"Focussed" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... through the papers on the desk, as he flashed his electric bull's-eye on them, when the panel in the wall opened slowly and Del Mar stepped into the room noiselessly. To his surprise he saw a round spot of light from an electric flashlight focussed on his desk. Some one was there! He ...
— The Romance of Elaine • Arthur B. Reeve
... the conditions of perspective and illusion which it imposed. Both these conditions were less well satisfied by drama, which directly "imitates action," than by the dramatic speech or monologue, which imitates action as focussed in a particular mind. And Browning's dramatic genius found its most natural and effective outlet in the wealth of implicit drama which he concentrated in these salient moments tense with memory and hope. The insuppressible alertness and enterprise of his ...
— Robert Browning • C. H. Herford
... suspended just over a pretty waterfall, which slipped down a smooth runway of eight or ten feet into a pool all foam and spray; a charming spot for a group-picture. It required both skill and patience to get every one posed and the camera focussed; Blue Bonnet had just completed these preliminaries, when Alec upset everything by insisting that he should be the photographer and she a member of the group. The rest supported his contention that she should be in the picture, and in ...
— Blue Bonnet's Ranch Party • C. E. Jacobs
... had through Him alone. And then imagine the struggle required to defeat this opposing power. Think of what the ordinary man has to meet and overcome to conquer the desire for Personal Aggrandizement—and then think of what the Master had to fight, with the focussed desire of the entire Race-Thought striving to express itself through Him! Truly the Sins of the World bore down upon Him with their mighty weight. And yet He knew that He had taken upon Himself this affliction by entering upon the Life of Man. And He met it ...
— Mystic Christianity • Yogi Ramacharaka
... who thought to feel for a pulse. The eager searchers from farther away had come to the place. A dozen pair of eyes or more were focussed on the man as he held his breath and felt for ...
— Bruvver Jim's Baby • Philip Verrill Mighels
... glasses being adjusted and focussed upon the portrait, Miss O'Donoghue halted abruptly with ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... the world shocks it; to be able to trace the footsteps of God's care is a necessity of its existence. Hence its pain when these evidences disappear. Now, all the contradictions and confusions of the world were focussed on Golgotha. Injustice was triumphant; innocence was scorned and crushed; everything was exactly the reverse of what it ought to have been. And all the millions of Whys which have risen from agonized souls, jealous for the honour of God but perplexed ...
— The Trial and Death of Jesus Christ - A Devotional History of our Lord's Passion • James Stalker
... the wood more in my gun: so that it was difficult to keep the hand off it, though the rabbits would not come out; and the shadowless recess grew like a furnace, for it focussed the rays of the sun. The heat on the sunny side of a thick hedge between three and four in the afternoon is almost tropical if you remain still, because the air is motionless: the only relief is to hold your hat loose; or tilt ...
— The Amateur Poacher • Richard Jefferies
... His eyes focussed vaguely upon the portrait. Clear, honest gray eyes ... lines of character and of humor ... sweetly curved lips, ready ...
— The Vortex Blaster • Edward Elmer Smith
... now focussed their attention upon him, the fourth of the line, standing beside the tree brought into the house. Each of them in his own way had wrought out a work for civilization, using the woods as an implement. In his own case, the woods around him having disappeared, the ancestral ...
— Bride of the Mistletoe • James Lane Allen
... others, secretiveness hermetically sealed fascinated her. Motives interested or disinterested, sordid or noble; desires, aspirations, hopes, perplexities,—whatever a glance, a word, an attitude, a silence, suggested to her, fixed her attention, excited her intelligence to curiosity, and focussed her interest ...
— Athalie • Robert W. Chambers
... deeply. Mr. Graham's name stirred up uncomfortable recollections. In any case, much as she had admired and liked him, she would have dreaded meeting him again; and to entertain him alone for an indefinite period, with his undivided attention focussed upon her, seemed an ordeal not only to be dreaded but truly to ...
— Elsie Marley, Honey • Joslyn Gray
... trouble. I was no longer cold and hungry. I was allowed a fair amount of outdoor exercise which, after my close confinement, proved to be a delightful shock. But, above all, I was again given an adequate supply of stationery and drawing materials, which became as tinder under the focussed rays of my artistic eagerness. My mechanical investigations were gradually set aside. Art and literature again held sway. Except when out of doors taking my allotted exercise, I remained in my room reading, writing, or drawing. This room of mine soon ...
— A Mind That Found Itself - An Autobiography • Clifford Whittingham Beers
... Then I wake up, so to speak, make an effort of attention, fix my thought on what I am reading, and easily take in its meaning. The act of will, the effort of attention, the intending of the mind on each word and line of the page, just as the eyes are focussed on each word and line, is the power here contemplated. It is the power to focus the consciousness on a given spot, and hold it there Attention is the first and indispensable step in all knowledge. Atten. tion to spiritual things is the ...
— The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali • Charles Johnston
... a book of travels are somewhat under a disadvantage in forming their opinion of a country, in that incidents are focussed for them by those of the same nature being grouped together. I do not wish it to be thought that murders and amoks are at all common occurrences in Northern Borneo, indeed they are very few and far between, and criminal acts of all kinds are ...
— British Borneo - Sketches of Brunai, Sarawak, Labuan, and North Borneo • W. H. Treacher
... the people shall sing to the President. He shall be kept reminded that we are there. He shall feel daily what America is like. America shall be focussed into melody. We shall have a literature once more and the singers, as in Greece, as in all happy lands and in all great ages, shall ...
— Crowds - A Moving-Picture of Democracy • Gerald Stanley Lee
... Lord comes back," he thought to himself; and for an instant the old misery stabbed at his heart. How difficult it was to hold the eyes focussed on that far horizon when this world lay in the foreground so compelling in its splendour and its strength! Oh, he had argued with Father Francis an hour ago that size was not the same as greatness, and that an insistent external could not exclude a ...
