"Surface" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... discussed in it. But I have never carried out the plan (which I think indispensable) of reading over again whatever work, however well known, one has to write about, with more satisfaction. The main defects lie on the surface. Despite great felicities of a certain kind, these poems have no claim to formal perfection, and occasionally sin by very great carelessness, if not by something worse. The poet frankly shows himself as one whose appeal is not ...
— Sir Walter Scott - Famous Scots Series • George Saintsbury
... the soil for the new plantation under the intensive cultivation method, the surface of the land is lightly plowed, and then followed up with thorough cultivation. When transplanting time comes, which is when the plant is about a year old, and stands from twelve to eighteen inches high ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... dies—and thy helper is none. We see thee how stripp'd of each bloom that equipp'd Thy flourish, till nipp'd the winter thy rose; Till the spoiler made bare the scalp of the hair, And the ivory[128] tare from its sockets' repose. Thy skinny, thy cold, thy visageless mould, Its disgust is untold, and its surface is dim; What a signal of wrack is the wrinkle's dull track, And the bend of the back, and the limp of the limb! Thou leper of fear—thou niggard of cheer— Where glory is dear, shall thy welcome be found? ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... Holland lies is very damp and misty, and its entire surface is covered with the network of canals running through the meadows to the sea. If you could stand on a hill and look down on it, it would look like an enormous puzzle, consisting of hundreds of small vivid green pieces cut apart by the canals ...
— Ten Boys from History • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... philosophy of religion is absent from his writings. In truth, his mind was not qualified to grapple with such questions. There is no sign in his writings that he ever tried his strength against them; that he ever cared to go below the surface into the hidden things of mind, and what mind deals with above and beyond sense—those metaphysical difficulties and depths, as we call them, which there is no escaping, and which are as hard to explore and as dangerous to mistake as the forces and combinations of external nature. ...
— Bacon - English Men Of Letters, Edited By John Morley • Richard William Church
... chief asset in the way of looks. It was a leisurely smile, that began far below the surface and sent preliminary ripples up to his eyes and the corners of his big mouth, and broke through at last in a radiant flash of good humor. In this case it met a very prompt answer ...
— Quin • Alice Hegan Rice
... of the being which thy presence was wont to rejoice. I know that our wisdom comes but from the indifference to the things of the world which the wisdom masters. The mirror of the soul cannot reflect both earth and heaven; and the one vanishes from the surface as the other is glassed upon its deeps. But it is not to restore me to that sublime abstraction in which the intellect, free and disembodied, rises, region after region, to the spheres,—that once again, and with ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... thirty-fifth year, exactly as he would have said it in her twelfth; and she would spring with the same alacrity and the same look of pleasure at being of use. But there was a filial service which she rendered to her parents much deeper than these surface obediences and attentions. They were but dimly conscious of it; and yet, had it been taken away from them, they had found their lives blighted indeed. She was the link between them and the outside world. She brought merriment, cheer, hearty friendliness ...
— Hetty's Strange History • Anonymous
... employed in her trance. As usual, she knew nothing in either state of what passed in the other. Then in her trance she exhibited three marvellous powers: she could read by the touch alone: if she pressed her hand against the whole surface of a written or printed page, she acquired a perfect knowledge of its contents, not of the substance only, but of the words, and would criticise the type or the handwriting. A line of a folded note pressed against the back of ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 379, May, 1847 • Various
... was his love for the gray-bearded baronet. But the grateful affection was so much a part of himself, that it seldom found an outlet in words, and a stranger would never have fathomed the depth of feeling which lay, a deep and powerful current, beneath the stagnant surface ...
— Lady Audley's Secret • Mary Elizabeth Braddon
... deposit effected? Also, as silex is not a constituent part of water, if incorporated at all, it can be held only in solution. By what law is this solution produced, so that the law of gravity should be suspended? If the silex be derived from the earth, by what vessels is it conveyed to the surface of the plants? and, in addition, if earth be its source, how is it that earth-seeking, and hollow plants, with their epidermis of silex, should arise in soils that are not silicious? being equally predominant, whether the soil be calcareous, argillaceous, or loamy. The decomposition of ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle
... smiling as if no unkind thought had ever ruffled his placid nature. I could not help but be aware of his meanness, and I suppose it was because I was only a boy and not given to looking under the surface that I did not yet completely recognize in him the real leader of all that had gone astray ...
— The Mutineers • Charles Boardman Hawes
... over some marbles of old Greece. I can not describe it, and if I could, for very love and reverence I would rather let it alone. Faber felt his heart rise in his throat at the necessity of breaking that exquisite surface with even such an insignificant breach and blemish as the shining steel betwixt his forefinger and thumb must occasion. But a slight tremble of the hand he held acknowledged the intruding sharpness, and then the red parabola rose from the golden bowl. He ...
— Paul Faber, Surgeon • George MacDonald
... was still as stagnant as it had been all through the night, the surface of the ocean being unbroken by the faintest ripple, save where, about a mile away, broad on our starboard bow, the fin of a solitary shark lazily swimming athwart our course turned up a thin, blue, wedge-shaped ripple as he swam. There was, however, a faint, scarcely perceptible mistiness ...
— A Pirate of the Caribbees • Harry Collingwood
... more skill acquired by the observation of greater numbers? I answer that, in consequence of having seen many, the power is acquired, even without seeking after it, of distinguishing between accidental blemishes and excrescences which are continually varying the surface of Nature's works, and the invariable general form which Nature most frequently produces, and always seems to intend ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume IV: The Adventurer; The Idler • Samuel Johnson
... present came out of the bay, or I believe my ill-found little schooner would have gone to the bottom, as did many a noble ship about that time. The sea, even as it was, soon became lashed into furious billows, which broke around us in masses of foam, which went flying away over the troubled surface of the ocean, covering us as would a heavy fall of snow. Grampus and I stood at the helm, keeping the little vessel as well as we could directly before the gale, but we tumbled about terrifically, and more than once I caught him casting anxious glances ...
