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Compass   Listen
verb
Compass  v. t.  (past & past part. compassed; pres. part. compassing)  
1.
To go about or entirely round; to make the circuit of. "Ye shall compass the city seven times." "We the globe can compass soon."
2.
To inclose on all sides; to surround; to encircle; to environ; to invest; to besiege; used with about, round, around, and round about. "With terrors and with clamors compassed round." "Now all the blessings Of a glad father compass thee about." "Thine enemies shall cast a trench about thee, and compass thee round."
3.
To reach round; to circumvent; to get within one's power; to obtain; to accomplish. "If I can check my erring love, I will: If not, to compass her I'll use my skill." "How can you hope to compass your designs?"
4.
To curve; to bend into a circular form. (Obs. except in carpentry and shipbuilding.)
5.
(Law) To purpose; to intend; to imagine; to plot. "Compassing and imagining the death of the king are synonymous terms; compassing signifying the purpose or design of the mind or will, and not, as in common speech, the carrying such design to effect."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Compass" Quotes from Famous Books



... For the non-military reader, it should be explained that this is the formation in which troops are considered least vulnerable against artillery or distant rifle and machine-gun fire. Great care was taken to ensure that direction was maintained, an officer with compass being specially detailed for this purpose, and that touch was not lost with the units on either flank. A battery of field artillery had been detailed to support the advance of this battalion; the ...
— With the British Army in The Holy Land • Henry Osmond Lock

... who loved us, She who lost herself in service, She who lightened all our darkness, She has left us, and we mourn her With a lonely, aching sorrow. May the great good Spirit hear us, Hear us in our grief and save us, Compass us with His protection Till, through suffering and shadow, We with weary feet have journeyed And again our mother greets us In the Land beyond ...
— Mary Slessor of Calabar: Pioneer Missionary • W. P. Livingstone

... beardless students with bachelor degrees, were of the party; they were poets who had put aside their studies last year. Their heads were so closely cropped as to be almost entirely naked. One of them carried a small compass on his watch-chain. They were Ojen's comrades, his admirers and ...
— Shallow Soil • Knut Hamsun

... (Star Flower).—To grow this native perennial to advantage, it should be planted in leaf-mould with which a large proportion of sand has been mixed. Confine the roots to a narrow compass by means of slates placed just beneath the surface of the soil. Let the ground be kept moist, but well drained. The bloom is produced during May and June, and it is propagated by runners. Height, 6 in. to ...
— Gardening for the Million • Alfred Pink

... is still enough to evince acquaintance with "Sylvester, Spenser, Drummond, Drayton, Chaucer, Fairfax, and Buchanan." The literary merit of these versions seems to us to have been underrated. There may be no individual phrase beyond the compass of an apt and sensitive boy with a turn for verse-making; but the general tone is masculine and emphatic. There is not much to say, but what is said is delivered with a "large utterance," prophetic of the "os magna soniturum," and justifying his own report of his youthful promise:—"It ...
— Life of John Milton • Richard Garnett

... and woods, the Forecaster leading on the old mule, the boys followed the direction of the kite. Bob's pocket compass held them true to their course and Tom's keen sense told of any shift of the wind. The boys ran fast, the mule ran faster, and Lassie and Rex ran faster still. Only Anton, the ...
— The Boy with the U. S. Weather Men • Francis William Rolt-Wheeler

... the sea or the majesty of wide vistas from mountain tops. Italian hill-tops afford views of numerous charming landscapes but no scenes of entrancing grandeur or awe-inspiring desolation, and the sea, before the days of the compass, was too suggestive of death and sorrow to invite consideration of its lawless beauty. These aspects of nature had to be discovered by later experiences in other lands. At first glance Vergil seems to care most for the ...
— Vergil - A Biography • Tenney Frank

... far, far beyond her age and the philosophy of her time. She seems to have seen through the weakness of her own religion, and even prepared for emergence into a different world. All her aspirations were for the North, the point of the compass whence blew the cool invigorating breezes that make life a joy. From the first, her eyes seem to have been attracted to the seven stars of the Plough from the fact, as recorded in the hieroglyphics in her tomb, ...
— The Jewel of Seven Stars • Bram Stoker

... usually in conquest, expansion into border regions for occasional occupation, or colonization. (4) Participation in streams of barter or commerce. (5) And, at a higher stage, in the great currents of human intercourse, experience, and ideas, which finally compass the world. In all this series the narrower movement prepares for the broader, of which it constitutes at once an impulse and ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park

... The only escape from ultimate payment of gold is to declare that as a nation we permanently and finally renounce all idea of ever attaining a specie standard—that we launch ourselves on an ocean of paper money without shore or sounding, with no rudder to guide us and no compass to steer by. And this is precisely what is involved if we adopt this mischievous suggestion of 'a new way to pay old debts.' Our fate in attempting such a course may be easily read in the history of similar follies ...
— Hidden Treasures - Why Some Succeed While Others Fail • Harry A. Lewis

... and travel, a profound and original intellect, and amazing fertility of thought. Yet the field which he had chosen was so vast, and its material so complex, that even his big mental grasp could not wholly compass it. His conclusions, therefore, are ...
— Influences of Geographic Environment - On the Basis of Ratzel's System of Anthropo-Geography • Ellen Churchill Semple

... birds and horses. The temple required a strong effort of the imagination to invest it with the least interest, but the view from this point was fine. A couple of miles southeasterly was the broad, glistening Bay of Tokio, and round the other points of the compass was the imperial city itself, covering a plain of some eight miles square, divided by water-ways, bridges, and clumps of graceful trees, looming conspicuously above the low dwellings. The whole was as level as a checker-board, but yet there was relief to the picture in the fine ...
— Due West - or Round the World in Ten Months • Maturin Murray Ballou

... winter trips I carried with me a camera, thermometer, barometer, compass, notebook, and folding axe. The food carried usually was only raisins. I left all bedding behind. Notwithstanding I was alone and in the wilds, I did not carry ...
— Wild Life on the Rockies • Enos A. Mills

... of some kind—huzzars I take it—coming on from the city. While we were cutting loose from the carriage, I fancied I heard a bugle-call in the direction cityward. Of course, with guns and bells signalling, we may expect pursuit from every point of the compass. Had we kept to the roads, we'd have been met somewhere. As it is, if they give us another ten minutes' grace, I'll take you into a place where there's not much fear of our being followed—by ...
— The Free Lances - A Romance of the Mexican Valley • Mayne Reid

... not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks Within his bending sickle's compass come. Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks But bears it out even ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... were soon other causes of alarm. The compass varied strangely, and what hope for them was there if this, their only guide, proved faithless? They ran into vast meadows of floating seaweed, the Sargasso Sea, and it seemed certain that the ships would soon be so entangled that they could move neither ...
— American Men of Action • Burton E. Stevenson

... average daily range having been from 58 to 80 degrees. During our stay on the Darling, the temperature of the water varied very slightly, being always between 65 and 67 degrees. The winds have generally been light, frequently going all round the compass in the course of the day; but in any case it has almost invariably fallen calm after sunset. Cirri and cirrostratus clouds have been very prevalent during the day, and cumulostratus during ...
— Successful Exploration Through the Interior of Australia • William John Wills

... held the entire Army of the Potomac at bay, march a dozen miles, and fall upon Lee's rear, all in the brief space of four or five hours. And it was this plan he chose to put into execution, deeming others equal to the performance of impossibilities, while himself could not compass the easiest problems under his ...
— The Campaign of Chancellorsville • Theodore A. Dodge

... as 1380, two Venetians, named Zeno, visited Iceland, and reported that there was a tradition there of a land named Estotiland, a thousand miles west of the Faroe Islands, and south of Greenland. The people were reported to be civilised and good seamen, though unacquainted with the use of the compass, while south of them were savage cannibals, and still more to the south-west another civilised people, who built large cities and temples, but offered up human victims in them. There seems to be here a ...
— The Story of Geographical Discovery - How the World Became Known • Joseph Jacobs

... Parloir aux Bourgeois, by the gate of the University; by Albertus Magnus in the Cordeliers, hard by the College of Bourgoyne; by Pic de la Mirandole, who lived I care not a rap where and debated I know not from Adam how or when; by Lord Bacon, who took more bribes in a day than you and I could compass in a dozen years; by Spinoza, a good worker of glass lenses, but a philosopher whom I have never read nor will; by Coleridge when he was not talking about himself nor taking some filthy drug; by John Pilkington Smith, of Norwood, Drysalter, who has, I hear, been lately horribly ...
— On Nothing & Kindred Subjects • Hilaire Belloc

... first display of jealousy Beth discovered that her husband pried upon her continually. He was very high and mighty on the subject of women spying upon men, but there seemed no meanness he would not compass in order to spy upon a woman. He had duplicate keys to her drawers and boxes, and rummaged through all her possessions when she went out. One day she came upon him standing before her wardrobe, feeling ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand

... chain and compass nodded. Nothing abashed by the lawyer's cool manner, Mr. Hardwick turned to the surveyor, and asked if he undertook to say that Walter Kinloch's deed called for land that was covered ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 10, August, 1858 • Various

... twelve times for every twenty-four hours,—and from the reports which the captain receives of the results of those trials, it is easy for him to calculate how far the ship has come during the whole period. As he knows, too, exactly how far the pilot has been steering by the compass all this time, he has both the direction in which the ship has been sailing, and the distance to which she has come; and, of course, from these data he can calculate where she must now be. This mode of determining the ship's place is called by the reckoning. The other is called ...
— Rollo on the Atlantic • Jacob Abbott

... affectionate leave of Mr Love, who was really much affected at parting with him, discussed valedictory pots of porter in the big room, over which many wishes were expressed that he might be enabled to compass the length and breadth of old Ruffle's feet, uttered a last cutting joke at Mr Kissing as he met that gentleman hurrying through the passages with an enormous ledger in his hands, and then took his place in the comfortable arm-chair ...
— The Small House at Allington • Anthony Trollope

... and sincerity and unconsciousness of Riley's old farmer are perfectly simulated, and the result is a performance which is thoroughly charming and delicious. This is art—and fine and beautiful, and only a master can compass it." ...
— The Complete Works • James Whitcomb Riley

... though this volume of my brief analysis the reader will doubtless find marked by the short-sightedness and imperfections which attend every attempt of human art to compress an infinite variety into a finite compass. ...
— A Morning's Walk from London to Kew • Richard Phillips

... the precise compass of that question. "That I can't exactly answer," she replied with ...
— Under the Greenwood Tree • Thomas Hardy

... The little punt had been long out of sight ere the news reached them, and the wind had increased to a gale. But Barney O'Flannagan questioned Bob Croaker closely, and took particular note of the point of the compass at which Martin had disappeared; and when the Firefly at length got under weigh, he climbed to the fore-top cross-trees, and stood there scanning the horizon with ...
— Martin Rattler • R.M. Ballantyne

... or agricultural cottage, watchful over some pathless domain of moorland or arable, as the fishing-boat swims, humbly in the midst of the broad green fields and hills of ocean, out of which it has to win such fruit as they can give, and to compass with net or drag such flocks as it may find,—next to this ocean-cottage ranks in interest, it seems to me, the small, over-wrought, under-crewed, ill-caulked merchant brig or schooner; the kind of ship which first shows its couple of thin masts over the low fields or marshes as we near any third-rate ...
— The Harbours of England • John Ruskin

... France has so much variety in such small compass. But every province has its distinctive human qualities. And between the Norman and the Gascon, the Breton and the Provencal, the man of Picardy and the man of Languedoc, there are greater temperamental differences than ...
— Foch the Man - A Life of the Supreme Commander of the Allied Armies • Clara E. Laughlin

... more than dead!' Then cold, and hot, and moist, and dry, In order to their stations leap, And Music's power obey. From harmony, from heavenly harmony, This universal frame began: From harmony to harmony Through all the compass of the notes it ran, The diapason ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy

... and poetry, and what time I've had I've read 'em, but I've never thought about 'em the way you have. That's why I can't talk about 'em. I'm like a navigator adrift on a strange sea without chart or compass. Now I want to get my bearin's. Mebbe you can put me right. How did you learn ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London

... and useless to enlarge upon my various attempts and various failures. I forbear to comment upon mistakes which I was in time wise enough to retrieve. Pushing out as I did, without compass and without experience, on the boundless ocean of learning, what could I expect but an utter ...
— Memoir of John Lothrop Motley, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... right, and not far from the edge of the cliff. I made my way to it at once, for as yet I had never been near it. Hitherto my excursions had been limited to the Castle and its many gardens and surroundings. It was of a style with which I was not familiar—with four wings to the points of the compass. The great doorway, set in a magnificent frontage of carved stone of manifestly ancient date, faced west, so that, when one entered, he went east. To my surprise—for somehow I expected the contrary—I found the door open. Not wide open, but what is called ajar—manifestly not locked or barred, ...
— The Lady of the Shroud • Bram Stoker

... another fellow by the leg who was attempting to do the same. "Keep quiet you, I say," and he dealt him a box on the ears which knocked him flat on the deck. They now made sail after three junks nearest to them. The whole fleet were scattered far and wide to every part of the compass. ...
— The Three Midshipmen • W.H.G. Kingston

... the Situation of the Troops before an Engagement, yet afterwards during the Fight, there is so much Noise, Smoak and Confusion, that for my part, I scarce can give a true Narration of what happen'd within a dozen Yards compass. Upon this Account, I cannot tell in what manner the French Troops behav'd themselves, but I was inform'd they made a tollerable Stand against King William's Army, but that they quickly chang'd it into a running Fight, and very dexterously convey'd both King James and themselves out ...
— Memoirs of Major Alexander Ramkins (1718) • Daniel Defoe

