"Plain" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... large, gray, and prominent; her nose was long, and aquiline: her mouth of vast capacity, her visage meagre and freckled, and her chin peaked like a shoemaker's paring knife; her upper lip contained a large quantity of plain Spanish, which, by continual falling, had embroidered her neck, that was not naturally very white, and the breast of her gown, that flowed loose about her with a negligence that was truly poetic, discovering linen that was very fine, and, ...
— The Adventures of Roderick Random • Tobias Smollett
... no old theories to prove and no ambition to start new ones, but simply jots down his impressions of people and things with no attempt at elaboration. The result is, we have a plain, faithful, unvarnished picture of Chinese life and manners, as seen by an intelligent, unprejudiced man. Upon the whole, we think this picture most decidedly favorable to ...
— The Galaxy, Volume 23, No. 2, February, 1877 • Various
... background, Jim, when you frown. It's plain that you belong to Langrigg. When you fought the Scots and hunted wolves I expect you often looked ...
— Partners of the Out-Trail • Harold Bindloss
... fat body uneasily on a chair, was Bunning, and there, to his intense surprise, was Lawrence. That football hero was lounging with half-closed eyes in a large armchair. His broad back looked as though it would burst the wooden arms, and his plain, good-natured face beamed, through a cloud of smoke, upon the company. Below his short, light grey flannel trousers were bright purple socks. He had the body of a bullock—short, thick, broad, strong, thoroughly well calculated ...
— The Prelude to Adventure • Hugh Walpole
... designed primarily for utility. Since light is the great desideratum, the paint, as a rule, should be light in color, though soft and tinted in tone for restfulness to the eye. Where wallpaper is used, it should have the same characteristics. Fanciful designs should be avoided. Indeed, plain paper forms the best base for artistic color schemes in the decoration of rooms, the variety in which is best obtained by the choice of furniture and pictures and ...
— Practical Suggestions for Mother and Housewife • Marion Mills Miller
... commands the apostles to preach repentance, and Peter preaches repentance Acts 2, 38. Afterward they cite certain passages of the Fathers and the canons, and conclude that satisfactions in the Church are not to be abolished contrary to the plain Gospel and the decrees of the Councils and Fathers [against the decision of the Holy Church]; nay, even that those who have been absolved by the priest ought to bring to perfection the repentance that has been enjoined, following the declaration of Paul, Titus 2, 14: ...
— The Apology of the Augsburg Confession • Philip Melanchthon
... "For several quite plain and simple reasons, an 'interview' must, as a rule, be an absurdity. And chiefly for this reason: it is an attempt to use a boat on land, or a wagon on water, to speak figuratively. Spoken speech is one thing, written speech is quite another. Print ...
— The Americanization of Edward Bok - The Autobiography of a Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward William Bok
... mother; "they are trickling down the stalks. We shall have it very wet here presently. I am very glad we have such good houses, and that the little one has one of his own. There has been really more done for us than for any other creature; it is quite plain that we are the most noble people in the world. We have houses from our birth, and the burdock forest has been planted for us. I should very much like to know how far it extends, and ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... sometimes goes there hunting. It was a dirty ruinous shed, with no furniture but a few bamboo bedsteads. On taking a walk into the country, I saw at once that it was no place for me. For many miles extends a plain covered with coarse high grass, thickly dotted here and there with trees, the forest country only commencing at the hills a good way in the interior. Such a place would produce few birds and no insects, and ...
— The Malay Archipelago - Volume II. (of II.) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... affectionate, Mr. Raynes; and, in behalf of the great Southern Confederacy, I thank you for the zeal and loyalty which you have displayed," replied Somers boldly; for it was plain that nothing but the most brazen ...
— The Young Lieutenant - or, The Adventures of an Army Officer • Oliver Optic
... [Greek: kataelthen] in iv. 31 must needs go a long way. Marcion evidently intends the word to be taken in a transcendental sense of the emanation and descent to earth of the Aeon Christus [Endnote 219:1]. It is impossible to think that this sense is more original than the plain historical use of the word by St. Luke, or to mistake the dogmatic motive in the heretical recension. There is also an evident reason for the omission of the first chapters which relate the human birth of Christ, which Marcion denied, and one somewhat less evident, ...
— The Gospels in the Second Century - An Examination of the Critical Part of a Work - Entitled 'Supernatural Religion' • William Sanday
... it to be endured that the Runnymede farmers should ride to hounds under a Master who had been guilty of such an iniquity as that? "The Staines and Egham Gazette," which had always supported the Runnymede hunt, declared in very plain terms that all who rode with the Major were enjoying their sport out of the plunder which had been extracted from Lord Silverbridge. Then a meeting was called for Saturday, the 18th December, to be held at that well-known sporting ...
