"Slate" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Revolution, to till their grants and to found families. There were gentry, too, from the tide-waters, come to retrieve the fortunes which they had lost by their patriotism. There were storekeepers like Mr. Scarlett, adventurers and ne'er-do-weels who hoped to start with a clean slate, and a host of lazy vagrants who thought to scratch ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... an eggshell from which the yolk had been sucked. Boston, New York, Philadelphia, and Charleston suffered alike, and worthy ship owners had to leave off counting their losses upon their fingers and take to the slate ...
— Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates • Howard Pyle
... Remus came up Whitehall Street recently, he met a little colored boy carrying a slate and a number of books. Some words passed between them, but their exact purport will probably never be known. They were unpleasant, for the attention of a wandering policeman was called to the matter by hearing the old ...
— Uncle Remus • Joel Chandler Harris
... Weymouth pines, and a fringe of tamarisk along the broken sea-wall—Tandy's, at the date in question, boasted a couple of bowed sash-windows on either side the front and back doors; and a range of five other windows set flat in the wall on the first floor. There was no second storey. The slate roofs were mean, low-pitched, without any grace of overshadowing eaves. At either end, a tall chimney-stack rose like the long ears of some startled, vacant-faced small animal. Behind the house, a thick plantation of beech and sycamore ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... courts was hushed, save the low monologue of the fountain whose minor murmuring made solemn accord with the sacred harmonious repose of its surroundings. The sun shone hot and blinding upon the towering mass of brick and slate, which, originally designed in the form of a parallelogram, had from numerous modern additions projected here, and curved into a new chapel yonder, until the acquisitive building had become eminently composite in its present style of architecture. The ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... A slate or flat stone acts like a mulch; if you leave one on the soil for a few days in hot weather and then lift it up on a hot day you will see that the soil underneath is quite moist; you may also find several slugs or other animals that have gone there for the sake of the ...
— Lessons on Soil • E. J. Russell
... another, he said 'e would. He seemed a bit dazed like, and by the time he went 'ome he 'ad made bets with thirteen of 'em. Being Saturday night they 'ad all got money on 'em, and, as for Bob, he always 'ad some. Smith took care of the money and wrote it all up on a slate. ...
— Ship's Company, The Entire Collection • W.W. Jacobs
... hall, near the door, was a large slate suspended by a wire. The pencil was tied to it. Here they put down vagrant memoranda and things they planned to ...
— Old Rose and Silver • Myrtle Reed
... it hard to understand what Harrington, a man of really fine sensibilities, sees in Mrs. Harrington. The very suggestion of locking up books to prevent their being carried away hurts like the screech of a pencil upon a slate. I think of Mrs. Harrington and then I think of Cooper. Cooper's shelves are continuously being denuded by his friends. But if you think of Cooper as a helpless victim you are sadly mistaken. There is an elaborate scheme behind it all, a scheme ...
— The Patient Observer - And His Friends • Simeon Strunsky
... brick-built houses with slate roofs, at the edge of a large mining village in Staffordshire. The houses are dingy and colourless, and without relief of any kind. So are those in the next row, so in the street beyond, and throughout the whole village. ...
— Facing Death - The Hero of the Vaughan Pit. A Tale of the Coal Mines • G. A. Henty
... There were fifteen boys and thirteen girls. When the roll was called and the number marked down on a slate in front of the school, the Master said, "First ...
— The Irish Twins • Lucy Fitch Perkins
... particular, the teacher may cause every young gentleman to have a slate or paper before him, on Saturdays, and then dictate a letter to them, either of his own composition, or taken out of some book, and turn it into false English, to exercise them in the grammar rules if he thinks proper, which they shall all ...
— The Young Gentleman and Lady's Monitor, and English Teacher's Assistant • John Hamilton Moore
... following Monday morning, McTeague looked over the appointments he had written down in the book-slate that hung against the screen. His writing was immense, very clumsy, and very round, with huge, full-bellied l's and h's. He saw that he had made an appointment at one o'clock for Miss Baker, the retired dressmaker, a little old maid who had a tiny room a few doors down the hall. It adjoined ...
— McTeague • Frank Norris
... The fort was built by Akbar to protect the passage of the Indus. In the river gorge below is a whirlpool between two jutting slate rocks, called Kamalia and Jamalia after two heretics who were flung into the river in Akbar's reign. The bridge which carries the railway across the Indus still makes Attock a position of military importance. ...
— The Panjab, North-West Frontier Province, and Kashmir • Sir James McCrone Douie
... count. They learn by using balls set in a frame. The frame is like the frame of a slate. The balls slide on wires. With the balls they ...
— Big People and Little People of Other Lands • Edward R. Shaw
... these persons no longer seem so contemptible or pernicious or devilish as they once did. At this point your factotum rubs your eye-glasses bright with the handkerchief he always carries about for slate-cleaning purposes, and lo! you even begin to discover good points about the chaps, ...
— The Joyful Heart • Robert Haven Schauffler
... helplessly around the table, her slate-colored eyes reddened with tears, then she plunged recklessly, after a fearful glance at Dundee's implacable face. "I said that if it was Nita he was talking to, he wouldn't speak in that tone; that she could make all the foolish mistakes of over-bidding or revoking or doubling ...
— Murder at Bridge • Anne Austin
... leather (manufactures of)—calashes, boots, and shoes, of all sorts; linen, or linen and cotton, viz., cambrics, lawns, damasks, &c.; maize, or Indian corn; musical instruments; mustard-flower; paper, painted or stained paper, &c.; pencils, lead and slate; perfumery; perry; pewter; pomatum; pots of stone; puddings and sausages; rice; sago; seeds, garden, &c.; silk (manufactures of), &c.; silk-worm gut; skins (articles manufactured of); soap, hard and soft; ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... still worse, for the head of the structure had been completely washed away by a gale, and no little care was necessary in order to step across the broken timbers in safety. The town, which contains between 1,200 and 1,300 inhabitants, is composed entirely of one-storied log huts, with slate or tile roofs, and with or without verandahs. They are all arranged in squares, separated from each other by wide roads; and the whole settlement is surrounded by stockades. At the further end of the town stands the convict ...
— A Voyage in the 'Sunbeam' • Annie Allnut Brassey
... sing—and with organs similar to those I had already remarked in our guides; but what airs! what tunes! The corpse before me seemed to be a leading singer; his soul-moving, heart-rending treble, sounded something like scraping slate pencil upon glass; the stave was of the following ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 390, September 19, 1829 • Various
... long is your slate? How long is your desk? How many feet long is your room? How wide is it? What is the distance around the room? How many feet wide is each window? Each door? How many yards wide is the nearest street ...
— Home Geography For Primary Grades • C. C. Long
... room where the Raymounts were one by one assembling to break their fast, was discolored and dark, whether with age or smoke it would have needed more than a glance to say. The reds had grown brown, and the blues a dirty slate-color, while an impression of drab was prevalent. But the fire was burning as if it had been at it all night and was glorying in having at length routed the darkness; and in the middle of the table on the white cloth, stood a shallow piece of red pottery full of crocuses, the earnest of the spring. ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald
... the little town of Kirkby-Malhouse, harsh and forbidding are the fells upon which it stands. It stretches in a single line of grey-stone, slate-roofed houses, dotted down the furze-clad slope of ...
— Danger! and Other Stories • Arthur Conan Doyle
... you please! Nothing has happened here, absolutely nothing! We begin again with an absolutely clean slate, ...
— Three Comedies • Bjornstjerne M. Bjornson
... Gobardhan covered a slate with mysterious calculations and, after poring over them for ten or fifteen minutes, he looked up with the remark:—"Your luck is really atrocious and has been so for ...
— Tales of Bengal • S. B. Banerjea
... make Lyme of; Slate stone to tyle withall, or such clay as maketh tyle; Stone to wall withall, if Brycke may not bee made; Timber for buylding easely to be conueied to the place; Reede to couer houses or such like, if tyle or slate be not—are to be looked for as things without which ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of The English Nation, Vol. XII., America, Part I. • Richard Hakluyt
... changed of late, For "Arctics" are my daily wear, The skies are turned to cold grey slate, And zephyrs are but draughts of air; But you make up whate'er we lack, When we, too rarely, come together, More potent than the almanac, You bring the ideal April weather; When you are with us we defy The blustering air, the ...
— Pike County Ballads and Other Poems • John Hay
... and appear very amicable one to another; but seldom, if ever, approach very near to our dwelling. The breast is of a pinkish, salmon colour; the head black; the back of a sort of bluish steel, or slate colour; in size they are ...
— The Backwoods of Canada • Catharine Parr Traill
... A slate-colored junco did a pretty thing in the woods one day of early spring—much more pleasing to see than the incident just described. He had rinsed his feathers in a pool of the little stream down in the hollow, and now he was squatting flat on his belly on the ground in a soft bed of brown leaves, ...
— Our Bird Comrades • Leander S. (Leander Sylvester) Keyser
... ance Company, he will be recouped their value. Nearly all the Fire Insurance offices are agreed in charging a certain rate of premium, which is called the tariff rate. For dwelling-houses built of brick or stone with slate or tile roof, the rate is only 1s. 6d. for every 100. For more hazard- ous buildings such as thatched houses, ware- houses, inns, shops, &c., the rates are higher, according to the nature of the risk. Household furniture and the other contents of a ...
— Everybody's Guide to Money Matters • William Cotton, F.S.A.
... in wall spaces, so as to be accessible. The rooms are ventilated through the hollow columns of the kiosks, and each is provided with an electric fan. They are heated by electric heaters. The woodwork of the rooms is oak; the walls are red slate wainscot and ...
— The New York Subway - Its Construction and Equipment • Anonymous
... gloom, gloom, gloom under the evening sky. Sometimes the reflections of distant rockets would shudder and fade across the pale blue; incessantly, from every corner of the world, came the screaming rattle of carts, a sound like many pencils drawn across a gigantic slate—and always the dust rose and fell in webs and curtains of filmy gold, under the ...
— The Dark Forest • Hugh Walpole
... journey in the winter-time, in that part of Normandy called the Pays de Caux, when, as evening was closing in, he perceived the turrets of an ancient chateau rising out of the trees of its walled park, each turret with its high conical roof of gray slate, like a candle with ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving
... began. The tutor could be seen any morning or afternoon watch below sitting on the forecastle floor working at the construction of a miniature full-rigged ship. His pupil sat beside him with the alphabet written on a slate, and as he advanced in knowledge, three letter, four letter and five letter words were given him, and it was when he arrived at this stage that the process became feverishly attractive and amusing. The following is something like how it appeared ...
— The Shellback's Progress - In the Nineteenth Century • Walter Runciman
... feather held edge downward to the earth, ever changed in form without apparent movement. More sparkling glowed the gold upon their edges. The sky beneath the cloud was now like emerald. The soft darkness of purple slate was on the hills. The lake took on a darker shade, and daylight began to fade from ...
— What Necessity Knows • Lily Dougall
... that made me drop the jug; you remember, miss, I had to come back for another. I told you about it at the time. When I went out again with a fresh jug he was waiting for me, he followed me to the 'Greyhound' and wanted to pay for the beer—not likely that I'd let him; I told them to put it on the slate, and that I'd pay for it to-morrow. I didn't speak to him on leaving the bar, but he followed me to the gate. He wanted to know what I'd been doing all the time. Then my temper got the better of me, and I said, 'Looking ...
— Esther Waters • George Moore
... imperforate and while the 3d, of which at least three millions were issued, varies but little in shade, the 6d, printed in comparatively small quantities, provides a number of striking tints. In his check-list, Mr. Howes gives "black-violet, deep-violet, slate-violet, brown-violet, dull purple, slate, black brown, brownish black, and greenish black", and we have no doubt the list could be considerably amplified, though the above should be sufficient for the most ...
— The Stamps of Canada • Bertram Poole
... though, to keep out of your mouth anything that might possibly crack or scratch the glassy coating, such as pins, pennies, pieces of wire, or slate pencils. It is best not even to try to bite off threads or pieces of string. There is, of course, another reason for not putting pencils and pennies and such things into your mouth: they may have dirt, or germs, ...
— The Child's Day • Woods Hutchinson
... slate again, and seemed to be determined, make or break, that he would attend to his lessons, whatever happened in the room. Unfortunately, in this instance, it was at least a partial break, for a very imperative knock was heard a few moments later at the front door. Andre answered ...
— Make or Break - or, The Rich Man's Daughter • Oliver Optic
... don't cry! They have broken your slate, I know; And the glad wild ways Of your school-girl days Are things of the long ago; But life and love will soon come by. There! ...
— Graded Memory Selections • Various
... Miss Mouse, In a slate-colored dress, like a Quaker, Once lived in a snug little house, Of which ...
— The Youth's Coronal • Hannah Flagg Gould
... hand must have something in it. The prince had been young and impressionable when Poland was torn to pieces, when that which for eight centuries had been one of the important kingdoms of the world was wiped off the face of Europe, like writing off a slate. He was not a ruffian, as Deulin had described him; but he was a man who had been ruffled, and nothing ...
— The Vultures • Henry Seton Merriman
... conceivable—a real exaltation of one's idea of space; so that one's entrance, even from the great empty square which either glares beneath the deep blue sky or makes of the cool far-cast shadow of the immense front something that resembles a big slate-coloured country on a map, seems not so much a going in somewhere as a going out. The mere man of pleasure in quest of new sensations might well not know where to better his encounter there of the sublime shock ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... BEFORE THE CONSTITUTIONAL CONVENTION AT ALBANY.—The Constitutional Convention at Albany has not had many variations from its customary slate of topics, but it is a noteworthy fact that no New York paper mentioned that Geo. Francis Train addressed the Convention for two hours on the subject of woman voting and the financial policy of the nation. Mr. Train having been ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... supercargo of the vessel said to him, "Come, Captain, let us go forward and hear what the sailors are talking about under the lee of the long-boat." They went forward accordingly, and the captain was surprised to find the sailors, instead of spinning their long yarns, earnestly engaged with book, slate, and pencil, discussing the high matters of tangents and secants, altitudes, dip, and refraction. Two of them, in particular, were very zealously disputing,—one of them calling out to the other, "Well, Jack, what have you got?" "I've got the sine," ...
