's being broken into fleecy fragments ...
— Passages From The American Notebooks, Volume 1 • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... battle with the world and poverty alone; but the eyes had their old plaintive trick; the dead gold of the hair, the rings and curls of it against the white temples, were still as beautiful as they had ever been; and the light form moved beside him with the same quick floating gait. ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... of floating ice encumbered the Seine; the basins in the Tuileries garden, the kennels, the public fountains were frozen. The North wind swept clouds of hoar frost before it in the streets. A white steam breathed from the horses' noses, and the city folk would glance in passing at the thermometer ...
— The Gods are Athirst • Anatole France
... did not apply in this strange case. There was no jealousy floating on the surface on the part of the husband and wife. Maud ignored Manfred's insane attitude towards Flossy because she had the same love-blind sickness and could see no one but Fred. Far from being jealous, Manfred ...
— Skookum Chuck Fables - Bits of History, Through the Microscope • Skookum Chuck (pseud for R.D. Cumming)
... we passed the typhoon shelter on the bay with its hundreds of floating homes. Next we noted the numerous curved graves (evil spirits, we were told, would not attack curved lines) and that all the graves faced the rice fields and the water for good luck. It seems that once a year, the relatives come with a big feast, and after waiting two hours for the spirits to ...
— The Log of the Empire State • Geneve L.A. Shaffer
... assembled, and there followed a hasty gabbling, to freshen the words in young and uncertain memories. Then a small vessel was dipped under floating toast, that covered the cider in the great pitchers, and the ceremony of christening the orchard began. Only the largest and most famous apple-bearers were thus saluted, for neither cider nor gunpowder ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts
... which are floating from one coast to another in the Mediterranean, and which sometimes strike terrour into the harmless inhabitants of an open coast, or threaten, but only threaten, destruction to an unfortified town, I am very far from considering as armaments fitted ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 11. - Parlimentary Debates II. • Samuel Johnson
... Catholic Majesty. So were some others not Indians; and the Spanish governors of Louisiana, scheming with them for the acquisition of Kentucky and the regions intervening, had allowed an interprovincial commerce to spring up. Flatboats and barges came floating down the Mississippi past the plantation home where little Suzanne and Francoise were growing up to womanhood. Many of the immigrants who now came to Louisiana were the royalist noblesse flying from the horrors of the French ...
— Strange True Stories of Louisiana • George Washington Cable
... before plunging down again into the bowels of the world. The one sky-flung leap it made as its weight burst down a mountain wall was enough to blot out Khinjan forever, and what had been a dry mile-wide moat was a shallow lake with death's rack and rubbish floating on the surface. ...
— King—of the Khyber Rifles • Talbot Mundy
... herself in?—and she feebly fingered at the gate. But it was locked and chained; and at the idea of her warm, soft body touching the icy water; at the picture of herself lying drowned, with dank hair, or, like the Christian Martyr, floating away on the surface; at the thought of their grief, of HIM wringing his hands over her corpse, she was so moved that she wept aloud again, and almost ran to ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... Hessians, 1000 strong, was posted on the bank of the Delaware at Trenton, and another one lower down, at Burlington. Washington decided to attack both these outposts, and arranged his troops accordingly, but when Christmas night arrived, the river was filled with great blocks of floating ice, and the only division which succeeded in crossing was the one that Washington led in person. It was less than 2500 in number, but the moment had come when the boldest course was the safest. By daybreak Washington had surprised the Hessians at Trenton ...
— The War of Independence • John Fiske
... said softly and groaned, whether from joy or pain it was impossible to tell. "She told me she wanted to go where there were floating white flowers. Those must be the flowers you speak of. Fly away, ...
— The Adventures of Maya the Bee • Waldemar Bonsels
... tossed to and fro grew calm; then they seemed to divide, and he felt himself going down, down into infinite depths. The sullen roar died away; the darkness was flooded with golden light, and through its ethereal waves he was still floating downward more gently than ever a roseleaf floated to earth on the evening's breath. Through the waves of golden light there came to him a faint, distant murmur of ...
