"Skimming" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... white or gayly-painted lateen sails gleaming in the evening glow, large galleys, light skiffs, and restless, skimming pleasure-boats, were flitting to and fro; and among them, like loaded wagons among chariots and horsemen, the low corn-barges scarcely seemed to move, piled as they were with pyramids of straw and grain as high as ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... are shy and capricious; they keep on the open plains, are quick to take the alarm, and bound away with a fleetness that defies pursuit. When thus skimming across a prairie in the autumn, their light gray or dun color blends with the hue of the withered herbage, the swiftness of their motion baffles the eye, and they almost seem unsubstantial forms, driven ...
— Astoria - Or, Anecdotes Of An Enterprise Beyond The Rocky Mountains • Washington Irving
... to a considerable distance in the interior. There are, however, some grounds to believe that a lake or run of fresh water exists not far from Denial Bay: the flock of teal seen upon the western Isle of St. Peter, and the number of winged, fresh-water insects skimming the surface of that bay, are the grounds to which ...
— A Voyage to Terra Australis • Matthew Flinders
... the air, Pegasus seemed hardly to be a creature of the earth. Whenever he was seen, up very high above people's heads, with the sunshine on his silvery wings, you would have thought that he belonged to the sky, and that, skimming a little too low, he had got astray among our mists and vapours, and was seeking his way back again. It was very pretty to behold him plunge into the fleecy bosom of a bright cloud, and be lost in it, for a moment or two, and then break forth from ...
— Myths That Every Child Should Know - A Selection Of The Classic Myths Of All Times For Young People • Various
... now bubbling over with excitement. The speed of the steamer had, without a doubt, been slackened, and a boat was being lowered. Brand and his companion, immensely happy, were already dotting down their notes for the wireless. The seaplane was gently skimming the water almost alongside, and barely fifty yards away. The pilot and his companion were clearly visible. The passengers lined the whole length of the steamer, leaning over to watch the denouement of ...
— The Box with Broken Seals • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... slide, I gloom, I glance, Among my skimming swallows; I make the netted sunbeam dance ...
— Journeys Through Bookland - Volume Four • Charles H. Sylvester
... with a bracing beam wind that filled every sail, jib, and square, and stay, the bold frigate Ocean Pride was skimming across the Atlantic like a veritable sea-bird. She was bound for the lone Bermudas, and the night was a heavenly one. So no wonder that, as the two young sailors leaned over the bulwarks and gazed at the moonlit water that seemed all a-shimmer with gold, their thoughts went back to ...
— As We Sweep Through The Deep • Gordon Stables
... than at Northbury. It was a famous harbor for boating. Even at low tide people could get on the water, and in the summer time this gay sheet of dark blue sparkling waves had many small yachts, fishing smacks, and row-boats of all sizes and descriptions skimming about on its surface. In the spring a large fishing trade was done here, and then the steamers whistle? and shrieked, and disturbed the primitive harmony of the place. But by midsummer the great shoals of mackerel went ...
— The Honorable Miss - A Story of an Old-Fashioned Town • L. T. Meade
... my books, a barrel of beer, which I tap myself (can you tap a barrel of beer?), and an old woman to do for me. I have also just concocted two gallons of tar-water under the directions of Bishop Berkeley: it is to be bottled off this very day after a careful skimming, and then drunk by those who can and will. It is to be tried first on my old woman; if she survives, I am to begin; and it will then gradually spread into the parish, through England, Europe, etc., "as the small pebble stirs the ...
— The Bed-Book of Happiness • Harold Begbie
... daisies in the orchard Gertie started up a rabbit, which ran slowly toward the woods. Gertie and Archy went skimming over the field after it, laughing and flourishing the great green umbrella at such a rate that the rabbit ran into the woods, where ...
— Harper's Young People, August 17, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... the taper spars; others refitting again for sea, and loading the huge pine-trunks moored as vast rafts to the stern. There were people everywhere, all was motion, life and activity. Jolly-boats with twenty oars, man-of-war gigs bounding rapidly past them with eight; canoes skimming by without a ripple, and seemingly without impulse, till you caught sight of the lounging figure, who lay at full length in the stern, and whose red features were scarce distinguishable from the copper-coloured bark of his boat. Some moved upon the rafts, ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... struck ten, and such a peal of chimes succeeded, as shook the whole edifice, notwithstanding its bulk, and drove me away in a hurry. No mob obstructed my passage, and I ran through a succession of streets, free and unmolested, as if I had been skimming along over the downs of Wiltshire. My servants conversing before the hotel were the only sounds which the great "Place ...
— Dreams, Waking Thoughts, and Incidents • William Beckford
... of that skimming were, and how far more philosophical his appreciation of Hindu literature had then become, may be seen from the end of the same letter, written from Rajshahi, ...