— Hurricane Hurry • W.H.G. Kingston
... was full of blood and lymph; on it several hydatids, and towards the falx some marks of suppuration were observed. The ventricles were filled with water, and the plexus choroides was considerably enlarged, and stuffed with grumous blood. The cortical surface of the brain appeared much browner than usual, but neither the medullary part nor cerebellum were impaired. We chiefly took notice of the Medulla Oblongata, this was greatly enlarged, surpassing the usual size by more than one third. It was likewise more ...
— An Essay on the Shaking Palsy • James Parkinson
... as true to say that the earth was made for all its inhabitants, and that human has a right to appropriate a portion of its surface, as to say that all persons have a right to participate in government. Many persons can be found to hold both these opinions. Experience has proved that the general good is promoted by ownership of the soil, with the resultant ...
— Debate On Woman Suffrage In The Senate Of The United States, - 2d Session, 49th Congress, December 8, 1886, And January 25, 1887 • Henry W. Blair, J.E. Brown, J.N. Dolph, G.G. Vest, Geo. F. Hoar.
... the superb Quai that borders the Seine; there, the passengers became more frequent; gay equipages rolled along; the white and lofty mansions looked fair and stately in the clear blue sky of early summer; beside him flowed the sparkling river, animated with the painted baths that floated on its surface: earth was merry and heaven serene his heart was dark through all: Night within—Morning beautiful without! At last he paused by that bridge, stately with the statues of those whom the caprice of time honours with a name; for though Zeus and his gods be overthrown, while earth exists ...
— Night and Morning, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Philippines on the east and south the water is from two to four thousand fathoms deep; so that if the seas were dried up around them, these islands would appear like a number of irregular chains of mountains, and the highest peak would be over 10,000 feet above the present surface of the water. ...
— Four Young Explorers - Sight-Seeing in the Tropics • Oliver Optic
... river we were navigating, though it had all the natural features it possesses to-day, was by no means the same picture of moving life. The steam-boat did not appear on its surface until four years later; and the journeys up and down its waters, were frequently a week in length. In that day, the passenger did not hurry on board, just as a bell was disturbing the neighbourhood, hustling his way through a rude throng of porters, cart-men, orange-women, ...
— Afloat And Ashore • James Fenimore Cooper
... divergencies of opinion and feeling, no important differences of language and literature—none of these obstructions to harmony and progress will interfere with the continental development and glorious destiny of our Federal Union. All that the earth yields from her teeming surface, or from her deep-embowelled mines; all that enterprise can accomplish with exhaustless means, the best facilities, and the most stupendous objects; and all that genius can create, when stimulated by the richest rewards and the freest opportunities for untrammelled ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 1 January 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... of his cane, came from Messrs. Florent and Chanor; and the coat, cut by old Graff himself, was of the very finest cloth. The Suede gloves proclaimed the man who had run through his mother's fortune. You could have seen the banker's neat little brougham and pair of horses mirrored in the surface of his speckless varnished boots, even if two pairs of sharp ears had not already caught the sound of wheels outside in the ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... ascertained that the Moon shone by reflected light, and that her surface was varied by inequalities resembling those of our Earth. The elliptical form of her orbit had been discovered by Horrox, and her elements were computed with ...
— The Astronomy of Milton's 'Paradise Lost' • Thomas Orchard
... reason for things is explained to children they grow quick to understand quite complicated explanations. A little girl, not yet two, was playing with her Noah's Ark on the dining-room table with its polished surface. The mother interposed a cloth, explaining that the animals would scratch the table if the cloth were not there. Within a few minutes the child twice lifted the cloth, peering under it and saying, "Not scratch table." Yet how often do we find facetiously-minded ...
— The Nervous Child • Hector Charles Cameron
... thoughtful silence for a little while the scarlet streaks turned to carmine, and the grey shadows deepened, and the wild-fowl flew past in dark straggling V's over the dull metallic surface of the great smooth-flowing Nile. A cold wind had sprung up from the eastward, and some of the party rose to leave the deck. Stephens ...
— A Desert Drama - Being The Tragedy Of The "Korosko" • A. Conan Doyle
... and Detroit Jim, the best second-story man east of the Mississippi, lay panting side by side in the pitch-dark dugout, six feet beneath the surface of the prison yard. They knew their exact position to be twenty feet south of the north wall, and, therefore, thirty feet south of the slate ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921 • Various
... children, and then bid him think of all his brothers and sisters, or as many of them as he could, gathered together in his father's cottage. Then she told him to look in the water, and there, reflected from its stilly surface, was that dead scene of many years gone by, as it was recalled to our retainer's brain. Some of the faces were clear enough, but some were mere blurs and splotches, or with one feature grossly exaggerated; the ...
— She • H. Rider Haggard
... following him. Through a narrow corridor and up a flight of steps they went, turning to right and left and doubling back through a maze of winding passageways which terminated in a spiral staircase that gave forth at the surface of the ground within the largest of the inner altar courts close ...
— Tarzan the Terrible • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... enlightning the City of London and Liberties thereof, &c., powers are granted in pursuance of which the great streets have been paved with whyn-quarry stone, or rock-stone, or stone of a flat surface.' —A Tour through the whole Island of Great Britain, ed. 1769, vol. ii, ...
— Life of Johnson, Volume 6 (of 6) • James Boswell
... and, stretching the length of the water front, a deep cool grove of interlaced plane trees. At the end of the grove, half a dozen broad stone steps dip down to a tiny harbour which is carpeted on the surface with lily pads. The steps are worn by the lapping waves of fifty years, and are grown over with slippery, slimy ...