— Books and Authors - Curious Facts and Characteristic Sketches • Anonymous
... to ten thousand of the suffering women—tell us, and think of the griefs that die unspoken! Nature is in earnest when she makes a woman; and there are women enough lying in the next churchyard with very commonplace blue slate stones at their head and feet, for whom it was just as true that "all sounds of life assumed one tone of love," as for Letitia Landon, of whom Elizabeth Browning said it; but she could give words to her grief, and they could not.—Will you hear ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 12, October, 1858 • Various
... some unknown reason, he had sufficient interest to swear out the warrant and assist in the arrest, he would have equal cause to serve those fellows behind him in other ways. Naturally, they would dread a trial, with its possibility of exposure, and eagerly grasp any opportunity for wiping the slate clean. Their real security from discovery undoubtedly lay in his death, and with the "Red Light" crowd behind them they would experience no trouble in getting a following desperate ...
— Keith of the Border • Randall Parrish
... studying her through half-closed, satisfied eyes though he already knew her as the Moslem priest knows the Koran. While they rode in silence he conned the inventory. Slim uprightness like the strength of a young poplar; eyes that played the whole color-gamut between violet and slate-gray, as does the Mediterranean under sun and cloud-bank; lips that in repose hinted at melancholy and that broke into magic with a smile. Then there was the suggestion of a thought-furrow between the brows and a chin delicately chiseled, ...
— The Lighted Match • Charles Neville Buck
... original co-partners in the purchase of Nashaway from Showanon, Prescott alone, tenax propositi, held to his purpose, and death found him at his post. His grave is in the old "burial field" at Lancaster, yet not ten citizens can point it out. Over it stands a rude fragment from some ledge of slate rock, faintly incised with characters which few ...
— Bay State Monthly, Vol. II. No. 5, February, 1885 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various
... these false assertions? Listen to me, then, whilst I endeavor to wipe from the fair character of Abolitionism such unfounded accusations. You know that I am a Southerner; you know that my dearest relatives are now in a slave Slate. Can you for a moment believe I would prove so recreant to the feelings of a daughter and a sister, as to join a society which was seeking to overthrow slavery by falsehood, bloodshed and murder? I appeal to ...
— An Appeal to the Christian Women of the South • Angelina Emily Grimke
... carelessness than his father's poverty), in a blue apron, very wide and short trousers, shoes somewhat out at the toes, and a chip hat, with the frizzles of his curly hair sticking through its crevices. A book and a small slate, under his arm, indicated that he was on his way to school. He stared at Hepzibah a moment, as an elder customer than himself would have been likely enough to do, not knowing what to make of the tragic attitude and queer scowl ...
— The House of the Seven Gables • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... purposes, is more like the Italian she-goat than any other creature, but is considerably larger, has no horns, and is free from the displeasing odour of our goats. Its fleece is not thick, but very long and fine; it varies in colour, but is never white, more generally of a slate-like or lavender hue. For clothing it is usually worn dyed to suit the taste of the wearer. These animals were exceedingly tame, and were treated with extraordinary care and affection by the children (chiefly female) who ...
— The Coming Race • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... opened, when let alone. It distressed me a good deal; and I felt relieved, though somewhat shocked, when B—— put an end to its misery by squeezing its head and throwing it out of the window. They were of a slate-color, and might, I suppose, have been able to shift for themselves.—The other day a little yellow bird flew into one of the empty rooms, of which there are half a dozen on the lower floor, and could not find his way out again, flying at the glass of the windows, instead of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 101, March, 1866 • Various
... sheep-fold; he roofed them with a sheet of corrugated iron, stolen from the outbuildings of a neighbouring farm, and covered the iron with sods; he built a fire-place with a flue, but no chimney; he caused water from a spring to flow into a hollow beside the door. Then he collected slate, loose stones, and earth; and, by heaping these against the walls of the hut, he gave the whole structure the appearance of a mound of rubbish. Human eyes rarely came within sight of the spot; but even a keen observer of casual objects would not have suspected that the mound represented any ...
— Mad Shepherds - and Other Human Studies • L. P. Jacks
... well knew, five minutes to twelve, sounded, I had attained my quotient in plain figures; a few moments more, and the process of fours into, twelves into, twenties into, had been accomplished; and just as the clock struck twelve I was able to hand up my slate ...
— The Story of the White-Rock Cove • Anonymous
... is almost entirely composed of cottages whose stone walls and thick slate roofs are beautifully mellowed by the hand of time. Nowhere does there appear anything new to jar with the silver greys and the grey greens of the old cottages, the church, and ...
— What to See in England • Gordon Home
... next hut is not at home. This is indicated by two great slabs of slate, one at the entrance to his porch and one over his front (and only) window. These are more for protection against prowling dogs ...
— With the Harmony to Labrador - Notes Of A Visit To The Moravian Mission Stations On The North-East - Coast Of Labrador • Benjamin La Trobe
... lateral windows as is the priest by his deacon and subdeacon, the lofty airy gallery of trifoliated arcades supporting a heavy platform upon its slender columns, and lastly the two dark and massive towers with their pent-house roofs of slate, harmonious parts of a magnificent whole, one above the other, five gigantic stages, unfold themselves to the eye, clearly and as a whole, with their countless details of sculpture, statuary, and carving, powerfully contributing to the calm grandeur ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 3 • Various
... to her room, and returned with a piece of the rough tissue paper which the Chinese use for writing upon, a brush, a piece of Indian ink, and a slate slab to mix it on, all tucked up ...
— The Little Girl Lost - A Tale for Little Girls • Eleanor Raper
... got to do with it," said Tenney, in surprise. "Won't let ye? Jerry Slate won't let ye? Jerry ain't one to meddle nor make. I guess if you told him 'twas your place to do it an' you'd ruther stan' up to it, he'd have no ...
— Old Crow • Alice Brown
... a young priest, with shaven head and dressed in the usual slate-coloured gown, appeared at the yamen of the Prefect to solicit subscriptions for the neighbouring monastery. As the Prefect was absent on some public business, he was ushered into the reception-room, where he was received by his mother, who had always been a ...
— Chinese Folk-Lore Tales • J. Macgowan
... observations including spacing between records. The operation of the printing hammers is such that the uniform motion of the type wheel is not disturbed in the act of printing. The whole instrument is mounted on a heavy slate plate 45 cm. by 60 cm., and protected by a ...
— Astronomical Instruments and Accessories • Wm. Gaertner & Co.
... going to slate me for bringing in people to bewitch the child, and I had to turn the lot of them out to finish the job ...
— In Wicklow and West Kerry • John M. Synge
... would take the little tin dinner bucket, and his slate, and all their books under his arm and go booming ahead about half a mile in advance, while Madge with brown Little Stumps clinging to her side like a burr, would come stepping along the trail under the oak-trees as fast as ...
— The Little Gold Miners of the Sierras and Other Stories • Various
... old Country which we have lost here; small enclosures, with hedgeway timber: green gipsey drift-ways: and Crome Cottage and Farmhouse of that beautiful yellow 'Claylump' with red pantile roof'd—not the d—-d Brick and Slate of ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald to Fanny Kemble (1871-1883) • Edward FitzGerald
... of preserving them. They were beautiful creatures, about ten times the size of an ordinary field grasshopper, and, except that their hind legs were longer in proportion to their size, the exact shape of that harmless little insect. Their colours are brilliant green, slate, and flamingo red, beautifully lined and variegated. The humming noise produced by these insects is very disagreeable, and fills the surrounding air with murmurs, while the wilderness look of the scene of their depredations has ...