— Chips from a German Workshop - Volume IV - Essays chiefly on the Science of Language • Max Muller
... put two pounds of beef cut from the lower part of the round, into two quarts of cold water and let come slowly to the boil, skimming carefully until perfectly clear. When this point is reached, add a small onion, two stalks of celery, two cloves, and keep at the boiling point for seven hours; then strain into an earthen bowl and let cool until next day. A half hour before needed, skim ...
— Favorite Dishes • Carrie V. Shuman
... for a moment with fear for her, then it grew hotter with admiration as he watched her skimming across the moor in the direction of the Hall. Once, just before she vanished from his sight, she turned and waved her hand to him as if to assure him that she was safe. The gesture reminded him of the white figure standing in the doorway last night, and something stirred in his heart and sent a ...
— At Love's Cost • Charles Garvice
... a real pleasure to be able to turn to such a journal after, as a matter of courtesy, skimming over so much trash as is thrown broadcast.... He seems determined to reverse this order and use words that will not only express his ideas, but, at the same time, sink them in ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, May 1887 - Volume 1, Number 4 • Various
... hardly believe his senses. How often he had looked upon the Roaring Bess from the respectable distance of the main road. To have a sail in her had been his one great ambition. While lying in bed he had often imagined himself skimming over the water, with the sail, big and white, bending above him. Now his dream had really come true, and here he was at last sitting by Captain Josh's side, watching him as he headed the boat upstream. A gentle breeze was drifting in from westward, sufficient to fill the sail ...
— Rod of the Lone Patrol • H. A. Cody
... afternoon Hilda travelled alone by the local train from Bleakridge to Knype, the central station where all voyagers for London, Birmingham, and Manchester had to foregather in order to take the fast expresses that unwillingly halted there, and there only, in their skimming flights across the district. It was a custom of Five Towns hospitality that a departing guest should be accompanied as far as Knype and stowed with personal attentions into the big train. But on this occasion Hilda had wished otherwise. ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett
... broke upon his recollection, but at first he could remember nothing more, nor connect the strange present with the excited past. Still more slowly—as when one breaks the azure sleep of some unruffled mountain mere by the skimming of a stone, and for a long time the clear images of blue sky, and wreathing cloud, and green mountain-top, are shaken and confused on the tremulous and twinkling wave, but unite together into the old picture ...
— Julian Home • Dean Frederic W. Farrar
... skimming the heap of MSS. before him, comes upon one which promises well in the opening paragraphs, he will turn to its conclusion, to learn how well the author has kept his promise; and if he finds there ...
— Short Story Writing - A Practical Treatise on the Art of The Short Story • Charles Raymond Barrett
... "Merely skimming the surface of life, I know nothing, by my own experience, of its deep and warm realities. I have achieved none of those objects which the instinct of mankind especially prompts them to pursue, and the accomplishment of which must therefore beget a native satisfaction. The truly ...
— Nathaniel Hawthorne • George E. Woodberry
... I went on, "that we should continue in the direction that has been pointed out for us; follow the light, however dim. There is a mystery here, and we are just now only skimming the surface of it; let's plunge below and see if we can't bring up at least a part ...
— The Paternoster Ruby • Charles Edmonds Walk
... called out, "Sail ahead, sir!" and Vernon, taking his eyes from her, saw a yacht skimming along the sapphire waves, almost parallel ...
— Nell, of Shorne Mills - or, One Heart's Burden • Charles Garvice
... skimming the bridge. If he'd been running, he'd have been shot to a sieve. As it was, they'd never see him in the mingled glare ...
— A Matter of Proportion • Anne Walker
... clinging to the flagstaff, and became absorbed in the rush of the foaming, boiling waters unrolling a gradually narrowing streak of dazzling white through the blue-green waste of billows, all sparkling in the slanting sunshine. Wheeling in flapping circles overhead, skimming the crested waves, settling down and lazily floating on the heaving flood, so many dots of snow upon the sapphire, the flock of gulls sailed onward with the ship, white scavengers of the sea, and sometimes dropped ...
— A Wounded Name • Charles King
... and he looked round at his listeners. They were gazing at him in silence. The water was boiling by now and Styopka was skimming off the froth. ...
— The Bishop and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... rush into the crowd, charging it with his mace as with a battering-ram, and was in the act of clutching the man who had thrown the filth, when the phalanx of packet-men broke through and bore him down. A moment later I saw his gold-laced hat fly skimming over the heads of the throng, and his mace wrenched from him and held aloft in the hands of a red-faced man, who flourished it twice and rushed upon the Mayor, shouting at the same time with all his lungs: "Townshends! This way, Townshends!" whereat the packet-men ...
— Sir John Constantine • Prosper Paleologus Constantine
... following its graceful windings—sometimes touching bottom, and sometimes skimming smoothly over deep water, where Kitty could no longer clutch for the tall, bright grass that here and there had reared itself above the surface. Often Big Tom would sing out, "Lie low!" as some great bough, hanging over ...