— Jerry • Jean Webster
... Adela, and trying to write the last four chapters of The Wrecker! Heavens, it's like two centuries; and ours is such rude, transpontine business, aiming only at a certain fervour of conviction and sense of energy and violence in the men; and yours is so neat and bright and of so exquisite a surface! Seems dreadful to send such a book to such an author; but your name is on the list. And we do modestly ask you to consider the chapters on the Norah Creina with the study of Captain Nares, and the forementioned last four, with their brutality of substance and the curious ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... was passing in my mind, and he must have seen it reflected on the polished surface of the porcelain he was contemplating, for his lips showed the shadow of a smile sufficiently sarcastic for me to see that he was far from being as easy-natured as his ...
— That Affair Next Door • Anna Katharine Green
... mountain road. It was hardly a road; in some places a beaten track was visible, in others Mr. Carleton wondered how his little companion found her way, where nothing but fresh-fallen leaves and scattered rocks and stones could be seen, covering the whole surface. But her foot never faltered, her eye read way- marks where he saw none; she went on, he did not doubt unerringly, over the leaf-strewn and rock-strewn way, over ridge and hollow, with a steady light swiftness that he could not help admiring. Once they came to ...
— Queechy, Volume I • Elizabeth Wetherell
... extinct in the mind of every man? No! I am not so shamefully ignorant of the laws that regulate the soul of man. The mind once tainted with Jacobinism can never be wholly free from the taint; I know no means of purification; when it does not break out on the surface, it still lurks in the vitals; no antidote can approach the subtlety of the venom, no length of quarantine secure us against the obstinacy ...
— The Life of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - 1838 • James Gillman
... told you so, Uncle Roger," the boy said triumphantly. Camp had jumped up on to the sofa too. He put his arm comfortably around the dog's neck. It was as well to acquire support on both sides, for the surface of the glazed chintz was slippery, inconveniently unsustaining to his equilibrium. "It's an awfully long time since I've seen Mary," he continued, "more ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... following day the funeral knell was sounded by the roar of the cannon from the gunboats, splashing shot into the river with the hope that the vibration would resurrect the bodies of the victims from their muddy tomb. Many of them were brought to the surface by this means. ...
— The Shellback's Progress - In the Nineteenth Century • Walter Runciman
... attention to the mercury bath, and found on examination that the surface of the mercury was almost always covered with a very fine dust. He found that even the mercury itself was positively full of organic matters; that from being constantly exposed to the air, it had collected an immense number of these infusorial organisms from the air. ...
— The Method By Which The Causes Of The Present And Past Conditions Of Organic Nature Are To Be Discovered.—The Origination Of Living Beings • Thomas H. Huxley
... paws in his pockets. Rudolf had kicked off his shoes and was ready to jump in after Peter, when he saw that quick as a flash, on an order from their Chief, the pirates had lowered a long rope with something bobbing at the end of it. Peter when he came to the surface, seized this rope and was rapidly hauled on ...
— The Wonderful Bed • Gertrude Knevels
... are physical and two chemical. By touch we discern pressures and surface textures. By hearing we receive impressions of certain air waves and by sight of certain ether waves. But smell and taste lead us to the heart of the molecule and enable us to tell how the atoms are put together. These twin senses stand like sentries at the portals of the body, where they closely ...
— Creative Chemistry - Descriptive of Recent Achievements in the Chemical Industries • Edwin E. Slosson
... Norwood, with its every detail as clearly marked as on the night it was first enacted. The long range of cone-shaped mountains, darkly silhouetted against the silvery sky, and seemingly hushed in gaping expectancy; the shining, scaly surface of some far-off tarn or river, perceptible only at intervals, owing to the thick clusters of gently nodding pines; the white-washed walls of cottages, glistening amid the dark green denseness of the thickly leaved box trees, and the light, feathery foliage of the ...
— Scottish Ghost Stories • Elliott O'Donnell
... assist to carry, whilst travelling from flower to flower, without which the flowers would not fructify. The bees have been found to continue collecting pollen from the same species of flowers, and prevent the multiplication of hybrid plants. They collect and carry this substance on the outer surface of the tibia, or the middle joint of the hinder leg; this part of the leg is broad, and on one side it is concave, and furnished with a row of strong hairs on its margins, forming as it were a natural basket, well adapted for the purpose. This substance mixed with honey, forms the ...
— A Description of the Bar-and-Frame-Hive • W. Augustus Munn
... night on the bottom, for the simple reason that had we come to the surface, we might have come down into territory unfamiliar to our guide. As soon as the first faint light began to filter down, however, we proceeded, and Mercer and I crowded ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, May, 1930 • Various
... quarters at fort Edward, he employed to the utmost advantage the short respite from action which Burgoyne unavoidably gave. The country between Skeensborough and fort Edward was almost entirely unsettled, was covered with thick woods, and of a surface extremely rough, and much intersected with creeks and morasses. Wood creek was navigable with batteaux as far as fort Anne; and military stores of every description might be transported up it. He obstructed its navigation by sinking numerous impediments ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 2 (of 5) • John Marshall
... whose territory they had delivered. They breathed new ardour into the Spanish people: the Guerilla warfare, trampled down in one spot only to start up in fifty others, raged more and more widely, as well as fiercely, over the surface of the country: the French troops lost more lives in this incessant struggle, wherein no glory could be achieved, than in any similar period spent in a regular campaign; and Joseph Buonaparte, while the question of peace or war with Russia ...
— The History of Napoleon Buonaparte • John Gibson Lockhart
... you feel badly," went on Bass, the finest part of his nature coming to the surface. "I'll be all right. Just you go back to work now, and don't worry. ...