— Lord of the World • Robert Hugh Benson
... long L glass with which he was working and fastened it by little hooks to the direct overhead glass which Colin was using, and as he did so the boy noticed that the two glasses were so arranged that they focussed at the same point of the reef, only that one viewed it from above, the other from the side. A little device worked by a thumbscrew varied the angle ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Fisheries • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... the beams earthward. And there, in the glare, they saw a youth speeding along on a motor-cycle. In an instant Tom grabbed up the binoculars and focussed them on the rider. ...
— Tom Swift and his Great Searchlight • Victor Appleton
... the brains of the telephone men were focussed upon this problem—how to reduce the expenditure on copper. One uncanny device, which would seem to be a mere inventor's fantasy if it had not already saved the telephone companies four million dollars or more, ...
— The History of the Telephone • Herbert N. Casson
... risks everything. It requires "mighty endurance," "hard labour," "stoutness of spirit," and "a great storm, assault, and onset" to open the Gate. In a word, the key to any important spiritual experience is intention, inward pre-perception, that holds the mind intently focussed in expectation, without which the "flash" of spiritual vision is ...
— Spiritual Reformers in the 16th & 17th Centuries • Rufus M. Jones
... forgot all around me. With my fancies focussed on my lover, I leaned back in my armchair, gazing at the rising moon. My word, at that moment I was ...
— Secret Memoirs: The Story of Louise, Crown Princess • Henry W. Fischer
... themselves: men, events, societies, phenomena, in no way otherwise more valuable than the myriad other things which flit around us like the sparrows on the housetop, should be glorified, magnified, and perpetuated, set under a literary microscope and focussed in the blaze of a literary magic-lantern—not for what they are in themselves, but solely to amuse and excite the world by showing how it can be done—all this is to me so amazing, so heart-breaking, that I forbear ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... early in life to collect and arrange a vast encyclopaedia of facts, all finally focussed with supreme skill upon the great principle he so clearly perceived and so lucidly expounded. He brought to bear upon the question an amount of personal observation, of minute experiment, of world-wide book knowledge, ...
— Luck or Cunning? • Samuel Butler
... Brunswick, Nova Scotia, and the St. Lawrence, met and crossed the equally important lines of travel from the British Islands to the same points. This circumstance contributed to the importance of that place as a naval and commercial centre, and also focussed about it by far the larger part of the effort and excitement of the first privateering outburst from the United States. As Rodgers' bold sortie, and disappearance into the unknown with a strong squadron had forced concentration upon the principal British ...
— Sea Power in its Relations to the War of 1812 - Volume 1 • Alfred Thayer Mahan
... Lefever's flash-light focussed on a United States license hanging back of the bar. "Is that a mere frame-up, Philippi?" he demanded, walking ...
— Nan of Music Mountain • Frank H. Spearman
... down. The radicals believed that the Supreme Court was in the control of the wealthy; the conservatives, that their opponents sought to assail the highest tribunal in the land. The peculiar circumstances preceding the year 1896, however, focussed attention on the monetary standard rather than upon the other demands ...
— The United States Since The Civil War • Charles Ramsdell Lingley
... mind of the gazer all the horror seemed focussed in that calm statement, those commonplace letters written ...
— The Beach of Dreams • H. De Vere Stacpoole
... take exception to the last statement, and give contrary proof by referring to some hair-lifting incident which seemed to be a refutation. But most of these attacks by Cougars have failed to stand the disintegrating power of a carefully focussed searchlight. ...
— Wild Animals at Home • Ernest Thompson Seton
... to call it, and the wilful rebel, victim of his own passions; not, as in the Roman State and family, between the man who performs religious duties and the man who wilfully neglects them—between pius and impius; but between the universal law of love, focussed and concentrated in the love of Christ, and the sleep, the darkness, the death of a world ...
— The Religious Experience of the Roman People - From the Earliest Times to the Age of Augustus • W. Warde Fowler
... flinched as though I had struck him in the face. For a moment I expected a blow; his hands clinched convulsively, and he focussed ...
— The Maids of Paradise • Robert W. (Robert William) Chambers
... putting his ear to the ground. Only by the simplest rules of psychology can he edit rightly so that he may lead, and to the average editor of to-day, it is to be feared, psychology is a closed book. His mind is all too often focussed on the circulation and advertising, and all too little on the intangibles that will bring to his periodical the results essential in ...
— A Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward Bok
... batteries, arranged to shoot a positive and a negative beam in the same direction. When these beams are made intermittent at light frequencies (though they are not light waves, nor of the same order as light waves) and are brought together, or focussed, at a given spot, the space in which they cross radiates alternating ultronic current in every direction. This radiated ultralight acts like true light so long as the crossing beams vibrate at light frequencies, except in three respects: first, it is ...
— The Airlords of Han • Philip Francis Nowlan
... desperate effort to sit up and look round. He looked at her, bewildered, at the room, and then his eyes focussed on ...
— Captivity • M. Leonora Eyles
... of the tomb he had built to enshrine her, on carved marble seats such as Tuscan poets sat on, in the old days, to sing to fair women, with our gaze focussed on the long white form between us—ah, between us indeed!—his ...
— Told in a French Garden - August, 1914 • Mildred Aldrich
... save, perhaps, the driver, kept their eyes focussed on the spot mentioned by Julius until the first clump of trees shut out their view of the old stone quarry and ...
— The Chums of Scranton High on the Cinder Path • Donald Ferguson
... a barren life and a loveless old age. Perhaps to bear a child, that, for the need of the educative, elevating companionship of family mates is consumed by self, inheriting that vicious selfishness, which he by his birth defeated, and finding all the forces of nature focussed on his defect, like a pack of hounds that turn ...
— The Fertility of the Unfit • William Allan Chapple
... with their back to it; and Jack, after trying in vain to get it over his right shoulder or his left, bent down and focussed it between his legs. This must have connected the current; for Simms turned right round and marched up to ...