— The Duke's Children • Anthony Trollope
... new comrades taking high rewards. It isn't fair. Naturally the old boys hate the newcomers. They feel like putting a coat of tar and feathers on every one of them. You and I have got to go to work and put the gold seekers out of the temple. They need to hear some of your plain talk. Our greatest ...
— In the Days of Poor Richard • Irving Bacheller
... other side of the archway the whole view of the plain called Higgins Farm met the adventurer. The farm-buildings were heaped graciously together on a little wave in the sea of ploughed fields. Except for two pale ricks in their midst, they exactly matched their surroundings, they were plastered dark red, and thatched ...
— Living Alone • Stella Benson
... before, the monk, standing amid the stunted shrubs on the hill of San Lucido, had looked out on the arid plain before him. It was all brown and grey, the desolate ground strewn with huge granite boulders, treeless; and for the wretched sheep who fed there, thin and scanty grass; the shepherd, in his tattered cloak, sat on a rock, moodily, paying ...
— Orientations • William Somerset Maugham
... Things is a demon who delights in cruelty and slaughter and gives his favor only in exchange for suffering and torture. A tribe in northwest India believes that God lives on the top of a mountain in plain sight of them, and up in the northeast are the Nagas, who declare that after the Creator made men He put them into a cellar from which they escaped into the world because one day he forgot to put back ...
— Modern India • William Eleroy Curtis
... cardinal and the lieutenant-general of the kingdom, for no other purpose than to give the judges proof of the culpability of the Prince de Conde. The letters seized on Lasagne, the prince's secretary, though intelligible to statesmen, where not sufficiently plain proof for judges. The cardinal intended to confront the prince and Christophe by accident; and it was not without intention that the young Reformer was placed in one of the lower rooms in the tower of Saint-Aignan, with a window looking on the prison ...
— Catherine de' Medici • Honore de Balzac
... then, our Lord bore so long with me, who was so wicked—and it is plain that it was by prayer all my evil was corrected—why should any one, how wicked soever he may be, have any fear? Let him be ever so wicked, he will not remain in his wickedness so many years as I ...
— The Life of St. Teresa of Jesus • Teresa of Avila
... have been in France, and have eaten frogs. The nicest little rabbity things you ever tasted. Do look about for them. Make Mrs. Clare pick off the hind quarters, boil them plain, with parsley and butter. The fore quarters are not so good. She may let them hop off ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... tolerance, though slow in flight, is strong-wing'd in the main; That night must come on these fine days, in course of time was plain; The pure old spirit struggled, but its struggles were in vain; A nation's grip was on it, and it died in choking pain, With the fine old English Tory days, All of the ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... revel of new pranks dies down to chords of muted horns, amid flashing runs of the harp, with a long roll of drums. Here Grave in solemn pace, violas and bassoon strike an ecclesiastical incantation, answered by the organ. Presently a Gregorian plain chant begins solemnly in the strings aided by the organ while a guise of the second profane motive intrudes. Suddenly in quick pace against a fugal tread of lower voices, a light skipping figure dances in the high wood. And now loud trumpets are saucily blowing the chant to the quick step, ...
— Symphonies and Their Meaning; Third Series, Modern Symphonies • Philip H. Goepp
... mean the gladness of the plain, This joy of eve and morn, The mirth that shakes the beard of grain And yellow locks ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 60, October 1862 • Various
... a tale in plain words, as a special correspondent who knows how to make a verbal precis should tell it. The men listened ...
— The Light That Failed • Rudyard Kipling
... took the place of shepherds, but the experiment was not a lucky one. Milton had more of the East in his imagination than any of his successors. His "vulture on Imaus bred, whose snowy ridge the roving Tartar bounds"; his "plain of Sericana where Chinese drive their cany wagons light"; his "utmost Indian isle Taprobane," are touches of the picturesque which anticipate a more modern mood ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... when the youth of twenty knows more than any one on earth could teach him, and more than he ever will know again; a time when, no matter how kind his heart, he is incased in a mental haughtiness before which plain Wisdom is dumb. But a time will come when the keenness of some girl's stiletto of wit will prick the empty bubble of his flamboyant egoism, and he will, for the first time, learn that he is but an ...
— From a Girl's Point of View • Lilian Bell
... Miss E., by George Ward, H. C.,'" this painfully plain- speaking young lady continued presently. "On the line at next spring's Salon, then packed up for the dear ones at home. I'd as soon own an 'Art Bronze,' myself—or ...
— The Guest of Quesnay • Booth Tarkington
... unfashionable, uneducated, uncultivated surroundings of Nazareth. Let them bear in mind the carpenter's shed, the rough country work, the bare equipment of the village home, the humble service of the family life. Let them, above all, remember the plain and gentle mother, and the meek and lowly One Himself, and in this remembrance ...