— Jennie Gerhardt - A Novel • Theodore Dreiser
... windiest, highest (on average), and driest continent; during summer, more solar radiation reaches the surface at the South Pole than is received at the Equator in ...
— The 2005 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... instant the one who plays the trick touches the nose, he unobserved allows the end of the fork to come in contact with the hard surface of the table. The vibration of the fork is inaudible until its end comes in contact ...
— School, Church, and Home Games • George O. Draper
... are the facilities for introducing different colors and different textures of surface which it presents, the ease with which openings and arches can be formed in it, the possibility of executing ornament and even carving, and the ease with which brickwork will combine with other ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 601, July 9, 1887 • Various
... have been up, and any Throg ship venturing into Warlock's amber-tinted sky would abruptly cease to be. In the race for survival as a galactic power, Terra had that one small edge over the swarms of the enemy. They need only stake out their new-found world and get the grids assembled on its surface; then that planet would be locked to the beetles. The critical period was between the first discovery of a suitable colony world and the erection of grid control. Planets in the past had been lost during that time lag, just as ...
— Storm Over Warlock • Andre Norton
... death-trap of many patrols, which had gone there and never been seen since. The trenches had been dug in the summer when the country was dry, with no regard to the fact that in winter the water level rises to within two inches of the surface of the ground. In consequence, the trenches were full of mud and water, and most of the bivouacs and shelters were afloat. The mud was the worst, for although only two feet deep, yet it was of the clinging ...
— The Fifth Leicestershire - A Record Of The 1/5th Battalion The Leicestershire Regiment, - T.F., During The War, 1914-1919. • J.D. Hills
... labour for the mines, the greater development of which is a condition of all other industrial development, the difficulty is that, while natives can be found in abundance to do surface work, the number of those who are willing to go underground is limited. There are only certain tribes among whom underground workers can be found in any great numbers, and these reside mostly in Portuguese territory. As you are aware, difficulties have arisen about ...
— Lord Milner's Work in South Africa - From its Commencement in 1897 to the Peace of Vereeniging in 1902 • W. Basil Worsfold
... on the cover, wound a cord completely around it, got the wires clear, and with the greatest care lowered the box over the end of the wharf. He kept on lowering until the box must have been eight or nine feet below the surface. Then he stood waiting, with the most solemn expression upon his face. Mr. Bowditch stood beside him, holding a watch, and counting the minutes. Every now and then he would say, like the tolling of a great bell: "One minute ...
— The Voyage of the Hoppergrass • Edmund Lester Pearson
... as a human enemy might have done. His savage snarl was full of intelligence, and his slow approach was deliberate torture. He stood for a moment in full view—then slipped and slid down to the surface of the ice, where, ten yards away, he ...
— The Junior Classics Volume 8 - Animal and Nature Stories • Selected and arranged by William Patten
... succeeded in fixing the strap firmly against the bar half-way up, and then placing one knee in the loop and putting an arm through the bar to steady himself, he set to work at the lead. The sharp point of the dagger quickly cut out that near the surface, but farther down the hole narrowed and the task was much more difficult. Several times Ralph relieved him at the work, but at last it was accomplished, and the bar was found to move slightly when they shook it. There now remained ...
— Saint George for England • G. A. Henty
... a hollow brass tube slanted at its distal end, and having a handle at its proximal or ocular extremity. An auxiliary canal on its under surface contains the light carrier, the electric bulb of which is situated in a recess in the beveled distal end of the tube. Numerous perforations in the distal part of the tube allow air to enter from other ...
— Bronchoscopy and Esophagoscopy - A Manual of Peroral Endoscopy and Laryngeal Surgery • Chevalier Jackson
... sympathy with the common people in the abstract, but his spiritual pride, his pedantry, his formalism, his personal fastidiousness, were all wounded to the very quick by the kind of men whom the Revolution had thrown to the surface. Gouverneur Morris, then the American minister, describes most of the members of the two Committees as the very dregs of humanity, with whom it is a stain to have any dealings; as degraded men only worthy of the profoundest contempt. Danton had said: 'Robespierre is the least ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 1 of 3) - Essay 1: Robespierre • John Morley
... planted fruit trees near the creek, where they do not have to be irrigated as the ground there holds sufficient moisture for them, but a neighbor tells me that on account of the moisture being so near the surface the trees will not bear fruit well, although they will grow and have ...
— One Thousand Questions in California Agriculture Answered • E.J. Wickson
... and again he stopped to look over at the outline of Building A, limned hard against hot blazing sky. And each time it was with a sense of heady exhilaration that he thought of his destiny—his hard-earned, dearly bought destiny. To be among that select group who would first set foot upon the surface ...
— The Stowaway • Alvin Heiner
... walnut-trees, with the rich sun brightening in the midst of the open spaces, and mellowing and fading into the shade,—and single trees, with their cool spot of shade, in the waste of sun: quite a picture of beauty, gently picturesque. The surface of the land is so varied, with woodland mingled, that the eye cannot reach far away, except now and then in vistas perhaps across the river, showing houses, or a church and surrounding village, in Upper Beverly. ...
— Passages From The American Notebooks, Volume 1 • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... we oft resort To Richmond, Twickenham, or to Hampton Court. By turns we play, we sing—one baits the hook, Another angles—some more idle look At the small fry that sport beneath the tides, Or at the swan that on the surface glides. My married sister says there is no feast Equal to sight of foreign bird or beast. With her in search of these I often roam: My kinder parents make me blest at home. Tir'd of excursions, visitings, and sights, No joys are pleasing to ...
