"Driest" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... deal while thus talking over what she was to see and do. She read every scrap she could lay her hand on which related to Rome or Florence or Venice or London. The driest details had a charm for her now that she was likely to see the real places. She went about with scraps of paper in her pocket, on which were written such things as these: "Forum. When built? By whom built? More than one?" "What does Cenacola mean?" ...
— What Katy Did Next • Susan Coolidge
... would his having friends make to her? Oh, yes, they wanted more wood. How gladly she would get it for him; search all day for the driest pieces if ...
— Rose O'Paradise • Grace Miller White
... island; one, my little fortification or tent, with the wall about it, under the rock, with the cave behind me, which, by this time, I had enlarged into several apartments or caves, one within another. One of these, which was the driest and largest, and had a door out beyond my wall or fortification, that is to say, beyond where my wall joined to the rock, was all filled up with the large earthen pots, of which I have given an account, and ...
— The Children's Hour, v 5. Stories From Seven Old Favorites • Eva March Tappan
... natural aspect of the mining belt to distinguish it from the rest of the Transvaal plateau. It is a high, dry, bare, scorched, and windy country, and Johannesburg, its centre, stands in one of the highest, driest, and windiest spots, on the south slope of the Witwatersrand ridge, whose top rises some 150 feet above the business quarters. Founded in 1886, the town has now a population exceeding 100,000, more than half of them whites. In 1896 the census (probably very imperfect) showed ...
— Impressions of South Africa • James Bryce
... boys and the girls have grown up together, playfellows from the beginning—playfellows with every thing that lives and breathes in the neighborhood; or if you will but stand where you are, and look up into the blue sky, and watch the clouds that are now drifting, as before a strong wind, over the driest and busiest thoroughfares of your crowded city; changing from shadow to sunshine, and from sunshine to shadow, every uplifted countenance over which they pass, you will find yourself at the very next breath a wiser, a better, and a happier man. You will undergo a transfiguration upon ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 5. May 1848 • Various
... his head ominously and his countenance become more and more depressed, this true friend tried to brighten him up a bit by feigning to take deep interest in a subject that to him was absolutely the driest in the world. ...
— All Around the Moon • Jules Verne
... to the forest, White Cloud. It will be a long walk for you. We need dry moss and decayed wood for tinder. Some cold morning we shall wake and find no red coals in the ashes. Then we shall need some pieces of the driest of wood to ...
— Two Indian Children of Long Ago • Frances Taylor
... rending anarchy and moaning paralysis of Italy. He had seen what Agricola had long before been spared the sight of. And what he saw, he saw not through a glass darkly or distorted, but in the whitest, driest light, without flinching and face to face. 'We are much beholden,' writes Bacon, 'to Machiavelli and others that wrote what men do, and not what they ought to do.' He did not despair of Italy, he did not despair even of Italian unity. But he despaired ...
— Machiavelli, Volume I - The Art of War; and The Prince • Niccolo Machiavelli
... if afraid of sinking. The most perfect of the polished pavements and walls lie at an elevation of from 7000 to 9000 feet above the sea, where the rock is compact silicious granite. Small dim patches may be found as low as 3000 feet on the driest and most enduring portions of sheer walls with a southern exposure, and on compact swelling bosses partially protected from rain by a covering of large boulders. On the north half of the range the striated and polished surfaces are less common, ...
— The Mountains of California • John Muir
... the generation now passing away. Still at such a time as this it is interesting to make some endeavor to estimate the value of what Mr. Mill has done in the way of criticism. It is at least worth while to examine whether one who has shown himself capable of grappling effectively with the driest and most abstruse problems that vex the human intellect was versatile enough to study poetry with an understanding heart, and to be alive to the ...
— John Stuart Mill; His Life and Works • Herbert Spencer, Henry Fawcett, Frederic Harrison and Other
... the bare rock, out o' some crack that just holds the roots;" she went on to say, "right on the pitch o' one o' them bare stony hills where you can't seem to see a wheel-barrowful o' good earth in a place, but that tree'll keep a green top in the driest summer. You lay your ear down to the ground an' you'll hear a little stream runnin'. Every such tree has got its own livin' spring; there's folk ...
— The Country of the Pointed Firs • Sarah Orne Jewett
... "seems to be the driest and the wettest, in parts, of any country; and all its great rivers, except the Nile, ...
— In Search of the Okapi - A Story of Adventure in Central Africa • Ernest Glanville
... on a heavy shower of rain which penetrated the canvas, and made it nearly as uncomfortable inside, as it would have been out. We were not prepared to catch water, having nothing to put it in. Our next object was to get fire, and after gathering some of the driest fuel to be found, and having a small piece of cotton wick-yarn, with flint and steel, we kindled a fire, which was never afterwards suffered to be extinguished. The night was very dark, but we found a piece of old rope, which when well lighted served for a candle. On examining ...
— The Pirates Own Book • Charles Ellms
... a theodicy, and who, for instance, regards the whole of man's existence as a punishment for sin or a process of purification. At this stage, and in this embarrassing position, Strauss even suggests a metaphysical hypothesis—the driest and most palsied ever conceived—and, in reality, but an unconscious parody of one of Lessing's sayings. We read on page 255: "And that other saying of Lessing's— 'If God, holding truth in His right hand, and in His left only the ever-living ...
— Thoughts out of Season (Part One) • Friedrich Nietzsche
... with an important air. "Are you all ready? This is the driest thing I know. Silence all round, if you please! 'William the Conqueror, whose cause was favoured by the pope, was soon submitted to by the English, who wanted leaders, and had been of late much accustomed to ...
— Alice's Adventures in Wonderland - Illustrated by Arthur Rackham. With a Proem by Austin Dobson • Lewis Carroll
... it. And this actually happens with English literature: by having the so-called standard works thrust upon them too early, and then only in a fragmentary form, not fresh and whole, but cut up into the very driest hay, the young too often neglect in after-life the very books which then might become the guides of their taste. Hence proceed in the minds of the young sudden and irregular revulsions of affection for different schools of writing: and all revolutions ...
— Literary and General Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... snapping turtles floating down stream in fly-time. Certainly not! I'm getting old—of course I am; that's the talk! I've been in office too long. Well, well, I know I'm rather asthmatic and phthisicky—but nobody ever knowed me to suck, even in the driest time. These living waters have welled up even from the time when the salt sea was divided from the land, and the rocks were cloven by the hand of Omnipotence, and the sweet spring came bursting upward from the fragrant earth, and light and flowers came together to welcome ...
— The Three Brides, Love in a Cottage, and Other Tales • Francis A. Durivage
... impulse on the part of the will, are almost a physical necessity. Sometimes, however, the lower animals entertain me much more than the average man. For, in the first place, what can such a man say? It is only conceptions, that is, the driest of ideas, that can be communicated by means of words; and what sort of conceptions has the average man to communicate, if he does not merely tell a story or give a report, neither of which makes conversation? The greatest charm of conversation is the mimetic part of it,—the character that is ...
— The Essays of Arthur Schopenhauer; The Art of Controversy • Arthur Schopenhauer
... to May are calves to be reared, because then they be more hardly bred and become the stronger cattle. Feed brawns, bacons, lards, and porkets on mast if there is any, if not on corn. 'In these months cleanse poundes or pools, this season being the driest;' an extraordinary assertion, unless the climate has changed, seeing that according to the monthly averages from 1841-1906, taken at the Royal Observatory, Greenwich, October is the ...
— A Short History of English Agriculture • W. H. R. Curtler
... cut down timber, to make Ulysses a ship. They obeyed, though in a work unsuitable to their soft fingers, yet to obedience no sacrifice is hard: and Ulysses busily bestirred himself, labouring far more hard than they, as was fitting, till twenty tall trees, driest and fittest for timber, were felled. Then like a skilful shipwright, he fell to joining the planks, using the plane, the axe, and the auger, with such expedition, that in four days' time a ship was made, complete with all her decks, hatches, side-boards, yards. Calypso added ...
— Books for Children - The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 3 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... we believe that if Professor Huxley were to become the President of the Social Science Association, or of the International Statistical Congress, he would still be amusing, so much bottled life does he infuse into the driest topic on which human beings ever ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 2 • Leonard Huxley
... disappeared, leaving me in a dense gloom, strongly pervaded by an odour of fungus and decaying onions. Groping into one of the casks, I found some straw, and spreading it on a piece of plank, I prepared to pass the night sitting with my back to the driest piece of wall I could find, which happened to be immediately under the airhole, a fortunate circumstance, as the closeness was often stifling. I had probably been dozing for some time in a sitting position, when I felt something ...
— Fashionable Philosophy - and Other Sketches • Laurence Oliphant
... observations from the summit of the Cuyamaca, in San Diego County, 6500 feet above the sea-level, "how land thus rising a mile or more in fifty or sixty miles, rising away from the coast, and falling off abruptly a mile deep into the driest and hottest of American deserts, could have a great variety of climates.... Only ten miles away on the east the summers are the hottest, and only sixty miles on the west the coolest known in the United States ...
— Our Italy • Charles Dudley Warner
... reader, though he may wonder at its discursiveness, will find the argument pretty free from polemic. Any one who has inherited a library of 17th century theology will agree with me that, of all dust, the ashes of dead controversies afford the driest. ...
— On The Art of Reading • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... was remarkably sweet. This was possibly caused by the hot and fiery constitution of his body; for sweet scents are produced, according to Theophrastus, by heat acting upon moisture. For this reason the hottest and driest regions of the earth produce the most aromatic perfumes, because the sun dries up that moisture which causes most substances ...
— Plutarch's Lives Volume III. • Plutarch
... begin to rattle and break into pieces as the wind blows against them. Although they keep their greenness, they act like the driest leaves of autumn. ...
— Common Science • Carleton W. Washburne
... veritable history amongst the people of Greece, it sustained attack after attack, first from ancient then from modern criticism, and has been gradually denuded of all its glorious circumstance, till now, even for those who are most willing to believe, there remains the driest, scantiest residue imaginable of what may be pronounced to be probable fact. Herodotus, with all his veneration for Homer, could not assent to attribute the Trojan war to the cause popularly assigned: he seems to have been of the opinion of our Payne ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, No. 382, October 1847 • Various
... thou now, Sigurd! and in thy gain rejoicing, while Gram, in the grass thou driest. My brother thou to death hast wounded, yet in some degree was ...
— The Elder Eddas of Saemund Sigfusson; and the Younger Eddas of Snorre Sturleson • Saemund Sigfusson and Snorre Sturleson
... of food, to raise fifteen pounds, appeared to him an insult—which probably it was not meant to be. Mr. Henson, the printer and bookseller, had very little knowledge of the actual state of his correspondent, and looking upon the whole scheme of publishing poetry as the driest matter of business, addressed Clare as he would have any other customer. This, however, was not the way in which the deeply-distressed poet viewed the proceedings. He gave way to his feelings in a very angry letter, after ...
— The Life of John Clare • Frederick Martin
... used ignores most of the continent out of sight of Melbourne and Sydney, though both Victoria and New South Wales could be stowed away in little more than half the area of Queensland. Do we reflect that Australia includes some of the driest tracts in the world, as well as areas in which the rainfall approaches the phenomenal—that not very much more than half of the territory of the Commonwealth lies within the temperate zone—that there are as marked differences between Tasmania and North ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... continent, extending century by century until a large portion of the now open sea became blocked up with solid ice. If the change was gradual and the snow became deeper each winter and lasted longer, an intelligent, gregarious, and exceedingly hardy and active animal like the huanaco, able to exist on the driest woody fibres, would stand the beat chance of maintaining its existence in such altered conditions, and would form new habits to meet the new danger. One would be that at the approach of a period of deep snow and deadly cold, all the herds frequenting one place would gather ...
— The Naturalist in La Plata • W. H. Hudson
... was the length of it, for I drew out pieces of it near fifty feet long, and even they were broken at the end, so that it might be as long again for aught I know, for it was so matted and twisted together, that it was a great trial of patience to untangle it; but that which was driest, and to me looked the rottenest and weakest, I found to be much the strongest. Upon examination of its parts, I discovered it to be composed of an infinite number of small threads, spirally ...
— Life And Adventures Of Peter Wilkins, Vol. I. (of II.) • Robert Paltock
... It chooses a soft place in a bank, where, at first, it can dig up, so that it will not be disturbed by water. Its home has several entrances, so that, if pursued, it can escape by running in or out. In one of its driest rooms it makes its nest of dried grass; and here it stays in stormy weather, only coming ...
— Friends in Feathers and Fur, and Other Neighbors - For Young Folks • James Johonnot
... its broad, fan-shaped crown of leaves is caught, and runs down the grooved stalks of the plant into receptacles that cunning Nature has fashioned just where the stalk meets the trunk. Even in the driest weather, these little natural tanks will, if gashed with a knife, yield nearly a tumblerful of pure sweet water, whence the popular name for the tree. A certain dull M.P., on his travels, had come down to Barrackpore for Sunday, and inquired eagerly whether there were any Travellers' ...
— The Days Before Yesterday • Lord Frederick Hamilton
... their house, having had a shell in the room we lived in, which had blown it even more to bits than before. I went to our new abode, and then on to the trenches to see how everything was doing, and got wet half way to the knees in the driest parts; but I am glad to say they are steadily improving things for us Regimental officers. I was in bed between 2 and 3 a.m., rose again at 3.30, and finally, of course, just about 5 a.m. for good. My feet ...
— Letters of Lt.-Col. George Brenton Laurie • George Brenton Laurie
... Farmer Brown's boy that he must be dreaming. He never, never had seen anything like this before, not even in the very driest weather of the hottest part of the summer. He looked this way and looked that way. The Green Meadows looked just as usual. The Green Forest looked just as usual. The Laughing Brook—ha! What was the matter with the ...
— The Adventures of Paddy the Beaver • Thornton W. Burgess
... sheathing below the waterline the ship was liable to be sunk by the terrible worm which, in Hakluyt's phrase, "many times pearceth and eateth through the strongest oake." For want of vegetable food in the larder, or anything save the driest of bread and beef stiffened with brine, the sailors were sure to be attacked by scurvy, and in a very long voyage the crew was deemed fortunate that did not lose half its number from that foul disease. Often in traversing unknown seas the sturdy men who survived all other perils were ...
— The Discovery of America Vol. 1 (of 2) - with some account of Ancient America and the Spanish Conquest • John Fiske
... mere high rough masses of hillocks (HULLEN); between them the water settled, and had no flow. In the driest years we couldn't cart the hay out, but had to put it up in big ricks. Only in winter, when the frost was sharp, could we get it home. But now we have cut away the hillocks; and the trenches that your Majesty got made ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Appendix - Frederick The Great—A Day with Friedrich.—(23d July, 1779.) • Thomas Carlyle
... head winds and heavy weather through another wild stretch of country. The next camping place was in a sort of circular basin that had been cut out of the prairie by the floods, and was surrounded by high mud banks. He found plenty of drift in the eddy and picked out the driest; but experienced great difficulty in starting a fire with it. He only succeeded in getting sufficient heat to cook his supper; he was not able to coax enough blaze to warm himself. Night came down black as ink and he heard the distant yell of a coyote which ...
— The Story of Paul Boyton - Voyages on All the Great Rivers of the World • Paul Boyton
... colour an exquisitely clear purple in the upper petals, gradated into deep blue in the lower ones; the centre, gold. Not larger than a violet, but perfectly formed, and firmly set in all its petals. Able to live in the driest ground; beautiful in the coast sand-hills of Cumberland, following the wild geranium and burnet rose: and distinguished thus by its power of life, in waste and dry places, from the violet, which ...
— Proserpina, Volume 2 - Studies Of Wayside Flowers • John Ruskin
... beautifully, and Jack and I went out on the river to catch what might be caught. Jack's joyful excitement was extreme at my announcing to him the fact that Mr. —— had consented to try ploughing on some of the driest portions of the island instead of the slow and laborious process of hoeing the fields; this is a disinterested exultation on his part, for at any rate as long as I am here, he will certainly be nothing but 'my boy Jack,' and I should think after my departure will never be degraded to the rank ...
— Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation - 1838-1839 • Frances Anne Kemble
... severe earthquakes, active volcanism, tsunami; Atacama Desert one of world's driest ...
— The 1990 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... this, the men went to work in earnest. In a short time the snow was cleared away or beat down compactly over a space some yards in extent along the side of the rock, while the others soon returned with a supply of the driest wood to be found, together with an armfull of hemlock boughs, to strew over the beaten snow. The next thing requiring their attention was the all-important object of starting a fire. But in this they were doomed to sad disappointment. Their punk-wood ...
— Gaut Gurley • D. P. Thompson
... name from the rock-shelter may be further illustrated. The word osh ten comes from o sho nan te, the condition of being dusky, dank, or mildewy; clearly descriptive of a cavern, but not of the most open, best lighted, and driest room in ...
— A Study of Pueblo Pottery as Illustrative of Zuni Culture Growth. • Frank Hamilton Cushing
... sun was Sasasquit; and about his business he went. He built the fire of sacrifice, piling it high with the driest trees of the forest, and he laid thereon the best offering he could procure—a fat fish from the river beside his cabin. He sung as before a song or invocation, in which he mentioned the wants of the wretched ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 1 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... increase is the weather. The eggs hatch underground and the immature prawns dig their way out in the spring. If there's been a lot of rain, most of them drown in their holes or as soon as they emerge. According to growth rings on trees, last spring was the driest in the Beta Piedmont in centuries, so most of them survived, and as they're parthenogenetic females, they all laid eggs. This spring, it was even drier, so now they have land prawns all over central Beta. And I don't know that anything can be done ...
— Little Fuzzy • Henry Beam Piper
... bridge is in the county of Rockbridge, to which it has given name, and affords a public and commodious passage over a valley, which cannot be crossed elsewhere for a considerable distance. The stream passing under it is called Cedar Creek: it is a water of James's River, and sufficient in the driest seasons to turn a grist mill, though its fountain is not more than ...
— Theory of the Earth, Volume 2 (of 4) • James Hutton
... made by this dike the valley was bedded up with sand and large gravel washed down by the torrential rush of spring freshets. Below it the same wild floods, leaping down in a twenty-foot fall, had gouged out a pothole so wide and deep that it was never empty of water even in the driest seasons. ...
— Out of the Depths - A Romance of Reclamation • Robert Ames Bennet
... the Mission houses. She thought these should be as simple as possible, and semi-native in style; such, she believed, to be the driest and most healthy. In any case disease could come into a house costing L200, as into one costing L20, and "there was such a thing as God's providence." Still, she recognised the importance of preserving the health of newcomers, and admitted that her ideas might not apply to ...
— Mary Slessor of Calabar: Pioneer Missionary • W. P. Livingstone
... Querouaille), and later was the school of Dr. Elphinstone, referred to in Boswell's "Life of Johnson," and supposed, on the very slightest grounds, to have been the original of one of Smollett's brutal schoolmasters in "Roderick Random"; though the driest of pedagogues, Elphinstone was the reverse of brutal. The house was subsequently a Roman Catholic seminary, and then a boarding-house, where Mrs. Inchbald lodged, and in which she died ...
— The Kensington District - The Fascination of London • Geraldine Edith Mitton
... their light and inflammable dresses with the blankets of the party. So soon as this precaution was observed, the old man approached the opposite margin of the grass, which still environed them in a tall and dangerous circle, and selecting a handful of the driest of the herbage he placed it over the pan of his rifle. The light combustible kindled at the flash. Then he placed the little flame in a bed of the standing fog, and withdrawing from the spot to the centre of the ring, he ...
— The Prairie • J. Fenimore Cooper
... the relative humidity attains its maximum in winter, in the months of July and August, with a mean of 90 per cent. The driest air occurs in the spring month of November, with a mean of 73 per cent. The remaining months vary between 79 and 86 per cent., and the mean of the whole ten months is 82 per cent. The variations ...
— The South Pole, Volumes 1 and 2 • Roald Amundsen
... highest, and driest continent; during summer more solar radiation reaches the surface at the South Pole than is received at the Equator in an equivalent period; ...
— The 1995 CIA World Factbook • United States Central Intelligence Agency
... revive the study in England—although no genius could galvanise the corpse of legal studies at the Cambridge of those days into activity. Maine, as Fitzjames says, 'made in the most beautiful manner applications of history and philosophy to Roman law, and transfigured one of the driest of subjects into all sorts of beautiful things without knowing or caring much about details.' He was also able to 'sniff at Bentham' for his ignorance in this direction. 'I rebelled against Maine for many ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... crossed Ontario in a bark canoe, even when there has been a good deal of sea on. Well managed, they are the driest boats of which ...
— The Pathfinder - The Inland Sea • James Fenimore Cooper
... its driest twist. "Bumptious young devil!" he said. "If that is the new young man, ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... atmosphere. In Aru, for example, when we left, the little streams were all dried up, although the weather was gloomy; while in January, February, and March, when we had the hottest sunshine and the finest days, they were always flowing. The driest time of all the year in Aru occurs in September and October, just as it does in Java and Celebes. The rainy seasons agree, therefore, with those of the western islands, although the weather is very different. The Molucca sea is ...
— The Malay Archipelago - Volume II. (of II.) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... cold. It lays no bodily handicap on health and energy, as does the excessive heat of the Tropics. The coldest regions where tillage is possible are tolerable places of residence, because their winters are intensely dry. That of central Siberia, which is drier than the driest desert, makes tent life comfortable in the coldest season, provided the tenter be clad in furs. The low temperatures of the Canadian Northwest for the same reason have not repelled settlers even from the Southern States. Negroes, however, meet a climatic barrier in America at the ...
— Influences of Geographic Environment - On the Basis of Ratzel's System of Anthropo-Geography • Ellen Churchill Semple
... his former place at Pamalombe; there he had maize at the different stages of growth throughout the year. To us, however, he seemed, by digging holes, and taking advantage of the moisture beneath, to have succeeded pretty well in raising crops at this the driest time. The Makololo remarked that "here the maize had no season,"—meaning that the whole year was proper for its growth and ripening. By irrigation a succession of crops of grain might be raised anywhere within the south ...
— A Popular Account of Dr. Livingstone's Expedition to the Zambesi and Its Tributaries • David Livingstone
... thou tiest, To the curtain string, Though the things thou driest Gird me while I sing, Hankies and inventions Of the lacy tribe— Things I may not mention, Let ...
— Tobogganing On Parnassus • Franklin P. Adams
... round them? or because Gold lies along the shallows of the world, And vile hands gather it? My song shall rise, Although none heed or hear it: rise it shall, And swell along the wastes of Nineveh And Babylon, until it reach to thee, Layard! who raisest cities from the dust, Who driest Lethe up amid her shades, And pourest a fresh stream on arid sands, And rescuest thrones and nations, fanes and gods, From conquering Time: he sees thee, and turns back. The weak and slow Power pushes past the wise, And lifts them ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various
... under a burning cloudless sky, no soft gradations between the greens and the blues. The little pools or perforations breaking the surface of the broad platform, acres of rocks, are, I believe, unexplained phenomena. In the driest season these openings contain water, presumably forced upwards from hidden springs. The pools, just now covered with green slime, curiously spot the grey surface ...
— East of Paris - Sketches in the Gatinais, Bourbonnais, and Champagne • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... and I was quite carried away by it." This was on October 15th; nearly six weeks after, on November 23rd, she made to her assembled Privy Council the formal declaration of her intended marriage. There is something particularly touching in even the driest description of this scene; the betrothed bride wearing a simple morning dress, having on her arm a bracelet containing Prince Albert's portrait, which helped to give her courage; her voice, as she read the declaration clear, sweet, and penetrating as ever, but her hands trembling so excessively ...
— Great Britain and Her Queen • Anne E. Keeling
... trunk of the tree. The spherical-shaped exterior is a mass of interwoven twigs, so carefully placed as to afford ample protection against rain or snow; leaves and grasses are stuffed inside, while the little bed where the squirrel nestles and takes its nap is of the softest and driest moss. In this pretty snuggery five or six little squirrels are born early in the warm weather. The mother is very watchful and very affectionate. If any wicked boys disturb her, or a natural enemy, some beast or bird of prey, comes near, she takes her ...
— Harper's Young People, January 6, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... Then I laid myself down to rest on the coast of Zealand, near Borreby, where there stood the forest and the charming meadows. The young men from the neighbourhood assembled there, and collected brushwood and branches of trees, the largest and driest they could find. They carried them to the village, laid them in a heap, and set fire to it; then they and the village girls sang and ...
— The Sand-Hills of Jutland • Hans Christian Andersen
... swollen by the melting snow, was overflowing the stone curb, and reached out in a thin sheet as it started down hill. The countess stopped, afraid of wetting her feet. The painter went ahead, putting his feet in the driest places, taking her hand to guide her, and she followed him, laughing at the obstacle ...
— Woman Triumphant - (La Maja Desnuda) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... from the bottom, they become flatter and flatter, and drier, until the outer surface layer becomes thin, fine, dry, slightly greasy scales, like fish-scales, of about the thickness of the very finest and driest bran. ...
— A Handbook of Health • Woods Hutchinson
... a while—watching Friedland with small sharp eyes. He had come there to discuss a new edition of Sidonius Apollinaris,—was himself one of the driest and acutest of investigators. All this talk for babes seemed to him the merest ...
— Helbeck of Bannisdale, Vol. II • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... were only like him there would be nothing wanting in my life," she thought regretfully. "I should have felt much a pride in a husband's fame, I should have worked so gladly to assist him in his career. The driest blue-books would not have been too weary for me—the dullest drudgery of parliamentary detail would have been pleasant work, if it could have helped him in his progress to ...
— Vixen, Volume III. • M. E. Braddon
... use the old slang, like a thorough "glutton," and honestly enjoys a telling facer from his adversary. Cockshot is bottled effervescency, the sworn foe of sleep. Three- in-the-morning Cockshot, says a victim. His talk is like the driest of all imaginable dry champagnes. Sleight of hand and inimitable quickness are the qualities by which he lives. Athelred, on the other hand, presents you with the spectacle of a sincere and somewhat slow nature thinking aloud. He is the most unready man I ever knew ...
— Memories and Portraits • Robert Louis Stevenson
... cataracts. I know the Egyptians say the water will be too low for the boats to go up. That may be true enough as to the native boats, but ours draw so little water that I believe there must always be depth enough for them, for there is always a good lot of water coming down here even at the driest season." ...
— The Dash for Khartoum - A Tale of Nile Expedition • George Alfred Henty
... tale of Debi Sing in Rungpore, to the learning, positiveness and cool judicial mastery of the Report on the Lords' Journals (1794), which Philip Francis, no mean judge, declared on the whole to be the "most eminent and extraordinary" of all his productions. But even in the coolest and driest of his pieces there is the mark of greatness, of grasp, of comprehension. In all its varieties Burke's style is noble, earnest, deep-flowing, because his sentiment was lofty and fervid, and went with sincerity and ardent disciplined travail of judgment. He had the style of his subjects; ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... (driest), two pounds; water, one-third pint; butter, two ounces, melted; flavor with maple flavor; boil to a ball, cream in the pan. Pour ...
— One Thousand Secrets of Wise and Rich Men Revealed • C. A. Bogardus
... awhile in quiet. I struck out across this piece of very desolate country, with little bushes growing but no grass, not good for pasture nor for anything but one purpose which I didn't then suspect. Soon I found myself walking along a ditch which kept cutting me off from the hill, a ditch in the driest of sandy land and as deep as my chin, all shored up with cut poles, or sometimes with plank, or with bundles of twigs, or with willow basket work. And then I saw it ...
— At Plattsburg • Allen French
... thus produced several sparks of fire. "This," said Harry, "will be sufficient to light a fire, if we can but find something of a sufficiently combustible nature to kindle from these sparks." He then collected the driest leaves he could find, with little decayed pieces of wood, and piling them into a heap, endeavoured to kindle a blaze by the sparks which he continually struck from his knife and the flint. But it was in vain; the leaves were not of a sufficiently ...
— The History of Sandford and Merton • Thomas Day
... with meaner tombs. It stands conspicuously alone, but will be soon overshadowed by four lately planted laurels. Petrarch's fountain, for here every thing is Petrarch's, springs and expands itself beneath an artificial arch, a little below the church, and abounds plentifully, in the driest season, with that soft water which was the ancient wealth of the Euganean Hills. It would be more attractive, were it not, in some seasons, beset with hornets and wasps. No other coincidence could assimilate ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XVII. No. 469. Saturday January 1, 1831 • Various
... more urgently needed. I cannot treat of science here, but I fully subscribe to the belief that a general knowledge of science is essential. But the result of our believing that it is advisable to know so much, is that we attempt to spread the thinnest and driest paste of knowledge over the mind, and all the vivid life of it evaporates in the process. The thing is, frankly, far too big to attempt; and, we must henceforth set our faces against the attainment; of mere knowledge ...
— Cambridge Essays on Education • Various
... to pick out the one that talks the most, so that she'll tell the neighbours all about you. Don't worry about that, though, they all talk. When you've moved In, stock up your room with about twenty of the driest-looking books in the world—law books look most imposing; fix up a table with lots of stationery—pens and pencils, red and black ink and all that sort of thing; make the room look as if you were the most sincere ...
— The Fortune Hunter • Louis Joseph Vance
... if possible, only at the cost of mental and spiritual dislocation. But, with all this, there was not in her a trace of the assumption of a religious superiority which I have so often found in the driest non-conformist, or the putting me apart with the creatures that perish and are doomed which I have oftener found in Catholic friends, with whom I have felt that they regarded me with a sort of pitiful friendship, as one certain to be damned, and so only worth a limited ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume I • Stillman, William James
... in circuit about fiue and twentie or thirtie miles, and is the driest Island in the world: for there is nothing growing in it but onely salte; for their water, wood, or victuals, and all things necessary came but of Persia, which is about twelue miles from thence. All the Illands thereabout be very fruitful, from ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, - and Discoveries of The English Nation, Volume 10 - Asia, Part III • Richard Hakluyt
... earth looked but to the future, and that the study of the classics, however essential, is but the ground work for combining and working out the problems of the future. He was epigrammatic, terse, and gifted with a quaint humour, with which he was apt, even when in the driest philosophy, to drive ...
— The Blind Spot • Austin Hall and Homer Eon Flint
... I departed from Nyamee; but the country was so deluged, that I was frequently in danger of losing the road, and had to wade across the savannahs for miles together, knee deep in water. Even the corn ground, which is the driest land in the country, was so completely flooded, that my horse twice stuck fast in the mud, and was not got out without the ...
— Life and Travels of Mungo Park in Central Africa • Mungo Park
... possible term. It has no flat leaves with expanded blades, to wither and die in the scorching desert air; but in their stead the thick and jointed stems do the same work—absorb carbon from the carbonic acid of the air, and store up water in the driest of seasons. Then, to repel the attacks of herbivores, who would gladly get at the juicy morsel if they could, the foliage has been turned into sharp defensive spines and prickles. The cactus is tenacious of life to a wonderful degree; ...
— Falling in Love - With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science • Grant Allen
... heat, than cold." This sentence of his will agree with that of Heraclitus, a dry light makes a wise mind, temperate heat and dryness are the chief causes of a good wit; therefore, saith Aelian, an elephant is the wisest of all brute beasts, because his brain is driest, et ob atrae, bilis capiam: this reason Cardan approves, subtil. l. 12. Jo. Baptista Silvaticus, a physician of Milan, in his first controversy, hath copiously handled this question: Rulandus in his problems, Caelius Rhodiginus, lib. 17. Valleriola 6to. narrat. ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... between the sessions of a caucus and give a racy abstract of the landscape. It may consume the best hours of many days to certify for one's self the simplest out-door fact, but every such piece of knowledge is intellectually worth the time. Even the driest and barest book of Natural History is good and nutritious, so far as it goes, if it represents genuine acquaintance; one can find summer in January by poring over the Latin catalogues of Massachusetts plants and animals in Hitchcock's Report. The most commonplace out-door society has the same ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 47, September, 1861 • Various
... after a debauch; and this course of life made him cold in love, but passionate and angry, which argues a hot constitution. And some report his sweat was fragrant and perfumed his clothes; which is another argument of heat, as we see the hottest and driest climates bear frankincense and cassia; for a fragrant smell, as Theophrastus thinks, proceeds from a due concoction of the humors, when the noxious moisture is conquered by the heat. And it is thought probable, that he took a pique at Calisthenes for ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
... bring one into an intimate relationship with his subject. A man of vast technical learning, he is still so interested in the relation of his facts to the problems of men that he is always able to infuse life into the driest of subjects, in other words, to HUMANIZE his knowledge; and in the estimation of Matthew Arnold, this is the true work of the scholar, the ...
— Autobiography and Selected Essays • Thomas Henry Huxley
... through, and a new hat had become a ruin, and still Oxford Street seemed as far off as ever; it was with deep relief that the dripping man caught sight of a dark archway which seemed to promise shelter from the rain if not from the wind. Salisbury took up his position in the driest corner and looked about him; he was standing in a kind of passage contrived under part of a house, and behind him stretched a narrow footway leading between blank walls to regions unknown. He had stood there for some time, vainly endeavouring to rid himself of some of his superfluous ...
— The House of Souls • Arthur Machen
... tone which tells that the heat of the day is over. There is not a cloud in the blue—not even one of those beautiful white filamentary things, like ghosts of silken floss, which usually swim in this most ethereal of earthly skies even in the driest weather. ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan - First Series • Lafcadio Hearn
... the very thought of any New York woman in love. There was only one woman who knew what the word meant and she was in Gunsight, Arizona. He picked up her letter and scanned it again, but his eyes had not learned to look for love. Even the driest formula, sent from one to another, may spell out that magic word; may spell it unconsciously and against the will, if the heart but rules the hand. Mary Fortune had told him in that briefest of messages that she was back in Gunsight again; and furthermore, if he wished to see her, he ...
— Rimrock Jones • Dane Coolidge
... to the grave have gone, And the waiting-women are here and are there, With birds at the windows and gleams of the sun Making the chamber of death to be fair. And under and over the mist unlaps, And ruby and amethyst burn through the gray, And driest bushes grow green with spray, And the dimpled water ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 118, August, 1867 • Various
... thrown together without system, and showing no signs of a plateau. They are parted by creek-valleys, gulches, and gullies, thick with tangled vegetation and varying in depth from a few feet to two and even three hundred. Many of them carry water even in the driest season. The country is remarkably like that behind Cape Coast Castle, where the Home Government, during the last Ashanti war (1873-74), proposed to ...
— To The Gold Coast for Gold, Vol. II - A Personal Narrative • Richard Francis Burton and Verney Lovett Cameron
... who understand how to read and to read with ease, but to whom books—at any rate certain classes of books—are not interesting. Now interest in a subject may be so great that one will wade through the driest literature about it, but such interest belongs to the few—not to the many. I have come to the conclusion that more readers have had their interest killed or lessened by books than have had it aroused or stimulated. ...
— A Librarian's Open Shelf • Arthur E. Bostwick
... wildly asking one another what the row is about; Raimondo, the pope's legate, comes on, and in the name of holy mother church begs for peace; Rienzi, waked by this time, sees what has occurred, and in a speech—uttered mainly in the driest of dry recitative—taunts the patricians with their bad conduct and their reckless readiness to break all the vows they have made. The nobles announce their intention of going elsewhere to fight out their quarrel to the bitter end, and they go. Rienzi beseeches the crowd to ...
— Richard Wagner - Composer of Operas • John F. Runciman
... the driest manner; "especially to your sisters. However this is no time to joke. I fear you will get the worst of it, John. Do you know a man of about Gwenny's shape, nearly as broad as he is long, but about six times the size of Gwenny, and with a length of snow-white hair, and a thickness ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... been the day before. He did not waste much time in consideration, having made up his mind on the previous visit as to which part of the rock he would drive the hole through. Sticking his last candle, therefore, against the driest part of the wall that could be found, he seized ...
— Deep Down, a Tale of the Cornish Mines • R.M. Ballantyne
... humidity of the atmosphere is defined as the degree of its approach to saturation. Air completely saturated is represented by 100, and that absolutely free of vapour by 0. As a matter of fact, however, the latter never occurs; even in the driest regions of Arabia a humidity of 10 per cent. is almost unknown. For its estimation the Wet and Dry Bulb thermometers are employed. These consist of two ordinary thermometers. One has its bulb exposed so as to register ...
— The Art of Living in Australia • Philip E. Muskett (?-1909)
... the west, and Resht on the north to the capital, is now Kazvin's sole importance. The road to Teheran was made some years ago at enormous expense by the Shah; but it has now, in true Persian style, been left to fall into decay. It is only in the finest and driest weather that the journey can be made on wheels, and this was naturally out of the question for us. A railway was mooted some time since along this, the only respectable carriage-road in Persia—but the ...
— A Ride to India across Persia and Baluchistan • Harry De Windt
... the entrance of the place. More within, on the driest part of the ground, lay a child asleep. Between them were scattered some withered branches and decayed leaves, which were arranged as if to form a fire. In many parts this scanty collection of fuel was slightly blackened; but, wetted as ...
— Antonina • Wilkie Collins
... on an amphora. The intrinsic beauty of the objects, and the light they shed on one of the most brilliant phases of human history, were in fact sufficient to justify the prevailing ardour; and the reconstructive habit he had acquired from Crescenti lent a living interest to the driest discussion between ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton |
