"Spiral" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... parks, and boulevards, monuments, and embankments. An imitation of Trajan's column in Rome, is 142 feet in height, and thirteen feet in diameter. It is constructed of masonry, encrusted with plates of bronze, forming a spiral band nearly 300 yards in length, on which are represented the "battle scenes of Napoleon during his campaign of 1805, and down to the battle of Austerlitz. The figures are three feet in height and many of them are portraits. The metal was obtained by melting down 1,200 ...
— Questionable Amusements and Worthy Substitutes • J. M. Judy
... craftswoman started at the middle, and began the task of putting in the cross-pieces or weft which were to complete and bind together the circular pattern. These she wove round and round in a continuous spiral, setting out at the centre, and keeping on in ever-widening circlets, till she arrived at last at the exterior or foundation threads. How she fastened these cross-pieces to the ray-lines I could never quite make out, though I often followed the work ...
— Science in Arcady • Grant Allen
... of the central cells or by the secretion of fluid internally. Some of the glands, such as the sudoriferous, do not ramify (Figure 2.284 efg). These glands, which secrete the perspiration, are very long, and have a spiral coil at the end, but they never ramify; so also the wax-glands of the ears. Most of the other cutaneous glands give out buds and ramify; thus, for instance, the lachrymal glands of the upper eye-lid that secrete tears (Figure ...
— The Evolution of Man, V.2 • Ernst Haeckel
... bridge Louis XV., by which this Temple of Hymen was reached, formed in itself an avenue, whose double rows of lamps, and obelisks and more than a hundred columns, each surmounted by a star and connected by spiral festoons of colored lights, produced an effect so brilliant that it was almost unendurable to the naked eye. The cupola of the dome of Saint Genevieve was also magnificently lighted, and each side outlined by a double row of lamps. At each corner were eagles, ciphers in colored glass, and garlands ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... through the inner lock-door. He saw that the interior of the ship was stripped and bare. But a spiral stairway descended from some upper compartment. It had a handrail of pure, transparent, water-clear plastic. The walls were bare insulation, but that trace of luxury remained. Pop gazed at ...
— Scrimshaw • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... the railing against which he leaned, was about to make a quick move forward when a puff of smoke arose from below and sent him staggering backward, gasping with a terror I could hardly understand till I saw that the smoke had taken the form of a spiral and was sailing away before him in what to his disordered imagination must have looked like a gigantic image of the coil with which twice before on this day he ...
— A Difficult Problem - 1900 • Anna Katharine Green (Mrs. Charles Rohlfs)
... deerskin attached at one end to a round piece of bone, fourteen inches long, tapered to a point, and covered over with leather. This looks like a little whip, the handle of which is placed up and down the hair, and the strap wound round it in a number of spiral turns, making the tail thus equipped very much resemble one of those formerly worn by our seamen. The strap of this article of dress, which is altogether called a tŏglēēgă, is so made from the deerskin as to show, when ...
— Journal of the Third Voyage for the Discovery of a North-West Passage • William Edward Parry
... of turquoise-blue and the gleam of iridescent tiles showed through the clear water in the octagonal basin set in the floor. The jets of water came from a large ball of blue faience resting on the top of a slender spiral column. The fountain was only one of the beautiful features of that Eastern mansion which Margaret noticed as her hostess conducted her ...
— There was a King in Egypt • Norma Lorimer
... centiped. The other animal is more cylindrical in shape and has two pairs of legs on each division of the body. Its colour is a darker brown than that of the centiped, and it has a habit of coiling into a spiral shape, when disturbed, so that the soft under surface is concealed. This is the milliped. Both of these animals are quite harmless and feed on decaying vegetable matter. They stand midway between worms and ...
— Ontario Teachers' Manuals: Nature Study • Ontario Ministry of Education
... yards away. Slowly, as he advanced, he made out the dim shadow of life in the white gloom—a bit of smoke climbing weakly in the storm, the black opening of a brush shelter—and then, between the opening and the spiral of smoke, a living thing that came creeping toward him on all fours, like ...
— The Honor of the Big Snows • James Oliver Curwood
... dear," said the major, "was that spiral gentleman handed to me all hot by friend Mark, who took it sizzling out of the fire with a bit of bent stick ...
— Mother Carey's Chicken - Her Voyage to the Unknown Isle • George Manville Fenn
... rapid manner. And for this purpose, iron is excellently adapted, as it possesses a much stronger affinity for the base of respirable air than mercury. The elegant experiment of Mr Ingenhouz, upon the combustion of iron, is well known. Take a piece of fine iron wire, twisted into a spiral, (BC, Plate IV. Fig. 17.) fix one of its extremities B into the cork A, adapted to the neck of the bottle DEFG, and fix to the other extremity of the wire C, a small morsel of tinder. Matters being thus ...
— Elements of Chemistry, - In a New Systematic Order, Containing all the Modern Discoveries • Antoine Lavoisier
... said, and knelt again in my seat. The plane suddenly seemed to swerve. Then it slanted at a most terrifying angle, and began to descend rapidly towards the earth in a spiral form. I filmed the scene on the journey. To say the earth looked extraordinary would be putting it very mildly. The ground below seemed to rush up and mix with the clouds. First the earth seemed to be over one's head, then the clouds. I am sure ...
— How I Filmed the War - A Record of the Extraordinary Experiences of the Man Who - Filmed the Great Somme Battles, etc. • Lieut. Geoffrey H. Malins
... he replied. "We went hand in hand up a high mountain. A path wound round it in spiral flexures, ever ascending, and communicating with all above and all below. A stream of water, pure as crystal, flowed along the path, from the summit to the base. Where we stood to rest awhile, the skies ...
— Philothea - A Grecian Romance • Lydia Maria Child
... she would have got rid of me because I was lame. It would have gone hardly with me had not Eurynome, daughter of the ever-encircling waters of Oceanus, and Thetis, taken me to their bosom. Nine years did I stay with them, and many beautiful works in bronze, brooches, spiral armlets, cups, and chains, did I make for them in their cave, with the roaring waters of Oceanus foaming as they rushed ever past it; and no one knew, neither of gods nor men, save only Thetis and Eurynome who took care of me. If, then, Thetis has come to my house I must make her due requital ...