— Books for Children - The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 3 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... bottoms of the vessels were double planked at first, and each year a new sheathing was added; the ships lasted only six years. They were caulked, as modern ships are; the timbers and planks fixed with iron nails, and a composition of lime, oil, and hemp, spread over the surface. They were capable of holding 5000 or 6000 bags of pepper, and from 150 to 300 seamen and passengers. They were supplied with oars as well as sails: four men were allotted to each oar. Smaller vessels seem to have accompanied the larger ones, which besides had boats ...
— Robert Kerr's General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 18 • William Stevenson
... with the solicitude of an absorbing affection, would at times suddenly grow cold, just as the violence of my passion was ready to break out. Her countenance would then express nothing but patient curiosity and an unswerving resolve to read to the bottom of my soul without letting me see even the surface of her own. ...
— Mauprat • George Sand
... twisted root or overhanging bank in which the large trout are apt to lurk. In the meanwhile he was giving instructions to his two disciples, showing them the manner in which they should handle their rods, fix their flies, and play them along the surface of the stream. The scene brought to my mind the instructions of the sage Piscator to his scholar. The country around was of that pastoral kind which Walton is fond of describing. It was a part of the great plain of Cheshire, close by the beautiful vale of Gessford, and just where ...
— The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. • Washington Irving
... there was no forgetting it when it had been seen but once. It combined everything, and there was no conflict of opposites in it. There were gravity and gallantry, the serious and the gay; it savored equally of the learned doctor, the bishop, and the great lord; that which appeared on its surface, as well as in his whole person, was refinement, intellect, grace, propriety, and, above all, nobility. It required an effort to cease looking at him. His manners corresponded therewith in the same ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume V. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... from a double cause: the weight of moisture suddenly accumulated on its surface, and the very obvious downrush of cold air that accompanied the storm of pelting hail. With a very limited store of ballast, it seemed impossible to make a further ascent, nor was this desirable. The signalling experiments on which ...
— The Dominion of the Air • J. M. Bacon
... the first time in his life, he feels discontented with his own low place in the mud. A longing creeps through him that is quite different from the customary longing for mosquitoes and flies. "I will creep up the stem of this rush," he thinks; "and perhaps, when I reach the surface of the water, I can dart like the little flat boatmen, or, better than all, shoot through the air like the blue-winged dragon-fly." But, as he crawls toilsomely up the slippery stem, the feeling that he has no wings like the ...
— The Stories Mother Nature Told Her Children • Jane Andrews
... fathoms, at about half a mile from the north-west end of the reef that stretches for two miles to the northward of the south-westernmost Hope Island; and, as it was low water and the reef uncovered, we walked across it. It is formed principally of coral, on the surface of which we found the gray trepang; a small Chama gigas, a cypraea, a pretty azure-coloured species of asteria, and a few bivalve shells. The few birds that frequented the reef were very shy, and flew away at our approach: they were ...
— Narrative of a Survey of the Intertropical and Western Coasts of Australia] [Volume 2 of 2] • Phillip Parker King
... of Rosapenna are described as being composed of "hills and dales, and undulating swells, smooth, solitary, and desolate, reflecting the sun from their polished surface," &c. ...
— Poems • Denis Florence MacCarthy
... When Surface talks of other people's worth He has the weakest memory on earth! And when his own good deeds he deigns to mention, His memory still is no whit better grown; But then he makes up for it, all will own, By a ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... trumpeter, for even the police might hear of him if he performed in public loudly enough. But Italian justice, though it does really savour of comic opera, is not so farcical as it appears on the surface. It is an unwritten law that the police shall not pigliare him till the sessions are nigh. He is on parole, so to speak, to come up when called upon; if he were really to take flight, he would be declared an outlaw, and ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill
... Miss Loring," said Mr. Dexter; "I never do. Leave mysteries to philosophers; there is quite enough of enjoyment upon the surface of things without diving below, into the dark caverns of doubt and vague speculation. I ...
— The Hand But Not the Heart - or, The Life-Trials of Jessie Loring • T. S. Arthur
... years geyser action remained a mystery balanced among conflicting theories, of which at last Bunsen's won general acceptance. Spring waters, or surface waters seeping through porous lavas, gather thousands of feet below the surface in some pocket located in strata which internal pressures still keep hot. Boiling as they gather, the waters rise till they ...
— The Book of the National Parks • Robert Sterling Yard
... golden veil over all its churches, statues, and ruins. Before they had gone far on their homeward ride, all things passed through magical changes. The hills were seen in vapory visions, shifting their hues with opaline glances; and over the green, billowy surface of the broad Campagna was settling a prismatic robe of mist, changing from rose to violet. Earth seemed to be writing, in colored notes, with tenderest modulations, her farewell hymn to the departing ...
— A Romance of the Republic • Lydia Maria Francis Child
... stones do fall from the sky, but that they are stones that have been raised to the sky from some other part of the earth's surface by ...
— The Book of the Damned • Charles Fort
... ill-feeling. Roger, despite his early training abroad, soon showed good sound English tastes. He took delight in country life; and though he did not bring down the partridges in the woods, or throw the fly upon the surface of the Itchen, with a degree of skill that would command much respect in the county of Hants, he did his best, and really liked the out-door life. In hunting he took delight from the time when he donned his first scarlet coat, and he rarely missed an opportunity of appearing at "the meet" ...
— Celebrated Claimants from Perkin Warbeck to Arthur Orton • Anonymous
... pelt is torn or injured it is rejected; so the trapper must take his captive clean and scarless. The weasel will not enter a cage trap, and the much used snap-jaw steel trap would tear the skin. But the weasel likes to lick a smooth surface, especially if it is the slightest bit greasy; so the trapper smears with grease the blade of a large knife and lays it on top of the snow, secured by a chain attached to the handle, and covers the chain with snow ...
— "Say Fellows—" - Fifty Practical Talks with Boys on Life's Big Issues • Wade C. Smith
... Smith reminds me of one other thing, for which your utilitarian has a sovereign contempt—that is poetry. What is poetry? Every thing that stirs the soul to its depths, or but crisps the surface, is poetry—every truth does this, therefore every truth is poetry. Mind, I don't say conversely, etc. There—that word 'conversely,' suggests to you that now you have me; there is mathematical truth, you say; you might as well attempt to raise ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No. 2, August, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... totally different and presumably lower standard of living. This may be seen when travelers peer with exclamations of surprise and pity or disgust into the stuffy homes of European peasants or the dark mud-floor rooms of Asiatics. The prejudices of race as well as of social class seem to come to the surface in this concrete experience of how another kind of human being sleeps, eats, and amuses himself. With Adelle this sensation of strangeness was not very keen, because her own acquaintance with the habits of the rich was less than ten full years old. Clark's one-room tar-paper shack did not seem ...
— Clark's Field • Robert Herrick
... projectiles. The Geneva Convention prohibits the use of explosive bullets, i.e., hollow bullets charged with an explosive which is fired by a detonating cap on coming in contact with a resisting surface. Now it is almost impossible to render a Mauser bullet "explosive," owing to its extreme slenderness, so that any explosive bullets which may have been used by the enemy must have come from sporting rifles, which are—as all evidence goes to ...
— With Methuen's Column on an Ambulance Train • Ernest N. Bennett
... good, for some succeed by catering to the lowest tastes of respectable people, and to the prejudice, ignorance, and passion of the lowest class; but, as a rule, the successful journal pecuniarily is the best journal. The reasons for this are on the surface. The impecunious newspaper cannot give its readers promptly the news, nor able discussion of the news, and, still worse, it cannot be independent. The political journal that relies for support upon drippings of party favor or patronage, the general newspaper ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... he might be were he to leave the noisy train behind him and plunge into the dark, scented hedge-rows and see before him the twinkling lights of some friendly inn. As the burnished clouds fade from the sky on the dark surface of the river the black barges hang their lights and in Cheyne Row and Glebe Place, down Oakley Street, and along the wide spaces of Cheyne Walk, lamps burn mildly in a hundred windows. Guarded on ...
— Fortitude • Hugh Walpole
... could see, he appeared to be a calm and quiet man, intense beneath the surface, with an air of dignity under insult. My chance ...
— The Rustlers of Pecos County • Zane Grey
... nothing had befallen her, and the good woman stood aghast when Mrs. Dr. Van Buren abruptly asked if Ethelyn was not there, or had been there lately, or heard from either. What did it portend? Had harm come upon Ethie? And a shadow broke the placid surface of the sweet old face as Aunt Barbara put these questions, first to herself, and then to Mrs. Van Buren, who rapidly explained that Ethelyn had left her husband, and gone, no ...
— Ethelyn's Mistake • Mary Jane Holmes
... walked slowly back, picking their way as well as they could in the darkness, occasionally taking to the zig-zag trenches when the surface paths were too obscure. Everywhere men were sleeping, rolled up in their blankets and lying uncomfortably along the bottom of the trenches or out on the ground under the stars. The boys did not talk. Zaidos was busy thinking of the present, with all its tragic incidents, and occasionally ...
— Shelled by an Unseen Foe • James Fiske
... occurrences of modern times. Hitherto Jaalam, though in soil, climate, and geographical position as highly qualified to be the theatre of remarkable historical incidents as any spot on the earth's surface, has been, if I may say it without seeming to question the wisdom of Providence, almost maliciously neglected, as it might appear, by occurrences of world-wide interest in want of a situation. And in matters of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 55, May, 1862 • Various
... twenty-four miles long; secondly, of a channel—nine miles in length—(the Culebra Cut)—which carries the valley on through a range of low hills; and, thirdly, of a set of locks at each end of this stretch of water that are connected by comparatively short approaches with the sea. The surface of the lake will be from 79 to 85 feet above sea-level, and vessels will be raised to this height and lowered again by passing through a flight of three locks upward and another flight of three locks downward. The passage of both flights ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 21 - The Recent Days (1910-1914) • Charles F. Horne, Editor
... any point of the earth and look up, the heavenly bodies appear as though they were situated upon the surface of a vast hollow sphere, of which your eye is the center. Of course this apparent concave vault has no existence and we cannot accurately measure the distance of the heavenly bodies from us or from each other. We can, however, measure the ...
— Lectures in Navigation • Ernest Gallaudet Draper
... ancient oaks, which were old when the Alhambra was built, the shrubberies, the vast rose garden. The surface of the pool in the sunken garden reflected the green or red masses of light that shot up every few moments from the four corners of the terrace surrounding it. On the lawn just above and to the right of the house, a ...
— The Avalanche • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... N. Latitude, as far as sixty or seventy miles south of that place. The pyramids of Jizeh are nearly opposite Cairo. They stand on a plateau or terrace of limestone, which is a projection of the Lybian mountain-chain. The surface of the terrace is barren and irregular, and is covered with sand and small fragments of rock; its height, at the base of the great pyramid, is one hundred and sixty four feet above the ordinary level of the Nile, from which it is distant about ...
— Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects and Curiosities of Art (Vol. 3 of 3) • S. Spooner
... that he had not observed my approach. For when, treading water easily in his immediate rear, I wished him good morning in my most conciliatory tones, he stood not upon the order of his sinking, but went under like so much pig iron. I waited courteously until he rose to the surface once more, when ...
— Love Among the Chickens - A Story of the Haps and Mishaps on an English Chicken Farm • P. G. Wodehouse
... one does Lady Ruth, while always acting as a lady, show that she prefers his society to that of Sir Lionel, and though the British soldier appears unruffled on the surface, ...