— An Englishman's Travels in America - His Observations Of Life And Manners In The Free And Slave States • John Benwell
... chair. Her forearms, ruffled and braceleted, lay along the fringed back of the chair, and from one negligent hand depended a rose. A heavy curtain came downwards out of nothing into the picture, and the end of it lay coiled and draped on the seat of the chair. The great dress was of slate-coloured silk, with sleeves tight to the elbow, and thence, from a ribbon-bow, broadening to a wide, triangular climax that revealed quantities of lace at the wrists. The pointed ends of the sleeves were picked ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... Doubtless some of the professors are frauds, but as much can be said for the professors of all other faiths. I confess that I haven't much confidence in "mejums," who find employment for the shades of G. Washington, J. Caesar, and others of that ilk, at table-tipping, slate-writing and such unproductive enterprises; nor in the class of spooks who "materialize" in dark rooms, come prancing out of "cabinets" and other uncanny corporeal incubators for no other apparent purpose than to enable their mundane manipulators to realize two dollars in ...
— Volume 10 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... which recedes from the course of the river, a few miles above the town, and, curving south-west, encloses a semicircular plot of land, towards the centre of which the town is built. Its neighbourhood abounds in coal. The pits are about a mile distant. They lie under a stratum of soft clay slate, which contains impressions of ferns, oak-leaves, and other vegetables, usually found in such situations. The town itself, in consequence of the frequent separation of its streets and houses, by grass-fields and gardens, has a quiet and rural aspect. It contains a neat church, ...
— Travels in North America, From Modern Writers • William Bingley
... far corner rose a slate colored mound that at first glance he had taken for a great heap of inanimate dirt. The mound began to move toward him—and metamorphosed into an animal, a thing that made Brand blink his eyes to see if he were dreaming, and then stop, ...
— The Red Hell of Jupiter • Paul Ernst
... would get his fellowship. Otherwise what was the poor fellow to do? Ridiculous as it may seem, she was even jealous of Nature. One day her husband escaped from Ilfracombe to Morthoe, and came back ecstatic over its fangs of slate, piercing an oily sea. "Sounds like an hippopotamus," she said peevishly. And when they returned to Sawston through the Virgilian counties, she disliked him looking out of the windows, for all the world as if Nature ...
— The Longest Journey • E. M. Forster
... occupation, provided they had had what the Mexican journals call the "corazon de los sportsmans." Youth, strength, courage, skill, exercised in a vagabondage that has all the nomadic charm without any of its drawbacks, are apt to sponge the old figures off the slate of life, leaving a teary smear, perhaps, to show where they have been, and room for fresh problems. At night over the camp-fire Mr. Ramsay gave a few pensive thoughts to the girl who regularly put two handkerchiefs under her pillow ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, August, 1885 • Various
... street, laid out on the plan of the Jebel el-Safra, the hauteville of Maghair Shu'ayb. On the right bank of the Wady appeared a heap of stones suggesting a Burj. Fine, hard, compact, and purple-blue slate was collected in the ruins; and the red conglomerates on either side of the watercourse suggested that Cascalho had ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 1 • Richard Burton
... off through the thick jungle. Surely something was moving there amid the trees; great slate-colored bodies, massive forms and waving trunks! The trumpeting increased, and the crashing of the underbrush sounded louder ...
— Tom Swift and his Electric Rifle • Victor Appleton
... them birth when he describes to us the nature of the soil and the rocks which surround Lake Parima, between the Essequibo and the Branco. "They are," says this great traveller, "rocks of micaceous slate, and of sparkling talc, which are resplendent in the midst of a sheet of water, which acts as a reflector beneath the burning tropical sun." So are explained those massive domes of gold, those obelisks of ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part I. The Exploration of the World • Jules Verne
... size than the house pigeon. In the air it looks not unlike the kite, wanting the forked or "swallow" tail. That of the pigeon is cuneiform. Its colour is best described by calling it a nearly uniform slate. In the male the colours are deeper, and the neck-feathers present the same changeable hues of green, gold, and purple-crimson, generally observed in birds of this species. It is only in the woods, and when freshly caught ...
— The Hunters' Feast - Conversations Around the Camp Fire • Mayne Reid
... Eyebright ran down to the cliff above the bathing-beach and looked toward the long cape at the end of which lay Malachi. The dots of houses showed plainer and whiter than usual against the cape, which had turned of a deep slate-gray, almost black. Two or three ships were in sight, but they were large ships far out at sea, and the strange darkness and the confusion and tumble of the waves, which every instant increased, made it difficult to detect any object so small as a boat. ...
— Eyebright - A Story • Susan Coolidge
... the letters in the combinations ou or ow, is marked in the words at the head of the reading exercises, the other is silent. If neither is marked, the two letters represent a diphthong. All other unmarked vowels in the vocabularies, when in combination, are silent letters. In slate or blackboard work, the silent ...
— McGuffey's First Eclectic Reader, Revised Edition • William Holmes McGuffey
... idea why he played that trick upon me. He knew that Enid Henson and myself were engaged; he could see what a danger to his schemes it would be to have a man like myself in the family. Then the second Rembrandt turned up, and there was his chance for wiping me off the slate. After that came the terrible family scandal between Lord Littimer and his wife. I cannot tell you anything of that, because I cannot speak with definite authority. But you could judge of the effect of it on ...
— The Crimson Blind • Fred M. White
... nature were already, were publicly, were almost indecorously active. They were practically there for good or for ill; experience was still to come and what they might work out to still a mystery; but the sum would get itself done with the figures now on the slate. On little Aggie's slate the figures were yet to be written; which sufficiently accounted for the difference of the two surfaces. Both the girls struck him as lambs with the great shambles of life in their future; but while one, with its neck in a pink ...
— The Awkward Age • Henry James
... to that, and afterwards Lady Greswold talked to Octavia, and asked her if she thought it would look better perhaps to begin gold with the soup, and have the hors d'oeuvres on specimen Sevres just to make a point. I hate gold plate myself, one's knife does make such slate-pencilish noises ...
— The Visits of Elizabeth • Elinor Glyn
... the bridge at Limburg on the Lahn, where the shadow of a stone bishop is thrown by the moonlight on the water brawling over slabs of slate. A woman passed them bearing in her arms a baby, whose mighty size drew ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... more than a week after we had been sent to school. I held my slate in front of my face while I whispered something to the girl beside and the girl behind me. Both ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine
... but I gambled on Paolo's ignorance of the custom," said I. "I flattered myself that I'd totted up his character like a sum on a slate, and I acted on the estimate I formed. If I had kept entirely to facts, without giving the rein to my imagination, you might now be doomed to travel at this time next year to Buda-Pesth, and there drown yourself in the largest possible vat of beer. Had Paolo been unlucky in the matter ...
— The Princess Passes • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson
... that shadow is pure purple my eyes are liars. It looks a kind of slate colour to me. Lord! if what you fellows say in your pictures is true, the whole earth must be blazing and ...
— The Third Violet • Stephen Crane
... occurred to Ruby before that she could please any of the teachers by showing them little kindnesses and being thoughtful of them, and she remembered remorsefully how she had laughed during recess when one of the girls had drawn on her slate a funny caricature of Miss Ketchum, with the two little curls that she wore on each side of her forehead standing up like ears, and her glasses on crookedly. She made up her mind that she would never laugh ...
— Ruby at School • Minnie E. Paull
... put Rupert to a trot, for she knew that while she was within hearing Jason would bombard her with similar tales of woe. Not a slate slid from the old roof of the Hall, or a sheep fell lame, but the matter was ...