... however, against entertaining the supposition that a Unitary Science will bring all the Phenomena of the universe within the compass of Demonstrable apprehension. The province of Science is not infinite, but circumscribed. We are limited in the application of Mathematical Laws, even within the sphere of Pure Mathematics; general equations ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, Issue 2, February, 1864 • Various

... barytone and a bass, as indispensable to the household as the piano is thought to-day. It was made effective in accompanying the madrigal, that delightful flower of the Elizabethan age. Singers not always being available for all of the difficult voice parts viols of the same compass supplied the lack. It was but a step for masters of music to compose pieces marked "to be sung or played," thus contributing to the forces that were lifting instrumental music above mere ...
— For Every Music Lover - A Series of Practical Essays on Music • Aubertine Woodward Moore

... paths, than to wander after the desires of your own heart and your own eyes over the blue hills. True, there are glorious vistas to explore, and streams of living silver to bathe in, and wild horses to catch by the mane, but you are in a chartless land without stars and compass. One false step and you are over a precipice, or up to your neck in a slough. Ah, it is perilous to throw over the old surveyors. I see Moses ben Amram, with his measuring-chain and his graving-tools, marking on those stone tables ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill

... life. AEsthetic studies of Shakespeare abound, and to increase their number is a work of supererogation. But Shakespearean literature, as far as it is known to me, still lacks a book that shall supply within a brief compass an exhaustive and well-arranged statement of the facts of Shakespeare's career, achievement, and reputation, that shall reduce conjecture to the smallest dimensions consistent with coherence, and shall ...
— A Life of William Shakespeare - with portraits and facsimiles • Sidney Lee

... juxtaposition with Doric columns employed for chimneys, while under oriel windows might be observed Italian doorways with Grecian pediments. Beyond the extensive gardens an avenue of Spanish chestnuts at each point of the compass approached the mansion, or led into a small park which was table-land, its limits opening on all sides to beautiful and extensive valleys, sparkling with cultivation, except at one point, where the river Darl formed the boundary of the domain, and ...
— Coningsby • Benjamin Disraeli

... by bad example, or bad management, before we have judgment to discern their approaches, or because the eye of Reason is laid asleep, or has not compass of view sufficient to ...
— Searchlights on Health: Light on Dark Corners • B.G. Jefferis

... of our passage from England, no opportunity was omitted of observing, with all the attention and accuracy that circumstances would permit, the variation of the compass, which I have inserted in a table, with the latitude and longitude of the ship at the time of observation. As the longitude may be depended upon, to a quarter or half a degree at most, this table will be of use to those navigators who correct their reckoning by ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 15 (of 18) • Robert Kerr

... jungle now. Except to lessen his speed it made little difference to the elephant; but for the man it was harder to find his way. On the twisting jungle tracks his luminous compass was of little use. He was forced to trust mainly ...
— The Elephant God • Gordon Casserly

... with as much courtesy as he could compass, for the sake of his great house and his great friends, and his standing with the Reds, that was as high as his own with the Yellows. "Then he should not steal roses," he answered, quietly enough. But immediately thereafter, as if the mention of roses had stirred him to fury, his wrath foamed over ...
— The God of Love • Justin Huntly McCarthy

... are right, Bob. The sound came from the leeward. I have no doubt it is some vessel in distress; and we must do something for her. Call all hands," I continued, as I took the wheel, and headed the Sylvania due west by the compass. ...
— Up the River - or, Yachting on the Mississippi • Oliver Optic

... has been invaluable in seeing the book through the press. Imust also acknowledge the patience and skill of Messrs. Spottiswoode's London staff in carrying out the many alterations which I have found to be inseparable from the task of bringing each passage and its notes into the compass ...
— Helps to Latin Translation at Sight • Edmund Luce

... again attempted to return home, but before very long we made the startling discovery that we had completely lost our way, and to add to our misfortune the small pocket-compass, which Frank had brought with him, and which would have now so greatly assisted us, was missing, most probably dropped from his pocket during the skirmish to get under shelter. We still wandered along till stopped by the shades ...
— A Lady's Visit to the Gold Diggings of Australia in 1852-53. • Mrs. Charles (Ellen) Clacey

... unmistakable cat-owl from very near me, with the most harsh and tremendous voice I ever heard from any inhabitant of the woods, responded at regular intervals to the goose, as if determined to expose and disgrace this intruder from Hudson's Bay by exhibiting a greater compass and volume of voice in a native, and boo-hoo him out of Concord horizon. "What do you mean by alarming the citadel at this time of night consecrated to me? Do you think I am ever caught napping at such an hour, and that I have not got lungs and a larynx as well as yourself? ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 7 • Charles H. Sylvester

... one side whereof ran a very clear streamlet, and saw it as fair and as delectable, especially at that season whenas the heat was great, as most might be conceived. According to that which one of them after told me, the plain that was in the valley was as round as if it had been traced with the compass, albeit it seemed the work of nature and not of art, and was in circuit a little more than half a mile, encompassed about with six little hills not over-high, on the summit of each of which stood a palace builded in guise of a goodly ...
— The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio • Giovanni Boccaccio

... with a breath, and the cheat watches the clouds and sets his weathercock by them,—so that one shall often see by their pointing which way the winds of heaven are blowing, when the slow-wheeling arrows and feathers of what we call the Temples of Wisdom are turning to all points of the compass. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 15, January, 1859 • Various

... the centre of it hung a large and exceedingly handsome lamp of solid silver, suspended by massive chains of the same metal, while one end of the skylight was occupied by a barometer hung in gimbals, and the other by a tell-tale compass. Such an elegant little apartment naturally demanded that all its appointments should correspond, and so they did, for the table—which we afterwards found to be made of solid walnut, polished to the ...
— A Middy in Command - A Tale of the Slave Squadron • Harry Collingwood

... as well as men entered these living tombs; and there spent their days in dirt and starvation, and such prayer and meditation doubtless as the stupified and worn-out intellect could compass; their only recreation being the gossip of the neighbouring women, who came to peep in through the little window—a recreation in which (if we are to believe the author of "The Ancren Riwle") they were tempted ...
— The Hermits • Charles Kingsley

... so very far off," spoke Russ, evasively. "The trouble is there are so many twists and turns to these creeks and rivers that we lost our way. I wish I had thought to bring a compass but, since we didn't, we'll have to go by the sun. I think the steamer lies in that general neighborhood," and he ...
— The Moving Picture Girls Under the Palms - Or Lost in the Wilds of Florida • Laura Lee Hope

... himself, on his first visit here. Speaking in his published voyages of this spot, he says—"My fancy led me to call it Cowley's Enchanted Isle, for, we having had a sight of it upon several points of the compass, it appeared always in so many different forms; sometimes like a ruined fortification; upon another point like a great city," etc. No wonder though, that among the Encantadas all sorts of ocular deceptions ...
— The Piazza Tales • Herman Melville

... Norton, of Harvard University, published a set of thirty-three of the best of the Liber studies, reproduced in Boston by the heliotype process. The Liber Studiorum was intended to manifest Turner's command of the whole compass of the landscape art, and was divided into six heads: historical, pastoral, elegant ...
— A History of Art for Beginners and Students: Painting, Sculpture, Architecture - Painting • Clara Erskine Clement