— Happy Days • Alan Alexander Milne
... waiting until, by very force of motionless persistence, she had focussed every eye upon her person. Then, according to the mandates of the Ladies' Galaxy, she hurled her bridal bouquet down across the banister, not upon the waiting Eva Saint Clair Andrews who hankered for it lustily, but straight against the manly waistcoat of the least ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray
... Crump, the extremely skilled and costly nurse, who arrived a full Advent before the child, fresh from the birth of a viscount, did much to generalize whatever had remained individual of this thing that was happening. With so much intelligence focussed, there seemed to Lady Harman no particular reason why she should not do her best to think as little as possible about the impending affair, which meant for her, she now understood quite clearly, more and more discomfort culminating in an agony. The summer promised to be warm, ...
— The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... interests and occupations was made possible by his power of concentration. He gave himself completely to the work in hand; all his knowledge, energy, and ability were focussed on that work, so that his whole personality was brought to a point of intense light and heat, as the rays of the sun are brought to a point in a burning-glass. When the power of concentration reaches this stage of development, it liberates a man from dependence ...
— Essays On Work And Culture • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... and is attributed to Professor Kircher, a German philosopher of rare talents and extensive reputation. The instrument is simple and familiar. It is a form of the microscope. The shadows cast by the object are, by means of lenses, focussed upon something capable of reflection, such as a wall or screen. No essential changes in the principles of construction have been made since the time of Kircher; but the modern improvements in lenses, ...
— Scientific American, Vol.22, No. 1, January 1, 1870 • Various
... contentions and rivalries of the political parties grew apace; and in 1797, just before the retirement of Washington at the close of his second administration, the struggle between Democrats and Federalists became focussed on the prize of the Presidency—the "Father of his Country" having declined to stand for a third term. The candidates, we need hardly say, were John Adams, who had been Vice President in Washington's administration, and Thomas Jefferson, the former being the standard-bearer of the ...
— Thomas Jefferson • Edward S. Ellis et. al.
... sometimes undertaken a secondary role. But then it often happens, not necessarily by his deliberate endeavour, but by the mere force and popularity of his name among the frequenters of his playhouse, that there is focussed on his secondary part an attention that it does not intrinsically merit, with the result that the artistic perspective of the play is injured. A primary law of dramatic art deprecates the constant preponderance of one actor ...
— Shakespeare and the Modern Stage - with Other Essays • Sir Sidney Lee
... Means of Social Education.—Education is not confined to the training of the schools. It is a continuous process going on through the life of the individual or the group. It is the intellectual process by which the mind is focussed on one problem after another that rises above the horizon of experience and uses its powers to improve the adaptation now existing between the situation and the person or the group. The educational process is complex. There ...
— Society - Its Origin and Development • Henry Kalloch Rowe
... Brinnaria directed the energies of those organizations of the ancient world which were analogous to our modern private detective bureaus, and upon Spain she focussed the energies of the managers of the ...
— The Unwilling Vestal • Edward Lucas White
... the Western humour, and the quaintly untrammelled American intelligence, focussed upon diverse and age-encrusted civilizations, which caught the instantaneous fancy of a vast public. It was a virgin field for the humorous observer; Europe had not yet become the playground of America. It was ...
— Mark Twain • Archibald Henderson
... look that would have seared the Sphinx. "There's nothing wrong with the machine!" he said, almost-but-not-quite shouting. "There's nothing wrong with the television! There's nothing wrong with the wiring! There must be something wrong at the other end—where the Ray is focussed! And I ...
— Stairway to the Stars • Larry Shaw
... as Eucken constantly insists, to stop short of this. Who can prescribe limits to the capability of consciousness when it is focussed, in the form of a conviction, on the deepest problems which press themselves upon it? There is only one objection that the empiricist can bring forward, and that is that all such ideals can never be proved to exist as things ...
— An Interpretation of Rudolf Eucken's Philosophy • W. Tudor Jones
... gallery of treaty-makers Lloyd George, Clemenceau, and Wilson focussed the "fierce light" that beat about the proceedings. But it was Smuts, in the shadow, who contributed largely to the mental power-plant that drove the work. Lloyd George had to consider the chapter he wrote in the great instrument as something in the nature of a campaign document ...
— An African Adventure • Isaac F. Marcosson
... he said; "you were sitting in this chair and looking at that crystal ball, which focussed the level rays of the setting sun, I suppose? Then it is ...
— Tales of Fantasy and Fact • Brander Matthews
... part of each day in the churches, trying to quiet her uneasiness with prayer. These petitions were no longer vague and generous for the fate of millions of unknown men, for the victory of an entire people. With maternal self-centredness they were focussed on one single person—her son, who was a soldier like the others, and perhaps at this very moment was exposed to the greatest danger. The tears that he had cost her! . . . She had implored that he and his father might come to understand each other, and finally just ...
— The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... action of this story is spiritual as well as physical, and occupies less than a month of time, it is focussed intensely upon reality. Everything that the author permits us to see and understand is seen through a single point of life—a hole pierced in the wall between two rooms of a grey Paris boarding house. The time is most often twilight, with its romantic penumbra, darkening ...
— The Inferno • Henri Barbusse
... His eyes traversed skein after skein of the brilliant colorful patternings, but he was unable to find a very closely netted region. He was about to announce his discovery to Caradoc when his lense focussed on another grim menace ...
— The Cruise of the Dry Dock • T. S. Stribling
... still followed him. The public would have found it hard to believe that at last Alan Massey was leading the most temperate and arduous of lives and devoting himself exclusively to one woman whom he treated as reverently as if she were a goddess. The gazes focussed upon Alan now inevitably included the girl with him, as lovely and young ...
— Wild Wings - A Romance of Youth • Margaret Rebecca Piper
... type of philosophy has sprung up, slowly undermining the very foundations; or, to vary the simile, while the former two have captured certain outworks, the latter has made its way to within striking distance of the citadel, and that the more unobserved because attention has been focussed almost exclusively upon the more imposing performances of the critic ...