— Our Master • Bramwell Booth
... and I were born neighbours' children," he said; "and this mortgage has given me more trouble than all the rest of my little possessions. That I have been in no hurry to foreclose is plain by the length of time I've suffered to go by, without claiming my dues. I could wait no longer, without endangering my rights, as there would be a presumption of payment after twenty years, and a presumption that would tell harder against me than old Kitty's oath. We are neighbours' ...
— Miles Wallingford - Sequel to "Afloat and Ashore" • James Fenimore Cooper
... tax simple as well as equitable. Is it conceivable that he can have forgotten ADAM SMITH's famous maxims on the subject, and particularly this: "The time of payment, the manner of payment, the quantity to be paid, ought all to be clear and plain to the contributor, and to every ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, August 4th, 1920 • Various
... a reasonable doubt applies to all proceedings of contempt. The accused is also allowed to go free on giving bail until final sentence, if that is to be preceded by any preliminary inquiry involving adjournments from day to day. No such inquiry is necessary when the contempt is plain and was committed in the presence of ...
— The American Judiciary • Simeon E. Baldwin, LLD
... he surrendered himself, as he had always done, to the interests of the moment and the hour. A fair proportion of the working day was spent in travel, and sometimes, as they crossed the exquisite plain of flowering green, with the snowcapped mountains in the distance, the ladies of the company would cry out at sight of some especial bank of wild flowers, and the conductor would stop the leisurely train to let ...
— Despair's Last Journey • David Christie Murray
... intimacy with her cousin, who hates her, gave me a knowledge of the truth. She still keeps her carriage, and appears to be rolling in wealth, but she has sold her diamonds and wears paste. And that plain young person on the other side of her has money, and knows the value of it. She requires rent-roll for rent-roll, and instead of referring you to her father and mother, the little minx refers you to her lawyer and man of business. ...
— The Privateer's-Man - One hundred Years Ago • Frederick Marryat
... 2 m. S. of Chard. The church is modern, but a Baptist place of worship, a plain, thatched building at South Chard, is supposed to have been an ancient chapel. It is locally known as St Margaret's, and over the doorway is an empty niche. For a curious custom of holding a sale by candlelight, ...
— Somerset • G.W. Wade and J.H. Wade
... my part, Mr. Bingley, I always keep servants that can do their own work; my daughters are brought up very differently. But everybody is to judge for themselves, and the Lucases are a very good sort of girls, I assure you. It is a pity they are not handsome! Not that I think Charlotte so very plain—but then she is our ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... penances we ever had to submit to, was that of drinking the water in which the Superior had washed her feet. Nobody could ever laugh at this penance except Jane Ray. She would pretend to comfort us, by saying, she was sure it was better than mere plain, clear water. ...
— Awful Disclosures - Containing, Also, Many Incidents Never before Published • Maria Monk
... see no supernatural prodigies, because there are none to see; and when we are told that the reason why we see no prodigies is because we have no faith, we answer (if we be sensible), Just so. As long as people had faith, in plain English believed, that they could be magically cured of a disease, they thought that they or others were so cured. As long as they believed that ghosts could be seen, every silly person saw them. As long as they believed ...
— The Hermits • Charles Kingsley
... talked much, casually ('but always Moleing you'll observe,' said Mr Pancks): and from whom he derived, without being at all suspected, two or three little points of family history which, as he began to hold clues of his own, suggested others. How it had at length become plain to Mr Pancks that he had made a real discovery of the heir-at-law to a great fortune, and that his discovery had but to be ripened to legal fulness and perfection. How he had, thereupon, sworn his landlord, Mr Rugg, to secrecy in ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... frequently lodged for the night in the neighborhood of some convent or monastery, and then we did exceeding well, the friars feeding us with their best, and compassionating us for our many sorrows. And at that time it was plain to us that the Inquisition was heartily hated by the friars—black, white, and gray,—and met with no favor from any but such as had long since forgotten all that they had ever known of mercy ...
— In the Days of Drake • J. S. Fletcher
... October day, two men were seen driving through the latticed gate of the town of Rosmin on toward the plain, which stretched out before them monotonous and boundless. Anton sat wrapped in his fur coat, his hat low on his forehead, and at his side was young Sturm, in an old cavalry cloak, with his soldier's ...
— Debit and Credit - Translated from the German of Gustav Freytag • Gustav Freytag
... know your friend Sir Charles Pomander? No! I am almost sure you do; well, he is a man I do not like. He is deceitful, besides he is a wicked man. There, to be plain with you, he was watching me all that night, the first time you came here, and, because I saw he was watching me I would not know who you were, nor ...