— At Love's Cost • Charles Garvice
... in those days, we aimless knights-errant with dinner-pail and slate; the dry, frosty hollow where gentians bloom when the pride of the field is over, the woody slopes of the hepatica's awakening, under coverlet of withered leaves, and the sunny banks where violets love to live with their good gossip, the trembling anemone. At noon, we roved abroad ...
— Meadow Grass - Tales of New England Life • Alice Brown
... oldest boy, was coiled up on the sofa calmly working out some algebra problems, quite oblivious to the noise around him. But he looked up from his slate, with his pencil suspended above an obstinate equation, to ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1896 to 1901 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... balcony, adjoining the wall, and so close that Jaime could touch it with his hand, was a small tower with a slate roof and with ancient coats of arms on the circular wall. It was the tower in which John Huss had been imprisoned before going to ...
— The Dead Command - From the Spanish Los Muertos Mandan • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... like a covey of snubbed doves, six or eight of her classmates were cooing and crooning together with excessive caution concerning the imminent graduation exercises that were to take place at eight o'clock that very evening. Beyond her dreariest ken of muffled voices, beyond her dingiest vista of slate and brick, on a far faint hillside, a far faint streak of April green went roaming jocundly skyward. Altogether sluggishly, as though her nostrils were plugged with warm velvet, the smell of spring and ether and scorched mutton-chops filtered in and out, in and out, in and ...
— The White Linen Nurse • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... A battery whose elements are contained in a trough, which is divided by cross-partitions so as to represent cups. A favorite wood for the trough is teak, which is divided by glass or slate partitions. Marine glue or other form of cement is used to make the joints tight. For porous cup divisions plates of porous porcelain or pottery are placed across, alternating with the ...
— The Standard Electrical Dictionary - A Popular Dictionary of Words and Terms Used in the Practice - of Electrical Engineering • T. O'Conor Slone
... over which they stalked of old. This early Oolitic volume corresponds in its contents to the section devoted by Cuvier, in his great work, to his second class, the birds. And in the Stonisfield slate,—a deposit interposed between the "Inferior" and "Great Oolites," we detect the earliest indications of his first or mammaliferous class, apparently represented, however, by but one order,—the Marsupiata, or ...
— The Testimony of the Rocks - or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed • Hugh Miller
... the rabble of men and women who had been threatened, the dwellers in those twelve houses next the inn, who came dragging our brick-faced knave of a host, with that hard-polished countenance of his slack and clammy—slate-gray in color too, all the red tan clean ...
— Red Axe • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... grieve the kind-hearted Munchkins, for they immediately took out their handkerchiefs and began to weep also. As for the little old woman, she took off her cap and balanced the point on the end of her nose, while she counted "One, two, three" in a solemn voice. At once the cap changed to a slate, on which was written in ...
— The Wonderful Wizard of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... didn't attempt to hide his delight. He grabbed his companion and hugged him until his ribs began to crack. Then, with a single blow from his huge club, the herdsman knocked the specimen clear of the slate in which it was set. Such was their excitement, neither dreamed of marking the ...
— The Devolutionist and The Emancipatrix • Homer Eon Flint
... which are perfectly flexible and can be rolled tightly, like a map, without injury, may be obtained from the New York Silicate Book Slate Co., 20 Vesey St., New York. They are made in various sizes, about the most convenient for use in noncommissioned officers' schools is No. 3, three by ...
— Manual of Military Training - Second, Revised Edition • James A. Moss
... the second-best parlour after breakfast, with my books, and an exercise-book, and a slate. My mother is ready for me at her writing-desk, but not half so ready as Mr. Murdstone in his easy-chair by the window (though he pretends to be reading a book), or as Miss Murdstone, sitting near ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... in marble of Hesse, the green corridor in marble of the Tyrol, the red corridor, half cherry-spotted marble of Bohemia, half lumachel of Cordova, the blue corridor in turquin of Genoa, the violet in granite of Catalonia, the mourning-hued corridor veined black and white in slate of Murviedro, the pink corridor in cipolin of the Alps, the pearl corridor in lumachel of Nonetta, and the corridor of all colours, called the courtiers' ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... corresponding defect. With the mind so crammed with other people's goods, how can you have room for any fresh manufactures of your own? A great memory is, I think, often fatal to originality, in spite of Scott and some other exceptions. The slate must be clear before you put your own writing upon it. When did Johnson ever discover an original thought, when did he ever reach forward into the future, or throw any fresh light upon those enigmas ...
— Through the Magic Door • Arthur Conan Doyle
... maintain. Radical and rebel as he was in politics and theology, contemptuous of law, custom and precedent, he was always the exact opposite in his art. There he never attempted the method of the tabula rasa, or clean slate, which made his political pamphlets so barren. The greatest of all proofs of the strength of his individuality is that it so entirely dominates the vast store of learning and association with which his poetry is loaded. ...
— Milton • John Bailey
... like,—the materials having been furnished him, probably, that they might figure in the report as evidences of indulgence. He did not look up from the table as the commissioners entered. He was in a slate-coloured dress, bareheaded; the room was reported as clean, the bed in good condition, the linen fresh; his clothes were also reported as new; but, in spite of all these assertions, it is well ...
— Memoirs Of The Court Of Marie Antoinette, Queen Of France, Complete • Madame Campan
... Anthropological Society of Moscow has introduced us to a Stone age the memory of which is preserved in the tumuli of Russia. On the shores of Lake Lagoda have been found some implements of argillaceous schist, in Carelia and in Finland tools made of slate and schist, often adorned with clumsy figures of men or of animals. The rigor of the climate did not check the development of the human race; in the most remote times Lapland, Nordland, the most northerly districts of Scandinavia, and even the bitterly cold Iceland, ...
— Manners and Monuments of Prehistoric Peoples • The Marquis de Nadaillac
... scene to the sub-arctic town of Wick. You can never have dwelt in a country more unsightly than that part of Caithness, the land faintly swelling, faintly falling, not a tree, not a hedgerow, the fields divided by single slate stones set upon their edge, the wind always singing in your ears and (down the long road that led nowhere) thrumming in the telegraph wires. Only as you approached the coast was there anything to stir the heart. The plateau broke down to the North Sea ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Gwen, whose heavy hammer, borrowed from Winnie's hen-yard, had been rather too forcible in its effects. "I'd almost got the loveliest, biggest belemnite, and it broke into three pieces like a slate pencil." ...
— The Youngest Girl in the Fifth - A School Story • Angela Brazil
... motherly, bustling way, it was quite affecting. Sally, who helped him, hadn't the least idea it wasn't Gruffy. However, the best of it is to come," said Salisbury, pausing a moment to recover the mirth which the recollection produced:—"He was stirring up a concoction of cold tea, ink and water, slate-pencil dust, sugar, mustard, and salt, when I thought" (Salisbury's voice trembled violently) "that I heard a step I ought to know, and I had hardly time to get completely behind the door when it was widely opened, and in walked ...
— Louis' School Days - A Story for Boys • E. J. May
... wildness was to be traced among them. They were clothed in the garments of civilization, but of a coarse and mean quality, and appeared broken down and dispirited. One half, at least, were women, and at the moment of which we are speaking they were collecting together from among the blue slate gravestones, where they had been dispersed, around a newly dug grave. The rites were of a Christian character, and performed by an elder of one of the neighboring churches, who offered up a prayer, on the conclusion of which he retired. ...
— The Lost Hunter - A Tale of Early Times • John Turvill Adams
... and [Armenian] bole; also white, red, yellow, blue and black clay very solid and greasy, and should be suitable for many purposes; earth for bricks and for tiles, mountain-chrystal, glass like that of Muscovy,(1) green serpentine stone in great abundance, blue limestone, slate, red grindstone, flint, paving stone, large quantities of all varieties of quarry stone suitable for hewing mill-stones and for building all kinds of walls, asbestos and very many other kinds applicable ...
— Narrative of New Netherland • Various
... in clouds. His disc was invisible, but we could clearly distinguish his situation through the watery barrier. The fall of the cataract is nearly perpendicular. The bank over which it is precipitated is of concave form, owing to its upper stratum being composed of lime-stone, and its base of soft slate-stone, which has been eaten away by the constant attrition of the recoiling waters. The cavern is about one hundred and twenty feet in height, fifty in breadth, and three hundred in length. The entrance was completely invisible. By screaming in our ears, the guide contrived to explain to us that ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 262, July 7, 1827 • Various
... Snowbird, or slate-colored junco (Junco hyemalis). Sparrow, chipping. See Hairbird. Sparrow, song (Melospiza cinerea melodia). Sparrow, tree or Canada (Spizella monticola). Sparrow, vesper (Poaecetes gramineus). Squirrel, ...
— Winter Sunshine • John Burroughs
... whose bathing began early in the morning and whose flirting continued far into the night, with forenoon and afternoon dawdling and dozing on the pebbles. At one end of the Terrace rose a prodigious headland, whose slope was scaled over with broken slate, like some mammoth heaving from the deep and showing an elephantine hide of bluish gray. At the other end was the Amusement Pier, with the co- educational college, which is part of the University of Wales, and with divers hotels. Somewhat behind and beyond were the ruins of one of those castles which ...
— Seven English Cities • W. D. Howells
... curiosity dominated his complex hesitations, and he stole back into his darkling sitting-room. He paused in the doorway. The stranger was still in the same attitude, dark against the window. Save for the singing of some sailors aboard one of the little slate-carrying ships in the harbour the evening was very still. Outside, the spikes of monkshood and delphinium stood erect and motionless against the shadow of the hillside. Something flashed into Isbister's mind; ...
— The Sleeper Awakes - A Revised Edition of When the Sleeper Wakes • H.G. Wells
... degradation to me, almost an officer on the quarter-deck of one of his Majesty's frigates! However, without taking time to weigh exactly my own dignity, I seized a large slate, and, turning sharply round, sent it hissing into his very teeth. I wish I had knocked one or two of them out. I wished it then fervently, and of that wish, wicked though it be, I have never repented. He was for some time occupied with holding his hand to his ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... point of view it makes life worth living. I've had roughish spells between whiles, but I'm so peculiarly constituted that a short bright spot of comfort makes me forget the disagreeables that have gone before, and wipes the slate clean for ...
— The Recipe for Diamonds • Charles John Cutcliffe Wright Hyne
... on the part of the disciplinarian. Most school teachers early learn the folly of making threats. When I was teaching school I recall that a number of slate pencils had been dropped on the floor one afternoon. Thoughtlessly I threatened, "Now the next child that drops a pencil will remain after school and receive punishment!" My fate! The weakest, most delicate girl in the room was the next to drop her pencil, and ...
— The Mother and Her Child • William S. Sadler
... After the young man had designated the desired changes, and had brought me an inkstand, but had taken leave for a short time on account of some business, I remained sitting on the bench against the wall, behind the large table, and essayed the alterations that were to be made, on the large slate, which almost covered the whole table, with a pencil that always lay in the window; because upon this slate reckonings were often made, and various memoranda noted down, and those coming in or going out even ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... scarcely knew what to make of this; whether to expect a shift of wind and a strong breeze, or whether it merely meant rain, or a thunder-storm. The sun, however, had scarcely set when we got a hint of what was to come, in the shape of a bank of dark, purplish, slate-coloured clouds that began to pile themselves along the eastern horizon, their edges as sharply defined against the clear sky as though the masses had been clipped out of paper. We were to be treated to a thunder-storm, and a pretty severe one, too, if the promise ...
— The Log of a Privateersman • Harry Collingwood
... in the floor, we felt a little comfort before an immense fire kindled in the open chimney. Our provisions were already adamantine; the meat was transformed into red Finland granite, and the bread into mica-slate. Anton and the old Finnish landlady, the mother of many sons, immediately commenced the work of thawing and cooking, while I, by the light of fir torches, took the portrait of a dark-haired, black-eyed, ...
— Northern Travel - Summer and Winter Pictures of Sweden, Denmark and Lapland • Bayard Taylor
... owe me now. I had to put on another farthing a week because his appetite grew so big. I knew you would rather pay more than see him suffer. And the guinea-pig died. There's twopence extra for funeral expenses. We put him in the orchard beside the dogs, and made a headstone out of your old slate. It's a rattling good idea, because, don't you see, you ...
— Pixie O'Shaughnessy • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... business matters is not acquired in a few weeks of commercial life. It is the result of years. It is not only the power within him, but also the experience behind him, that makes a successful business man. The commercial world is only a greater school than the one of slates and slate-pencils. No boy, after attending school for five years, would consider himself competent to teach. And surely five years of commercial apprenticeship will not fit a young man to assume a position of trust, nor give him the capacity to decide upon important business matters. In the first five years, ...
— The Young Man in Business • Edward W. Bok
... what he has said; he is looked upon as having lied. If, however, he takes the pipe and smokes, every one believes him. It is the most solemn form of oath. The Blackfoot pipes are usually made of black or green slate or sandstone. ...
— Blackfoot Lodge Tales • George Bird Grinnell
... under water when he arrived. It was Baldwin's duty to superintend part of the works. He therefore went down, and met his man at the bottom of the sea. Joe took a small school-slate with him, and a piece of pencil—for, the depth being not more than a couple of fathoms, it was possible to see to read ...
— Under the Waves - Diving in Deep Waters • R M Ballantyne
... school," she said, fiercely—"master, mistress, and all—and yet I am kept sitting over a, b, c, like a baby. I get so sick of it that sometimes I answer wrong by way of novelty. Then I have to hold out my hand for the rod. To-day I drew Portia and Shylock on my slate, and forgot to finish my sum; therefore ...
— The Late Miss Hollingford • Rosa Mulholland
... "Pernod," after a long day's work at the atelier. They finish their absinthe and then, arm in arm, start off to Madame Poivret's for dinner. It is cheap there; besides, the little "boite," with its dingy room and sawdust floor, is a favorite haunt of theirs, and the good old lady, with her credit slate, a friendly ...
— The Real Latin Quarter • F. Berkeley Smith
... absurd termination to my violent exertions? I get levers and mattocks to demolish the two houses, and train myself to be capable of working like Hercules, and when everything is ready and in my power, I find the will to lift a slate off either roof has vanished! My old enemies have not beaten me; now would be the precise time to revenge myself on their representatives: I could do it; and none could hinder me. But where is the ...
— Wuthering Heights • Emily Bronte
... mate reached the deck the wind had freshened still more. In the southwest a low lying bank of slate colored cloud was slowly diffusing itself over that ...
— Ralph Granger's Fortunes • William Perry Brown
... routine, scratching slate pencils, gum under desks, smells—all the set up palette of the schoolroom was not to her a ...
— Ptomaine Street • Carolyn Wells
... triumphantly. "I knew there'd be no slate. That proves as it won't come up to Wales. There isn't such a country for slate anywhere as Wales. Well, sir, but even if there's no slate, we can make shift. First thing we do as soon as we get out, will be for me to rig the missus up a bit of a kitchen, ...
— Mass' George - A Boy's Adventures in the Old Savannah • George Manville Fenn
... especially the birds of prey, there are several which are spread over the greater part of the northern continent, some indeed being found also in great numbers in South America. These are the turkey vulture, the black vulture, the little rusty-crowned falcon, the pigeon hawk, slate-coloured hawk, red-tailed buzzard, American horned owl, little American owl, and five other species of falcons. The perchers are less ...
— The Western World - Picturesque Sketches of Nature and Natural History in North - and South America • W.H.G. Kingston
... very neatly made; diameter inside 2 inches, depth 1 inch; composed of grey fibres, bits of bark, grass, and the like, cemented with spider's web. The eggs are two in number, greenish white, spotted with brown and slate-coloured dots, which in most specimens form a well-defined zone round the thickest part of the egg, leaving both ends without marks. Length of the egg .75 inch; breadth .59 inch. This bird was not observed in Maunbhoom ...
— The Nests and Eggs of Indian Birds, Volume 1 • Allan O. Hume
... Christ Scourged, by Sebastian del Piombo, and in the third chapel to the left, an Entombment by Fiammingo; having examined these two masterpieces at leisure, he will take you to each end of the transverse cross, and will show you—on one side a picture by Salviati, on slate, and on the other a work by Vasari; then, pointing out in melancholy tones a copy of Guido's Martyrdom of St. Peter on the high altar, he will relate to you how for three centuries the divine Raffaelle's Transfiguration ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... concomitant in the prevailing disorder. Also the disease hydrophobia, produced in man, is not always the result of any poison introduced into his system, but merely the melancholy, and often fatal result of panic fear, and of the disordered slate of the imagination. Those who are acquainted with the effects of sympathy, and imitation, and panic, in the production of nervous disorders, will readily apprehend the meaning ...
— The Dog - A nineteenth-century dog-lovers' manual, - a combination of the essential and the esoteric. • William Youatt
... the night train down from Paris. Early in the morning I woke up to find myself in the gorges of the Alps, high peaks with romantic Italian-looking settings soaring on every side. At noon we reached Lake Geneva, lying slate-coloured and sombre beneath a wintry sky. That afternoon I saw ...
— Out To Win - The Story of America in France • Coningsby Dawson
... hooded cloak of black cloth, daintily lined with silk, and confined close up to the throat by an embossed silver clasp, but hanging loosely down to the heels, in thick, full folds. The petticoat is very short; the trim ancles are cased in close-fit hose of dark, sober, slate colour; and the shoes, though thick and serviceable like all the rest of the costume, fit the foot as neatly as those which are not made to ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... are the tombs of many whom history has gathered and recorded as her own. But history looks in vain among the blue-black slabs of semi-slate for the name of one who was greatest perhaps of them all; but whose last days were so strangely clouded and whose sepulchre was so obscure as to leave the world in doubt for more than a half century as to where the body of the great ...
— James Otis The Pre-Revolutionist • John Clark Ridpath
... sea-urchins make slate-pencils in some of the islands, and are excellent for hastily writing on a nearby cliff a message to a friend who is following tardily. The creatures are poisonous when alive, however, and ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien
... went on shore. No grass was seen; but everywhere in this country were vast ice mountains (glaciers), and the intermediate space between these and the shore was, as it were, one uniform plain of slate (hella). The country appearing to them destitute of good qualities, they called ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 5 • Various
... its inmates, but the gods had taken them into their almighty protection, and there lay the carriage, with broken wheels, in the arms of two gigantic cypresses which had taken firm root in the fissures of the slate rocks, and whose dark tops reached up to the ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... along the regular Russian post-road was attended with only the usual vicissitudes of ordinary travel. Wading in our Russian top-boots through the treacherous fords of the "Snake" defile, we passed the pyramidal slate rock known as the "Gate of Tamerlane," and emerged upon a strip of the Kizil-Kum steppe, stretching hence in painful monotony to the bank of the Sir Daria river. This we crossed by a rude rope-ferry, filled at the time ...
— Across Asia on a Bicycle • Thomas Gaskell Allen and William Lewis Sachtleben
... interruption of the business of slate during the emperor's stay at Rominten. Theerbude is connected with Berlin by wire, and telegrams are arriving and departing at all ...
— The Secret Memoirs of the Courts of Europe: William II, Germany; Francis Joseph, Austria-Hungary, Volume I. (of 2) • Mme. La Marquise de Fontenoy
... basket-chair, up and down on the highest terrace. She held a minute faded pink silk parasol over her head—it had an ivory handle which folded up when she no longer needed the parasol as a shade. She wore one-buttoned gloves, of slate-colored kid, and a wrist-band of black velvet clasped with a buckle. An inverted cake-tin of weather-beaten straw, trimmed with rusty velvet, shadowed her old, tired eyes; an Indian shawl was crossed ...
— Halcyone • Elinor Glyn
... pretty respectable—for a Pennsylvanian. The President returned to the subject several times; got out his list of Cabinet officers and figured industriously upon it with a rather perplexed face; called Ratcliffe to help him; and at last the "slate" was fairly broken, and Ratcliffe's eyes gleamed when the President caused his list of nominations to be sent to the Senate on the 5th March, and Josiah B. Carson, of Pennsylvania, was promptly confirmed as Secretary ...
— Democracy An American Novel • Henry Adams
... to," said Nancy, "but it's almost the same. She says she can't do them, and says she could if some one was kind enough to just show her how. Then I can't seem to be unkind, and the minute I say I'll help her, she pushes her slate and pencil towards me. 'You can do 'em easier than I can,' she says, and instead of helping her, I do ...
— Dorothy Dainty's Gay Times • Amy Brooks
... before. One day, not so long ago, I had felt particularly happy there. I had been able for a long time to read correctly in my reading-book and write on my slate. But one day Mr. Voltelen had said to me: "You ought to learn to read writing." And from that moment forth my ambition was set upon reading writing, an idea which had never occurred to me before. When my tutor first showed me writing, it had looked to me much as cuneiform ...
— Recollections Of My Childhood And Youth • George Brandes
... with that doubleply slate roof of his, needs watchin' close. He has a nutty idea that he ought to be sociable, and he no sooner spots Mr. Robert and Miss Elsa Hampton, chattin' cozy in a garden nook, than he's prompted to kick ...
— Torchy, Private Sec. • Sewell Ford
... duties in life. To get a realistic notion, let every man who has a wife ask himself how he would relish being told by her, "I have an engagement with John Smith to-night to see about fixing up a slate to get Mrs. Jones nominated for sheriff," and being left to go his own way while she goes with Smith. If that wouldn't make hell in the household in one act we don't know what would, yet this is merely one little trivial episode of what this ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... I have given up school, and taken to private pupils," the Badger said to himself. "I hope she won't exasperate me, and make me lose my temper! Now take this slate," he continued aloud, "and try and do one of these simple sums. You'll soon get used ...