— Problems of Immanence - Studies Critical and Constructive • J. Warschauer
... away towards the caves; he disappeared, and the beach, now destitute of life, lay sung to by the sea and flown over by the gulls. Nothing speaking of man lay there but the boat that looked like a toy cast there by a child. It held her eyes, focussed her thoughts, and became the centre of a sudden longing, a desire soul searching as the desire for water—the desire for civilization, for the things ...
— The Beach of Dreams • H. De Vere Stacpoole
... fellow by the test of how long he could endure a flat mute stare and return look for look unblinking. The act of smoking fortifies and partly covers the insolence. But if by chance an equable, not too narrowly focussed, counterstare is met, our impertinent inquisitor may resemble the fisherman pulled into deep waters by his fish. Woodseer perused his man, he was not attempting to fathom him: he had besides other stuff in his head. Potts had naught, and the poor particle ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... him is to lift him out of his sphere. Brethren and friends, there is manhood in the Negro race. There was humanity in those slaves who toiled their way over mountains and through swamps before the war, with their eyes focussed upon the North star of freedom. And there was humanity in those mothers who clasped their babes to their breast and fled before the bloodhounds that they might escape the enslavers of men. There was manhood in those one hundred and seventy-eight thousand Negro soldiers who seized their muskets ...
— American Missionary, Volume 44, No. 1, January, 1890 • Various
... as to afford contemplative satisfaction. In such cases the word Beautiful has been brought over with the emotion of satisfied contemplation. And could we examine microscopically the minds of those who are thus applying it, we might perhaps detect, round the fully-focussed thought of that admirable but nowise shapely thing or person or proceeding, the shadowy traces of half-forgotten shapes, visible or audible, forming a halo of real aesthetic experience, and evoked by that word Beautiful whose application they partially justify. Nor is this all. ...
— The Beautiful - An Introduction to Psychological Aesthetics • Vernon Lee
... adoring eyes of the three musicians who were "hairdressers in the daytime" focussed passionately upon Miss Van Tuyn, distracted her attention. She felt masculinity intent upon her and ...
— December Love • Robert Hichens
... foreign nations, notably the great English-speaking mother and her rebellious offspring, to set forth, in various forms of print, many individual opinions of Russia, its people, and its government. Here all the scribbling of the quasi-authoritative, statistical variety has lately focussed itself, bursting forth in a very tornado of long-winded, vilificacious ignorance. Certain subjects may be suitable vehicles for the exploiting of this species of personal vanity. But of them the most incongruous, and the most abused, has been the great, white, silent, unprotesting ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... focussed the card. There were only two words printed on it, only "Lord Blandamer" in the most unpretending and simple characters, but their effect was magical. Doubt and suspicion melted suddenly away, and a look of radiant surprise overspread her countenance, such as would have become a Constantine ...
— The Nebuly Coat • John Meade Falkner
... once, notwithstanding the walls of the cavern trembled to the hollow thunder of the waters. His eyes fell upon something beyond-the fire. He did not move, or cry out, or wonder where he was; his mind was focussed like his wide-opened eyes on that object. It was like a face, and yet he could not make out whether it was the face of man, or bird, or beast, or reptile. One glance at the thing by any one else would have been more than ...
— In Search of the Okapi - A Story of Adventure in Central Africa • Ernest Glanville
... planted a kitchen chair. On the back of this he had rested a long telescope, which usually adorned the big glass case which stood against the wall behind the shop-counter. This formidable instrument he had focussed upon the pinnacle of a wooded height, which stood conspicuous behind the line of foot-hills, and, as he peered at the distant mountain-top, he gave vent to a string of ejaculations, expressive of ...
— The Tale of Timber Town • Alfred Grace
... like a moving-picture machine!" cried Susie, with a little gasp of enjoyment. "Or a comic opera!" she added, wrestling with her glasses to get them focussed on the moving boat. "The hero's sitting in the stern," she announced. "He's all wrapped up and there's another man holding him. I can't see anything of him but his eyes, for he's got a handkerchief ...
— Affairs of State • Burton E. Stevenson
... he would not anticipate. Drew's advent had focussed his desire to put himself, and her, to the test. Joyce had precipitated ...
— Joyce of the North Woods • Harriet T. Comstock
... outworks of that system—necessarily of its own force developed into an attack on the organization representing it, and on the economic basis of the latter. The battle against ecclesiastical abuses, again, in its turn, focussed the ever-smouldering discontent with abuses in general; and this time, not in one district only, but simultaneously over the whole of Germany. The movement inaugurated by Luther gave to the peasant groaning under the weight of baronial oppression, and the small handicraftsman suffering under ...
— German Culture Past and Present • Ernest Belfort Bax
... fancies focussed themselves, at last, on the vision of a trig little sail-boat, "a jug of wine, a loaf of bread" in the cabin, with possibly the book of verses underneath the bow, or more suitably, in the shadow of the sail; and Aleck Van Camp and himself astir in the rigging ...
— The Stolen Singer • Martha Idell Fletcher Bellinger
... aboard seemed to have his gaze focussed on Jerry by this time, as though he might be the one to decide whether the hunt had better be abandoned right then and there, or kept ...
— The Outdoor Chums on the Gulf • Captain Quincy Allen
... the day long in the light of His face, and He sees and marks all our else hidden evil. It needs something more than any of us can do to make the thought that we do stand in the full glaring of that great searchlight, not turned occasionally but focussed steadily on us individually, a joy and a blessing to us. And what we need is offered us when we read, 'His countenance was as the sun shineth in his strength, and I fell at His feet as dead. And He laid His hand upon me and said, Fear not! I am He that liveth and was dead; and ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... the book and focussed his glasses on the tow. The track of the fire was patent to the world now, and we were unbending the sails from ...