— Po-No-Kah - An Indian Tale of Long Ago • Mary Mapes Dodge
... Parental Advice Petticoats at the Polls Picnic Incidents Plato Polygamy as a Religious Duty Preventing a Scandal Railway Etiquette Recollections of Noah Webster Rev. Mr. Hallelujah's Hoss Roller Skating Rosalinde Second Letter to the President She Kind of Coaxed Him Shorts Sixty Minutes in America Skimming the Milky Way Somnambulism and Crime Spinal Meningitis Spring Squaw Jim Squaw Jim's Religion Stirring Incidents at a Fire Strabismus and Justice Street Cars and Curiosities Taxidermy The Amateur Carpenter ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye
... them any day if you go by a brook. The diving-beetles are skimming about, rowing themselves along with their flattened hind legs. Every few minutes they come to the surface and lift their wings to get a little air under them, then down they go into the brook. They are very hungry beetles, eating other insects which they find in the water. The boldest often ...
— Little Busybodies - The Life of Crickets, Ants, Bees, Beetles, and Other Busybodies • Jeanette Augustus Marks and Julia Moody
... In the controlling actions of an aeroplane—and this is a fact which tends sometimes to the confusion of the novice—nothing more is required, normally, than the most delicate of movements. The difference say between ascending, and skimming along the ground, is represented by a movement of the hand-lever of only a few inches. Delicate, sure, quick, and firm; such is the ...
— Learning to Fly - A Practical Manual for Beginners • Claude Grahame-White
... embarked and pulled up under lovely verdant banks, which are occupied by villas, till we reached the arm of the lake that stretches towards the south-west. Here a fair breeze struck us, and making sail, away we went, skimming before it, at the rate of eight miles an hour. Once or twice the wind came with a power that showed how necessary it is to be cautious on a water that is bounded by so many precipitous rocks. We passed the solitary ...
— A Residence in France - With An Excursion Up The Rhine, And A Second Visit To Switzerland • J. Fenimore Cooper
... visit not to a silly child, not to a boor, but to a bibliophile who is very happy to make your acquaintance, and who knows that long ago you used to make elf-knots in the manes of mares at the crib, drink the milk from the skimming-pails, slip graines-a-gratter down the backs of our great-grandmothers, make the hearth sputter in the faces of the old folks, and, in short, fill the house with disorder and gaiety. You can also boast of giving the ...
— The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard • Anatole France
... its last spectacular effects, and found ourselves in a deep oval indentation, glassy as an inland lake, whose bosom caught the changing cloud tints like a mirror, and whose deep cool green borders were alive with myriads of delighted birds, skimming, chattering, calling. Half a mile away, at its farther end, the surf leaped frothily over a bar, and beyond that the open sea tumbled and flashed in the first sun-rays. It was idyllic—and on our left ...
— A Woman's Impression of the Philippines • Mary Helen Fee
... murmured Lancelot, smiling. And, indeed, the image of Mary Ann skimming the meads on a pony in the sunshine was more pleasant to contemplate than that of Mary Ann whitening the wintry steps. "What a complexion you must have had to start with!" he cried aloud, surveying the not unenviable remains of it. "Well, ...
— Merely Mary Ann • Israel Zangwill
... for orders, had studied a little of everything. Skimming all things leaves naught for result. One may be victim of the omnis res scibilis. Having the vessel of the Danaides in one's head is the misfortune of a whole race of learned men, who may be termed the sterile. What Barkilphedro had put into his ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... Now skimming the waves with his wings, and now shooting Up, arrow-like, into the dark clouds on high, The storm-finch is clamoring loudly and shrilly; The clouds can hear joy in ...
— Mother Earth, Vol. 1 No. 1, March 1906 • Various
... beneath him, and the one wing that bore him skimming over its million deaths, away to the House of Lossie, where it stood steady in its woods, he distinguished the very window whence, hardly an hour ago, from the centre of the calm companionship of books, he had gazed out upon the wind swept waste ...
— Malcolm • George MacDonald
... midst of which a mighty death agony beat back the troubled waves of the trade wind. Only then did the muffled double boom of the explosion reach the ears of the spectators, presently to be followed by a whispering, swift-skimming wavelet that swept irresistibly across the bigger surges and lapped the ship's side, as for a message ...
— The Mystery • Stewart Edward White and Samuel Hopkins Adams
... public privileges for practically nothing; and in return he gives the contracts for constructing the subways and street-car lines to companies organized by the politicians. These companies are simply paper companies... they farm out the contracts to the real builders, skimming off a profit of twenty or thirty per cent. One of these companies received contracts last year to the value of thirty ...