— The Iliad • Homer
... extraordinary still. There was a mast set up in the ground, thirty or forty feet high. At the ground, ten feet from the foot of the mast, there commenced an inclined plane, formed of a plank about a foot or eighteen inches wide, which ascended in a spiral direction round and round the mast till it reached the top. A man ascended this plane by means of a large ball, about two feet in diameter, which he rolled up standing upon it, and rolling it by ...
— Rollo in Paris • Jacob Abbott
... character. For this pulpit is one of the finest examples of the ornate, if somewhat bizarre art of the thirteenth century, and belongs to a type of work that is not unfrequently met with throughout Italy. Six spiral columns, springing from the backs of crouched lions, support the rostrum of marble inlaid with beautiful mosaics; whilst above the arch of the stair-way of ascent stands the famous portrait, usually called ...
— The Naples Riviera • Herbert M. Vaughan
... consists of an axis of hollow brass tube, eighteen inches in length, through which, upon a semi-spiral inclined at fifteen degrees, pass a series of steel wire radii, two feet long, and thus projecting a foot on either side. These radii are connected at the outer extremities by two bands of flattened ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 1 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... with festoons of foliage, vine branches, and grapes, painted on a soft green ground. The floor was tiled with large black and white squares. At the far end was the yawning cellar entrance, above which rose a spiral staircase hung with red drapery, and leading to the billiard-room on the first floor. The counter or "bar" on the right looked especially rich, and glittered like polished silver. Its zinc-work, hanging with a broad bulging border over the sub-structure of ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola
... ceremony of special significance which is never omitted at the sacrifice of a Bear. Libations were offered to the inabos, sacred wands which stand outside the Aino hut. These wands are about two feet high and are whittled at the top into spiral shavings. Five new wands with bamboo leaves attached to them are set up for the festival; the leaves according to the Ainos mean that the Bear may come to life again. These wands are specially interesting. The chief focus of attention is ...
— Ancient Art and Ritual • Jane Ellen Harrison
... a horny framework, the individuals of the colony living in cells strung on one or both sides along a hollow stem, and communicating by means of a common flesh in this central tube. Some graptolites were straight, and some curved or spiral; some were single stemmed, and others consisted of several radial stems united. Graptolites occur but rarely in the Upper Cambrian. In the Ordovician and Silurian they are very plentiful, and at the close of the Silurian ...
— The Elements of Geology • William Harmon Norton
... matter and of life is so absolutely unknown that scientists have not as yet formulated definite theories concerning it. Even the theories regarding the origin of the solar system are still conflicting and none is generally accepted. The old nebular hypothesis is discredited and the theory of the spiral movement of the solar matter seems to be confirmed by phenomena observable in the heavens. The one principle generally held by scientists is that, given matter and life and some creating force, our present marvelous complex universe has come into being according to laws usually called ...
— The Making of a Nation - The Beginnings of Israel's History • Charles Foster Kent and Jeremiah Whipple Jenks
... "Tiend Commissioners and Transplantation off Paroch Kirkis," which was pasted over the stone mantelpiece of the bar, the landlord returned with the foreign gentleman's thanks, and an invitation to his chamber, whither the Major immediately repaired; following the host up a narrow stone spiral stair to a snugly wainscotted room, against the well-grated windows of which a sudden shower ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various
... couching crosses the flower forms in straight lines; and in the eye of the flower where the threads cross, the two are sewn down at a single stitch. The spiral stems a sort of laid cord. Flower in blue, sewn with blue and outlined with gold; leaves, a bright fresh green stitched with olive. ...
— Art in Needlework - A Book about Embroidery • Lewis F. Day
... the east; and so onwards to the south, then to the west, and back again to the north. If the movement had been quite regular, the apex would have described a circle, or rather, as the stem is always growing upwards, a circular spiral. But it generally describes irregular elliptical or oval figures; for the apex, after pointing in any one direction, commonly moves back to the opposite side, not, however, returning along the same line. Afterwards other irregular ellipses or ovals are successively described, with their ...
— The Power of Movement in Plants • Charles Darwin
... Ed had built a row of blocks completely around the circle, he trimmed the first blocks which he had placed to a wedge, that he might build his circle of blocks up in a spiral. ...
— Bobby of the Labrador • Dillon Wallace
... SPIRAL: One husband! The woman consenting to marriage takes but one. For her there is no widowhood. That punctuation of the sentence called death is not the end of the chapter for her. It is the brilliant proof of her having a soul. So she exalts her sex. Above the ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... with a single envelope with a pith on the inside, which could only be divided into slices with a knife, either in stripes of a width permitted by the sides of the prism, or else shaved round and round, like the operation of cork making, and producing a long spiral shaving. ...
— Forty Centuries of Ink • David N. Carvalho
... twig it was fastened to, and circling round and round, one fold upon another, which gradually increased to the size of my wrist in the middle, and then as gradually decreased till it terminated in a point again at the contrary extreme; all which spiral, if it were fairly extended in length, might be a yard or an ell long. I surveyed this strange vegetable very attentively; it had a rind, or crust, which I could not break with my hand, but taking my knife and making an opening therewith ...
— Life And Adventures Of Peter Wilkins, Vol. I. (of II.) • Robert Paltock
... the man, "it will be best for you to cross our Valley and mount the spiral staircase inside the Pyramid Mountain. The top of that mountain is lost in the clouds, and when you reach it you will be in the awful Land of Naught, ...
— Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz • L. Frank Baum.
... in the room. Jack chanced to rest his hand against it, when he must unconsciously have touched some secret spring, for a secret door opened, dividing the picture in two parts, and, to our hero's unbounded astonishment, he saw before him a small spiral staircase leading ...
— Jack's Ward • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... arrived, Urged slanting onward by the bickering breeze That issues from beneath Aurora's car, Shudder the sombrous waves; at every beam More vivid, more by every breath impelled, Higher and higher up the fretted rocks Their turbulent refulgence they display. Madness, which like the spiral element The more it seizes on the fiercer burns, Hurried them blindly forward, and involved In flame the senses and in gloom the soul. Determined to protect the country's gods And asking their protection, ...