— At the Time Appointed • A. Maynard Barbour
... disgrace and ruin; before thee, the unpenetrated veil of Night. Brother, these wild water-mountains, bounding from their deep basin—ten miles deep, I am told—are not entirely there on thy behalf! Meseems they have other work than floating thee forward; and the huge winds that sweep from Ursa Major to the Tropics and Equator, dancing their giant waltz through the kingdoms of Chaos and Immensity, they care little about filling rightly or filling wrongly the small shoulder-of-mutton sails in this cockle-skiff of thine. Thou ...
— Christopher Columbus and His Monument Columbia • Various
... provisions we had brought with us. For the benefit of travellers, I should say they will find the water by opening the door of a kind of outhouse; this covers the water and prevents the cows from dirtying it. There will be a wooden bowl floating on the top. The water outside is not drinkable, but that ...
— Alps and Sanctuaries of Piedmont and the Canton Ticino • Samuel Butler
... changed some in looks in the year or more that had passed since I saw him floating away in that balloon. And not fur the better. He told me how he had blowed clean acrost Lake Erie in that there balloon. And then when he got over land agin and went to pull the cord that lets the parachute loose it wouldn't work at first. He jest natcherally drifted on into the midst of nowhere, ...
— Danny's Own Story • Don Marquis
... history and her triumphs and reverses on land and sea by heart. Though limited by no narrow love of country, he felt from sentiment and imagination that attachment to every symbol of patriotism and national power which makes the sailor suffer death with joy when he sees his country's flag floating in the smoke of victory. "The radiant ensign of the Republic" was to him the living embodiment of her honor and her power. He had for it the pride and passion of the boy, with the prophetic hopes of the patriot. Men of genius are ever revivifying the commonplace ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 6, No. 33, July, 1860 • Various
... Shockoe Hill was all alight, men and women entering between white pillars, from the long windows music floating. Beyond the magnolias and the garden the ground dropped suddenly. Far and wide, a vast horizon, there showed the eastern sky, and far and wide, below the summer stars, there flared along it a reddish light—the camp-fires of two armies, the ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston
... days the Camoens lay off Akureyri gave us no time for prolonged excursions, but was more than sufficient to lionise the little town, so we were not sorry when the steamer's whistle summoned us to return to our floating home. ...
— A Girl's Ride in Iceland • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie
... that they were steadily drifting out to sea. He believed, from the change in the apparent direction of the fog-siren, that they were moving down the coast toward Sandy Hook. But they were evidently floating farther out to sea, for the sounds of the siren were fainter ...
— Frank Merriwell's Reward • Burt L. Standish
... but it always put Shelley in spirits, and his best work was done beneath the sultry blue of Italian skies, floating in a boat on the Serchio or the Arno, baking in a glazed cage on the roof of a Tuscan villa, or lying among the ruins of the Coliseum or in the pine-woods near Pisa. Their Italian wanderings are too intricate to be traced ...
— Shelley • Sydney Waterlow
... also, his own belief that it was merely a feint to draw off Colonel Donop, and that preparatory to an attack on Trenton. The officer treated the information lightly, and pointing to the mass of ice floating down the river asked whether it would be possible for ...
— True to the Old Flag - A Tale of the American War of Independence • G. A. Henty
... direction of Bordeaux. This bold movement was prevented by Blaise de Montluc, who, adopting the suggestion of another, and appropriating the credit due to the sagacity of this nameless genius, detached one of the numerous floating windmills that were moored in the Garonne, and having loaded it with stones, sent it down with the current against Coligny's bridge. Not only were the chains that bound the structure broken, but the very boats on which it rested were carried away as far as to Bordeaux itself. ...
— History of the Rise of the Huguenots - Volume 2 • Henry Baird
... of retarding, aid combustion, as is the case in fierce conflagrations. The gaseous products of combustion are conveyed away by flues; and means being adopted to consume anything like smoke, all that is observed from the outside is occasionally a quivering transparent ether floating away from the high steeple to ...