— The Machine • Upton Sinclair
... Dolly involuntarily compared their experiences. Trouble to Christina was a word of unknown meaning; to herself it was become daily bread. Had that made the difference? Christina was living on the surface of things; skimming a smooth sea in a gilded gondola; shelter and adornment were all about her life, and plenty within. Dolly had been, as it were, cast into the waves and was struggling with them; now lifted on a ...
— The End of a Coil • Susan Warner
... in that fallow, outside the paddock." The master went over about nine o'clock to see what kind of a ploughman was Jack, and what did he see but the little boy driving the bastes, and the sock and coulter of the plough skimming along the sod, and Jack pulling ding-dong ...
— Celtic Fairy Tales • Joseph Jacobs (coll. & ed.)
... Testing for Coal Tar Dyes; Determining the Per Cent of Skin in Beans; Extraction of Fat from Peanuts; Microscopic Examination of Milk; Formaldehyde in Cream or Milk; Gelatine in Cream or Milk; Testing for Oleomargarine; Testing for Watering or Skimming of Milk; Boric Acid in Meat; Microscopic Examination of Cereal Starch Grains; Identification of Commercial Cereals; Granulation and Color of Flour; Capacity of Flour to absorb Water; Acidity of Flour; Moist and Dry Gluten; Gliadin from Flour; Bread-making Test; Microscopic Examination of Yeast; ...
— Human Foods and Their Nutritive Value • Harry Snyder
... half-way down the mountain, fairly skimming over the rocks and rubbish, and almost before the distracted girls had recovered their senses enough to be of any aid to the prisoners, the little fellow stumbled across the threshold of the Eagles' Nest, gasping, "They've ...
— Tabitha's Vacation • Ruth Alberta Brown
... minutes the biplane hummed on and on in long rising and falling slants, like a swallow skimming the surface of a lake. The even staccato of the exhaust, echoless in that height and vacancy, rippled with cadences like a monster mowing-machine. And Stern was beginning to consider himself as good as in Boston already—was ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... I see Above the fog that sheets the mead - Yea, that which once could breathe and plead! - Skimming along with spectre-speed To a last tryst ...
— Moments of Vision • Thomas Hardy
... skimming beneath the surface of a sea of clouds: now the black billows had silver crests: now an incandescent buoy bobbed among them. O for ...
— Dead Men Tell No Tales • E. W. Hornung
... from the start by sheer audacity—by its dominant, insistent, almost brutal and entirely misdirected power. It was less the story that struck one than the personal equation between the lines, and the impression she brought away from her breathless skimming was that she had encountered the shock ...
— The Wheel of Life • Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow
... sir.' And with his mind apparently relieved from an overwhelming weight by having at last got an order for something, the waiter imperceptibly melted away. Waiters never walk or run. They have a peculiar and mysterious power of skimming out of rooms, which other ...
— The Inns and Taverns of "Pickwick" - With Some Observations on their Other Associations • B.W. Matz
... or rabbits. Never put in fat, as this can be rendered down for pastry and frying, and only makes the stock greasy; always cover the bones with cold water, but regulate the quantity by the material used. Put in cold water with a teaspoonful of salt, and when it boils up, skim well; when skimming, take an iron spoon and a basin of water, and dip the spoon in the water each time the scum is removed; then put in the peppercorns and vegetables. In very hot weather put peppercorns and a fagot of herbs only, as the vegetables ...
— The Art of Living in Australia • Philip E. Muskett (?-1909)
... Farther Discoveries" of the Sectaries, and their opinions and practices. This was because Mr. Edwards had solicited fresh information from all quarters, and it was poured in upon him superabundantly by Presbyterian correspondents. The First Part, as the skimming of the cream by Mr. Edwards himself, is perhaps the richest essentially. The others consist mainly of verifications and additional details, rumours, and anecdotes. Altogether, the Three Parts of Edwards's Gangraena ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson
... in a charming little cottage in one of the garden cities near New York, and found them equally divided in their solicitude over a baby on the top floor and a huge jar in the basement which needed constant skimming if the beer was ...
— Roving East and Roving West • E.V. Lucas
... sat in Solon's battered chair with the missing castor, surveyed his exchange-laden desk with a humorous eye, and seized the last Argus, skimming its local columns with a lively interest and professing to be enthralled by its word-magic. She read stray items that commended themselves to her critical judgment, such as, "A wind blew last week that you could lean up against like the side of the house;" or "Westley ...
— The Boss of Little Arcady • Harry Leon Wilson
... which little Cupids make into a pleasure-dial. It keeps on turning them; and now we have the beautiful dream of a pilgrim sleeping with his staff and gourd beside him, and to whom appears a host of young fays skimming a huge pot. Does it not seem that your eye is upon a vision of a fete by Boucher, shown by his pupil in Tasso's garden? Adorable magic lantern! where Clorinde follows Fiammette, where the gleams of an epic poem mingle with the smiles of the novellieri! Tales of the fay Urgele, little comic jests, ...
— Great Pictures, As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Esther Singleton
... favourite ecclesiastical process of privily damning me for a heretic, and a worse than heathen. Moreover he had sent me a kind of ritual which I had perused in an hour and returned to him: this prepossessed the Shaykh strongly against me, lightly "skimming" books being a form of idleness as yet unknown to the ponderous East. Our days at Harar were monotonous enough. In the morning we looked to the mules, drove out the cats—as great a nuisance here as at Aden—and ate for ...
— First footsteps in East Africa • Richard F. Burton
... for when the exhaust from the motor was sent through the new muffler Tom had attached it was possible to talk aboard the Lucifer. The young manager pointed down toward the earth, over which the craft was then skimming, though at no ...
— Tom Swift among the Fire Fighters - or, Battling with Flames from the Air • Victor Appleton
... its rivers were running; its trees were fruitful, and its gardens bore ripe produce. It was a city with impenetrable gates, empty, still, without a voice or a cheering inhabitant, but the owl hooting in its quarters, and birds skimming in circles in its areas, and the raven croaking in its districts and its great thoroughfare-streets, and bewailing those who had been in it. The Emeer Moosa paused, sorrowing for its being devoid of inhabitants, and its being despoiled of people and dwellers; and ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... to sea, While the little chiming bee Sung his ballad on the lea, Humming sweet; And the red-winged butterfly Was sailing through the sky, Skimming up and bouncing by Near ...
— Life and Remains of John Clare - "The Northamptonshire Peasant Poet" • J. L. Cherry
... Porcaraigne, nine geometrical miles. Where the Fresquel enters the canal, there is, on the opposite side, a waste, to let off the superfluous waters. The horse-way is continued over this waste, by a bridge of stone of eighteen arches. I observe them fishing in the canal, with a skimming net of about fifteen feet diameter, with which they tell me they catch carp. Flax in blossom. Neither strawberries nor peas yet at Carcassonne. The Windsor-bean just come to table. From the ecluse de la Lande we see the last olive trees near a metairee, or farm-house-, called La Lande. ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... up the whole cask, in a rotatory direction, with a clean split stick inserted through the bunghole. Having stirred it sufficiently, pour in the remainder of the wine drawn off, until the cask is full; then stir again, skimming off the bubbles that rise to the surface. When thoroughly mixed by stirring, close the bunghole, and leave it to stand for three or four days. This quantity of clarified wine will fine thirteen dozen of ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... the animable hopjack of my contemplayshins, your aydear is infernally skimming before my keymerycal fansee, when Murfy sends his puppies to the heys of slipping mortals; and when Febus shines from his merry dying throne; whereupon I shall canseif old time has lost his pinners, as also cubit his harrows, until thou ...
— The Adventures of Roderick Random • Tobias Smollett
... a sweet, fresh autumn morning in Lonesome Valley. Before night the deer would bellow reply to the hunters' rifles, and the mountain-goat call to its unknown gods; but now there was only the wild duck skimming the river, and the high hilltop rising and fading into the mist, the ardent sun, ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... been full day outside now, for the funnel was bright with sunshine, and even the dim cave caught a reflected radiance. As I watched the river I saw a bird flash downward, skimming the water. It turned into the cave and fluttered among its dark recesses. I heard its wings beating the roof as it sought wildly for an outlet. It dashed into the spray of the cataract and escaped again into the cave. For maybe twenty minutes it fluttered, till at last it found the way it ...
— Prester John • John Buchan
... afternoon school was well over that Betty found John in any way approachable. He was skimming stones along the dusty road with practised skill, and Betty, alone and ...
— An Australian Lassie • Lilian Turner
... under my window; Richmond Hill and Ham Walks bound my prospect; but, thank God! the Thames is between me and the Duchess of Queensberry. Dowagers (-As plenty as flounders inhabit all around, and Pope's ghost is just now skimming under my window by a most poetical moonlight. I have about land enough to keep such a farm as Noah's, when he set up in the ark with a pair of each kind; but my cottage is rather cleaner than I believe his was after ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole
... next world, because they certainly got him nowhere in this. He was quite affable to the colored waiter who served his breakfasts in the bachelor apartment house, and increased his weekly tip to a dollar and a half. Then he sat down and opened the Times-Republican, skimming over it after his habit for his own space, and frowning over a row of exclamation and interrogation points unwittingly set behind ...
— The Breaking Point • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... talking. Wouldn't I like to be up on that barn roof in the sun! Bet I'd do some talking too. S'posing I was a really dove. What fun it would be to fly away, away up in the blue sky. I wonder if they ever bump into the clouds. There goes a white cloud skimming right over the sun. Now it's gone and we're in the shine once more. Queer how it can shine in spots and be cloudy in spots at the same time. That's like laughing with one eye and bawling with the other. I don't b'lieve a body could ever do that. Wish I could, just ...
— Heart of Gold • Ruth Alberta Brown
... spindle is forged. Good low-percentage carbon-annealed steel ought to withstand considerable friction; at all events the wear under any conditions should be uniform. If the surfaces of both rings and grooves be found in bad condition, they should be re-ground, if not sufficiently worn to warrant skimming up with ...
— Steam Turbines - A Book of Instruction for the Adjustment and Operation of - the Principal Types of this Class of Prime Movers • Hubert E. Collins
... magnificent canopies of verdure on the face of the rocks. The sea-birds, allured by the stillness of these retreats, resorted here to pass the night. At the hour of sunset we could perceive the curlew and the stint skimming along the seashore; the frigate-bird poised high in air; and the white bird of the tropic, which abandons, with the star of day, the solitudes of the Indian ocean. Virginia took pleasure in resting herself upon the border of this fountain, decorated ...
— Paul and Virginia • Bernardin de Saint Pierre
... stooping to drag the boat further ashore, he smote him such a blow over the head, as brought him instantly to the ground, a dead man to all appearance, since, while his body fell upon the earth, his head,—or at least a goodly portion of it, sliced away by the blow,—went skimming into the water. ...
— Nick of the Woods • Robert M. Bird
... were outwardly gay; very full of society life, though not of the kind that I cared for. I went into it to please mamma; and succeeded but partially; for she insisted I was too sober and did not half take the French tone of easy, light, graceful skimming over the surface of things. But mamma could be deep and earnest too on her own subjects of interest. The news of President Lincoln's proclamation, setting free the slaves of the rebel States, roused her ...
— Daisy in the Field • Elizabeth Wetherell
... an indefinite color, spread my veil over my bonnet, and bent my shoulders, and passed down the carriage-drive, by the dining-room windows, into the stable-yard. The rays of sunset struck the lantern-panes in the light-house, and gave the atmosphere a yellow stain. The pigeons were skimming up and down the roof of the wood-house, and cooing round the horses that were in the yard. A boy was driving cows into the shed, whistling a lively air; he suspended it when he saw me, but I shook my finger at him, and ran in. Slipping into the side hall, I dropped my bonnet ...
— The Morgesons • Elizabeth Stoddard
... Britisher's face, too, brightened up with good-nature, the boatswain sounded his whistle, the savage guns disappeared in their ports; the yards were manned with jolly tars, and away streaked the admiral in his barge, skimming the sullen water, towards the Yankee, under a heavy cannonade of grape. The ladies, loving and affectionate souls! couldn't stand it another minute, and, with a Joan of Arc heroism, volunteered to follow ...
— The Adventures of My Cousin Smooth • Timothy Templeton
... retire in state to the morning-room immediately after breakfast and spend a quiet hour in skimming through the papers; they were there, so she might as well get their money's worth out of them. Politics did not greatly interest her, but she was obsessed with a favourite foreboding that one of these days there would be a great social upheaval, in which everybody would ...
— The Chronicles of Clovis • Saki
... glare of it. Now and again some unseen coyote signals his pack in a long-drawn, dolorous whine that comes from no determinate point, but nothing stirs much before mid-afternoon. It is a sign when there begin to be hawks skimming above the sage that the little people ...
— The Land of Little Rain • Mary Austin
... sauntering out to the garage at the back of the house and giving the matter little more thought. It had been arranged that he was to bring the aeroplane back that morning, driving over with Peggy, Jimsy and Jess in the car, and skimming home in the Butterfly while a part of the party brought the car back. They were to call for Jess and Jimsy at their home, a fine residence overlooking the Sound ...
— The Girl Aviators' Sky Cruise • Margaret Burnham
... out of the grotto, followed by Porthos. Dawn just dinted with purple and white the waves and the plain; through the dim light the young melancholy firs waved their tender branches over the pebbles, and long flights of crows were skimming with their black wings over the thin fields of buckwheat. In a quarter of an hour it would be clear daylight; the awakened birds joyously announced it to all nature. The barkings which had been heard, which had stopped the three fishermen engaged in moving the boat, ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas
... people in the city, but down the aerial streets shining objects swirled with the swift easy gliding of flat stones skimming an edge ...
— The Mississippi Saucer • Frank Belknap Long
... where elms grew then, And still the thumbling tit and perky wren Popped through the tiny doors of cosy balls And the blackbird lined with moss his high-built walls; A round mud cottage held the thrush's young, And straws from the untidy sparrow's hung. And, skimming forktailed in the evening air, When man first was were not the martens there? Did not those birds some human shelter crave, And stow beneath the cornice of his cave Their dry tight cups of clay? And from each door Peeped on a ...
— Georgian Poetry 1918-19 • Various
... gulf of Stenia lies there landlocked, and out of it a boat appeared, skimming around the intervening promontory. In a mass of flowers, in a shade of garlands hanging from a low mast, its arms and shrouds wreathed with roses, the singers sat timing their song with their oars. The refrain was supported by zitheras, flutes and horns. The vessel turned ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 1 • Lew. Wallace
... she walked smiling back, With blushing face, and slowly; There's something in the humblest love That makes it pure and holy. And did he marry her, you ask? She stands there with the ladle A-skimming of the morning's milk— That's Sam ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For, Book Two • Various
... miles to the left of their proper course, the Bei Dagh peak rises to a height of ten thousand four hundred feet, while, a few miles farther on, and quite near to their track, the highest peak of the Susuz Dagh range rises still higher by one hundred and fifty feet. The Flying Fish, therefore, skimming along at a height of ten thousand feet only, was liable to dash into either of these peaks if it so happened that she chanced to encounter an air current to deflect her to the eastward of her proper course. This, however, ...
— With Airship and Submarine - A Tale of Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... sharp now, and be lively," exclaimed the Captain as he helped them one by one aboard; and then he got in himself, and shoved the yacht off from the landing, and with the assistance of a singular-looking boy, whom the Captain called "Main Brace," he spread the sails, and the lively craft was soon skimming over the waters, carrying as lively a party as ever set out on an afternoon frolic. "Jolly" was the only word which seemed at all to express the children's pleasure, and if the boys said "it's jolly" once, they must have said it fifty times at least; while ...
— Cast Away in the Cold - An Old Man's Story of a Young Man's Adventures, as Related by Captain John Hardy, Mariner • Isaac I. Hayes
... as he was sometimes called, Robin Goodfellow) was a shrewd and knavish sprite, that used to play comical pranks in the neighbouring villages; sometimes getting into the dairies and skimming the milk, sometimes plunging his light and airy form into the butter-churn, and while he was dancing his fantastic shape in the churn, in vain the dairymaid would labour to change her cream into butter: nor had the village swains any better success; whenever Puck chose to ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... heartily to work, banging with might and main, and raised such a terrible clatter that the birds made what haste they could to get away; and though they had shot half the feathers out of their wings, they were soon seen skimming among the clouds, a long distance off and looking like a flock of wild geese. Orpheus celebrated this victory by playing a triumphant anthem on his harp, and sang so melodiously that Jason begged him to desist, lest, as the steel-feathered birds had been driven away ...
— Famous Tales of Fact and Fancy - Myths and Legends of the Nations of the World Retold for Boys and Girls • Various
... and saw him coming along the platform. Just then the car began to move,—they were shunting it about to attach a sleeper that had been brought in from Louisville and my carriage, or whatever you call it, went skimming out of the sheds into a yard where everything seemed to be most noisy and complex. I dropped off in the dark just before they began to haul the carriage back. A long train of empty goods wagons was just pulling out and I threw my bag into a wagon ...
— The House of a Thousand Candles • Meredith Nicholson
... which he might have no control, each guard in turn devoted considerable attention to the upper regions, hoping to glimpse the aerostat, and holding matches in readiness to raise a flare by way of alighting signal. But it was not until the early dawn that Bruno caught sight of the air-ship, just skimming the tree-tops, the better to escape ...
— The Lost City • Joseph E. Badger, Jr.
... indeed, I am urgently pressed by you to send answers, but what renders me rather dilatory in this respect is the difficulty of finding a trustworthy carrier. How few of these gentry are able to convey a letter rather weightier than usual without lightening it by skimming its contents! Besides, I do not always care to send[76] whenever anyone is starting for Epirus: for I suppose that, having offered victims before your Amaltheia,[77] you at once started for the siege of Sicyon. And yet I am not even certain ...
— The Letters of Cicero, Volume 1 - The Whole Extant Correspodence in Chronological Order • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... more freely than usual through their veins, and experience an unusual exhilaration of spirits. Merry laughter often rises from the groups on the bank, and the air rings with the sharp sound made by pieces of ice sent skimming by mischievous boys over the glassy surface, to the disgust of skaters, who foresee future falls as the result of these fragments should a slight thaw freeze them ...
— Captain Bayley's Heir: - A Tale of the Gold Fields of California • G. A. Henty
... huddled close together, could not speak for the cold, intensified by the rapidity at which they were going. The sledge sped on as lightly as a boat over the waves. When the breeze came skimming the earth the sledge seemed to be lifted off the ground by its sails. Mudge, who was at the rudder, kept in a straight line, and by a turn of his hand checked the lurches which the vehicle had a ...
— Around the World in 80 Days • Jules Verne
... one of which I witnessed, consoled me somewhat when I saw Phil Adams skimming over the water in a spanking breeze with every stitch of canvas set. There were few better yachtsmen than Phil Adams. He usually went sailing alone, for both Fred Langdon and Binny Wallace were under ...
— The Story of a Bad Boy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... (Strix flammea).—Nested in a barn, another year in a pigeon-loft, and again in an old tub at Otterbourne. To be seen skimming ...
— John Keble's Parishes • Charlotte M Yonge
... and sticks to the meat,[67-*] which, instead of looking delicately white and nice, will have that coarse and filthy appearance we have too often to complain of, and the butcher and poulterer be blamed for the carelessness of the cook in not skimming her pot. ...
— The Cook's Oracle; and Housekeeper's Manual • William Kitchiner
... here visiting us, and one afternoon we were all in the kitchen when Gavotte came skimming along on the first pair of snowshoes I ever saw. We have had lots of snow this winter, and many of the hollows and gullies are packed full. Gavotte had no difficulty in coming, and he had come for the mail and to invite us to a feast of "ze hose." I could not think what kind of a dinner ...
— Letters of a Woman Homesteader • Elinore Pruitt Stewart
... blowing, and fell upon the sails with a strong and equal pressure. We rode before it rapidly, skimming over the low, crested waves almost without a motion. Never before had I felt so perfectly secure upon the water. Now I could breathe freely, with the sense of assured safety growing stronger every ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma • Hesba Stretton
... (1) By skimming, after the milk has stood usually for twenty-four hours? this is known as "gravity cream." (2) By an apparatus known as a separator; this is known as "centrifugal cream"; most of the cream now sold in cities is of this ...
— The Care and Feeding of Children - A Catechism for the Use of Mothers and Children's Nurses • L. Emmett Holt
... shall be my court, Myself the sovereign of the women; There moustached loungers shall resort, Whilst Elssler o'er the stage is skimming. If any rival dare dispute The palm of ton, my set shall huff her; I'll reign supreme, make envy mute, When once I wed ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... could see quite clearly downward. The ship was breaking up with inconceivable rapidity. Already there was a huge irregular vent between the fore deck and the central block of cabins topped by the bridge. And a new horror was added to all that had gone before. Swarms of rats were skimming up the slippery planks. They were invading the forecastle and the forecastle deck. They came in an irresistible army, though, fortunately for Iris's continued sanity, the greater number scurried into the ...
— The Stowaway Girl • Louis Tracy
... both silent for some time after this. Then Antony exerted himself to amuse me. We talked as lightly as the skimming of swallows, flying from one subject to another. We were as happy as laughing children. The time passed. It seemed but a few minutes when the clock ...
— The Reflections of Ambrosine - A Novel • Elinor Glyn
... most Job-like of travellers. We could sometimes quarrel with him for making so very light of heavy inconveniences and positive misfortunes. It is necessary to pause and reflect in order to appreciate what he endured. The hasty reader, skimming the page without allowing his imagination to dwell on the Doctor's brief indications of the many sufferings, the wounds and sickness (the latter often caused by unwholesome diet), the hunger and thirst, the daily and nightly exposure, for fifteen months, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 385. November, 1847. • Various
... the desk and glanced over the book; not the minute examination with the reading glass which I had given it; that mere flirt of a glance which, when I had first noticed it the night before at Tait's, skimming across that description of Clayte, had seemed so inadequate. Then ...
— The Million-Dollar Suitcase • Alice MacGowan
... all noble; I play at chess so free, At ravelling runes I'm ready, At books and smithery; I'm skilled o'er ice at skimming On skates, I shoot and row, And few at harping match ...
— The Romany Rye • George Borrow
... African oil palm is a native of southwestern Africa, but has been introduced into other regions. It grows to a height of 20 to 30 feet and bears dense heads of fruit. The oil is obtained by boiling the fruits in water and skimming off the oil as it rises to the surface. It is used in the manufacture of candles. In Africa it is eaten as butter by ...
— Catalogue of Economic Plants in the Collection of the U. S. Department of Agriculture • William Saunders
... after me. The turbine howled as the driver gunned us up on the air cushion and sent us skimming away. The trip lasted only four or five minutes through the thinning traffic of late evening. We pulled up in front of a brownstone house in the upper Eighties that reared up four stories among a ...
— Card Trick • Walter Bupp AKA Randall Garrett
... fantastical people made themselves heard who thought that the solar system could not be quite so simple an affair as common-sense knew it must be were these opinions knocked on the head. Dr. Johnson, the great exemplar of British common-sense, observing in autumn the gathered swallows skimming over pools and rivers, pronounced it certain that these birds sleep all the winter—"A number of them conglobulate together, by flying round and round, and then all in a heap throw themselves under water, and lie in the bed of a river": ...
— Art • Clive Bell
... one they adopted, and, soon after Mr. Whitford's visit the airship arose, with him on board, and Tom sent her about in great circles and sweeps, now on high and again, barely skimming over the treetops. During this time a lookout was kept for any other ...
— Tom Swift and his Great Searchlight • Victor Appleton |