— Miss Caprice • St. George Rathborne
... in mind, they quite as often choose a hollow surface of rock in some waste pasture or the open ground on which to deposit the two speckled-gray eggs that sixteen days later will give birth to their family. But in August, when family cares have ended for the ...
— Bird Neighbors • Neltje Blanchan
... as the law of gravitation or the laws of the planetary system, and every device to evade it or avoid it has, by its failure, only demonstrated the universal law that specie measures all values as certainly as the surface of the ocean measures the level of ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman
... between the city and the opposite shore. The seabreeze died away, and was succeeded by a sultry calm; after a short interval, the grateful land wind, laden with sweet odours, advanced as a dark line slowly stealing along the surface of the water, and the deep boom of the evening gun echoing from hill to hill may be said appropriately ...
— Narrative Of The Voyage Of H.M.S. Rattlesnake, Commanded By The Late Captain Owen Stanley, R.N., F.R.S. Etc. During The Years 1846-1850. Including Discoveries And Surveys In New Guinea, The Louisiade • John MacGillivray
... lakes, tanks, and fountains, they used a bath which is still to be seen in many Indian villages, and which they call the temezcalli. It is made of unbaked bricks; its form is that of a baker's oven, about eight feet wide and six high; the pavement rather convex, and lower than the surface of the soil. A person can enter this bath only on his knees. Opposite the entry is a stone or brick stove, its opening towards the exterior of the bath, with a hole to let out the smoke. Before the bath is prepared, the floor inside is covered ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon De La Barca
... for example, imposes a unified form on the description of the world. Let us imagine a white surface with irregular black spots on it. We then say that whatever kind of picture these make, I can always approximate as closely as I wish to the description of it by covering the surface with a sufficiently fine square mesh, and then saying of every square whether it is black or white. ...
— Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus • Ludwig Wittgenstein
... over it. It was buried in the earth on the spot where the Pool of Bethesda was afterward made, so that it was not only the descent of the angel, but the virtues of the buried wood, which gave to the water its healing qualities. At the time of the passion the wood rose and floated on the surface. The Jews took it to make the ...
— The Worship of the Church - and The Beauty of Holiness • Jacob A. Regester
... Charley. Blowing away the remaining dust and ashes, Charley once more began an examination of the little excavation. Inch by inch he scrutinized the surface of the pit. He found it partly baked. Suddenly he gave a cry. He had found the distinct prints of some one's fingers. On the second side of the excavation he found more prints, and the third side yielded still others. Carefully Charley chopped out the incriminating bits of clay. When he ...
— The Young Wireless Operator—As a Fire Patrol - The Story of a Young Wireless Amateur Who Made Good as a Fire Patrol • Lewis E. Theiss
... seas like unto the vapor of the desert, beneath our glorious and conquering footsteps and those of our faithful and victorious heroes. He has made in our royal mind the thrones of kings and the deep ocean of earthly glory more despicable than the light bubble that floats upon the surface of the wave; and no doubt his extraordinary mercy, which he has now shown, will ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, v. 13 • Various
... is lacking for the formation of those intimate friendships which would bring this knowledge within their grasp. French homes are rarely open to birds of passage, and visitors leave us with regret that they have not been able to see more than the surface of our civilization or to recognize by experience the note of our inner ...
— Widger's Quotations from The Immortals of the French Academy • David Widger
... her keenly, trying to penetrate beneath the surface of her almost unnatural calm. He did not wish to be ...
— The Easiest Way - A Story of Metropolitan Life • Eugene Walter and Arthur Hornblow
... the virtue is not conspicuous, and the vice is one enormous fact. When I think of the growth of that poisonous hereditary taint, which may come with time—when I think of passions let loose and temptations lying in ambush—I see the smooth surface of the Minister's domestic life with dangers lurking under it which make me shake in my shoes. God! what a life I should lead, if I happened to be in his place, some years hence. Suppose I said or ...
— The Legacy of Cain • Wilkie Collins
... being able to send a letter to you, via California, even from this remote corner of the world. It is the Ultima Thule and no mistake. Fancy two good-sized islands with undulated surface and sometimes elevated hills, but without tree or bush as tall as a man. When we arrived the 8th inst. the barren uniformity was rendered still more obvious by the deep coating of snow which enveloped everything. How can I describe to you "Stanley," the sole town, metropolis, ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 1 • Leonard Huxley
... amalgam of mercury and tin, to increase their efficiency, press the rim of the plate between them as it revolves, and a brass conductor C, insulated on glass posts, is fitted with points like the teeth of a comb, which, as the electrified surface of the plate passes by, collect the electricity and charge the conductor with positive electricity. Machines of this sort have been made with plates 7 feet in diameter, and yielding sparks nearly ...
— The Story Of Electricity • John Munro
... notwithstanding their difference in character, well deserved this common namepursued their course along the skirts of the village in silence. It was not until they had reached the lake, and were moving over its frozen surface toward the foot of the mountain, where the hut stood, that the ...
— The Pioneers • James Fenimore Cooper
... wither and turn yellow. It became yellower and yellower every day. The keeper came and told the forester. They were out the other day looking at it. Then they discovered that all the grass-roots were eaten up or gnawed through. They were able to roll up the whole grassy surface like a carpet; and they did so. I was sitting at the edge of the wood myself, looking on. The grass was gone and the hay and everything; and ...
— The Old Willow Tree and Other Stories • Carl Ewald
... slopes and down the hollows, and the men found no difficulty in keeping the pace. Looking back when they nooned, Harding noticed the straightness of their course. Picked out in delicate shades of blue against the unbroken white surface surrounding it, the sled trail ran back with scarcely a waver to the crest of a rise two miles away. This was not how they had journeyed north, with the icy wind in their faces, laboriously struggling round broken ridges and through tangled woods. Harding was a sanguine man, but experience ...
— The Intriguers • Harold Bindloss
... this delight in the mere surface play of life that she could, for instance, be interested in that somewhat serious by-play called "flirtation," or take any delight in the exercise of those little arts of pleasing and winning which are none the less genuine and charming because they are ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... kind of architecture, from one extremity of the empire to the other, differing only in the number of rounds or stories, and in the materials of which they are constructed. The manners, the dress, the amusements of the people, are nearly the same. Even the surface of the country, as far as regards the fifteen ancient provinces, is subject to little variation, and especially those parts over which the grand inland navigation is carried; the only parts, in fact, that foreigners travelling in China ...
— Travels in China, Containing Descriptions, Observations, and Comparisons, Made and Collected in the Course of a Short Residence at the Imperial Palace of Yuen-Min-Yuen, and on a Subsequent Journey thr • John Barrow
... from newspaper and sprinkle on surface of water; letters floating may spell or suggest name of future husband ...
— Games For All Occasions • Mary E. Blain
... confidence had stirred suspicions in the public mind which mounted into alarm when the Peace of Nimeguen suddenly left Charles master—as it seemed—of the position, and it was of this general panic that one of the vile impostors who are always thrown to the surface at times of great public agitation was ready to take advantage by the ...
— History of the English People, Volume VI (of 8) - Puritan England, 1642-1660; The Revolution, 1660-1683 • John Richard Green
... upon us, all the lower sky went black. An advancing roar came upon our ears. And then a blinding wave of rain drove across the surface of the earth, wiping out the day, beating down with remorseless strength and volume as though it would smother and drown us twain in its deluge—us, the last two human ...
— The Way of a Man • Emerson Hough
... were dazzling with light; pomp and splendor reigned throughout, and on entering the supper-room you were almost blinded by the array of gold and silver adorning the costly buffet, on whose glittering surface the lights were ...
— Frederick The Great and His Family • L. Muhlbach
... time-sense that the place-sense also reeled and slipped to a different angle in his mind. He saw how in a far-off field at the crest of the further slope serried rows of washing were laid out, looking so oddly like gravestones that the surface of his mind took it for a cemetery until, pricked to a more normal consciousness, he realised that there could be no such thing there, but only a field belonging to a farm of his own. Even then it seemed to him that he was wandering in ...
— Secret Bread • F. Tennyson Jesse
... our serious plays are amusing in a deeper way—now that we have begun timidly to scratch the surface of things. I wonder, if you and I were put on the stage, what they would say ...
— The Black Cat - A Play in Three Acts • John Todhunter
... spake Magdalen, * "of torn bright song, and see and feel." They turned the raiment, saw and felt * what their turning did reveal - All the inner surface piled * with bloodied hairs, like hairs ...
— Poems • Francis Thompson
... but we found little that was worthy of our attention. The basis of the island is granitic, and covered with a shallow soil, formed of decayed vegetable matter, mixed with sand, which nourishes the stunted vegetation that thickly clothes the surface, particularly on the north-eastern, which is its most ...
— Narrative of a Survey of the Intertropical and Western Coasts of Australia - Performed between the years 1818 and 1822 • Phillip Parker King
... had at that time under inoculation. They were selected from 160, as having the greatest number of pustules. The part was washed with warm water before the blood was taken, to prevent the possibility of any matter being mixed with it from the surface." ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. I - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... fell into the boat, she fell into the water. With a burst of delighted laughter she disappeared into the lake. A cry of horror ascended from the boats. They had never seen the princess go down before. Half the men were under water in a moment; but they had all, one after another, come up to the surface again for breath, when—tinkle, tinkle, babble, and gush! came the princess's laugh over the water from far away. There she was, swimming like a swan. Nor would she come out for king or queen, chancellor or daughter. ...
— Fairy Tales Every Child Should Know • Various
... a tiny circle no larger than the head of a pin. Blood was oozing from beneath the lifted rim, and I nervously picked off the tiny patch of hard, hard flesh and watched the surface blood well out into a tiny droplet. My perception told me the truth: It was Mekstrom's Disease and not a doubt. The ...
— Highways in Hiding • George Oliver Smith
... Straighten Wires. It is often necessary to have short lengths of wires straight, where they are to be made into bundles, etc. To straighten them, lay one or two at a time upon a perfectly flat surface, place a flat piece of board upon them, then roll them back and forth between the two. The upper board should be pressed down upon the wires while rolling them. If properly done, the wires can be quickly ...
— How Two Boys Made Their Own Electrical Apparatus • Thomas M. (Thomas Matthew) St. John
... set; and "The Curlew" started on in the wake of the shower. The cloud passed across the straits diagonally to the south-west. We could see it raining heavily on the ice-flecked water a few miles farther up; and immediately the whole surface began to steam. We watched ...
— Left on Labrador - or, The cruise of the Schooner-yacht 'Curlew.' as Recorded by 'Wash.' • Charles Asbury Stephens
... shot him to save my life, at the very moment when you first learned all his cruelty and his vileness. The rest of the world could never be made to understand all that. They'd say to the end, as it looks on the surface, 'She shot her ...
— Recalled to Life • Grant Allen
... browner trouts darting to and fro with such a slippery gliding, that the motion seemed the result of will, without any such intermediate and complicate arrangement as brain and nerves and muscles. The water-beetles went spinning about over the surface; and one glorious dragon-fly made a mist about him with his long wings. And over all, the sun hung in the sky, pouring down life; shining on the roots of the willows at the bottom of the stream; lighting up the black head of the water-rat as he hurried across ...
— Annals of a Quiet Neighbourhood • George MacDonald |