— The Recreations of A Country Parson • A. K. H. Boyd
... writers write of themselves; not, as vain people talk, of their triumphs, and grievances and diseases, but of what they have succeeded in grasping as their own out of all the floating wisdom of the world. In {200} a passage like this one almost hears Johnson reflecting aloud as he walks back in his old age to his lonely rooms after an evening at "The Club" or the Mitre. It is the graver side of ...
— Dr. Johnson and His Circle • John Bailey
... into the bowels of the attendant that he fell upon his back, heels, uppermost, while at the same moment the minstrel, in his snow-white garments, was precipitated head fore-most into the muddy brook, and, for the moment disappearing, the violin alone could be seen floating on the surface. A second later, a wretched-looking object, covered with slime and filth, emerged from the slongh; this was Paganini the second! who, after securing his fiddle, that had stranded on a mud-bank, scrambled up the steel slope, amid the roars of laughter of my people and of ourselves, ...
— In the Heart of Africa • Samuel White Baker
... upon the non-return-valve principle, is normally kept open by the current from the Dal; but if the Jhelum, rising in flood, threatens to pour back into the lake and swamp the low ground and floating gardens, it closes automatically, and so remains sealed until the outward ...
— A Holiday in the Happy Valley with Pen and Pencil • T. R. Swinburne
... Soon the noise of the waterfall behind Casa Felice died away, the spectral facade faded and only the plash of the oars and the tinkle of fishermen's bells above the nets, floating here and there in the lake, were audible. The distant lights of mountain villages gleamed along the shores, and the lights of the stars gleamed ...
— The Woman With The Fan • Robert Hichens
... to a consciousness of pain and illness, unable at once to realize where I was, or feel any true sense of personality. I seemed to be floating through the air, aware dimly of suffering, but helplessly in the grasp of some power beyond all struggling against. Then slowly I comprehended that I rested in a boat, tossed about by a fairly heavy sea; ...
— Wolves of the Sea • Randall Parrish
... expected there from their three months' excursion upon the Nile. Fortunately, we found their dalbeah anchored in the stream, and we drove to it without delay. Sure enough, as we reached the bank, there lay the Nubia, that little gem, with the Stars and Stripes floating above her. We were rowed on board only to find that our friends were in the city. However, we made ourselves at home in the charming saloon, and awaited their return. Unfortunately, some sailor on shore had told them of ...
— Round the World • Andrew Carnegie
... characteristics of the age, whatever they were, were independent in the main of anything the Whig bishop did or wrote. Still, he was one of those representative men who give form and substance to a great deal of floating thought. He caught the ear of the public, and engrossed an attention which was certainly very remarkable. In this character as a leader of religious thought he was deficient in some very essential points. He was too much of a controversialist, ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... star, which the Roman poet called Noctifer, began to bicker and brighten in the serene sky, and the last vestige of the sun's afterglow had now faded from the west. It was already as dark as a summer midnight. Small and continuous sounds came floating up from the city beyond. Immediately below he heard the occasional voices of students passing on the stone walk, and from the meadows on the west came the melancholy hoot of ...
— The Mayor of Warwick • Herbert M. Hopkins
... next training day, when the able men of Salem were drawn up in their breastplates and headpieces, with the Red-Cross flag floating over them, and the rest of the townspeople, with here and there an Indian among them, looking on: Endicott, in his armor, with his sword upon his thigh, spoke in passionate terms to the assembly of the matter which weighed upon his heart. And then, as a symbol of the ...
— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne
... white flag; they flocked down to the stones, no longer at all in fear of double-dealing, and crowded to get at the salt; the rocks where it was strewn were covered with more sheep than Ellen would have thought it possible could stand upon them. They were like pieces of floating ice, heaped up with snow, or queen-cakes with an immoderately thick frosting. It was one scene of pushing and crowding those which had not had their share of the feast forcing themselves up to get at it, and shoving others off in consequence. Ellen was wonderfully pleased. It was a ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Elizabeth Wetherell
... offered for sale, the elegant furniture, and all the most valuable of the personal property. Times were hard, and sales were slow; but there would be sufficient realized, it was thought, to pay the floating indebtedness. Hope Terrace and the mills would probably go for the mortgages. There was a small life-insurance settled upon Mrs. Lawrence, and the children would ...