— The Brassbounder - A Tale of the Sea • David W. Bone
... not been focussed on the occupant of Stateroom A he would have wondered a good deal as to what had taken Justin O'Reilly on a "flying trip" west. This was O'Reilly's first year in Congress, and he'd manoeuvred to make himself a conspicuous figure in Washington one way or other. His own present ...
— The Lion's Mouse • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... I focussed the lens on the flush-cut surface of closely-rolled leaf, and explored every part of ...
— The Red Thumb Mark • R. Austin Freeman
... focussed upon the other two. They were tall, as are all Martians. The young woman, Setta Meka, seemed perhaps twenty or twenty-five years of age, by Earth reckoning, in stature perhaps very nearly my own height, which is six feet two. It is difficult ...
— Wandl the Invader • Raymond King Cummings
... lights back of window, two baby spots off left; one focussed on bed and the other on door down R.1. Red fire-escape light shows door R. when opened. Night lamp ...
— The Ghost Breaker - A Melodramatic Farce in Four Acts • Paul Dickey
... supporters on their way to the polls, hated the smug smiles of his committee-men at polling stations. He forgot that he did not hate England. A little black disk an inch or two in diameter if cunningly focussed can obscure the sun in heaven from human eye. There was England still behind the little black disk, though Paul for ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke
... interesting case is that which first focussed the public attention on the value of the system. It occurred in 1898, shortly after the present Commissioner initiated the system in India. He himself ...
— Scotland Yard - The methods and organisation of the Metropolitan Police • George Dilnot
... bell rang that summoned him to the carpet in the cashier's office it seemed as though the eye of everyone of his associates was raised from the work that had employed their attention and was focussed ...
— Dick the Bank Boy - Or, A Missing Fortune • Frank V. Webster
... of the long faces were two square holes, from the edges of which the inside walls focussed back on two smaller, circular diaphragms. That made the two openings act somewhat like megaphone horns to still further magnify the sound which was emitted directly from this receiver without using any earpieces, and could be listened to anywhere ...
— Guy Garrick • Arthur B. Reeve
... war, a feeling of restiveness, an impulse to throw off the German yoke, had been gradually displaying itself in the Press, in commercial circles, and in the Duma. These aspirations and strivings were focussed in the firm resolve of the Russian Government, under M. Kokofftseff, to refuse to renew the Treaty of Commerce which was enabling Germany to flood the Empire with her manufactures and to extort a ruinous tribute ...
— England and Germany • Emile Joseph Dillon
... science, the attention and interest of the universe have been largely focussed on the marvellous achievements of the human intellect. Discoveries, inventions, advanced methods and great strides of progress in countless directions are the boast and pride of modern times. There is no disputing ...
— Heart and Soul • Victor Mapes (AKA Maveric Post)
... that all the surface of the sail is gradated to that focus. Try to copy this sail once or twice, and you will begin to understand Turner's work. Similarly, the wing of the Cupid in Correggio's large picture in the National Gallery is focussed to two little grains of white at the top of it. The points of light on the white flower in the wreath round the head of the dancing child-faun, in Titian's Bacchus and Ariadne, exemplify the ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... pitch for very long and be an efficient sentry. If he did, he would challenge mice and shoot at cloud-shadows and bring the deuce of a commotion about his ears. And this Doggie, who did not lack ordinary intelligence, realized. So he strove to think of other things. And the other things all focussed down upon his Doggie self. And he never knew what to make of his Doggie self at all. For he would curse the things that he once loved as being the cause of his inexpiable shame, and at the same time yearn for them with an ...
— The Rough Road • William John Locke
... chest heaved spasmodically; his breath came in dry gasps. Howard stooped over him and called to him softly. The eyes flew open and, after a heavy gathering of the brows bespeaking the effort made, focussed upon Howard's. ...
— The Desert Valley • Jackson Gregory
... more, and was roused only at a curious light which flashed above me in the sky. Its first aspect led me to the conclusion that I saw a reflection of the Aurora; but the second flash altered the opinion. The light was clearly focussed, being a volume of intensely bright, white rays which passed right above me with slow and guided motion, and then stopped altogether, almost fixed upon the jolly-boat. I knew then what it was, and I sat up to see the great beams of a man-of-war's ...
— The Iron Pirate - A Plain Tale of Strange Happenings on the Sea • Max Pemberton
... on which his attention was focussed stood against the wall, the young man sitting in the corner between November and the woman. Of two tables between it and P. Sybarite's, one was vacant, the other occupied by a brace of hatchet-faced male intimates of the dive ...
— The Day of Days - An Extravaganza • Louis Joseph Vance
... unintelligible High Church grace. The effect of this was astonishing. A tableau ensued, in which the mouths of all the performers were seen to be wide open for at least half a minute, while spoons full of pudding, or fruit, were lifted towards them, and the round eyes above them were focussed with a concentration of complete surprise and agitation upon the intermittent clergyman, who had sat down again, and was speaking to Mrs. Windsor about chasubles. Then, as at a signal, all the spoons, still full, were pensively ...
— The Green Carnation • Robert Smythe Hichens
... Seaton focussed an attractor upon the one who had apparently signaled the attack. Rolling the vessel over in a short loop, so that the captive was hurled off into space upon the other side, he snatched the tube from the figure's grasp with one auxiliary attractor, and anchored head and limbs ...
— Skylark Three • Edward Elmer Smith
... was the dearth of original names that it is on record that old Ian McAllister, the first schoolmaster in the McDonald settlement, was often compelled as he flung his tawse across the room at some focussed point of mischief behind the stove, to pause even at the boiling-point of his wrath, to deliver himself of some such explanation of the ...
— Duncan Polite - The Watchman of Glenoro • Marian Keith
... in delights, for Dolly. Two mornings were spent in the great picture gallery. Mrs. Copley's desires and expectations having focussed upon the Green vaults, were hardly able to see anything else clearly; indeed, she declared that she did not think the wonderful Madonna was so very wonderful after all; no woman could stand upon clouds in that way, and as she was a woman, ...