— Peg Woffington • Charles Reade
... admit that in my humble opinion things are a little on the down grade with us," answered Coldevin. "I confess that that is my opinion. And it is especially the country's youth I am thinking of. We have begun a slow retrogression; in plain words, we are lowering our standards, we are tapering down to a general zero. The young do not demand much from themselves or from others any more; they accept the diminutive and call it great; there is not much, not very ...
— Shallow Soil • Knut Hamsun
... old man was then crucified with Him, namely, in the same body then crucified (See 1 Peter 2:24; and Rom 6:6). This is nonsense to them that believe not; but if thou do indeed believe, thou seest it so plain, and yet such a mystery, that it makes ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... idea: Dreams, being natural occurrences, in the strictest sense, he held that their best interpreters are the common people; and this accounts, in great measure, for the profound respect he always had for the collective wisdom of plain people—'the children of Nature,' he called them—touching matters belonging to the domain of psychical mysteries. There was some basis of truth, he believed, for whatever obtained general credence ...
— Lincoln's Yarns and Stories • Alexander K. McClure
... "D. R., Dorothy Reed—it's plain as day. Oh!" he added quickly, in a changed tone, "that doesn't help us, after all; for R would stand for Robertson as well as for Reed. But then, in some way or other such a chain as this ought to help us. It's by no means a common chain. I never ...
— Donald and Dorothy • Mary Mapes Dodge
... question of time when they should all reappear in dramatic form, unless Louise should detect them in the manuscript before they were put upon the stage and forbid his using them. If it were to be done before marriage they were not sure that she would do it, or could do it, for it was plain to be seen that she was perfectly infatuated with him. The faults they found in him were those of manner mostly, and they perceived that these were such as passion might forgive to his other qualities. ...
— The Story of a Play - A Novel • W. D. Howells
... not a worldly-wise change. Wages in England were very low and there were no vineyards in that chilly land, and Pierre worked and died a plain English farm-hand, blessed only with health, remarkable strength, and a wretched, but happy home. Much of their parents' sturdiness and independence was passed on into the blood of their four children, two boys and two girls, for in ...
— Our Nervous Friends - Illustrating the Mastery of Nervousness • Robert S. Carroll
... koh'bol/ 1. [IBM: prob. from Frank Zappa's 'Suzy Creamcheese'] n. A coder straight out of training school who knows everything except the value of comments in plain English. Also (fashionable among personkind wishing to avoid accusations of sexism) 'Sammy Cobol' or (in some non-IBM circles) 'Cobol Charlie'. 2. [proposed] Meta-name for any {code grinder}, analogous ...
— THE JARGON FILE, VERSION 2.9.10
... would perhaps behold, at such pleasant places beneath the shade of those trees, some party of the fair and gentle folk of that country; and he would see them playing in sport, or he would hear them chanting to the music of shining golden harps. And he would behold in the midst of that beautiful plain a wonderful castle with towers and roofs uplifted high into the sky, and all shining in the peculiar radiance of that land, like to castles ...
— The Story of the Champions of the Round Table • Howard Pyle
... went to the Parliament House, where we were detained till four o'clock. Miss ——— dined with us, a professed lion-huntress, who travels the country to rouse the peaceful beasts out of their lair, and insists on being hand and glove with all the leonine race. She is very plain, besides frightfully red-haired, and out-Lydia-ing even my poor friend Lydia White. An awful visitation! I think I see her with javelin raised and buskined foot, a second Diana, roaming the hills of Westmoreland in quest of the lakers. Would to God ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... road toward the Siberian frontier is across a sandy plain, six or eight miles wide. On emerging from the hills at its southern edge the dome of the church in Kiachta appears in sight, and announces the end of Mongolian travel. No lighthouse is more welcome to a mariner than is the view of this ...
— Overland through Asia; Pictures of Siberian, Chinese, and Tartar - Life • Thomas Wallace Knox
... said Wallenstein to the messengers; "I pity but forgive him. It is plain that the grasping spirit of the Bavarian dictates to him. I grieve that, with so much weakness, he has sacrificed me, but I will obey." He dismissed the emissaries with princely presents; and in a humble letter besought the continuance of ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... called) presided; he was an unusually handsome lad of about eighteen years of age, fairer than most Nepalese, and very refined looking. As on all previous occasions, everyone wore uniform except the King, who had on a perfectly plain dress of spotless white. Great deference is outwardly paid to the Dhiraj, but he has no power, and is never consulted in matters of State, being considered too sacred to be troubled with mundane affairs. Although a mere boy, he had four wives, two of them daughters of ...