— Soap-Bubble Stories - For Children • Fanny Barry
... of property in Marsac. The house, with a garden before it and a yard at the back, was built of white tufa ornamented with carvings, cut without great expense in that easily wrought stone, and roofed with slate. The pretty furniture from the house in Angouleme looked prettier still at Marsac, for there was not the slightest attempt at comfort or luxury in the country in those days. A row of orange-trees, pomegranates, and rare plants stood before the house ...
— Eve and David • Honore de Balzac
... by a clock-face: Fenchurch Street Station. Beyond its dingy platforms, the metal track which contracts into the murk is the road to China, though that is, perhaps, the last place you would guess to be at the end of it. The train runs over a wilderness of tiles, a grey plateau of bare slate and rock, its expanse cracked and scored as though by a withering heat. Nothing grows there; nothing could live there. Smoke still pours from it, as though it were volcanic, from numberless vents. The region is without sap. Above its expanse project superior ...
— London River • H. M. Tomlinson
... judge if he is willing that I should wipe the slate clean as you propose in case there really is a door and an old Peter to present a purified passport to," the dying man said to me with a touch of his old whimsicality. "I give up, Greg; the soul that Charlotte possesses ...
— The Heart's Kingdom • Maria Thompson Daviess
... elements—silicates, carbonates, sulphates, phosphates, and chlorides of lime, potash, magnesia, alumina, soda, oxides of iron and manganese—it derives from the detritus of the granite, gneiss, mica, and chlorite slate, limestone and sandstone rocks, in which the Himmalaya chain of mountains so much abounds; and the organic elements—humates, almates, geates, apoerenates, and crenates—it derives from the mould, formed from the decay of animal and vegetable matter. ...
— A Journey through the Kingdom of Oude, Volumes I & II • William Sleeman
... fatigue, our prisoner slept on till after the sun was up, and we were busy in marking out the ground for our slate hut, and making preparations for cutting down the nearest trees with which to build it. More than once I looked at his countenance while he slept, and called my wife to look at him. We were both convinced that my surmise ...
— Peter Biddulph - The Story of an Australian Settler • W.H.G. Kingston
... find her slate, and when she did find it many of the figures were blurred, for Barbara had sat upon it. And then the numbers seemed to dance before her, and each time that she added, the answer was different. She went over and over the sums until her head ached. The table was covered with little square ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 3 (of 12) - Classic Tales And Old-Fashioned Stories • Various
... you away from it? The Old Homestead that stands beside the road just on the rise of the hill, with its dark spruce trees wrapped in snow, the snug barns and the straw stacks behind it; while from its windows there streams a shaft of light from a coal-oil lamp, about as thick as a slate pencil that you can see four miles away, from the other side of the cedar swamp in the hollow. Don't talk to me of your modern searchlights and your incandescent arcs, beside that gleam of light from the coal-oil lamp in the farmhouse window. ...
— Nonsense Novels • Stephen Leacock
... a bad sort, taking him altogether. The worst of him is, he is one of the most indiscreet persons I ever met with. Does the queerest things, when the whim takes him, and doesn't care what other people think of it. They say the Lepels have all got a slate loose in the upper story. Oh, no; not a very old family—I mean, nothing compared to the family of his friend, young Rothsay. They count back, as I have heard, to the ancient kings of Scotland. Between ourselves, ...
— Little Novels • Wilkie Collins
... there are two chief forms, the first being a tank or pan formed of large pieces of slate, with the joints made with clay, and surrounded with a mud wall. The whole is covered with an arch or vault and is filled with the brine, which is then evaporated by surface heat, the fire being placed at one end and the flue ...
— On the Antiquity of the Chemical Art • James Mactear
... with convicts at work. They make elaborate motions with picks at white rocks, and thus dig out considerable black slate. SILAS has become a Warden, no one knows how. The convicts sing and enjoy themselves, with the exception of ARNOLD, who evidently finds prison life too gay and frivolous. Mrs. ARMITAGE, who has become a fashionable lady—no one ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 13, June 25, 1870 • Various
... punished for persisting, in spite of the slate on the wall and your nursery-governess, that the Mediterranean lay between Scotland and Ireland? Miss Jevons wanted to give you bread and water for three days. How's that prig Graves?" he added ...
— Elster's Folly • Mrs. Henry Wood
... sleeve and turn traitor to myself? Why, the law itself gave me what they passed over. I was declared a bankrupt. Don't you know what that means? It means that the courts assumed responsibility for my affairs, paid off my creditors, and, as a small compensation for having robbed me, wiped the slate clean and declared me free of all claims. And this was twenty-five years ago. My dear boy! Read the Bankruptcy Act. ...
— Queed • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... over a natural spring of inflammable gas, and to be constantly illuminated therewith. What moral could be drawn from this? It is carburetted hydrogen gas, and is cooled from a soft shale or slate, which is sometimes bituminous, and contains more or less carbonate of lime. It appears in the vicinity of Lockport and Niagara Falls, and elsewhere in New York. I believe it indicates coal. At Fredonia, the whole village is lighted by it. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... again, and walked on along a very rough and dirty road, the ground growing more decidedly into hills and valleys as they advanced, till they found themselves before a small, but very steep hillock, one side of which was cut away into a slate quarry. Round this stood a colony of roughly-built huts, of mud, turf, or large blocks of the slate. Many workmen were engaged in splitting up the slates, or loading wagons with them, rude wild-looking men, at the sight ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... dress. The maypole dancers are in dull-green, dull-violet, and dull-blue, bronze, and slate-gray. Some wear cloaks and some do not. All should have a wild, ...
— Patriotic Plays and Pageants for Young People • Constance D'Arcy Mackay
... great fir-tree stretched his length, a peeled multitude of his dead fellows leaned and stood upright in the midst of scattered fire-stained members, and through their skeleton limbs the sheer precipice of slate-rock of the bulk across the chasm, nursery of hawk and eagle; wore a thin blue tinge, the sign ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... object in the midst of a grey and desolate picture, the dreary character of which it would be difficult to surpass. It was now blowing a whole gale from the South-West, the wind having backed during the night; the sky was an unbroken expanse of dark, slate-coloured cloud athwart the face of which tattered shreds of dirty grey vapour rapidly swept; the sea, of an opaque greyish-green tint, ran high and steep, crested with great curling heads of pallid froth, flecked here ...
— A Middy of the King - A Romance of the Old British Navy • Harry Collingwood
... pedestrians (unless in a group) are less liable than a motor to have a shell spent on them. We climbed under a driving grey sky which swept gusts of rain across our road. In the lee of the castle we stopped to look down at the valley of the Moselle, the slate roofs of Pont-a-Mousson and the broken bridge which once linked together the two sides of the town. Nothing but the wreck of the bridge showed that we were on the edge of war. The wind was too high for firing, and we saw no reason for believing that the wood ...
— Fighting France - From Dunkerque to Belport • Edith Wharton
... i.e., A stucco box, with two bay-windows, a slate roof, and a romantic or aristocratic name—"Killiecrankie," "Glaramara," ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, April 12, 1890 • Various
... or diamonds, or copper, or silver? I would sometimes lie flat down to drink out of a stream, and could see little yellow specks among the sand; were these gold? People said no; but then people always said there was no gold until it was found to be abundant: there was plenty of slate and granite, which I had always understood to accompany gold; and even though it was not found in paying quantities here, it might be abundant in the main ranges. These thoughts filled my head, and I could not ...
— Erewhon • Samuel Butler |