— The End of a Coil • Susan Warner
... in the study-room, her frowning eyes focussed on a spot straight ahead of her, her spirit slowly rose to meet the challenge of the debate. These others had all had to live through their "first," ease had come to them only with practice, ...
— Highacres • Jane Abbott
... heaven, all is still and peaceful, and the fact that in the very nature of things one cannot rush through this pervading beauty of the earth, but has to plod onwards step by step along a toilsome roadway, enables the scenery to be so impressed upon one's mind as to be focussed for life in one's memory. One is held spellbound; these are the pictures never forgotten. Here I sit in a corner of the earth as old as the world itself. These mountains are as they were in the great beginning, when the Creator and Sustainer ...
— Across China on Foot • Edwin Dingle
... a wheel just flash past that open spot back along the trail!" he cried; and immediately every eye was focussed on the spot indicated; for coming at just such a moment the news ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts on a Tour - The Mystery of Rattlesnake Mountain • George A. Warren
... focussed his eyes, then stumbled to his feet and caught Clavering by the arm. "Yes," he muttered. "Get me out of this and take me where I can get a drink. Seen ...
— Black Oxen • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... behind the pupil is the lens of the eye, which also is adjustable by the action of a little muscle, called the "ciliary muscle". This muscle corresponds to the focussing mechanism of the camera; by it the eye is focussed on near or far objects. The eye really {195} has two lenses, for the cornea acts as a lens, but is not adjustable. The "aqueous and vitreous humors" fill the eyeball and keep it in shape, while still, being transparent, they allow the light ...
— Psychology - A Study Of Mental Life • Robert S. Woodworth
... who had been using a small but powerful telescope, uttered an exclamation, and focussed the instrument on a speck that seemed moving along on ...
— Tom Swift Among The Diamond Makers - or The Secret of Phantom Mountain • Victor Appleton
... water, brush heaps, rocky bits of woodland, are favorite resorts. The Carolina wren decidedly objects to being stared at, and likes to dart out of sight in the midst of the underbrush in a twinkling while the opera-glasses are being focussed. To let off some of his superfluous vivacity, Nature has provided him with two safety-valves: one is his voice, another is his tail. With the latter he gesticulates in a manner so expressive that it seems to be a certain index to what is passing ...
— Bird Neighbors • Neltje Blanchan
... sauntered up the steps behind the others to the old garden, which was the pride of every pupil in Warwick Hall. The hollyhocks from Ann Hathaway's cottage had not yet begun to flaunt their rosettes of color, but the rhododendrons from Killarney were in gorgeous bloom. As Lloyd focussed the camera in such a way as to make them a background for a picture of the sun-dial, Betty heard Kitty ask: "You'll let us know early in the morning what your present ...
— The Little Colonel: Maid of Honor • Annie Fellows Johnston
... of antagonism. Up to that time, Ethel Dent had known only unreserved approval. Weldon's occasional gravity, to her mind, suggested certain reservations. By way of overcoming these reservations, she focussed her whole attention upon Captain Leo Frazer. Across the table, Weldon, in the intervals of his talk with his hostess, could hear the low murmur of their ...
— On the Firing Line • Anna Chapin Ray and Hamilton Brock Fuller
... have been such a thing as a broken bottle anywhere about the stack, Miss Q——? The sun came out unusually strong this morning, I noticed; and it's a well-known scientific fact that the action of the solar rays, focussed by such a medium as I have suggested, will produce ignition—provided, of course, that the inflammable material is in the ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... impression of somebody squeaking as it went down. It was the sort of impression one disregards. The collapse of the pile of goods just sufficed to end his subconscious efforts to get something to hit somebody with, and his whole attention focussed itself upon the struggle in the window. For a splendid instant Parsons towered up over the active backs that clustered about the shop window door, an active whirl of gesture, tearing things down and throwing them, and then ...
— The History of Mr. Polly • H. G. Wells
... the three uttered a word. She was trembling so that she could not speak. There were tears in the old man's eyes. To Wayland's face had come a look. It was like the blue flash of a pistol shot. The pupils of his eyes had focussed to pin points of fire. ...
— The Freebooters of the Wilderness • Agnes C. Laut
... left it behind, the pride and grandeur of the scenery beggared description. It was as though for days we had been looking upon a mighty canvas, and while we had caught something of its splendour, now for the first time had we focussed it aright. The memory we took away ...
— Jonah and Co. • Dornford Yates
... satisfactory; and this is a very different thing from the result of truly pictorial rendering with its constructive appeal, its sense of ensemble, its presentation of an idea by means of the convergence and interdependence of objects focussed to a common and central effect. To this impressionism is absolutely insensitive. It is the acme ...
— French Art - Classic and Contemporary Painting and Sculpture • W. C. Brownell
... completely in the wrong. How on earth a fellow could make such an ass of himself Soames could not conceive; but he had done so, and all the rancour and hidden jealousy that had been burning against him for so long was now focussed in rage at this crowning piece of extravagance. The attitude of the confident and friendly husband was gone. To preserve property—his wife—he had assumed it, to preserve property of another kind he lost ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... just pride in this reputation. He said that this reputation was a treasure of priceless value; that under Providence its value had now become inestimably enhanced, for the recent episode had spread this fame far and wide, and thus had focussed the eyes of the American world upon this village, and made its name for all time, as he hoped and believed, a synonym for commercial incorruptibility. [Applause.] "And who is to be the guardian of this noble fame—the community as a whole? No! The ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... man smiled as though in subdued mirth, and with a red pencil outlined the area. Following this his eyes rested contemplatively on the lumberman who sat still focussed ...
— The Rapids • Alan Sullivan
... little while, in utter silence, his keen eyes travelled from one visage to the next, from Henri Picquet to Victor Georgiades, to Sanchez, to Sard. His intent scrutiny focussed ...
— The Flaming Jewel • Robert Chambers
... other populations who do the same sort of things. But if such apparently commonplace acts be investigated they will be found to have a long and complex history. None of these things that seem so obvious to us was attempted until a multitude of diverse circumstances became focussed in some particular community, and constrained some individual to make the discovery. Nor did the quality of obviousness become apparent even when the enlightened discoverer had gathered up the threads of his predecessor's ideas and woven them into ...
— The Evolution of the Dragon • G. Elliot Smith
... and Cincinnati were seriously threatened, and the battle of Chickamauga was another field of slaughter, even though it was shortly redeemed by Chattanooga. But the attention of the country was necessarily focussed chiefly on the limited territory that lay between Washington and Richmond. In that region nothing permanent or decisive had been accomplished in the period of more than two years, and it is small wonder that the President ...
— The Life of Abraham Lincoln • Henry Ketcham
... just a moment, to address his mother. She turned; there was an exchange of greetings, in which Mistress Hortensia standing rigid as stone—took no part. A silence fell about; quizzing-glasses went up; all eyes were focussed upon the group. Then Rotherby and his friends ...
— The Lion's Skin • Rafael Sabatini
... us now, in the leisure of abundant time and with all the fresh light that science has shed upon surgery, and focussed upon the subject of gunshot wounds, to criticise the surgeons of that day, who, with hundreds of men each awaiting in agony his turn, were obliged to decide within minutes, yea, even seconds, upon a serious operation, without previous preparation or reinforcement ...
— Charles Carleton Coffin - War Correspondent, Traveller, Author, and Statesman • William Elliot Griffis
... precisely, how far it does go. Both sides would admit that, in this fact directly known, what is in the full focus of attention at any given moment is very limited; on the other hand both would admit that this fully focussed fact is set in a context, or fringe, with no clearly defined limits which also goes to make up the whole fact directly known though we do not usually pay much attention to it. The fact directly known being given the problem is to find out what it is ...
— The Misuse of Mind • Karin Stephen
... it, the past is not only focussed there, in a man's soul, it IS there. How could it be reflected from there if it were not there? All things that he has ever seen, known, felt, believed of the surrounding world are now within him, have become part of him, in part are him—he has been changed into their ...
— Beautiful Thoughts • Henry Drummond
... came focussed on a mass of men, such a fire as I suppose has never been seen before, for not only was it a tremendous volley poured in at point-blank range, but it was a sustained volley; the rapid action of the magazines enabling the enemy to keep up an unintermittent hail of bullets on the English ...
— With Rimington • L. March Phillipps
... flashed. She whirled with the evident intention of issuing her commands direct. Kingozi's weary, slow indifference fell from him. In one bound he faced her, his chin thrust forward. His blue eyes had focussed into ...
— The Leopard Woman • Stewart Edward White et al
... wife had not taken a good look at Max up to then. Her entire attention had been focussed on the guilty party, whom she meant to ...
— Chums of the Camp Fire • Lawrence J. Leslie
... Lord James hastily focussed his glasses upon the beckoner. Seen through their powerful lenses, he seemed to leap to within a few feet —so near that Lord James could see the heaving of his broad chest under the tattered flannel shirt as he flung his arms about his ...
— Out of the Primitive • Robert Ames Bennet
... the standing moved for a better view-point, the room focussed on Plimsoll, Wyatt and the three cow-chums. Then Wyatt stepped aside. There was a malicious little grin on his face. Mormon's suggestion as to his private grudge against Plimsoll was not without foundation. Wyatt had ...
— Rimrock Trail • J. Allan Dunn
... of exaltation, I rose noiselessly and dressed myself with rapid, nervous hands. My every faculty was focussed upon a solitary point. Without and around there was nothing but shadow and uncertainty. I seemed conscious only of a shaft of light, as it were, traversing the darkness and globing itself in a steady disc of ...
— At a Winter's Fire • Bernard Edward J. Capes
... the shuffle of feet, again heads were nodded, and elbows nudged neighbouring ribs, and all eyes were focussed upon Bellew who was in the act of lighting ...
— The Money Moon - A Romance • Jeffery Farnol
... you live, Amarilly?" she asked, her eyes sparkling as she focussed them on the family. "You needn't come for the washing the first time. I will bring it myself so I can see all your little brothers. Be sure to come to the Guild next Saturday, and then I'll have the rug for you to take ...
— Amarilly of Clothes-line Alley • Belle K. Maniates
... at the open jewel box which one of the masked men held, then, like lightning, his sinister eyes focussed ...
— The Flaming Jewel • Robert Chambers
... extremities as at the centre. Should a portion be gravely endangered, the world must behold all the other sections stirring themselves to meet the emergency. Each should be a leader for the whole body, the supreme weight of which would thus be focussed upon the menaced quarter. In the process, our varied peoples would determine their common interests and a common pride of dominion, incalculable ...
— The Romance of a Pro-Consul - Being The Personal Life And Memoirs Of The Right Hon. Sir - George Grey, K.C.B. • James Milne
... to all specific types. The only reason why we notice individual differences in the case of the human type more than we do in the case of any other types, is because our attention is here more incessantly focussed upon these differences. We are compelled to notice them in the case of our own species, however small they may appear to a naturalist, because, unless we do so, we should not recognise the members of our own family, or be able to distinguish between a man whom we know is ...
— Darwin, and After Darwin (Vol. 1 and 3, of 3) • George John Romanes
... flashed as he shrugged pleased denial of claim to such courage, then his roving gaze focussed upon a distant object and the confident expression altered swiftly to uneasiness, awe, superstitious terror. Terry, startled at the transformation, followed the direction of his dread stare and saw that his eyes were fixed upon the distant, mist-wreathed crest of Apo. He ...