... wetted, and every exertion made to come up. But about four o'clock in the afternoon, when the frigate was eight or nine miles off, it fell calm, as Gascoigne had predicted, and the heads of all the vessels, as well as the frigate, were now round the compass. ...
— Mr. Midshipman Easy • Captain Frederick Marryat

... committed the clumsy indiscretion of removing you with this little instrument," he said. "You recall the episode? Ericksen's Disintegrating Ray, Dr. Stuart. The model, here, possesses a limited range, of course, but the actual instrument has a compass of seven and a half miles. It can readily be carried by a heavy plane! One such plane in a flight from Suez to Port Said, could destroy all the shipping in the Canal and explode every grain of ammunition on either shore! Since ...
— The Golden Scorpion • Sax Rohmer

... form and inspired in its sentiment by the Provencal lyrics, lies within the compass of about one hundred and thirty years, from 1150 to 1280. The Crusade of 1147 served, doubtless, as a point of meeting for men of the North and of the South; but, apart from this, we may bear in mind the ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden

... the fog was growing thicker. He studied his compass with straining eyes. He was startled by a gull's plunging up through the mist ahead of him, and disappearing. He was the more lonely when it was gone. His eyebrows and cheeks were wet with the steam. Drops of moisture ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis

... nearest cape of which is called the Cape de Ras, is situated west of our diametrical or meridional line whereon is fixed the first point of longitude according to the true meridian of the compass; and the said Cape de Ras is in west longitude 40 Degrees and 47 of North latitude. The Terra Nova extends towards the Arctic pole from 40 Degrees to 60, and from Cape de Ras going towards the pole, the coast almost always runs from south to ...
— The Voyage of Verrazzano • Henry C. Murphy

... island of Takeshima. The "Izumrud" had used her superior speed to get away to the south-west. The four battered ships that remained with him saw more than twenty enemies appear from all points of the compass, including Togo's battleships and heavy armoured cruisers, all as fit for work as when the first fighting began. They opened fire at long range with ...
— Famous Sea Fights - From Salamis to Tsu-Shima • John Richard Hale

... tested; the runners and cross-bars of his komatik all came in for a critical overhauling. The contents of the nonny-bag were amply replenished; the matches in the water-tight bottle were tested for dampness; his small compass was securely lashed to the chain of his belt. His one bottle of spirits, "kept against sickness," was carefully stowed with the tea and hardtack. A bundle of warm wraps, with his axe, and even a few dry splits, completed his equipment. ...
— Labrador Days - Tales of the Sea Toilers • Wilfred Thomason Grenfell

... day—although a perfect stranger to London—to walk from Charing Cross to the Temple without inquiring the route. I had absolutely no assistance but a small map of Surbiton and the neighbourhood, from which I had calculated the general lie of the country, and a plain, ordinary compass, which I had bought cheap because it had lost its pointer. I am not sure that the route I took was the most direct. But when, after several hours' walk, I found myself at Willesden Junction, I was assured by a boy in the district, whom ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, April 5, 1890 • Various

... those things though, and she and Maxwell's mother got on very well after the first plunge, though the country doctor's widow was distinctly a country person, with the narrow social horizons of a villager whose knowledge of the city was confined to the compass of her courageous ventures ...
— The Story of a Play - A Novel • W. D. Howells

... out away from the ship several hundred yards and studied his pocket compass. He held it steady for a moment, watching the needle swing around. He turned and walked slowly still watching the needle of the compass. He waited for it to steady again, then turned back to Roger and Astro who stood watching ...
— Stand by for Mars! • Carey Rockwell

... a vague idea of reaching some unknown goal. Thus I forged up the street, noting the small traffic of the milk-shop, and wondering at the incongruous medley of penny pipes, black tobacco, sweets, newspapers, and comic songs which here and there jostled one another in the short compass of a single window. I think it was a cold shudder that suddenly passed through me that first told me that I had found what I wanted. I looked up from the pavement and stopped before a dusty shop, above which ...
— The Great God Pan • Arthur Machen

... spectacles, are in full activity, the entrepreneurs seizing the moments, and coins too, as they fly. In short, midsummer has come, and fashion is about to substitute languor for excitement. Meantime, our excursion trains have commenced their trips to every point of the compass; and during the next few months, thousands will have the opportunity of exploring the finest scenery of our merry island at the smallest possible cost; and for one centre of attraction, as London was last year, there will now ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 443 - Volume 17, New Series, June 26, 1852 • Various

... this time Noah had lived in darkness, seeing nothing but the waters rolling and raging in a terrifying volume. Now the delicious light of the sun bursts forth once more, and the winds cease to roar from all points of the compass. Only the east wind, calculated to reduce the waters, is blowing, and gradually it takes away the stagnant flood. Other means also are effective; the ocean no longer hurls its waves upon the land, but takes back the waters which it had spewed forth, and the ...
— Commentary on Genesis, Vol. II - Luther on Sin and the Flood • Martin Luther

... by windlassing, presently gets a shoot, which, without taking a compass, and thereby a commodious stand, he ...
— The Tragedie of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark - A Study with the Text of the Folio of 1623 • George MacDonald

... to see, and it's yours. Florida? Bermuda? Mediterranean? With the compass I've made and adjusted to the new magnetic variations, and with the maps out of Van's set of books, I reckon we're good for anything, including ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England

... hundred pounds' worth of manure on them, and it only makes them more stupid than they were before. One of our fields—a wizened-looking eleven- acre strip bordering the Fyfield road—he has christened Mrs. Gummidge: it seems to feel everything more than any other field. From whatever point of the compass the wind blows that field gets the most harm from it. You would think to look at it after a storm that there hadn't been any rain in any other field—that that 'particular field must have got it all; while two days' sunshine has the ...
— They and I • Jerome K. Jerome

... fellow-citizens becoming their instruments and slaves. I have little fear of this danger, knowing well how strong the bond which holds us together is and who the people are who are thus held together; but still, it is proper to look at and to provide against it, and it is not within the compass of human wisdom to make a more effectual provision than would be made by the proposed improvements. With their aid and the intercourse which would grow out of them the parts would soon become so compacted and bound together that nothing could ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 1 (of 3) of Volume 2: James Monroe • James D. Richardson

... before the Ephori, and a meeting of the whole people of Sparta, at which his unlawful fatness was publicly exposed; and he was threatened with perpetual banishment if he did not bring his body within the regular Spartan compass, and give up his culpable mode of living; which was declared to be more worthy of an Ionian than ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 227, March 4, 1854 • Various

... bending forward at the pictures shifting through the door-way. "He'd do for the Colossus at what-you-may-call-it; and there's our Effie, she minds me of a yellow-bird, hanging on his arm and talking: I wonder if that's what my mother means,—I wonder will my mother compass it. See Mary Strathsay there! She's white and fine, I'll warrant; see her move like a swan on the waters! Ay, she's a lovesome lass,—and Helmar thought ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 63, January, 1863 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... exercise of his jurisdiction; for instance, against those who in any way injure or deface his album; or who summon a parent or patron without magisterial sanction; or who violently rescue persons summoned before himself, or who compass such a rescue; ...
— The Institutes of Justinian • Caesar Flavius Justinian

... admissions against me, alleging, "that since I had confessedly, upon my own showing, assumed the bearing or deportment of a robber or malefactor, I had voluntarily subjected myself to the suspicions of which I complained, and brought myself within the compass of the act, having wilfully clothed my conduct with all the colour and livery ...
— Rob Roy, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott

... personalities, The power to interpret glances, silences, The pauses in momentous transformations, The genius of divination and prophecy; So that you feel able at times to hold the world In the hollow of your hand; Then, if, by the crowding of so many powers Into the compass of your soul, Your soul takes fire, And in the conflagration of your soul The evil of the world is lighted up and made clear— Be thankful if in that hour of supreme vision ...
— Spoon River Anthology • Edgar Lee Masters

... commonplace than without it. Balzac's Peau de Chagrin is no doubt a great feat of the realistic-supernatural; but no one can help feeling how much the author is aided by his "broker's clerk" style of description, and by the familiar Parisian scenes among which he makes his hero move. It is easier to compass verisimilitude in the Palais-Royal than on the South Pacific, to say nothing of the thousand assisting touches, out of place in rhyme and metre, which can be thrown into a prose narrative. The Ancient Mariner, however, ...
— English Men of Letters: Coleridge • H. D. Traill

... the right hand, that must cleanse these lying records with fire, even as of old the draperies of asbestos were cleansed, and must quicken them into regenerated life. Willingly I acknowledge that no man will ever avoid innumerable errors of detail: with so vast a compass of ground to traverse, this is impossible: but such errors (though I have a bushel on hand, at M. Michelet's service) are not the game I chase: it is the bitter and unfair spirit in which M. Michelet writes against England. Even that, after all, is but my secondary object: ...
— Miscellaneous Essays • Thomas de Quincey

... a buoy, or a lightship long before the man whose proper work it was to see it, and at sea, with a telescope to his eye, I often saw him apparently taking in two signals from opposite points of the compass at one and the same moment, with the ship rolling heavily and sheets of spray ...
— Stand By! - Naval Sketches and Stories • Henry Taprell Dorling

... for he had been always credited not with patience so much as brilliancy; and little by little, from one point to another, he at last succeeded in piecing out the situation. First he remarked that, although Archie set out in all the directions of the compass, he always came home again from some point between the south and west. From the study of a map, and in consideration of the great expanse of untenanted moorland running in that direction towards the sources of the Clyde, he laid his finger on Cauldstaneslap and ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson

... hoofs rose and fell upon the moss with all the circumspection snorting Rosinante could compass. But one might as well go snaring moonbeams as dream to crush such airy beings. Ever and again a gossamer company would soar like a spider on his magic thread, and float with a whisper of remotest music past my ear; or some bolder pigmy, ...
— Henry Brocken - His Travels and Adventures in the Rich, Strange, Scarce-Imaginable Regions of Romance • Walter J. de la Mare

... needs leave something to the capacity and leniency of our readers. They will be satisfied, then, with the motives we have mentioned. We would have stated them more clearly and have set more by them, had the general compass of a ...
— The Tales and Novels, Complete • Jean de La Fontaine

... way through the woods. He was looking forward, with a pleasure he did not attempt to analyse, to seeing Joan in the setting where she belonged. And if occasionally the thought intruded itself that it might be advisable to take a few mental compass bearings and to ascertain his exact position before going any further, he dismissed them as ridiculous. Such thoughts have been similarly dismissed before. . . . It was just as Vane was abusing himself heartily ...
— Mufti • H. C. (Herman Cyril) McNeile

... beautiful pyramid. Only the innumerable stone bells stand out against the starlit night; stone bells with the little peepholes in them, through which the stolid countenances and the stone eyes of many Buddhas, in calm repose, look out upon the four points of the compass. ...
— Flash-lights from the Seven Seas • William L. Stidger

... with horror, were examined by the monarch with an intelligent eye. On being shown the planisphere, he proved his knowledge of the planets and many of the constellations, by repeating their Arabic names. The telescope, which presented objects inverted,—the compass, by which he could always turn to the East when praying,—and the sextant, which he called 'the looking-glass of the sun,' excited peculiar interest. He inquired with evident jealousy, into some parts of English ...
— An Appeal in Favor of that Class of Americans Called Africans • Lydia Maria Child

... imagined that there might be some Village not far off, and observing that he look'd at the Sun, and then took his Way direct South, they travell'd on the same Point of the Compass, and from the Top of a Hill they spied a pretty large Village, and went down to it; the Men came out with their Arms, such as before described, Bows, Arrows, and Javelins, but upon two only of the Whites advancing, with ...
— Of Captain Mission • Daniel Defoe

... comprehensiveness with brevity, a much larger number of scientific and technical terms, as well as geographical and other proper names, have been introduced, than are found in any other Dictionary of the same compass; while the whole has been cleared of redundant explanation and improper expressions, and carefully revised by an ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 434 - Volume 17, New Series, April 24, 1852 • Various

... description of the fighting can be given it is necessary to understand the plan of the fight as a whole. Assuming that the page on which these words are printed represents a map of the North Sea and that the points of the compass are as they would be on an ordinary chart, we have the island of Helgoland, half an inch long and a quarter of an inch wide, situated in the lower right-hand corner of this page, with about half an inch separating its eastern side from ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume II (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various

... of the streets. The Italians are a plump race, with well-developed muscles, and their vocal chords share in the general muscular health and development; so that the average voice in Italy has a much wider compass than in most other countries; and an unctuous ease of execution is readily acquired. Their language, again, favors Italian singers quite as much as their climate. It abounds in the most sonorous of the vowels, while generally ...
— Chopin and Other Musical Essays • Henry T. Finck

... for us to get it fixed in our minds that we need to be guided always by Him. A ship was wrecked on a rocky coast far out of the course that the captain thought he was taking. On examination, it was found that the compass had been slightly deflected by a bit of metal that had ...
— When the Holy Ghost is Come • Col. S. L. Brengle

... title of all twelve books, the index of the work, the herald of its meaning, the expression in briefest compass of the whole performance, I have for this chosen the name VARIAE. And this, because it was necessary for me not always to use the same style, since I had undertaken to address various kinds of persons. One ...
— The Letters of Cassiodorus - Being A Condensed Translation Of The Variae Epistolae Of - Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator • Cassiodorus (AKA Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator)

... Alicia and me. If I can only get to the top of the house, I may get also to the root of the obstacle. It is a dangerous and an uncertain experiment; but, come what may of it, I will try and find out, if human ingenuity can compass the means, what Doctor Dulcifer's occupation really is, on the other side of ...
— A Rogue's Life • Wilkie Collins

... dyke, and as they topped it they saw a weaponed man on his feet betwixt them and the sky. Stephen stood up straightway and fell a-whistling a merry tune, but softly enough, while he made a sign to the others to fetch a compass and go creeping past this man. So they did, while Stephen and the warder walked toward one another; but so soon as they met, the warder knew his friend, and hailed him and said: "Well, minstrel, thou art back again pretty soon; ...
— The Sundering Flood • William Morris

... storm-swept billows, he steered due west. In his journal, day after day, he wrote these simple but sublime words, "That day he sailed westward, which was his course." And still, as hope rose and fell, as misgivings and terrors seized on his men, as the compass varied in inexplicable ways as though they were entering regions where the very laws of Nature change, the soul of the great admiral stood firm and each evening he wrote again the self-same words, "that day he sailed westward which was his course," ...
— Education and the Higher Life • J. L. Spalding

... confronted by a good deal of French—to him an unfamiliar language. Here a long row of Balzac; then, the Waverley Novels in faded red cloth of very old date. Racine, Moliere, Bulwer following in more modern garb; Shakespeare in a compass that promised very small type. His quick trained glance sweeping along the shelves, contracted into a little frown of resentment while he sent his hand impetuously through his scant locks, standing ...
— At Fault • Kate Chopin

... equally capable of throwing the whole blame of such misconduct on her, and of afterwards upbraiding her for a behavior, to which he will, upon the same principle, disown that he has been accessary. Many similar instances have come within the compass of my own observation. In things of less material nature, that are neither criminal in themselves, nor pernicious in their consequences, always acquiesce, if insisted on, however disagreeable they may be to your own temper and inclination. Such a compliance will evidently prove ...
— Sketches of the Fair Sex, in All Parts of the World • Anonymous

... the year 1885, appeared the ninth edition, in which Professors Whitney of Yale and Sievers of Tubingen give admirably and in fair compass what is known of philology, making short work of the sacred theory—in fact, throwing ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White

... Bart. "We have a compass, and can find our way back, but if we straggle off alone some of us may get lost, and none of us knows these woods well ...
— Frank Roscoe's Secret • Allen Chapman

... That, even in a material sense, the intellect of a people is their most important element, is evident from the example of the Chinese, who were so long acquainted with printing, powder, and the mariner's compass, without, by their means, attaining to intelligent public opinion, forming a good army, or coming to an understanding of the art of ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • William Roscher

... It's just the North Pole, that's all, and I've found it; and now I shall try to climb up and plant the British flag on the top—my handkerchief will do; and if it really is the North Pole, my pocket compass Uncle James gave me will spin around and around, and then ...
— The Book of Dragons • Edith Nesbit

... scabbard was a mass of jewels, and the handle a flaming ruby. The belt was webbed with pearls and glistening brilliants. Under the sword were the instruments sacred then and ever since to Master Masons—a square, a gavel, a plummet, and an inscribing compass. ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 1 • Lew. Wallace

... true that philosophers also say that the knowledge concerning the soul is a principle for the knowledge of separate substances. For by knowing itself, it attains to some knowledge of incorporeal substances, such as is within its compass; not that the knowledge of itself gives it a perfect and ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I (Prima Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas

... wheel, motionless except for an occasional scant shifting of his hands. He was sailing by compass; the patent log, trailing behind on its long cord, maintained a constant, jerking register on its dial. He had resolutely banished all thought save that of navigation. Halvard was occupied forward, clearing the deck of the accumulations ...
— Wild Oranges • Joseph Hergesheimer

... course generally by compass from Hawthornden to these lakes has been several points to the west of north. The natives informed us, when at the lakes, that they could reach ...
— The Bushman - Life in a New Country • Edward Wilson Landor

... go again promenade upon the board of the vessel, and I look at the compass, and little boy sailor come and sit him down, and begin to chatter like the little monkey. Then the man that turns a wheel about and about laugh, and say, "Very well, Jacques," but I not understand one word the little fellow say. So I make inquire, and they tell ...
— The Book of Anecdotes and Budget of Fun; • Various

... upon bustle; but further off, it extended to old and young, hale and infirm, asthmatic and long-winded, grave and gay, taught and untaught, respectable and disreputable, industrious and idle, till it reached a compass of twenty miles at least, extending not only to the Forth and Tay, but stretching inland from their opposite shores. In short, men who had never climbed a mountain all their lives before, though living in close proximity to one, were seen on its loftiest peaks, and ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 447 - Volume 18, New Series, July 24, 1852 • Various

... was a man of narrow mind and imperfect education, and his uncompromising bigotry was made hot and mischievous by violent and hasty passions; he exerted his influence indecorously and unjustifiably to compass the death of the enthusiasts, and his whole conduct in respect to them was marked by brutal cruelty. The Quakers, whose revengeful feelings were not less deep because they were inactive, remembered ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... buy a pin and a special compass that works in the dark," Malone said. "I don't think you'd like it. How ...
— Supermind • Gordon Randall Garrett

... was that due form? A. Kneeling on my left knee, my right foot forming a square, my body erect, my right hand grasping the hilt of my sword, my left hand covering the Holy Bible, Square, and Compass, with two cross-swords thereon, in which due form I took upon me the solemn oath and obligation of Knight of the ...
— The Mysteries of Free Masonry - Containing All the Degrees of the Order Conferred in a Master's Lodge • William Morgan

... smacks all round were alternately presenting sterns and bowsprits to the sky in a violent manner that might have suggested the idea of a rearing and kicking dance. When the carrier steamed up to the Admiral, and lay to beside him, and the smacks drew towards her from all points of the compass, the mazes of the dance became intricate, and the risk of collisions called for ...
— The Lively Poll - A Tale of the North Sea • R.M. Ballantyne

... full scout regalia, his duffel bag stuffed to capacity with his aluminum cooking set and two extra scout suits. His diminutive but compact and sturdy little form was decorated with his scout jackknife hanging from his belt, his compass dangling from his neck, and his belt ax dragging down his belt ...
— Pee-wee Harris • Percy Keese Fitzhugh

... the return journey about one o'clock this morning, after taking the compass bearings of the principal points within sight on Wrangell Land, and making a hasty collection of the flowering plants on my way. I found one species of poppy, quite showy, and making considerable masses of color on the sloping uplands, three or four species of saxifrage, ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 312, December 24, 1881 • Various

... revision and correction, he must be placed first among Americans of all the several generations to which he belonged, excepting only Franklin; and if Franklin excelled him in humor and geniality, he far surpassed Franklin in compass and vivacity. Indeed, it is only by the recent publication of his letters that his gifts in these respects are becoming well known. The first installment of his private letters published during his lifetime, though not deficient in these characteristics, yet having been written ...
— Hidden Treasures - Why Some Succeed While Others Fail • Harry A. Lewis

... discovered the necessity of being an assistance to my new friends in procuring food, as their hospitality depends largely upon the state of their larder. A compass and a small trunk of instruments belonging to the Captain had been either over-looked or rejected by the crew in their flight. I secured the esteem of the Esquimaux by using the compass to conduct a hunting party in the ...
— Mizora: A Prophecy - A MSS. Found Among the Private Papers of the Princess Vera Zarovitch • Mary E. Bradley

... Minister) "that he would have the goodness to open himself confidentially to me on the precise object which the two allied Courts might have in contemplation. This, however, the Count was by no means disposed to do; on the contrary, he went round the compass of evasion in order to avoid a direct answer. But determined as I was to push the Austrian Minister, I heaped question on question, until I forced him to say, blushing, and with evident signs of embarrassment, 'Count ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe

... of every age: that three hundred millions of gold or silver were annually paid to the treasury of the caliphs. [133] Our reason must be startled by these extravagant assertions; and they will become more palpable, if we assume the compass and measure the extent of habitable ground: a valley from the tropic to Memphis seldom broader than twelve miles, and the triangle of the Delta, a flat surface of two thousand one hundred square leagues, compose ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 5 • Edward Gibbon

... degrees in the northwest direction; but by a change of position every part of the horizon between these points is to be seen. Toward the west are seen ridges parallel to the Penobscot, over which Katahdin towers to a great height, bearing by compass N. 85 deg. W. In a direction N. 75 deg. W. are seen two distant peaks, one of which was identified as the Traveller. All of these eminences lie south of the line claimed by Great Britain. In the north-northwest ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Tyler - Section 2 (of 3) of Volume 4: John Tyler • Compiled by James D. Richardson

... or two after Pomona's arrival I bought a cow. Euphemia was very anxious to have an Alderney,—they were such gentle, beautiful creatures,—but I could not afford such a luxury. I might possibly compass an Alderney calf, but we would have to wait a couple of years for our milk, and Euphemia said it would be better to have a common cow than to ...
— Rudder Grange • Frank R. Stockton

... good word," said the Harvester, "and it must mean a wonderful thing——to some men. 'Who bides his time.' Well, I'm 'biding,' and if my time ever comes to be my Dream Girl's husband, I'll wager all I'm worth on one thing. I'll study the job from every point of the compass, and I'll see what showing I can make on being the kind of a husband that a woman clings ...
— The Harvester • Gene Stratton Porter

... diversion only, proved at length an employment of profit." He is mentioned for his skill in micrography in Holinshed's Chronicle. "Hadrian Junius," says Evelyn, "speaking as a miracle of somebody who wrote the Apostles' Creed and the beginning of St John's Gospel within the compass of a farthing: what would he have said of our famous Peter Bales, who, in the year 1575, wrote the Lord's Prayer, the Creed, Decalogue, with two short prayers in Latin, his own name, motto, day of the month, year of the Lord, and reign of the queen, to whom he presented it ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 2 - "Baconthorpe" to "Bankruptcy" • Various

... words could say that she had better mind her own business, and she began to think so herself, for she muttered, "After all, what is it to me if he does like Fanny? I am bound fast, but oh, if I were free, I'd compass heaven and earth to secure him." Her wish to ...
— Tempest and Sunshine • Mary J. Holmes

... hold, that our dream-thinking is uncontrolled and undirected by the will. The will—the inhibiting and guiding power—finds rest and refreshment in sleep, while the mind, like a barque without rudder or compass, drifts aimlessly upon an uncharted sea. But curiously enough, these fantasies and inter-twistings of thought are to be found in great imaginative poems like Spenser's "Faerie Queene." Lamb was impressed by the analogy between our dream-thinking ...
— The World I Live In • Helen Keller

... in great things, it is the same in proportion with small; so that in all the trade of England, you may reckon two-thirds of it carried on upon credit; in which reckoning I suppose I speak much within compass, for in some trades there is four parts of five carried on so, ...
— The Complete English Tradesman (1839 ed.) • Daniel Defoe

... moment Kettle Flatnose stepped back a few paces, and with a mighty rush leaped right over the space in all his war gear, and alighted on the Dragon's deck within a yard of the King. It was a tremendous leap, and so nearly beyond the compass of Kettle's powers that he was scarcely able to retain his foothold, but stood for a moment on the edge of the vessel with shield and sword upheaved, as he staggered to regain his balance. Thus exposed, ...
— Erling the Bold • R.M. Ballantyne

... will it should come to pass, considering all consequences. I believe there is no person of good understanding who will venture to say, he is certain that it is impossible it should be best, taking in the whole compass and extent of existence, and all consequences in the endless series of events, that there should be such a thing as moral evil in the world. And if so, it will certainly follow, that an infinitely wise Being, who always chooses what is best, must choose that there should be such a thing. And ...
— A Theodicy, or, Vindication of the Divine Glory • Albert Taylor Bledsoe

... celebrated astronomer, Dr Edmund Halley, was appointed to the command of his majesty's ship the Paramour Pink, on an expedition for improving the knowledge of the longitude, and of the variation of the compass; and for discovering the unknown lands supposed to lie in the southern part of the Atlantic Ocean. In this voyage he determined the longitude of several places; and, after his return, constructed his variation-chart, and ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 14 • Robert Kerr

... as German girls may be expected to behave when they are frivolous and wayward. She squandered her fortune, she avenged the first Mme. Brunner by making her husband as miserable a man as you could find in the compass of the free city of Frankfort-on-the-Main, where the millionaires, it is said, are about to pass a law compelling womankind to cherish and obey them alone. She was partial to all the varieties of vinegar commonly ...
— Cousin Pons • Honore de Balzac

... for credit the merchant is guided by the record made in previous dealings. A business man's ledger is a very valuable history of credits. It is his compass in a sea of doubt. If upon the inspection of an old account it be discovered that in former years the customer paid cash and discounted his bills, and that later his method of payment was by promissory notes, and that ...
— Up To Date Business - Home Study Circle Library Series (Volume II.) • Various

... the earliest, and yet perhaps almost the completest, example of a literary anomaly which Antiquity, for all its abominations, did not know: the glorification of fidelity in adultery, the glorification of excellence within the compass of guilt. Older times —more distant from our own in spirit, though not necessarily in years—have presented us with many themes of guilt: the guilt which exists according to our own moral standard, but not according to that of the narrator, as the magnificently tragic ...
— Euphorion - Being Studies of the Antique and the Mediaeval in the - Renaissance - Vol. II • Vernon Lee

... covered with embroidered caps and flowering into crocketed spires. The window above the door is deeply niched; it opens upon a balcony made in the form of a double pulpit—one of the most charming features of the front. Chenonceaux is not large, as I say, but into its delicate compass is packed a great deal of history—history which differs from that of Amboise and Blois in being of the private and sentimental kind. The echoes of the place, faint and far as they are to-day, are not political, ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James

... soft, deep, loving eyes and her smiling mouth. Every now and then she burst into song; and then her thrilling voice, so sweet and fresh, had tones in it that only birds and good women full of love may compass. Mostly the song was a lilt or a verse which spoke for her own heart and love; but just as the clock struck three, she broke into a low laugh which ended in a merry, mocking melody, and which was evidently the conclusion of her argument concerning ...
— A Knight of the Nets • Amelia E. Barr

... tale well repays perusal; for in this epoch of his life many of his characteristic qualities were tempered and ground to the keen edge they retained throughout. Swept onward toward the trackless ocean of political chaos, the youth seemed afloat without oars or compass: in reality, his craft was well under control, and his chart correct. Whether we attribute his conduct to accident or to design, from an adventurer's point of view the instinct which made him spread his ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. I. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane

... time we returned him to his ship, the Ohio. Subsequently, I made a bargain with Mr. Hartnell to survey his ranch at Cosnmnes River, Sacramento Valley. Ord and a young citizen, named Seton, were associated with me in this. I bought of Rodman M. Price a surveyor's compass, chain, etc., and, in San Francisco, a small wagon and harness. Availing ourselves of a schooner, chartered to carry Major Miller and two companies of the Second Infantry from San Francisco to Stockton, ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan

... we, in the compass of a pale, Keep law, and form, and due proportion, Showing, as in a model, our firm estate? When our sea-walled garden, the whole land, Is full of weeds; her finest flowers choked up, Her fruit-trees all unpruned, her hedges ruined, ...
— Flowers and Flower-Gardens • David Lester Richardson

... are dead, father, said he, I hope that I shall ride in the saddle. Oh, 'tis a brave thing for a man to sit by himself! he may stretch himself in the stirrups, look about, and see the whole compass of the hemisphere. You 're now, my lord, ...
— The White Devil • John Webster

... says, 'The Notes in this Edition take in the whole Compass of Criticism. The first sort is employed in restoring the Poet's genuine Text; but in those places only where it labours with inextricable Nonsense. In which, how much soever I may have given scope to critical Conjecture, when the ...
— The Works of William Shakespeare [Cambridge Edition] [9 vols.] - Introduction and Publisher's Advertising • William Shakespeare

... light string was carefully coiled on the ground, so as to unwind with the greatest facility, and so offer as little resistance to the flight of the arrow as might be. Then, all being in readiness, Cuthbert attached the end to an arrow, and drawing the bow to its full compass, let fly the arrow. All held their breath; but no sound followed the discharge. They were sure, therefore, that the arrow had not struck the wall, but that it must have passed clear over it. Half an hour elapsed before they felt that the ...
— The Boy Knight • G.A. Henty

... of feathers were beaten out and scattered about the room. Next he climbed up the posts and balanced himself on the tester, to the no small risk of breaking that slender frame work, and injuring himself severely by a fall. Soon the compass of the room became too narrow, and the elevation of the bed-posts too trifling for his expanding ideas. He went to the window, and, opening it, looked forth. Here was a new temptation. The roof of a piazza, built out from ...
— The Iron Rule - or, Tyranny in the Household • T. S. Arthur

... the sunny side of some high mountain, there refreshing themselves with the pleasant beams of the sun, while I was shivering and shrinking in the cold, afflicted with frost, snow, and dark clouds. Methought also, betwixt me and them, I saw a wall that did compass about this mountain; now through this wall my soul did greatly desire to pass, concluding that if I could, I would even go into the very midst of them, and there also comfort myself with the heat of ...
— Life of Bunyan • Rev. James Hamilton

... Sincere the leader of them) moving simultaneously from Dresden itself, that is, from northward or northwestward; 12,000 Reichsfolk, horse and foot, part of them already to southeastward of Finck, other part stealing on by the Elbe bank thitherward: here, from three different points of the compass, are 42,000. These simultaneously dashing in, from west, north, south, upon Finck, may surely give account of his 12,000 and him! If only we can keep Friedrich dark upon it; which surely our Pandours ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle

... the promontory: but according to the winde, they draw always as neere South as they can to put themselues in the latitude of the point, which is 35 degrees and an halfe, and then they take their course towards the East, and so compass the point. But the winde serued vs so, that at 33 degrees we did direct our course toward the point or ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of - The English Nation, Vol. 11 • Richard Hakluyt

... by telling you how I read that, especially as, rather against the strict rules of your order, you use an arc and compass breastpin." ...
— The Lock And Key Library - Classic Mystery And Detective Stories, Modern English • Various

... understand Which, how we have perform'd, all ages 725 Can speak th' events of our presages Have we not lately, in the Moon, Found a New World, to the Old unknown? Discover'd sea and land, COLUMBUS And MAGELLAN cou'd never compass? 730 Made mountains with our tubes appear, And cattle grazing ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler

... tone is unbroken between the words, but in speaking it is interrupted. In singing tone is sustained and changed from one pitch to another by definite intervals over a wide compass that includes notes not attempted in speech. In speaking tone is unsustained, not defined in pitch, is limited to a narrow compass, and the length of the tones is not governed by ...
— Resonance in Singing and Speaking • Thomas Fillebrown

... was known in the settlement that Bryant had got out of reach, we learned that Detmer Smith, the master of the Waaksamheyd, had sold him a compass and a quadrant, and had furnished him with a chart, together with such information as would assist him in his passage to the northward. On searching Bryant's hut, cavities under the boards were found, where he had secured the compass and such other articles as required ...
— An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 1 • David Collins

... know you haven't done all the things I've heard about," she said bravely. "And there's always a chance. You're a man. You can find a way out. If the trails seem all twisted and tangled, you can use a compass—your own conscience, Roger. You ...
— The Coyote - A Western Story • James Roberts

... meet every appearance of danger without great concern, and not be over solicitous about the event." "I have this day signified to Mr. Pitt that he may dispose of my slight carcass as he pleases, and that I am ready for any undertaking within the reach and compass of my skill and cunning. I am in a very bad condition both with the gravel and rheumatism; but I had much rather die than decline any kind of service that offers itself: if I followed my own taste it would lead me into Germany, and if my poor talent ...
— Lectures and Essays • Goldwin Smith

... might now be stirring within her, this fact was beyond question. Also, she had come of her own free will. The foot which had dared to stamp upon the torn fragments of the Pope's mandate, had, with an equal courage, stepped aside from the way of convention and had brought her within the compass of his arms. ...
— The White Ladies of Worcester - A Romance of the Twelfth Century • Florence L. Barclay

... description he knew the place. This was Duke Morgan's ranch-house, set as a fortress almost at the mouth of the Gap. To pass it unobserved was to compass the most ticklish part of his mission, and without changing his slow pace he rode on, wondering whether a bullet, if fired from any of the low, open windows—which he could almost throw his hat into as he trotted past—would knock him off his horse or leave him a chance to spur away. But no bullet ...
— Nan of Music Mountain • Frank H. Spearman



Words linked to "Compass" :   dig, get it, sight, potentiality, archaicism, scope, achieve, compass north, sweep, apprehend, compass saw, savvy, compass flower, capableness, radio compass, get wise, catch on, gyrocompass, grok, intuit, compass plane, grasp, reach, tumble, contrast, capability, palette, ken, horizon, ballpark, cardinal compass point, archaism, get the picture, magnetic compass, circle, latitude, compass plant, attain, twig, orbit, get onto, drafting instrument, confines, purview, digest, mariner's compass



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