— Hope Mills - or Between Friend and Sweetheart • Amanda M. Douglas
... In the excitement of the occasion every one had forgotten sharks. What was to be done? The raft was utterly destroyed. Only a few of the logs which had formed it lay on the reef; the rest were floating on the lagoon at various distances, none ...
— Philosopher Jack • R.M. Ballantyne
... please papa; or would she have lovely auburn waves done on a frame, with a curl draped over her forehead? Would her complexion be just as nice, comfortable, motherly sort of complexion, of no particular colour; or would it be pink and white like rose-leaves floating in cream? Would she have the kind of figure to fit the corsets you can pick up at any shop, ready made for fifty-nine and a half cents, and the dresses Miss Pettingill makes for ten dollars, with ...
— My Friend the Chauffeur • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... quiet and secure. He returned to his study, and was just settling down for a quiet read, when the sound of footsteps smote on his ear. He opened the door, and started back at the sight of a white figure which came floating towards him, with flowing ...
— Sisters Three • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... runs, Silent and sullen, the floating fort; Then comes a puff of smoke from her guns, And leaps the terrible death, With fiery breath, From each ...
— Poems of American Patriotism • Brander Matthews (Editor)
... sees, feels, or in any way takes cog- nizance of, must be caught through mind; inasmuch as perception, sensation, and consciousness belong to mind and not to matter. Floating with the popular current of mortal thought without questioning the re- [25] liability of its conclusions, we do what others do, believe what others believe, and say what others say. Common consent is contagious, ...
— Miscellaneous Writings, 1883-1896 • Mary Baker Eddy
... the terrace into the gardens. Here they stood awhile in the sweet freshness of the night, which was very grateful after the heated, perfume-laden air of the banquet; then began to wander up and down among the scented trees and flowers. The moon, floating in a cloudless sky, was almost at its full, and by her light they saw a wondrous scene. Under many of the trees and in tents set about here and there, rugs were spread, and to them came men who had drunk of the wine of the feast, and cast ...
— The Brethren • H. Rider Haggard
... heavily wooded islands, that make of its vast expanse a maze of channels, rivers and waterways. Calm, without a ripple, lay the glassy, sunlit surface, each island, rock and tree meeting its reflected image at the water line, the sky above flecked with floating clouds, making with the mirrored sky ...
— The Major • Ralph Connor
... and the Highlanders of the forty-second, with their major, Duncan Campbell of Inverawe, silent and gloomy amid the general cheer, for his soul was dark with foreshadowings of death.[615] With this central column came what are described as two floating castles, which were no doubt batteries to cover the landing of the troops. On the right hand and the left were the provincials, uniformed in blue, regiment after regiment, from Massachusetts, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, and Rhode Island. ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman
... "Nancy" were launched and manned, and were pulled away toward floating objects that had ...
— The Dock Rats of New York • "Old Sleuth"
... that this whole country abounded in signs of petroleum. It was found floating on springs. The company possessed rights of royalty on thousands of acres on Elk River, which was as yet in the debatable land, harassed by rebels. These claims, however, were "run out," and needed to be renewed by signatures from the residents. They were in the hands of David Goshorn, ...
— Memoirs • Charles Godfrey Leland
... as our enemy's, is encircled by a wide ring of floating cosmic debris," the alien said. "In both instances, the rings are remnants of what once may have been satellites. In the ring which encircles us, we have successfully secreted refrigerated, lead-sheathed stores of male ...