— Forty-one years in India - From Subaltern To Commander-In-Chief • Frederick Sleigh Roberts
... Merimee, and found its final expression in the plays of Meilhac and Halevy—she adapted its formula so as to suit even her social engagements, transposed it into the courtesy which was always struggling to be positive and precise, to approximate itself to the plain truth. She would never develop at any length to a hostess the expression of her anxiety to be present at her party; she found it more pleasant to disclose to her all the various little incidents on which it would depend whether it was or was not ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... "It's plain enough; you'll see if you meet her. But I should think even he would not have the audacity to ...
— The Gadfly • E. L. Voynich
... the jungle, and found our horses waiting for us in the bed of the river by the water side, and we rode towards our camp well satisfied with the day's work. Upon entering an open plain of low withered grass we perceived a boar, who upon our approach showed no signs of fear, but insolently erected his tail and scrutinised our party. Florian dismounted and fired a shot, which passed through his ...
— The Nile Tributaries of Abyssinia • Samuel W. Baker
... of these lines he traced every movement from above to below. Thence he naturally concluded that the stars were rolling torches set in the vault of the sky; that, if left to themselves, they would fall to the earth in a shower of fire; that the earth was one vast plain, forming the lower portion of the world, &c. If he had been asked by what the world itself was sustained, he would have answered that he did not know, but that to God nothing is impossible. Such ...
— What is Property? - An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government • P. J. Proudhon
... girl opened it. She had a cigarette in her hand, her face was pale under a mass of reddish-chestnut hair, her eyes very large, a pale brown, as large as the eyes of women in those paintings of Artemisias and Berenikes found in tombs in the Fayum. She wore a plain black dress. ...
— Three Soldiers • John Dos Passos
... forbearance the regular soldiers stipulated for the liberation of their officer. In the end the chief offenders among the radicals were punished by imprisonment or banished, and the tumult subsided; but the French officials now had strong support, not only from the hierarchy, as before, but from the plain pious people ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. I. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... the presence of these gentlemen, also declare, in a very plain and precise manner, the determination that I have come to. As it required some time to prepare for its execution, I have not spoken of it sooner, for you know I am not in the habit of saying, 'I will do so and so!' but I ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... one. To you, educated people, he appears in a nobler aspect of course; but to us plain, simple people, he reveals himself as ...
— Savva and The Life of Man • Leonid Andreyev
... forgotten,' or something of that sort. I recollect her now—poor child!—turning her eyes full on me and saying, 'But I should not forget you, Mr. Harrisson.' You see how it was? Only it seems a sort of disloyalty to the poor girl to tell it. It was all plain, and she meant it to be. I can't remember now whether I said, 'I can't marry you, Tina, because I don't know that my wife is dead,' or whether I only thought it. But I know that I then knew I was, or had been, married and ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... throughout the universe, 'tis plain, The moon drinks up the sea, the earth the rain, The sun the air, and ev'ry tree, we know, The earth's prolific juice imbibes to grow. The air sups up the water too, 'tis said, Why then, my dearest friends, ...
— Ebrietatis Encomium - or, the Praise of Drunkenness • Boniface Oinophilus
... At the close of the fourteenth century, Wycliffe had cried that the rotting trunk cumbered the ground, and should be cut down. It had not been cut down; it had been allowed to stand for a hundred and fifty more years; and now it was indeed plain that it could remain no longer. The boughs were bare, the stem was withered, the veins were choked with corruption; the ancient life-tree of monasticism would blossom and bear fruit no more. Faith had sunk into superstition; duty had died into routine; ...
— History of England from the Fall of Wolsey to the Death of Elizabeth. Vol. II. • James Anthony Froude
... has to look after everything, one needs all one's wits. However, Georges' husky voice recurred to me, and I said to myself, "I am sure that he has caught a cold; it is plain that he has had his hair cut ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... life around, Why comes not Jane? When friendship calls, Why leaves she not Augusta's walls? Where cooling zephyrs faintly blow, Nor spread the cheering, healthful glow. That glides through each awaken'd vein, As skimming o'er the spacious plain, We look around with joyous eye, And view no boundaries ...
— Elegies and Other Small Poems • Matilda Betham
... After that it was plain that he had discovered that the rose-garden was not ALL the world. He knew about the other side of the wall. But it did not absorb him altogether. He was seldom absent when I came and he never failed to answer my call. ...
— My Robin • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... but it had a certain advantage as a practical aid to good government. The maintenance of social order required the establishment of popular deference to some species of superiority, and the superiorities of birth and fortune were at least plain and palpable to the mob of mankind who have to be governed, whereas the superiorities of wisdom and virtue were often invisible and uncertain, even to the discerning. But however useful this admiration for the wrong things might be for ...
— Life of Adam Smith • John Rae
... armory of genius. Cities serve it poorly, books and colleges at second hand; the eye craves the spectacle of the horizon, of mountain, ocean, river and plain, the clouds and stars; actual contact with the elements, sympathy with the seasons as ...
— Pearls of Thought • Maturin M. Ballou
... slope of the basin and halted their horses on the crest. Before them stretched a plain so big and vast and inviting that it made the girl gasp ...
— 'Firebrand' Trevison • Charles Alden Seltzer
... his horse, and rode into a forest, and held no highway. And as he looked afore him he saw a fair plain, and beside that a fair castle, and afore the castle were many pavilions of silk and of diverse hue. And him seemed that he saw there five hundred knights riding on horseback; and there were two parties: they that were of the castle were all on black horses ...
— Le Morte D'Arthur, Volume II (of II) - King Arthur and of his Noble Knights of the Round Table • Thomas Malory
... given to any food product, and its nonacceptance will quite clearly reveal the real motive of any continued restriction of their use, and that having been made clear the duty of the Executive will be very plain. ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents, Volume IX. • Benjamin Harrison
... certificate. There had been an unhappy engagement between my uncle and Ann Walden—he, poor, timid, gentle soul, dared not speak at the proper moment, he dreaded giving pain, and he married Cynthia's mother privately, and before things could be made plain—he died up in the hills, serving men! The man that married them went away—only a year ago he came back; recently Mr. Greeley drove over to Sudley's Gulch to make a will for this man; Cynthia and I went with him. The man died a few days ago. Among ...
— A Son of the Hills • Harriet T. Comstock
... was not only very plain in her attire, but very, economical—a circumstance which, I have often heard her say, gave great umbrage to the other Princesses of the Court of Versailles, who never showed themselves, from the moment they rose till they returned to bed, except in full dress; while she herself ...
— The Secret Memoirs of Louis XV./XVI, Complete • Madame du Hausset, an "Unknown English Girl" and the Princess Lamballe
... Beyond doubt both acts of Eumenes were included among those which were reported at Rome in 590 et seq. as attempts on his part to interfere further in Gallic affairs, and to support his partisans in that quarter (Polyb. xxxi. 6, 9; xxxii. 3, 5). On the other hand it is plain from one of the letters of his successor Attalus that the times had changed and his wishes had lowered their tone. The priest Attis appears to have at a conference at Apamea obtained once more from Attalus the promise of armed assistance; but afterwards ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... taking this simple view of things in rich commercial cities. Our worthy trustee merely put the thing on the correct basis. He frankly said what every church does, ought to do, and must do. He stated a universal fact in the plain and sensible language to which he was accustomed. In the same way these business-like Christians have borrowed the language of the Church, and speak of men who ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton
... down over the front window, but the lamp threw a shadow on it, plain as a photograph. It was the shadow of the old man, sitting there with his arms flung out across the table, and his head bowed down on them. I was just hesitating, whether to knock or to slip away, when I heard him groan, and sort of cry out, 'Oh, my Danny! My Danny! If only ...
— Georgina of the Rainbows • Annie Fellows Johnston
... eaten a little corn, Ranjoor Singh questioned this man Abraham, and then went with him through the camp, examining the plunder the Turks had seen fit to requisition. It was plain that this particular Turkish officer was no paragon of all the virtues, and Ranjoor Singh finally entered his tent unannounced, taking Abraham with him. So it was that I learned the details later, for Abraham told me ...
— Hira Singh - When India came to fight in Flanders • Talbot Mundy
... over the left shoulder of the mountain and found himself looking down on the wide plain which held Stillwater. The air was crystal-clear and dry; the shoulder of the mountain was high above it; Gregg saw a breathless stretch of the cattle country at one sweep of ...
— Ronicky Doone • Max Brand
... returned Lord Frederick, 'and must press you for a plain and straightforward answer. Is what you have just said only a mere whim of the moment, occasioned by your being out of humour and irritated, or is it your serious intention, and one ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... particularly dispensed with, owing to a feat of early manhood. Ere he had fully composed the angry thoughts which were chafing in his mind, the sound of a hunting bugle was heard at the gate, and from the sort of general stir which it spread through the garrison, it was plain that the governor had returned from his ride. Every sentinel, seemingly animated by his presence, shouldered his pike more uprightly, gave the word of the post more sharply, and seemed more fully awake and conscious of his duty. Sir John de Walton having alighted ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... which their production is thus effected, is more properly a natural than an artificial one. In speaking of truffle-grounds, he says (quoting from Broome) "that whenever a plantation of beech, or beech and fir, is made in the chalky districts of Salisbury Plain, after the lapse of a few years truffles are produced, and that the plantations continue productive for a period of from ten to fifteen years, after which they cease to be so." No truffle spores were planted ...
— Life: Its True Genesis • R. W. Wright
... torn and furrowed desert by the pool of Fafnir's blood, And the Serpent lay before him, dead, chilly, dull, and grey; And over the Glittering Heath fair shone the sun and the day, And a light wind followed the sun and breathed o'er the fateful place, As fresh as it furrows the sea-plain, or bows ...
— Myths of the Norsemen - From the Eddas and Sagas • H. A. Guerber
... had been rediscovered. For centuries it had lain like a buried city, forgotten under the ignorance and the fighting of the Middle Ages. Now it was brought to light, and the recovered treasure was the common possession of Italy, not indeed so much of the plain people as of the learned ...
— Raphael - A Collection Of Fifteen Pictures And A Portrait Of The - Painter With Introduction And Interpretation • Estelle M. Hurll
... straight, plain dressing-gown, her hair in two long plaits down her back, tapped softly in the dead of night at her mother's door, and in a blood-curdling whisper called ...
— Kitty Trenire • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... could do to be paled down," thought Penelope to herself; but she did not speak her thought aloud. "I mustn't tell Aunt Sophy, that is plain. I must keep all I know about Paulie dark for the present. There's an awful lot. There's about the thimble, and—yes, I did see them all three. I'm glad I saw them. I won't tell now, for I'd only be punished; but if I don't tell, and pretend I'm ...
— Girls of the Forest • L. T. Meade
... used by what was called the Continental troops, of which the force led into Canada by Arnold and Montgomery was a part, was of plain crimson, and perhaps sometimes it may have had a border of black. On the 1st January, 1776, the army was organized, and the new flag then adopted was first unfurled at Cambridge, at the head-quarters of General Washington, ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... and limitless. It is one of the rare spots on the globe where nature reveals herself to us unfailingly wholesome and green. A little further to the north the country is threatened with barrenness, a little further to the south, it is fatigued and scorched by the sun. At the end of a plain that ran down to the edge of the sea, some peasants were erecting a stack of corn. "Look," he said, "seen from here, they are beautiful. They are constructing that simple and yet so important thing, which is above all else the happy and almost unvarying monument ...
— The Life of the Bee • Maurice Maeterlinck
... stomach." Captain Servadac turned out into the open air to smoke his pipe upon the edge of the cliff. The shades of night were drawing on. An hour previously, veiled in heavy clouds, the sun had sunk below the horizon that bounded the plain beyond ...
— Off on a Comet • Jules Verne
... Grom, his right hand and his counselor, stood upon the bare green ridge above the Cave-mouth, and stared down anxiously upon the sun-drenched plain. Of old it had taken keen eyes to discern the varied life which populated its bamboo-thickets and cane-choked marshes. Now it was as thronged as the home pastures of a cattle-farm. Here and there a battle raged between such small-brained brutes as the white rhinoceros and the ...
— In the Morning of Time • Charles G. D. Roberts
... "My lads, you must not fear death; when soldiers brave death, they drive him into the enemy's ranks." In the fury of assault, he no more spared himself. He went to the edge of his possibility. It is plain that in Italy he did what he could, and all that he could. He came, several times, within an inch of ruin; and his own person was all but lost. He was flung into the marsh at Arcola. The Austrians were between him and his troops, in the melee, and ...
— Representative Men • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... Make a plain grape-fruit salad. When you have it ready to serve, cover the top thickly with finely chopped almonds or pecans mixed. Pour ...
— The International Jewish Cook Book • Florence Kreisler Greenbaum
... The Wavecrest was some distance from any of the other craft beating into the harbor. The sun had set long since and the moon, a great, round target of silver, was rising out of the sea, its light shimmering across the heaving liquid plain. A more peaceful scene one could scarcely imagine, and somehow it took the heat ...
— Swept Out to Sea - Clint Webb Among the Whalers • W. Bertram Foster
... sister will have plenty of friends to ask without thinking of Sylvia. She won't find it plain sailing looking after a big house like that. I should advise her to engage a housekeeper if she doesn't want to be cheated right and left. I know what servants are when the mistress is never in the kitchen to look after the scraps. I daresay ...
— More about Pixie • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... generation of shipowners and merchants in all the ports from Bombay clear over to where the East merges into the West upon the coast of the two Americas. His fame remained writ, not very large but plain enough, on the Admiralty charts. Was there not somewhere between Australia and China a Whalley Island and a Condor Reef? On that dangerous coral formation the celebrated clipper had hung stranded for three days, her captain and crew throwing her cargo overboard with one hand and with ...
— End of the Tether • Joseph Conrad
... What kind of person is this Elizabeth Royal?" asked Lady Dacre after a pause. "Is she pretty, or plain?" ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1 • Various
... might account for this by the fact that this curious unfinished establishment was not subject to the usual laws governing orderly housekeeping. Bates was evidently aware of my suspicions, and he remarked, drawing down the last of the plain green shades: ...
— The House of a Thousand Candles • Meredith Nicholson
... Gareth I shall mourn as long as life lasts. As soon would I have slain my own nephew, Sir Bors, as have harmed Sir Gareth wittingly; for I myself made him knight, and loved him as my brother." "Liar and traitor," cried Sir Gawain, "ye slew him, defenceless and unarmed." "It is full plain, Sir Gawain," said Launcelot, "that never again shall I have your love; and yet there has been old kindness between us, and once ye thanked me that I saved your life." "It shall not avail you now," said Sir Gawain; "traitor ye are, both to the King and to me. ...
— Stories from Le Morte D'Arthur and the Mabinogion • Beatrice Clay
... station. For three miles, four, it held its place; then, as, with the old unconscious motion the girl turned to look back, she searched for it in vain. Behind them as before, unbroken, limiting, only the brown plain and the blue surrounding wall met her gaze. At last, there in the solitude, there with no observer save nature and nature's God, she ...
— Where the Trail Divides • Will Lillibridge
... begun by frowning on O'Sullivan Og. But presently he smiled at something the latter said, then he laughed; at last he made a joke himself. At that the girl turned on him; but he argued with her. A man held up a tub for inspection, and though she struck it pettishly with her whip, it was plain that she was shaken. O'Sullivan Og pointed to the sloop, pointed to his house, grinned. The listeners on the deck caught the word "Dues!" and the peal ...
— The Wild Geese • Stanley John Weyman
... Vashti refused to come at the command of a drunken husband to show herself to his drunken lords, was there a clearer case of disrespect to the marital dignity on the part of a wife. It was a plain act of insubordination, rebellion against law and order; and how shocking in Lady Byron, who ought to feel herself but too much flattered to be exhibited to the public as the head wife of a ...
— Lady Byron Vindicated • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... the Emperor Alexander came to Ecouen, and he did me the honour to breakfast with me. After showing him over the establishment I conducted him to the park, the most elevated point of which overlooked the plain of St. Denis. 'Sire,' said I, 'from this point I saw the battle of Paris'—'If,' replied the Emperor, 'that battle had lasted two hours longer we should not have had a single cartridge at our disposal. We feared that we had ...
— Memoirs Of The Court Of Marie Antoinette, Queen Of France, Complete • Madame Campan
... a little chamber and provide it with a door, windows, and window-shutters. Let an aperture be made in one of the shutters through which a sunbeam can pass. Close the door and windows so that no light shall enter save through the hole in the shutter. The track of the sunbeam is at first perfectly plain and vivid in the air of the room. If all disturbance of the air of the chamber be avoided, the luminous track will become fainter and fainter, until at last it disappears absolutely, and no trace of the beam is to be seen. What rendered the ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... having been secured by walls, a fosse, and a gate.[2] Elala about the same period built "thirty-two bulwarks" at Anarajapoora[3]; and Dutugaimunu, in commencing to besiege him in the city, followed his example, by throwing up a "fortification in an open plain," at a spot well ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent
... documents, which are better evidence even than imperial medals; whilst, on the other hand, all the fabulous anecdotes, not having an attorney's seal to them, seem to have been the fictions of the wonder maker. The plain presumption from the record of Shakspeare's situation in 1589, coupled with the fact that his first arrival in London was possibly not until 1587, but according to the earliest account not before 1586, ...
— Biographical Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... grief for a lover's death, but she left a group of lovers to lament her loss. In many respects she was not unlike Mlle. de Scudery; exceptionally plain, her face was much marked with smallpox, a disfigurement not uncommon in those days; her exceedingly piercing and fine eyes, beautiful hair, tall and elegant figure, excellent taste in dress, pleasing voice and a most brilliant talent for conversation, ...
— Women of Modern France - Woman In All Ages And In All Countries • Hugo P. Thieme
... returned Bessie, in such an alarmed voice that Miss Sefton laughed; and then she continued, in rather a shamefaced manner: "You see I am not like you, Miss Sefton. I have not been used to luxuries and being waited on; we are plain ...
— Our Bessie • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... children even from himself? If among the figments of his brain, he could fashion slaves, and make them something else than property, he knew full well that a very different pattern was in use among the southern patriarchs. Why did he not, in plain words, and sober earnest, and good faith, describe the thing as it was, instead of employing honied words and courtly phrases, to set forth with all becoming vagueness and ambiguity what might possibly be supposed to exist in the ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society |