— Gebir • Walter Savage Landor
... own, like a fair ghost gliding step for step beside her. At last she stopped; they were well away from the house in a quaint bit of garden shaded with formal fir-trees and clipped yews, where a fountain dashed up a slender spiral thread of white spray. A strange sense of fury in her broke loose; with pale face and cruel, glittering eyes she turned upon ...
— Innocent - Her Fancy and His Fact • Marie Corelli
... from earth, like some graceful bird, higher and higher, and then, in a big spiral, he began ascending until he was five hundred feet in the air. Up there he traveled back and forth, in circles, and in figure eights, desiring to test the ...
— Tom Swift and his Wireless Message • Victor Appleton
... of poor Modern Germany) which has followed therefrom,—ACH GOTT, he might have been a "SUCCESS of a Fritz" three times over! He might have been a German Cromwell; beckoning his People to fly, eagle-like, straight towards the Sun; instead of screwing about it in that sad, uncertain, and far too spiral manner!—But it lay not in him; not in his capabilities or opportunities, after all: and we but waste ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. III. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Hohenzollerns In Brandenburg—1412-1718 • Thomas Carlyle
... snapped trees off close to the ground. In others it seemed to swoop down from above, lick up a patch of trees bodily and carry them clean away, leaving the surrounding trees untouched. Sometimes it would select a tree of thirty years growth, seize it, spin it round, and leave it a permanent spiral screw. I was in these regions about the time, and had the account from a native who had gone through it all and couldn't speak of it except with glaring ...
— Blown to Bits - or, The Lonely Man of Rakata • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... as it is called in the orchestra, is the sweetest and mellowest of all the wind instruments. In Beethoven's time it was but little else than the old hunting-horn, which, for the convenience of the mounted hunter, was arranged in spiral convolutions that it might be slipped over the head and carried resting on one shoulder and under the opposite arm. The Germans still call it the Waldhorn, i.e., "forest horn;" the old French name was cor de chasse, the ...
— How to Listen to Music, 7th ed. - Hints and Suggestions to Untaught Lovers of the Art • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... into a spiral, lit it, and held it for his companion. He continued to hold it until it was consumed, and dropped the fragment—a fiery star—from the open window. He watched it as it fell, and then returned ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte
... continues up and down through Beacon Heights, a large chamber which imitates Rocky Mountain scenery and terminates at the Corkscrew Path which, as the name indicates, is a spiral path winding down like a great stairway against the wall of an approximately circular chamber which is perhaps the highest in the cave, and shows the most violent water-action. The plunging torrent rushed on from here to tear out the heavy rock and form the next chamber, ...
— Cave Regions of the Ozarks and Black Hills • Luella Agnes Owen
... nearly a thousand paces, and the path, perfectly on a level, will be two paces broad, so that I may walk between you; but another could not join us conveniently. From this there will be several circuitous and spiral, leading by the easiest ascent to the summit; and several more, to the road along the cultivation underneath: here will, however, be but one entrance. Among the projecting fragments and the massive stones yet standing of the boundary-wall, ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor
... with the stench of oil. The room hung with soot from the lamp. A thin spiral thread of black smoke rose from the taper. In the dim light the leering face of Sipsu appeared like the face of the great demon himself. His small half-closed eyes blazed ...
— The Eternal Maiden • T. Everett Harre
... motion, or stopped in a conductor, a neighboring conductor has a current produced in the opposite direction. Henry proved that this principle might be made available to produce an action of a current upon itself, by forming a conductor in the whirls of a spiral, so that sparks and shocks might be obtained by the use of such spirals, when connected with a pair of galvanic plates, a current from which could give no sparks and no shocks. Henry's discoveries of the effects of a current in producing several alternations in currents ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 6, No. 1, July, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... thought. Sceptical minds see in human affairs a regular oscillation, hopeful ones a continual progress, and both can support their creeds with abundance of pertinent example. Both seem to admit a law of recurrence, but the former make it act in a circle, the latter in a spiral. There is, no doubt, one constant element in the reckoning, namely, human nature, and perhaps another in human nature itself,—the tendency to reaction from all extremes; but the way in which these shall operate, and the force they shall exert, are dependent on a multitude of new and ...
— The Writings of James Russell Lowell in Prose and Poetry, Volume V - Political Essays • James Russell Lowell
... high; The foaming base the angry whirlwinds sweep, Where curling billows rouse the fearful deep: Still round and round the fluid vortex flies, Diffusing briny vapours o'er the skies. This vast phenomenon, whose lofty head, In heaven immersed, embracing clouds o'erspread, 40 In spiral motion first, as seamen deem, Swells, when the raging whirlwind sweeps the stream. The swift volution, and the enormous train, Let sages versed in nature's lore explain. The horrid apparition still ...
— The Poetical Works of Beattie, Blair, and Falconer - With Lives, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Rev. George Gilfillan [Ed.]
... which he had cogitated when reclining in a state of supine repletion to aid digestion, stimulated by his appreciation of the importance of inventions now common but once revolutionary, for example, the aeronautic parachute, the reflecting telescope, the spiral corkscrew, the safety pin, the mineral water siphon, the canal lock with winch and sluice, ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... soaring birds at once. This gull, having spread his wings wide, swept up the dean, or valley, with great speed, and, turning a large circle, rose level with the hill. Round again he came, rising spirally—a spiral with a diameter varying from a furlong to a quarter of a mile, sometimes wider—and was now high overhead. Turn succeeded turn, up, up, and this without a single movement of the wings, which were held extended ...
— The Life of the Fields • Richard Jefferies
... matter settled, the three children set off on their way clown the narrow spiral staircase, at the bottom of which Alan, who led the way, stopped in order to assist the girls over some rotten boards. The whole passage required careful walking, to avoid dangerous holes, and ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various
... before. The field presented to the eye is depicted in Fig. 1, B, where it is visible that while the original organism persists yet a new organism has arisen in and invaded the fluid. It is a relatively long and beautiful spiral form, and now the movement in the field is entrancing. The original organism darts with its vigor and grace, and rebounds in all directions. But the spiral forms revolving on their axes glide like a flight ...
— Scientific American Supplement, Vol. XIX, No. 470, Jan. 3, 1885 • Various
... him from the front, so that Nick was seated in reverse position on his back. The object which he grasped was the spiral tail of the animal, but, before he could make his grip certain, the porker swerved so suddenly to one side that Nick rolled off and bumped against ...
— Through Forest and Fire - Wild-Woods Series No. 1 • Edward Ellis
... parapet, within which arose a steep roof, flagged with grey stones. A single turret at one angle, defended by a door studded with huge iron nails, rose above the battlement, and gave access to the roof from within, by the spiral staircase which it enclosed. It seemed to the party that their motions were watched by some one concealed within this turret; and they were confirmed in their belief when, through a narrow loophole, a female hand was seen to wave a handkerchief, as if ...
— The Black Dwarf • Sir Walter Scott
... are noted for their vanity in brass wire, which is wound in spiral rings round their wrists and ankles, and the varieties of style which their hispid heads exhibit; while their poor lords, obliged to be contented with dingy torn clouts and split ears, show what wide sway Asmodeus holds over this terrestrial sphere—for it must have been an unhappy time when ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley
... Fire Towers, and our engraving represents the view of one of them, at Brechin, in Scotland. It consists of sixty regular courses of hewn stone, of a brighter colour than the adjoining church. It is 85 feet high to the cornice, whence rises a low, spiral-pointed roof of stone, with three or four windows, and on the top a vane, making 15 feet more, in all 100 feet from the ground, and measuring ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 333 - Vol. 12, Issue 333, September 27, 1828 • Various
... spiral shell, Full blasted, tell, That all your wat'ry realms should ring; Your pearl alcoves, Your coral groves, Should echo theirs, ...
— The Poetical Works of Edward Young, Volume 2 • Edward Young
... communicated with gun-stations, turrets, steering-room, engine-rooms, and all parts of the ship where men were stationed. In the forward part was a binnacle with small steering-wheel, disconnected now, for the steering was done by men below the water-line in the stern. A spiral staircase led to the main-deck below, and another to the first fighting-top above, in which staircase were small platforms where a signal-officer and two quartermasters watched through slits the signals from the flag-ship, and ...
— "Where Angels Fear to Tread" and Other Stories of the Sea • Morgan Robertson
... mainly of dotted or reticulated ducts (Fig. F), but all gradations from, this to the spiroids, or even true spiral ducts (Fig. E). may be found, though the annular and spiral ducts are quite rare. These ducts are often prismatically compressed by each other. The fibrovascular bundles also contain soft-walled prosenchyma cells. The peri-nuclear portion consists of soft-walled ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 497, July 11, 1885 • Various
... her complexion. The brilliancy of her eyes, the superb arch of her eyebrows, her well-formed aquiline nose, her teeth as white as pearl, and the profusion of her sable tresses, which, each arranged in its own little spiral of twisted curls, fell down upon as much of a lovely neck and bosom as a simarre of the richest Persian silk, exhibiting flowers in their natural colours embossed upon a purple ground, permitted to be visible—all these constituted a combination of loveliness, which yielded not to the most ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott
... Here Edgar drew an end of candle from his pocket and lighted it. The tunnel was so low that Gaydon, though a shortish man, could barely hold his head erect. He followed Edgar to the end and up a flight of winding steps. The air grew warmer and dryer. They had risen above ground, the spiral wound within the thickness of a wall. The steps ended abruptly; there was no door visible; in face of them and on each side the bare stone walls enclosed them. Edgar stooped down and pressed with his finger on a round insignificant discolouration of the ...
— Clementina • A.E.W. Mason
... up again at dawn. At two o'clock he came into the clearing about Lac Bain. As he hurried to Breed's quarters he wondered if Colonel Becker or Isobel had seen him from their window. He had noticed that the curtain was up, and that a thin spiral of smoke was rising from the clay chimney that descended to ...
— Philip Steele of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police • James Oliver Curwood
... bone called the hammer; the hammer beats against another called the anvil, and this against a third called the stirrup; and the quiver of the stirrup is passed on to a little window, opening into a little room with a spiral key-board; and from this, the wave travels along a nerve to the brain. As the waves reach the brain, the brain hears. In this way we hear all sorts of sounds, from the tick of a watch to ...
— The Child's Day • Woods Hutchinson
... by them into clouds and out of them, up hill and down dale in ether-land amid the showers from below of the raining aircraft guns. Strathdene knew how to dodge and duck, turn somersaults, volplane, spiral, coast downward on an invisible toboggan-slide, or climb into ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes
... seated he resettled himself on the sofa, and, keeping his eyes fixed on the lad, placed the amber mouth-piece of a long spiral tube connected with a narghile which was smouldering on the floor to his lips, and the gurgling sound was once more produced. But to Harry's astonishment, no cloud issued from his uncle's mouth; like a law-abiding ...
— For Fortune and Glory - A Story of the Soudan War • Lewis Hough
... where now the lands were left waste, and nothing fed upon them but cattle. I cannot attempt to describe the mountains. I can only say that I thought those on our right—for the other side was only a continued high ridge or craggy barrier, broken along the top into petty spiral forms—were the grandest I had ever seen. It seldom happens that mountains in a very clear air look exceedingly high, but these, though we could see the whole of them to their very summits, appeared to me more majestic in their own nakedness than our imaginations could ...
— Recollections of a Tour Made in Scotland A.D. 1803 • Dorothy Wordsworth
... conduit before the mixing boxes, and permit the measuring of the velocity of the current. The air-current, after passing through the holes, enters the mixer, a cast-steel box traversed by 36 copper tubes, each perforated by 12 openings, 3 mm. in diameter, arranged in a spiral along its length and equally spaced. The total cross-sectional area of the ...
— Transactions of the American Society of Civil Engineers, vol. LXX, Dec. 1910 • Herbert M. Wilson
... proceed in opposite directions at the same time and no eye, of course, is able to move upward and downward, or right and left, in the same moment. A very characteristic experiment can be performed with a black spiral line on a white disk. If we revolve such a disk slowly around its center, the spiral line produces the impression of a continuous enlargement of concentric curves. The lines start at the center and expand until they disappear in the periphery. If we look for a minute ...
— The Photoplay - A Psychological Study • Hugo Muensterberg
... the limitless wastes are covered by a scrubby plant known as mountain sage. It rises from a tough gnarled root in a number of spiral shoots, which finally form a single trunk, varying in circumference from six inches to two feet. The leaves are grey, with a strong offensive smell resembling true sage. In other places there appear ...
— The Western World - Picturesque Sketches of Nature and Natural History in North - and South America • W.H.G. Kingston
... through the charging circuit in one direction only. In appearance the bulb, see Figure 49, resembles somewhat an ordinary incandescent bulb. In the bulb is a short tungsten filament wound in the form of a tight spiral, and supported between two lead-in wires. Close to the filament is a graphite disk which serves as one of the electrodes. Figure 50 shows the operating principle of the Tungar. "B" is the bulb, containing the filament "F" and the graphite ...
— The Automobile Storage Battery - Its Care And Repair • O. A. Witte
... of Maxentius in the plains of Torre di Quinto, Constantine "raised a basilica over the tomb of the blessed Peter, which he enclosed in a bronze case. The altar above was decorated with spiral columns carved with vines which he ...
— Pagan and Christian Rome • Rodolfo Lanciani
... balsam, at the foot of a large hemlock—I took up my quarters there for the night. The tufted branches of this tree render it a much more secure retreat in a thunder-storm than the pine, whose pointed branches and spiral shaped top ...
— Service in the Hudson's Bay Territory • John M'lean
... done the rubber tape was wound round and round the copper wires, after which the whole was put into a vulcanizing bath of hot paraffine. Upon soaking half an hour, it was removed from the paraffine and the jute serving was bound back again; then the armour—a steel wire spiral jacket—was replaced, the spirals winding back into their original position with the greatest ease. Wire was then wound at intervals over this steel jacket to keep the spirals in place, after which the whole, for ten or fifteen ...
— A Woman's Journey through the Philippines - On a Cable Ship that Linked Together the Strange Lands Seen En Route • Florence Kimball Russel
... in his mind. It was Mrs. Larrabbee who had given character to the career of the still comparatively youthful and unquestionably energetic president of the Chamber of Commerce by likening it to a great spiral, starting somewhere in outer regions of twilight, and gradually drawing nearer to the centre, from which he had never taken his eyes. At the centre were Eldon Parr and Charlotte Gore. Wallis Plimpton had made ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... vehicle stopped. An elevator accepted them and lifted an indefinite distance through the night, toward the stars. A sort of gangplank with a canvas siderail reached out across emptiness. Cochrane crossed it, and found himself at the bottom of a spiral ramp inside the rocket's passenger-compartment. A stewardess looked at the tickets. She led the way up, ...
— Operation: Outer Space • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... thought of Greek pottery from his mind. As he peeped out of his window he could see slanting rifts of early sunlight flecking with gold the trunks of the great pines. From the chimney of the cookhouse a spiral of blue smoke was ascending and as it rose it carried into the air with it a pleasant odor of burning wood ...
— The Story of Porcelain • Sara Ware Bassett
... of the photoplay is as great a step as was the beginning of picture-writing in the stone age. And the cave-men and women of our slums seem to be the people most affected by this novelty, which is but an expression of the old in that spiral of life which is going higher while seeming to repeat the ...
— The Art Of The Moving Picture • Vachel Lindsay
... reaction from the materialism of the age, and this is certainly well, in my mind, but then there is something more than this, more than a mere human reaction, I believe. I have not the power of writing myself at all, though I have felt the pencil turn in my hand—a peculiar spiral motion like the turning of the tables, and independent of volition, but the power is not with me strong enough to make ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume II • Elizabeth Barrett Browning
... "I see what he did. This is the old spiral stairway that goes round the inside of the Keep. There are two doorways at the bottom. One opens into the courtyard, the other is a postern gate through the curtain wall to the outside—but that was closed up in the sixteenth century, so the only way ...
— The Eyes Have It • Gordon Randall Garrett
... the pirates, the plagiarists, those plagues of the profession. Certainly, there were great bill-toppers, creators of sensations who discovered new things—terrifying feats of gyroscopic balancing, or flights through space, based upon principles of ballistics, assisted by the spiral spring—daring risk-alls, nerve-shakers, purveyors of thrills, turning to intelligent account the seductive power which dangerous feats exercise upon the public. Jimmy knew all about that. He was not the only one; but, this time, it was a question ...
— The Bill-Toppers • Andre Castaigne
... us from the corner of the canvas to the extreme distance and thence in a circuit back; in another it moves on a flat plane like an ellipse in perspective. Again, first catching the eye in the centre, it unfolds like a spiral. ...
— Pictorial Composition and the Critical Judgment of Pictures • Henry Rankin Poore
... the narrow spiral stairs that led to the main floor of the barn, stopped at its head, then ...
— Youth • Isaac Asimov
... means having combined functions of rolling and another, any patent having claims for the combination of a means for rolling and a means for cooling would fall in subclass 1, Miscellaneous. In that subclass would also fall all "Mills," such as for rolling spiral conveyer-flights, the same not falling under any of the subclasses 32-40, no miscellaneous subclass of "Mills" and no special article-rolling subclass having been provided; also all parts or accessories, such as a water-cooled screen, peculiarly adapted to rolling-mills, ...
— The Classification of Patents • United States Patent Office
... breath remember the solemn and terrible magnificence of that picture of lightning-coloured ice, the sulphur-tinctured shapes of the swollen bodies of clouds bringing their dark electric mines together in a huddle, the answering flash of the face of the deep to the lancing of each spiral dazzling bolt, with the air as still as the atmosphere of a cathedral for the thunder to ...
— The Frozen Pirate • W. Clark Russell
... are attracted by the splendour of their appearance. Like a triangular band of fire in the air, they gradually come onwards, until within sight of the lake. Poised on the wing for an instant, they hang motionless over the end of their weary flight; then, by a slow circular movement, they trace a spiral descent and range themselves like a line of soldiers in battle array upon the borders of the lake. But no one dares approach them more nearly, for the air from the lake is at this season, though perfectly harmless to the flamingo, deadly poison to ...
— Mamma's Stories about Birds • Anonymous (AKA the author of "Chickseed without Chickweed")
... a room within it for the operator. Secondly, in front as well as behind, or all round, set a widely-stretched sail parallel to the machine forming within a hollow or bend which could be reefed like the sails of a ship. Thirdly, place wings on the sides, to be worked up and down by a spiral spring, these wings also to be hollow below in order to increase the force and velocity, take in the air, and make the resistance as great as may be required. These, too, should be of light material and of sufficient size; they should ...
— A History of Aeronautics • E. Charles Vivian
... dog showed himself much exhausted, and it was with hanging head he followed his mistress up the grand staircase and the second spiral one that led yet higher to her chamber. Thither presently came lady Elizabeth, carrying a cushion and a deerskin for him to lie upon, and it was with much apparent satisfaction that the wounded and wearied animal, having followed his tail but one ...
— St. George and St. Michael • George MacDonald
... the pretty features of Robin Redbreast: though a spiral one, the steps were pleasantly shallow, and every here and there it was lighted by ...
— Robin Redbreast - A Story for Girls • Mary Louisa Molesworth
... Young ceratodus six weeks after issuing from the egg. s spiral fold of gut, b rudimentary belly-fin. ...
— The Evolution of Man, V.2 • Ernst Haeckel
... steps, they mounted in a squalid well, obscurely lighted from the upper windows, toward which decaying stairs rose in a dangerous spiral, without guard-rail. A misstep being no trifle, Rudolph offered his hand for the mere safety; but she took it with a curious little laugh. They climbed cautiously. Once, at a halt, she stood very close, with eyes shining large in the dusk. Her slight body trembled, ...
— Dragon's blood • Henry Milner Rideout
... lies ever at the flood for you to use? Coming in this way, you come, besides, for many, not for me alone, since behind every thrill of beauty stand the countless brave souls who lived it in their lives. They have entered the mighty rhythm that floats the spiral nebulae in space, as it turns the little aspiring Nautilus in the depths of the sea. Having once felt this impersonal worship which is love of beauty, they are linked to the power that drives the universe towards perfection, the power that knocks in a million ...
— The Garden of Survival • Algernon Blackwood
... room, he pressed a button and a series of book- freightened shelves swung on a pivot, revealing a tiny spiral stairway of steel, which he descended with care that his spurs might not catch, the bookshelves swinging into ...
— The Little Lady of the Big House • Jack London
... door of the castle opens into one of these intermediate apartments. On the left-hand side of the entrance has been a spiral staircase, leading to the rooms above and to the top of the castle, which has had a flat roof, surrounded by a parapet and several turrets. The walls of this tower are very strong and firm; a deep buttress is placed at each corner, and one against the middle of each side wall. A small square ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... guides. The pace was set at an ambling run over rocks that had cut Ledyard's boots to tatters before nightfall. He was quite unarmed; and just at dark the way seemed to end at a sandy shore, where the waves were already chopping over on the rising tide, and spiral columns of smoke betrayed the underground mud huts of those very Indian villages that had massacred the Russians a quarter of a century before. The guides had dived somewhere underground and, while Ledyard stood nonplussed, came running back carrying a light skin boat which they launched. ...
— Vikings of the Pacific - The Adventures of the Explorers who Came from the West, Eastward • Agnes C. Laut
... and invisible. We cannot indeed see the augmentation of intensity in the region beyond the red, but we can measure it and express it numerically. With this view the following experiment was performed: A spiral of platinum wire was surrounded by a small glass globe to protect it from currents of air; through an orifice in the globe the rays could pass from the spiral and fall afterwards upon a thermo-electric pile. Placing in front of ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... in Dunvegan Castle contains the room in which Dr. Johnson and Sir Walter Scott slept during their respective visits to the castle. The burly lexicographer would have little wind left for argument after he had toiled up the steep and narrow spiral stairway leading to the room. Formerly, so the smiling chief told me, the young lady chosen by the Macleod to be his wife, had to pass a night alone in this haunted chamber, in order that the fairies might have an opportunity of seeing her, ...
— Literary Tours in The Highlands and Islands of Scotland • Daniel Turner Holmes
... weak, feeble, and ugly, but by degrees she grew stronger and improved in looks, and thanks to the unflagging care of her preserver, in eight months' time she was transformed into a very pretty dog of the spaniel breed, with long ears, a bushy spiral tail, and large expressive eyes. She was devotedly attached to Gerasim, and was never a yard from his side; she always followed him about wagging her tail. He had even given her a name—the dumb know that their inarticulate noises call the attention of others. He called her Mumu. All the ...
— The Torrents of Spring • Ivan Turgenev
... between processes projecting from the inner wall of each chamber "seem to be the first rudiments of those which, in the higher classes (i.e. in animals with a spinal column), are extended in the form of canals and spiral chambers, within the substance of the dense nidus ...
— On the Genesis of Species • St. George Mivart
... beheld the silent toil That spread his lustrous coil; Still, as the spiral grew, He left the past year's dwelling for the new, Stole with soft step its shining archway through, Built up its idle door, Stretched in his last-found home, and knew ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes
... years; and round it hurries to and fro a great orange butterfly, larger seemingly than any English kind. Next to it is a row of Hibiscus shrubs, with broad crimson flowers; then a row of young Screw-pines, {78c} from the East Indian Islands, like spiral pine-apple plants twenty feet high standing on stilts. Yes: surely we are in the Tropics. Over the low roof (for the cottage is all of one storey) of purple and brown and white shingles, baking in the sun, rises ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley
... may seem That this most fevered and fantastic wear Of nerves and senses is myself indeed, The rest, illusion taken in that snare.— But still the fiery splendour and the need Can bite like actual flame and hunger. Ah! If Sense, bewildered in the spiral towers Of Matter, dreamed this great Superbia I call the Soul, not less the Dream hath powers; Not less these Twain, being one, are separate, Like lovers whose love is tangled hard ...
— The Hours of Fiammetta - A Sonnet Sequence • Rachel Annand Taylor
... Spiral puttees have advanced so far in popular favour that they are now being issued for general wear by such a conservative (but ever reliable) gent's furnishing house as the U.S.Q.M.C.D. They are considered warmer than the old-style canvas leggings, although, ...
— The Stars & Stripes, Vol 1, No 1, February 8, 1918, - The American Soldiers' Newspaper of World War I, 1918-1919 • American Expeditionary Forces
... fish and insects, his accustomed fare. When the fish do not approach his station, he flies along, just over the water, and occasionally hovers with rapidly moving wings over the spot where he sees a trout or minnow. In the next instant, descending with a quick spiral sweep, he seizes a fish, with which he rises to his post and swallows it in an instant. All these proceedings were watched frequently by the children, with intense delight, as they stood concealed among the bushes, not daring to move for ...
— Frank and Fanny • Mrs. Clara Moreton
... with her feet for every stone step. The ascent appeared to be interminable; the narrowing stone spiral seemed to have no end. Her hand ...
— Barbarians • Robert W. Chambers
... found this way opening to us from the valley wherein we had thought that surely we must die. In a little chamber, cut in the rock above the opening into which the ladder of bolts led us, Young was waiting for us; and from this chamber a spiral stair-way ascended that was dimly lighted by crevices cut from it out to the face of the cliff. With Young leading us, up this we went; at first rapidly, but, later, slowly and wearily, for it seemed as though the stair would never end. Yet though our bodies were ...
— The Aztec Treasure-House • Thomas Allibone Janvier
... go together up some high hill from which we can look out upon the strange history of humankind. We see its agonies and wars, its rising empires followed by their ruinous collapse, and yet a mysterious advance, too, as though mankind, swinging up a spiral, met old questions upon a higher level, so that looking back to the Stone Age, for all the misery of this present time, we would be rather here than there. What can we make of it? Hauptmann's Michael Kramer says "All this life is the shuddering of a fever." And Paul ...
— Christianity and Progress • Harry Emerson Fosdick
... the glossy shells from cracking. When cool, your bivalves will be gaping open; simply scrape them clean. Your univalves will be more difficult; remove the animal with a crocket hook or other piece of bent wire, turning it gently with the spiral; try to get it out whole to save yourself trouble. Save the univalve's operculum and slice it off the muscle that holds it. It will preserve indefinitely and is a ...
— Let's collect rocks & shells • Shell Oil Company
... flat, cold, slimy—had twisted itself round his naked arm. It crept upward towards his chest. Its pressure was like a tightening cord, its steady persistence like that of a screw. In less than a moment some mysterious spiral form had passed round his wrist and elbow, and had reached his shoulder. A sharp point ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume V. • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... somewhat larger than the common sheep, is covered with brownish hair instead of wool, and is chiefly remarkable for its huge spiral horns, resembling those of a sheep, but frequently three feet in length, and from four to six inches ...
— The Young Trail Hunters • Samuel Woodworth Cozzens
... forty or more degrees below zero, were always kept comfortably warm, sometimes uncomfortably warm, in the rabbit-skin coats that their mother and their grandmother had made for them. The rabbit skins were cut into thin, spiral strips and twisted, with the hair-side out, about thin thongs, and woven together like a small-meshed fish-net, so that, though the hair overlapped and filled every mesh completely, one's fingers might be passed through the garment anywhere. They ...
— The Drama of the Forests - Romance and Adventure • Arthur Heming
... Empress," returned the Tyro, executing a most elaborate Oriental bow, the concluding spiral of which almost involved him in Mrs. Charlton Denyse's suddenly ...
— Little Miss Grouch - A Narrative Based on the Log of Alexander Forsyth Smith's - Maiden Transatlantic Voyage • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... than in the first instance. The Cryptomeria of Japan has a variety with twigs resembling ropes. This is not caused by a twisting, but only by a curvature of the needles in such a way that they seem to grow in spiral lines around the twigs. This variety often reverts to the type with widely spread, straight needles. And on many a specimen four, five, or more reverted branches may be seen on different parts of the same shrub. Still more ...
— Species and Varieties, Their Origin by Mutation • Hugo DeVries
... built after the fashion of the ancient towers with the spiral staircase, that was common to all castles and abbeys of the west. The mason work was much coarser and more roughly done, but the imitation of the ancient tower was very good other ways. I do not believe ...
— The Letters of "Norah" on her Tour Through Ireland • Margaret Dixon McDougall
... very valuable a piece of watch-work (for I do really think, from the experience I have had of it, that a superior piece of work was never made) would be better fixed upon a small horizontal table, made on purpose, and well secured; and under the box which contains the watch, a kind of spiral spring or worm, which, with every jerk or pitch of the ship, would yield a little with the weight of the watch, and thereby take off much of that shock which must in some degree affect ...
— An Historical Journal of the Transactions at Port Jackson and Norfolk Island • John Hunter
... that I see over the dim ruffs? A slender spiral of flame shootin' up through the shadows, and on Dreamland tower a rosy blush seemed to grow on its whiteness. As I watched the flame, it grew larger and larger, and my heart most stopped beatin', for I knowed what a fire would mean in them unsubstantial ...
— Samantha at Coney Island - and a Thousand Other Islands • Marietta Holley
... and for a moment lights up the gray cloth, the border gimp, and Volodya's figure cowering in a corner. At the same moment, directly above our heads, a majestic roar resounds, which seems to rise ever higher and higher, and to spread ever wider and wider, in a vast spiral, gradually gaining force, until it passes into a deafening crash, which causes one to tremble and hold one's breath involuntarily. The wrath of God! how much poetry there is in this ...
— Lectures on Russian Literature - Pushkin, Gogol, Turgenef, Tolstoy • Ivan Panin
... of the people of Ghareeah a greyhound bitch for four Tunisian piastres, so that we may now expect some hares and gazelles. In returning to the encampment I observed the phenomenon of a column of dust carried into the heavens in a spiral form by the wind, whilst all around was perfectly calm. Such columns are not of so frequent occurrence in the desert as is imagined, but from time to time, as in ...
— Narrative of a Mission to Central Africa Performed in the Years 1850-51, Volume 1 • James Richardson
... been waste and desolate, had it not been well filled with handsome, but heavy old-fashioned furniture, covered with crimson damask, and one side of the room fitted up with a bookcase, so high that there was a spiral flight of library steps to give access to the upper shelves. Opposite were four large windows, now hidden by their ample curtains; and near them was at one end of the room a piano, at the other a drawing-desk. The walls were wainscoted with polished black oak, the panels reflecting the ...
— Scenes and Characters • Charlotte M. Yonge
... which wild weeds cover Wait for thine aethereal lover; For the pallid moon is waning, O'er the spiral cypress hanging And the moon ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... recollect, the only time I was ever taken to any place of entertainment was when my Father and I paid a visit, long anticipated, to the Great Globe in Leicester Square. This was a huge structure, the interior of which one ascended by means of a spiral staircase. It was a poor affair; that was concave in it which should have been convex, and my imagination was deeply affronted. I could invent a far better Great Globe than that in my ...
— Father and Son • Edmund Gosse
... big flat rock from which they had often fished together. At his feet the turbid current rolled ponderously against the solid wall of rock and, turning back upon itself, swung round in an ever-lessening circle until it sucked down suddenly into a spiral vortex that spewed up all it caught in the boiling channel below. There in years past the lambs and weaklings from the herds above had drifted to their death, but never before had the maelstrom claimed ...
— Hidden Water • Dane Coolidge
... a pessimist, and I like to believe that, although our course frequently resembles a circle, it is much better to characterize it as a spiral, and that, although we do get back to a point that we recognize, it is not, after all, our old starting point; it is an homologous point on a higher plane. We have at least climbed a little, even if we have not traveled in a ...
— Craftsmanship in Teaching • William Chandler Bagley
... the royal palace, the heart of the king was grave and majestic; with a view to gain the merit of a pure and moral life, he became a convert of a great Rishi. With garments dyed and clad with hair, shaved, save one spiral knot, he led a hermit's life, but, as he did not rule himself with strict morality, he was immersed in suffering and sorrow. Each morn and eve he used the three ablutions, sacrificed to fire and practised strict austerity, let his body be in filth as the brute beast, passed through fire ...
— Sacred Books of the East • Various
... expanded wings would be brought into a slanting condition over a smaller area of supporting air, and the whole apparatus would tend to glide downwards in that direction. The projection of a small vertical plane upon either side would make the gliding mass rotate in a descending spiral, and so we have all the elements of a controllable flight. Such an affair would be difficult to overset. It would be able to beat up even in a fair wind, and then it would be able to contract its bladders and fall down a long slant in any direction. From some such crude beginning a form ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells
... now, no mounting heavenward, as I have seen him mount till his petty persecutor grew dizzy with the height and returned to earth. But the next day, with a fairly good breeze blowing, I watched two hawks for many minutes climbing their spiral stairway to the skies, till they became very small objects against the clouds, and not once did they flap their wings! Then one of them turned toward the mountain-top and sailed straight into the face of the wind, till he was probably over his mate or young, when, with half-folded ...
— Under the Maples • John Burroughs
... the wall of the Needle, dug in its very crust, turned round and round the pyramid, encircling it like the spiral of a tobogganslide. Each hurrying the other, they clattered down the treads, taking two or three at a bound. Here and there, a ray of light trickled through a fissure; and Beautrelet carried away the vision of the fishing-smacks hovering ...
— The Hollow Needle • Maurice Leblanc
... (and a little nervous at her task, when actually confronted with it), staring petrified at Molly's darkened dining-room, where, on a platform, against dull velvet backgrounds, an ivory, loose-haired, barely draped intaglio-woman, swayed and whirled and beckoned. A slender spiral of smoke rose from the incense bowl before her: the odour hung heavy in the room. Three or four women (much better gowned than Eleanor) and a dozen men applauded from the drawing-room; a strange-looking youth with a shock of auburn hair drew from a violin sounds which it required ...
— The Strange Cases of Dr. Stanchon • Josephine Daskam Bacon
... made up of innumerable small cells with thick walls, marked with ridges or processes which differ much in different species. The fibres also differ much in different genera. Sometimes they are simple, hair-like threads; in others they are hollow tubes with spiral thickenings, often very regularly placed, running around ...
— Elements of Structural and Systematic Botany - For High Schools and Elementary College Courses • Douglas Houghton Campbell
... constructed in it, a reservoir of compressed air, a portion of which, liberated into the space behind the bullet when the trigger is pulled, propels the bullet from the barrel by its expansion. The common forms of air-gun, which are merely toys, are charged by compressing a spiral spring, one end of which forms a piston working in a cylinder; when released by a pull on the trigger, this spring expands, and the air forced out in front of it propels the bullet. Air-guns of this kind are sometimes ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... we have just come through... We were constantly in fear of the falling of those gigantic boulders that overhung our path behind the swishing trees that clung along the precipice.... The zigzag road that runs down this slope is like a spiral stair in crookedness and bumps.... We could catch a glimpse now and again of a light from the little bungalows that clung to the mountain sides.... But we dare not arouse the dwellers for many obvious ...
— Rescuing the Czar - Two authentic Diaries arranged and translated • James P. Smythe
... sporting about in every direction. Numerous species resemble pearly or opaline cups or vases, fringed round the margin with delicate fibres, that are in constant oscillation. Some of these are attached by spiral tendrils; others are united by a slender stem to one common trunk, appearing like a bunch of hare-bells; others are of a globular form, and grouped together in a definite pattern, on a tabular or spherical membranous case, for a certain period of their existence, and ultimately ...
— The Illustrated London Reading Book • Various
... way. Years passed, and as no communication reached him, Mr. Owen was disposed to class the promise with too many others made in the like circumstances. But on his first return to this country Livingstone presented himself, bearing the tusk of an elephant with a spiral curve. He had found it in the heart of Africa, and it was not easy of transport. "You may recall," said Professor Owen, at the Farewell Festival in 1858, "the difficulties of the progress of the weary sick traveler on the bullock's back. Every pound weight was of moment; but Livingstone said, ...
— The Personal Life Of David Livingstone • William Garden Blaikie
... it was washed every morning after the departure of the crowds who slept on it; and he looked down, in the middle, on the labyrinth marked out on the ground in lines of white stone and ribbons of blue stone, twisting in a spiral, like a watch-spring. This path our fathers devoutly paced, repeating special prayers during the hour they spent in doing so, and thus performing an imaginary pilgrimage to the Holy Land to ...
— The Cathedral • Joris-Karl Huysmans |