— Terry - A Tale of the Hill People • Charles Goff Thomson
... river plunged down in the flaming fall. Ray chose convenient boulders for shelter and quickly we flung ourselves flat. Ray replaced the fired cartridges in the rifle and leveled it across the rock before him. I unslung the binoculars and focussed them. ...
— Astounding Stories, April, 1931 • Various
... would be interesting to learn just what proportion of solitary children there is on the roll of those who have become great in our world. One thinks of John Ruskin, a particularly fine specimen of the highly focussed single son. Prig perhaps he was, but this world has a certain need of such prigs. A correspondent (a schoolmistress of experience) who has collected statistics in her own neighbourhood, is strongly of opinion not only that solitary children ...
— Mankind in the Making • H. G. Wells
... another place in this Apostle's writings we read of 'the high calling of God in Christ Jesus.' Yes, there, as focussed into one strong voice, all the summonses are concentrated and gathered. For in Jesus Christ we see the possibilities of humanity realised, and we have the pattern of what we ought to be, and are called thereby to be. And in Christ we get the great motives which make this summons, ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren
... ages. The idea of transmutation, in the country of its origin, had a philosophical basis, and was linked up with the Greek theories of matter there current; thus, by supplying a central philosophical principle, it to some extent unified and focussed chemical effort, which previously, so far as it existed at all, had been expended on acquiring empirical acquaintance with a mass of disconnected technical processes. Alchemy in this sense is merely an early phase of the development of systematic chemistry; in ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... matter for discussion in Jurisprudence is the case of a mother with child. Is the child under those circumstances really an unjust aggressor? Let us study that important case with the closest attention. Let all the rays of light we have gathered so far be focussed on this particular point. Can a physician ever be justified in destroying the life of a child, before or during its birth, by craniotomy or in any other manner, in order to save its mother's life, on the ...
— Moral Principles and Medical Practice - The Basis of Medical Jurisprudence • Charles Coppens
... had abstracted its gaze, which was now directed down the aisle of the carriage, indefinitely focussed on some point outside the window. It seemed remote, entirely unconcerned with any ...
— The Wonder • J. D. Beresford
... like a specter in his path was it to be wondered at that Dick resolutely turned his gaze from the allurements of the harbor and settled himself in the big chair with all his attention focussed on Bob King's radio lesson. Moreover, human nature is selfish enough to like company in its misery and were not his mother, Nancy and Walter consigned to the same ...
— Walter and the Wireless • Sara Ware Bassett
... His presence; the more solitary we are, the larger the gifts of His companionship. Our need is the measure of His prayer. 'Satan hath desired to have you, but thou, Peter, dost stand in the very focus of the danger, and so on thee are focussed, too, the rays of My love and care.' Be sure, dear friends, that it is always so for us, and that when you want Christ most, Christ is most ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... With attention still focussed on the differences rather than the similarities between the musical art and a new art of mobile color, we come next to the consideration of the matter of form. Now form is essentially of space: we speak about ...
— Architecture and Democracy • Claude Fayette Bragdon
... the two repeaters shifted, shifted until they were focussed upon a spot midway between the belt and the rolling collar of the flannel shirt. ...
— Where the Trail Divides • Will Lillibridge
... is not how the attributes of the soul arose from the chemistry of the brain and the nerves; but how the brain and the nerves together with the whole stream of material phenomena from the star-dust upwards, ever got themselves unified and focussed into any sort of intelligibility or system. The average human mind which feels a shock of distrust and suspicion directly we suggest that the thing we name "conscience," defined as the power of response to the ideal vision, is an inalienable aspect of what we call "the soul" wherever ...
— The Complex Vision • John Cowper Powys
... sunburnt Rattlesnake Island, and who lost the habit of living a few years ago, I was on social terms—terms of vague but cosy intimacy. On occasions of our rare meetings we found ideas in common. Peradventure similarities of environment focussed similar thoughts. Perhaps abnormal temperaments gave rise to becoming tenderness and sympathy. Whatsoever and howsoever the mutual sentiment, it ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield
... the extent or shallowness of Paracelsus' claim is a matter of quite secondary interest. We are concerned with the poet's presentment of the man—of that strange soul whom he conceived of as having anticipated so far, and as having focussed all the vagrant speculations of the day into one startling beam of light, now lambently pure, now lurid with ...
— Life of Robert Browning • William Sharp
... by patronage, and that if only some one in authority will interest himself in you, you straightway enter upon a glorious career. There is, however, no royal road to advancement on the Press. Proprietors and editors simply could not afford it. Living as newspapers do in the fierce light focussed from a million eyes, fighting daily with keen competition, the instinct of self-preservation compels their directors to engage the highest talent where it is discoverable, and, failing that, the most sedulously nurtured skill. For this they will pay almost anything; and they ask nothing ...
— Faces and Places • Henry William Lucy
... Burns in 1914 from the Office of the Local Government Board, over which he then presided, 'that few, if any, conferences held in London in recent years have done more good for the cause of social progress than the Industrial Remuneration Conference of 1885. The Conference focussed public opinion and sympathy upon a large number of important questions, which have since made greater headway than they would have done if the Conference had not taken place. I have the highest opinion of the value of its work, and of the good influence it exercised in stimulating inquiry and action ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke, Vol. 2 • Stephen Gwynn
... second Miriam did not turn. She drank in the quiet "yes, yes," the hard fixed scene seemed to move. Who loved it too, the dark sky and the storm? Then she focussed her companion who was standing a little behind her, and gazed at Fraulein; she hardly saw her, she seemed still to see the outdoor picture. Fraulein made a movement towards her; and then she saw for a moment the strange grave young ...
— Pointed Roofs - Pilgrimage, Volume 1 • Dorothy Richardson
... poetry, it was women driven to distraction by unappeased longing rather than men hungry with desire who formed the chief subject of romantic art. Pictures focussed on woman in all her varied moods and flattered the male mind by portraying her wilting with sadness when ...
— The Loves of Krishna in Indian Painting and Poetry • W. G. Archer |