— The Women-Stealers of Thrayx • Fox B. Holden
... constantly smoking their pipes up and down the Thames, offer much the most agreeable mode of getting to London. At least, it might be exceedingly agreeable, except for the myriad floating particles of soot from the stove-pipe, and the heavy heat of midsummer sunshine on the unsheltered deck, or the chill, misty air draught of a cloudy day, and the spiteful little showers of rain that may spatter down upon you at any moment, whatever the promise of the sky; besides ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... opposing words and sympathies in a poet; but here we find them evoked in a restricted locale- an English county-where the rich, cool tranquil landscape gives a solid texture to the human show. What, I think, impresses one, thrills, like ecstatic, half-smothered strains of music, floating from unperceived instruments, in Mr. Housman's poems, is the encounter his spirit constantly endures with life. It is, this encounter, what you feel in the Greeks, and as in the Greeks, it is a spiritual waging of miraculous forces. There is, too, in Mr. Housman's poems, the singularly Grecian Quality ...
— A Shropshire Lad • A. E. Housman
... 'The floating clouds their state shall lend To her; for her the willow bend; Nor shall she fail to see Even in the motions of the storm Grace that shall mould the ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... about four little speckled eggs, warmed by the breast of its mate—and singing and swinging, and the music in in happy waves rippling out of the tiny throat, and the flowers blossoming, the air filled with perfume, and the great white clouds floating in the sky, and the little boy would lean up against the tree and think about Hell and the worm that never dies. Oh! the idea there can be any day too good for a child ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll, Volume I • Robert Green Ingersoll
... human heads could be seen peering above a few logs of drift-wood that had lodged on these naked rocks, and which had probably suggested the idea of the practicability of the hazardous undertaking. At the next moment, a fifth form was seen floating over the green edge of the fall, a little from the line of the island. The savage struggled powerfully to gain the point of safety, and, favored by the glancing water, he was already stretching forth ...
— The Last of the Mohicans • James Fenimore Cooper
... And if the rose-leaves were all smooth, a man would crumple one on purpose, in order to have something to grumble about. Hark, Rorie!" cried Vixen, with a sudden change of tone, as the first silvery chime of Ringwood bells came floating over the woodland distance—the low moon-lit hills; "don't be cross. The old year is dying. Remember the dear days that are gone, when you and I used to think a new year a thing to be glad about. And now, what can the new years bring us half so good ...
— Vixen, Volume II. • M. E. Braddon
... the long-ago vanished thoughts or emotions restored to us, in which we found delight or disturbance; but of themselves do they seem to arise, not undesired indeed, but unbidden, like sea-birds that come unexpectedly floating up into some inland vale, because, unknown to us who wonder at them, the tide is flowing and the breezes blow from the main. Bright as the living image stands now before us the ghost—for what else is it than the ghost—of Mary Morrison, just as she stood before us on one particular ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... for the money, and it can't be found. It's no use to bother any more about the matter. It's gone, and that's the end of it—if he lost it at all. You have looked all over the ferry-boat, and it isn't there. If it had been floating in the lake, you couldn't help seeing it. Now, you better take your boat and row up the lake ...
— Haste and Waste • Oliver Optic
... with floating face upwards, Sir," he said. "There's no sort of use in trying to strike out, you'd only sink to the bottom like a boat with a hole in it. There—let me hold you like this; one hand'll do it. Look out for the river-weeds. Now try ...
— Austin and His Friends • Frederic H. Balfour
... That done, and every bedroom, and, indeed, the whole house, having been minutely examined by the whole body, we allotted the various household duties, as if we had been on a gipsy party, or a yachting party, or a hunting party, or were shipwrecked. I then recounted the floating rumors concerning the hooded lady, the owl, and Master B.: with others, still more filmy, which had floated about during our occupation, relative to some ridiculous old ghost of the female gender who went up and down, carrying the ghost of a round table; and also to ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... their voices and footsteps echoed too clearly in the verandahs and the scantily furnished rooms. But did he venture to grumble at these minor drawbacks, Lance would declare he was demoralised by floating loose in an Earthly Paradise and becoming a mere appendage ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver |
