"Powdery" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... day the twins were taken around the woods by the driver or some of the lumbermen who were not busy. They saw big trees cut down, but were careful not to get in the way of the great, swaying trunks. They played in the piles of sawdust, jumping off powdery wood. ...
— The Bobbsey Twins in the Great West • Laura Lee Hope
... an eye-witness of the appearance. 'I observed,' says he, 'the beautiful effect of the drifted snow upon the mountains, and the perfect tone of colour. From the top of the mountains downwards a rich olive was produced by the powdery snow and the grass, which olive was warmed with a little brown, and in this way harmoniously combined, by insensible gradations, with the white. The drifting took away the monotony of snow; and the whole vale of ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... but I, And footprints one by one, Zigzaggedly, Where I had run; Where shrill and powdery A robin sat ...
— Collected Poems 1901-1918 in Two Volumes - Volume I. • Walter de la Mare
... punch or vinegar, as, being largely calcium carbonate they are very easily acted upon by acids, and a mere touch with an acid might ruin the surface luster. Being partly organic in nature, pearls are not everlasting, but must eventually decay, as is shown by the powdery condition of very old pearls that have been found with mummies or in ancient ruins. The organic matter has yielded to bacterial attack and decayed, leaving only the powdery mineral matter behind. As heat and moisture are the conditions most conducive to the growth of bacteria, and ...
— A Text-Book of Precious Stones for Jewelers and the Gem-Loving Public • Frank Bertram Wade
... you down like a bird. Why, you looked just like a Malay. Mark, what have you been doing, sir? rubbing your powdery hands all over ...
— Mother Carey's Chicken - Her Voyage to the Unknown Isle • George Manville Fenn
... Schw.—The mealy agaric, or powdery amanita, is a pretty little species. It was first collected and described from North Carolina by de Schweinitz (Synop. fung. Car. No. 552, 1822), and the specimens illustrated in Fig. 78 were collected by me at Blowing Rock, N. C., during September, 1899. Peck has given in the 33rd Report ...
— Studies of American Fungi. Mushrooms, Edible, Poisonous, etc. • George Francis Atkinson
... set-up men, than the sons of the farmhouse of Drumquhat. Many a morning, ere the eldest son of the house rose from his bed in the black dark to look to the sheep, before lighting his candle he brushed off from the coverlet a full arm-sweep of powdery snow. It was a sign of Walter's emancipation from boyhood when he insisted on leaving his mother's cosy little wall-chamber and climbing up the ladder with the boys to their "laft" under the eaves. Nevertheless, it went with a sudden pang to the mother's heart to think that never more should she ...
— Bog-Myrtle and Peat - Tales Chiefly Of Galloway Gathered From The Years 1889 To 1895 • S.R. Crockett
... greatest difficulty. Their tongues were out, their legs spread, spasmodically their eyes rolled back to show the whites, from time to time one or another of them uttered a strangled, moaning bellow. They were white with the powdery dust, as were their yokes, the wagons, and the men who plodded doggedly alongside. Finally, they stopped. The dust eddied by; and the blasting sun fell ...
— The Killer • Stewart Edward White
... gazed ruefully at the white sandbags and an army ration of cheese rolled up in a paper on which blow-flies were congregating. Chalk was all over the place, the dug-outs were dug out of chalk, the sandbags were filled with chalk, every bullet, bomb and shell whirled showers of fine powdery chalk into the air, chalk frittered away from the parapets fell down into our mess-tins as we drank our tea, the rain-wet chalk melted to milk and whitened the barrels and actions (p. 245) of our rifles where they stood on the banquette, bayonets ...
— The Red Horizon • Patrick MacGill
... treeless ridge, she emerged on that high altar on which, not twenty-four hours earlier, he had sunk face downward in the snow. The snow had drifted again over his footprints and the mark of his form. It was drifting still, in little powdery whirls, across a surface that caught tints of crimson and glints of fire from an angry sunset. It was windy here. As she stood above him, facing the north, her figure poised against a glowering sky, her garments blew backward. Even when he reached her and ...
— The Side Of The Angels - A Novel • Basil King
... and most terrible avalanches, those of dry, powdery snow, occur only in winter, when sudden squalls and hurricanes of snow throw the whole atmosphere into chaos. They come down in sudden whirlwinds, with the violence of a waterspout, and in a few minutes whole ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume VI • Various
... of the plains is not a reluctant virgin but brazen and soon away. The mud roads of a few days ago are powdery dust and the puddles beside them have hardened into lozenges of black sleek ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis
... soft, unpacked snow. It was hard, monotonous work, with none of the joy and blood-stir that went with flying over hard surface. Now one man to the fore in the snowshoes, and now the other, it was a case of stubborn, unmitigated plod. A yard of powdery snow had to be pressed down, and the wide-webbed shoe, under a man's weight, sank a full dozen inches into the soft surface. Snowshoe work, under such conditions, called for the use of muscles other than those ...
— Burning Daylight • Jack London
... menacing in the moonlight, and the mighty stream of the Thames glittered like polished steel as it flowed seaward. As there were only a few leafless trees dotted about the marshy ground, and as that same ground, lightly sprinkled with powdery snow, revealed every moving object for quite a mile or so, Hope could not conceive how the mummy case, which seemed heavy, could have been brought into the silent garden without its bearers being seen. It was not late, ...
— The Green Mummy • Fergus Hume
... from them more yellow yet; for each fruit-stalk and each flower-scale at the base of the nut is veined and tipped with bright orange. It pours down the stems, semi-gray on one side, then yellow, and then, on the opposite side, covered with a powdery lichen varying in colour from orange up to clear vermilion, and spreads itself over a floor of yellow sand and brown fallen nuts, and the only vegetation of which, in general, is a long crawling Echites, ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley
... rakes the roads for a dry powdery dust and mixes it with saliva to convert it into a hard cement," foresee that this mud ...
— Fabre, Poet of Science • Dr. G.V. (C.V.) Legros
... water to a porcelain dish containing 10 grams of heavy magnesium oxid in suspension in 100 cc. of water. (This reagent should meet the U.S.P. requirements.) Evaporate slowly on the steam bath with frequent stirring to a dry, powdery mass. Rub the residue with a pestle into a paste with boiling water. Transfer with hot water to a smooth filter, cleaning the dish with a rubber-tipped glass rod. Collect the filtrate in a liter flask marked at 250 cc. ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... find for the Indians whose watch fires winked from the hills. To the cry of "Roll out," and the snap of the long whip, the wagon lurched into motion, the thirst-racked animals straining doggedly as it crunched over sage stalks and dragged through powdery hummocks. The old man walked by the wheel, the long lash of his whip thrown afar, flashing in the upper light and descending in a lick of flame on the mules' gray flanks. With each blow fell a phrase of encouragement, the words of a friend who wounds and wounding himself suffers. ...
— The Emigrant Trail • Geraldine Bonner
... begun to come. She knew well that it would go on falling, not to-day perhaps, nor to-morrow, but as certainly as time would bring the following days, so certainly the snow would fall, covering the frozen surface of the earth and water with foot above foot of powdery whiteness. Far as she now was from the gay, active throng of fellow-creatures which she conceived as existing in the outer world, and with whom she longed to be, the snow would make that distance not only great, but impassable ...
— What Necessity Knows • Lily Dougall
... seemed full of separate things which she remembered afterwards—but her hand was disengaged from Mr. Linden's arm, and he was standing before her and she behind him, almost before she had fairly seen a little flash of red light from the hedge before them. A sharp report—a powdery taint on the sweet air, came then ...
— Say and Seal, Volume I • Susan Warner
... gales it is almost necessary to dress oneself in wind clothes if one ventures outside for the briefest periods—exposed woollen or cloth materials become heavy with powdery crystals in a minute or two, and when brought into the warmth of the hut are soon wringing wet. Where there is no drift it is quicker and easier to ...
— Scott's Last Expedition Volume I • Captain R. F. Scott
... blither is the mountain roe; With many a wanton stroke Her feet disperse the powdery snow, That rises ...
— Cole's Funny Picture Book No. 1 • Edward William Cole
... islands in the shining yellow sea, are houses—sometimes in a clump of trees, sometimes only like bare-backed domesticity or naked industry in the workfield. Also rising here and there in the expanse, clouds that wind skyward, spreading out in a powdery mist. They look like the rolling smoke of incense, of sacrifice. Sacrifice it is. The vast steam-threshers are mightily devouring what their servants, the monster steam-reapers, have gleaned for them. Soon, when September comes, all that waving sea will be still. What was gold ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... in and damped not only their spirits but their shoes. The netting and lines became flabby. The moccasins, with which Hendrick had supplied them from the bundle he carried for his own use, were reduced to something of the nature of tripe. The damp snow, which when rendered powdery by frost had fallen through the net-work of the shoes, now fell upon it in soft heaps and remained there, increasing the weight so much as to wrench joints and strain muscles, while the higher temperature rendered ...
— The Crew of the Water Wagtail • R.M. Ballantyne
... the "Swagman" with his load on his back, perhaps fifty pounds of provisions rolled up in his blankets, with a pick and shovel strapped on them, and in either hand a gallon bag of water. No light work this with the thermometer standing at 100 degrees in the shade, and the track inches deep in fine, powdery dust; and yet men start off with a light heart, with perhaps, a two hundred mile journey before them, replenishing their bundles as they pass through camps ...
— Spinifex and Sand - Five Years' Pioneering and Exploration in Western Australia • David W Carnegie
... about the powdery snow, As night's dim footsteps pass; But waiting, in its grave ...
— Adela Cathcart - Volume II • George MacDonald
... vines, and where, in default of vegetation under the shade of two trees, papers collect, old rags, potsherds, bits of mortar fallen from the roof; a barren ground, where time has shed on the walls, and on the trunks and branches of the trees, a powdery deposit like cold soot. The two parts of the house, set at a right angle, derive light from this garden-court shut in by two adjoining houses built on wooden piers, decrepit and ready to fall, where on each floor some grotesque evidence ...
— The Commission in Lunacy • Honore de Balzac
... trouble in growing gooseberries successfully is the powdery mildew—a dirty, whitish fungous growth covering both fruit and leaves. It is especially destructive of the foreign varieties, the culture of which, until the advent of the potassium sulfide spray, was being practically abandoned. Use 1 oz. of potassium sulfide (liver of sulphur) to ...
— Home Vegetable Gardening • F. F. Rockwell
... light threaded its way under the window-curtain, and fell in a spot of fluid gold upon the mirror. He watched it move silently across the powdery surface: suddenly another dimpling pool appeared on the soot of the chimney-back, and his eye followed the tremulous beam to its entrance over the top of the shutter. The birds were shouting now ...
— The Awakening of Helena Richie • Margaret Deland
... vault, where bird shapes floated on aerial currents or sped in jubilant flight. From the chaparral came the scents of sun-warmed foliage, the pungent odor of bay, the aromatic breath of pine, and the sweet, frail perfume of the chaparral flower. This flecked the hillside with its powdery blossom, a white blur among the glittering enamel ...
— Treasure and Trouble Therewith - A Tale of California • Geraldine Bonner
... out and back to search the sliding heaps of dust-like powdery rock-slide that lay everywhere ...
— Tharon of Lost Valley • Vingie E. Roe
... and in every other direction, to discover if there was any opening in the thick cloud of snow which dropped around us. I say dropped, for I never before saw snow fall so perpendicularly, and in such minute powdery particles. The peculiar and oppressive gloominess which filled the air, made one feel that something unusual was approaching, otherwise I could scarcely fancy that in so perfect a calm any danger could ...
— Peter the Whaler • W.H.G. Kingston
... double peaks, the one a pyramid, the other a bold broken crystal not unlike the Finsteraarhorn seen from Furka. These are connected by a snowy saddle, and snow is lying on their inaccessible crags in powdery drifts. Sunlight pours between them into the ravine. The green and golden forests now join from either side, and now recede, according as the sinuous valley brings their lines together or disparts them. There is a sound of cow-bells on the meadows; and the roar ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Second Series • John Addington Symonds
... four times as numerous on one side of the nebul as on the other. These nebul, as far as appearance goes, might be likened to rail fences, or thin hedges, against which the wind is driving drifts of powdery snow, which, while scattered plentifully all around, tends to bank itself on the leeward side of the obstruction. The imagination is at a loss to account for these extraordinary phenomena; yet there they are, faithfully giving us their images whenever the photographic ...
— Curiosities of the Sky • Garrett Serviss
... Tamagno, as Othello, with a scrawled, cordial message; another of a graceful woman in the Page's costume of Les Huguenots, signed "Sempre ... Scalchi"; a water colour drawing by Jan Beers; and a Victorian lithograph in powdery foliage and brick of The Penny Rolling Mills. Jaffa. A black-blue rug, from Myrtle Forge, partly covered the broad, oak boards of the floor; and there was a comfortable variety of chairs—sturdy, painted Dutch, winged Windsors ...
— The Three Black Pennys - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... dashed on. Every now and then I looked back to observe the progress of the conflagration. Dark wreaths were rising higher and higher in the sky, and below them forked flames ever and anon darted up as the fire caught the more combustible vegetation. Borne by the wind, light powdery ashes fell around us, while we were sensible of a strong odour of burning, which made it appear as if the enemy was already close at our heels. The grass on every side was too tall and dry to enable us— as is frequently done under such circumstances, ...
— Adventures in the Far West • W.H.G. Kingston
... really alone, he led the way into a dark corner of the hog, where we were. There, from under a pile of garden baskets, calabashes, etc., he brought out a peculiarly-shaped gourd, full of some red, powdery substance. This, with trembling haste, he put into my hand, and seemed greatly relieved when I had it securely. Going then to the corner where I kept my goods, he took up a box of matches and made signs for me to exchange, ...
— Through Five Republics on Horseback • G. Whitfield Ray
... found the first tree, the first foliage. Then, at Rue du Chateau, the horizon opened before them in dazzling beauty. The fields stretched away in the distance, glistening vaguely in the powdery, golden haze of seven o'clock. All nature trembled in the daylight dust that the day leaves in its wake, upon the verdure it blots from sight and the ...
— Germinie Lacerteux • Edmond and Jules de Goncourt
... "Nell! Where have you been? Why do you gaze At me with such strange eyes?" "But can you see me, mother dear?" Poor Nelly faltering cries. "See you? Why not, my little girl? Why should mamma be blind?" And little Nell unties her shoes, With fairy fern-seed lined, And tosses up into the air A little powdery cloud, And frowns upon it as it falls, And murmurs half aloud, "It wasn't true, a word of it, About the magic spell! I never will believe ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, September 1878, No. 11 • Various
... as yet. He used his coal-scraper to fill the sieve, and shook the fine powdery lime into one heap, and gently tilted the coarse residuum upon another, after searching it carefully over. At the end of an hour's labour he had added two guinea-pieces and nine sovereigns ...
— Nicky-Nan, Reservist • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)
... night, and we were covered with drift which came in through hundreds of leaks: in this wind-swept place we had found no soft snow with which we could pack our hard snow blocks. As we flensed some blubber from one of our penguin skins the powdery drift covered ...
— The Worst Journey in the World, Volumes 1 and 2 - Antarctic 1910-1913 • Apsley Cherry-Garrard
... and freedom. Beyond the old ruined farmhouse past the gnarled and rheumatic apple tree is that dimpled path that runs across fields, the short cut down to the harbour. The stiff frozen plumes of ghostly goldenrod stand up pale and powdery along the way. How many tints of brown and fawn and buff in the withered grasses—some as feathery and translucent as a gauze scarf, as nebulous as those veilings Robin Herrick was so fond of—his mention of them gives an odd connotation to ...
— Plum Pudding - Of Divers Ingredients, Discreetly Blended & Seasoned • Christopher Morley
... soon ascertain that. My blade entered the sack, and a slit was cut large enough to admit my fist. I had no need to thrust my hand inside, for as I held it under the vent thus opened, I felt a soft, powdery substance streaming downward, with which my palm was instantly filled; and as my fingers closed upon it, I felt satisfied that I had got hold of a fistful of flour. My hand went straight to my lips, and a single taste of the precious dust confirmed my conjecture. ...
— The Boy Tar • Mayne Reid
... of the desert, with their dry heat, he compares them 'to the impression which one receives upon opening a fierce oven to take out the bread;' according to his description, speaking of the fitful winds, he says they are not merely laden with fog, but gritty and powdery, and in reality full of fine dust, which penetrates everything; and of the sun, he says it 'presents to view but ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part 2. The Great Navigators of the Eighteenth Century • Jules Verne
... wrote was the coldest I have yet felt. I pulled the rag carpet from the floor and covered myself with it, but could not get warm. The sun rose gloriously on a shrouded earth. Barns, road, shrubs, fences, river, lake, all lay under the glittering snow. It was light and powdery, and sparkled like diamonds. Not a breath of wind stirred, there was not a sound. I had to wait till a passing horseman had broken the track, but soon after I set off into the new, shining world. I soon lost the horseman's ...
— A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains • Isabella L. Bird
... sandstone, before the limestone and flint recur."[133] Some slopes are composed entirely of soft sandstone; many patches are of a hard metallic-sounding trap or porphyry; but the predominant formation is a greasy or powdery limestone, bare often, but sometimes clothed with a soft herbage, or with a thick tangle of shrubs, or with lofty forest trees. The ridge of the mountain is everywhere naked limestone rock, except in ...
— History of Phoenicia • George Rawlinson
... by Martin's shovel, and wallowed laboriously and happily through it. Twice he was unable to extricate his foot in time to prevent a glorious tumble from which he arose covered from crown to toe with the powdery crystals. The temperature was so low that they did not melt, although just inside the tops of the arctics thin bands of snow packed tight. These Bobby occasionally removed with ...
— The Adventures of Bobby Orde • Stewart Edward White
... ravine down which smoked the stream of hot water, and followed the winding pathway through the canebrakes until we reached a wide area covered over with a thick, powdery yellow substance which I believe was sulphur. Above the shoulder of a weedy bank the sea glittered. We came to a kind of shallow natural amphitheatre, and here the four of us halted. Then Moreau sounded the horn, and broke the sleeping stillness ...
— The Island of Doctor Moreau • H. G. Wells
... and cunning he shook the powdery crumb from his hands. They never expected that. Manna. Live on fish, fishy flesh they have, all seabirds, gulls, seagoose. Swans from Anna Liffey swim down here sometimes to preen themselves. No accounting for tastes. Wonder what kind is swanmeat. Robinson ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... she could catch the sparkle of the sand, and there away in the distance a powdery whirl which was all she could see of Cinders. He was evidently digging for dear ...
— The Rocks of Valpre • Ethel May Dell
... a cold, powdery afternoon in January, with the snow thick on the ground, save where the little winds had blown the crown of the street bare before Mrs. Falconer's house. A post-chaise with four horses swept wearily round ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald
... miles south hung a misty veil, and twenty-five miles above Naples a zone of semi-obscurity began, blotting out the sun, whose light trickled through with a sickly glare. Everything was whitened with powdery dust; pretty white villas were daubed and dripping with mud, and people were busy shoveling the ashes from ...
— The San Francisco Calamity • Various
... the wooded hills and the stony mountains. The youngest showered blue milk in the valleys and by the gray seashore. And, on the morrow, where 5 the red milk had been sprinkled, red and brittle ore of iron flecked the ground; where the white milk had been scattered, powdery ore of a yellow hue abounded; and where the blue milk had been showered, flaky masses of crude iron, tough and dark, lay hidden beneath the ...
— Story Hour Readings: Seventh Year • E.C. Hartwell
... streams of running water are seen; the silence is broken only by howling storm winds and the rustle of the surface snow which they drive before them. Sounding with long poles, explorers find that below the powdery snow of the latest snowfall lie successive layers of earlier snows, which grow more and more compact downward, and at last have altered to impenetrable ice. The ice cap formed by the accumulated snows of uncounted centuries may well be more than a mile ...
— The Elements of Geology • William Harmon Norton
... a background of heavy, leaden-grey sky the heather lies black as if washed in ink. Across from the wild North Sea comes a wind thin and nipping, waxing in strength, and with the gathering storm piping ever more shrilly down the glen, driving before it now a fine, powdery white dust that chokes nostril and mouth, and blinds the eyes of those whom necessity compels to be out-doors. It is "an oncome," a "feeding storm." Thus have begun many of the great snowstorms that from time ...
— Stories of the Border Marches • John Lang and Jean Lang
... over their evening meal. Outside the frost was almost arctic, but there was wood in plenty round Fremont ranch, and the great stove diffused a stuffy heat. The two men had made the round of the small homesteads that were springing up, with difficulty, for the snow was too loose and powdery to bear a sleigh, and now they were content to lounge in the tranquil enjoyment of the rest and warmth that followed exposure to the ...
— The Cattle-Baron's Daughter • Harold Bindloss
... and a strange melancholy transformed her face.... She was at a loss for words.... 'Poor Ombos—oh, poor, cranky Ombos,' she muttered. 'One morning I found him dead in his room, with all his wonderful, brown, powdery-looking books. He was leaning on a table over an old volume that he was fond of.... And then the doctors came. He had died, they afterwards said, of failure ...
— War and the Weird • Forbes Phillips
... extracted the last fang of frost, and there was already green grass in the damp hollows. Bluebirds picked the last year's berries from the cedar-trees; buds were bursting on the swamp-willows; the alders were hung with tassels, and a powdery crimson bloom began to dust the bare twigs of the maple- trees. All these signs of an early spring Miss Lavender noted as she picked her way down the wooded bank. Once, indeed, she stopped, wet her forefinger ...
— The Story Of Kennett • Bayard Taylor
... San Diego is in the midst of rice-fields. It is approached by a narrow path, powdery on sunny days, navigable on rainy. A wooden gate and a wall half stone, half bamboo stalks, succeed in keeping out men, but not the curate's goats, nor the pigs of his neighbors. In the middle of the enclosure is a stone pedestal ...
— An Eagle Flight - A Filipino Novel Adapted from Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... cold and powdery snow, as it were a fruit of the season, will come twittering a flock of delicate crimson-tinged birds, lesser redpolls, to sport and feed on the buds just ripe for them on the sunny side of a wood, shaking down the ...
— Bird Neighbors • Neltje Blanchan
... and the snow was falling in powdery flakes, when a sportsman alighted at the Hotel des Postes, and at the first glance I knew him for a countryman. He was a fine, frank, free-hearted young fellow, one of the most easily likable of youngsters, and we were on friendly terms together before the ...
— Schwartz: A History - From "Schwartz" by David Christie Murray • David Christie Murray
... we have seen boiled potatoes from an untaught cook coming upon the table like lumps of yellow wax,—and the same article, the day after, under the directions of a skilful mistress, appearing in snowy balls of powdery lightness. In the one case, they were thrown in their skins into water, and suffered to soak or boil, as the case might be, at the cook's leisure, and after they were boiled to stand in the water till she was ready to peel ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 86, December, 1864 • Various
... purpose use potatoes that are very white, mealy, and smooth. Boil them very carefully, and when they are done, peel them, pour off the water, and set them on a trivet before the fire till they are quite dry and powdery. Then rub them through a coarse wire sieve into the dish on which they are to go to table. Do not disturb the heap of potatoes before it is served up, or the flakes will fall and it will flatten. This preparation looks well; but many think that ...
— Directions for Cookery, in its Various Branches • Eliza Leslie
... furious driven waves, three hundred pines Straggle the marches between sand and soil. Like maps of stone-walled fields their branching roots Hold the silt still so that thin grass grows there, Its blades whitened with travelling powdery drift The besom of the lightest breeze sets stirring. That woman's gaze toils worn from remote years, Yet forward yearns through the bright spacious noon, Beyond the farthest isle, whose filmy shape Floats faint on the sea-line. I, scooping grains up with the frail half-shell Pale green ...
— Miscellany of Poetry - 1919 • Various
... another variety, in such a way as to effect its fertilization. This is done by cutting away (with scissors) the stamens of the flower to be fertilized, a short time before they arrive at maturity, and taking a flower in which the pollen is ripe, dry, and powdery, from the stalk of the variety wished for the male parent; and holding it in the right hand, and then striking it on the finger of the left, held near the flower, thus scattering the pollen on the stigma of the ...
— The $100 Prize Essay on the Cultivation of the Potato; and How to Cook the Potato • D. H. Compton and Pierre Blot
... days. The favourite place was the "Soko de barra," or large bazar, outside the town whose condition is that of Suez and Bayrut half a century ago. It is a foul slope; now slippery with viscous mud, then powdery with fetid dust, dotted with graves and decaying tombs, unclean booths, gargottes and tattered tents, and frequented by women, mere bundles of unclean rags, and by men wearing the haik or burnus, a ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton
... with a ruddy reflection as of interspersed rubies; while, above all, the glorious sunshine, streaming in through the shattered panes of the oriel at the eastern end, cast floods of quickening, mellow light, to the remotest corners of the room, making the floating atoms of dust turn to waves of powdery amber, and enriching every object it touched with its luminous rays. Even the very representations of Europe, Asia, and Africa, on the walls, lost their typographical characteristics, and shone out to me in the guise of tapestried chronicles, ancient as those of Bayeux, describing deeds ...
— She and I, Volume 1 • John Conroy Hutcheson
... stands sentinel over the sisterhood slumbering at her feet. These are the Black Hills of Dakota, as we see them from the breaks of the Mini Pusa, a long day's march to the west. Here to our right, southeastward, rolls the powdery flood of the South Cheyenne, when earlier in the season the melting snows go trickling down the hill-sides. But to-day only in dry and waving ripples of sand can we trace its course. If you would see the water, dig beneath the surface. Here behind ...
— Marion's Faith. • Charles King
... Asako out of her dream; and the kiss left a bitter powdery taste upon her lips which ...
— Kimono • John Paris
... the men carefully attending to the fire, which was now one bright glow of embers; and very soon Ching announced that dinner was cooked, proceeding directly after to hook out the hard masses of clay, which he rolled over to get rid of the powdery ash, and, after letting them cool a little, he duly cracked them, and a gush of deliciously-scented steam saluted ...
— Blue Jackets - The Log of the Teaser • George Manville Fenn
... side. Joiwind directed their course straight toward Poolingdred. From the position of the sun, Maskull judged their way to lie due north. The sand was soft and powdery, very tiring to his naked feet. The red glare dazed his eyes, and made him semi-blind. He was hot, parched, and tormented with the craving to drink; his undertone of pain emerged ...
— A Voyage to Arcturus • David Lindsay
... rose. Even as it is, I expect a great deal of it will be redeemed by scientific irrigation. The soil only needs water to become inexhaustibly productive. Our desert, as you know, is not sand, like parts of the Sahara; it has all the ingredients that go to nourish plants, only their present powdery condition makes them unavailable. Now, I can, to-day, buy a hundred square miles of desert for a few dollars. You ...
— The Golden Fleece • Julian Hawthorne
... known that in some localities the materials from which Portland cement is made are of such a powdery character that they have to be combined or moulded into balls or bricks previous to calcination in the ordinary way, thus entailing expense which would be entirely obviated by the adoption of the patent revolving furnace, as has been proved by the author in producing excellent cement with a mixture ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 620, November 19,1887 • Various
... in early that year. October and November passed in a whirl of powdery snow and winds that cut through the heaviest furs. As the time of Christmas fasts and feasts drew on, Ivan began to long for what he believed would not be granted him—the spending of his holiday week in comparative freedom at home. He was, however, too proud to beg ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... conscious that darkness was falling. The trail followed along the bottom for a half-dozen miles and then turned off into the bad lands, leading up and down through the ravines and over the ridge crests of a rough and broken country. He crossed a wide plateau where the wind blew savagely, sweeping the powdery snow into his face, then dipped again into the valley where the trail led along the bottoms between the rows of high bluffs, continually crossing and recrossing the river. The ice was too thin to bear the horse, for the cold had come suddenly and had not yet frozen it solid, and ...
— Roosevelt in the Bad Lands • Hermann Hagedorn
... here, as well as in all other caves we examined, were built entirely of a powdery substance, the decomposed material of the cave itself. Great quantities of it were found on the floors of caves which had not been occupied by man. It is not of a sandy nature, and its colour is light brown, sometimes almost grey, or even white. The ancient builders ...
— Unknown Mexico, Volume 1 (of 2) • Carl Lumholtz
... extraordinary part of the imitation, for we find representations of leaves in every stage of decay, variously blotched and mildewed and pierced with holes, and in many cases irregularly covered with powdery black dots gathered into patches and spots, so closely resembling the various kinds of minute fungi that grow on dead leaves that it is impossible to avoid thinking at first sight that the butterflies themselves have ...
— Contributions to the Theory of Natural Selection - A Series of Essays • Alfred Russel Wallace
... of contentment when a dusky figure appeared for a moment in the doorway. His weariness seemed to fall from him, and once more his companion wondered at the tirelessness of the man, as floundering on foot beside them he urged the team through the powdery drifts beneath the big birch bluff. Winston did not go in, however, when they reached the house, and when, five minutes later, Maud Barrington came out, she saw him leaning with a drawn face very wearily against the sleigh. He straightened himself ...
— Winston of the Prairie • Harold Bindloss
... shrieking, hissing, deafening roar that nearly took Steve off his legs, and sent the doctor staggering forward to clutch at the nearest object that would offer a hold. In an instant the deck was white with a fine, powdery dust that bit and stung and filled the hair, penetrating to the skin. Voices were inaudible, but there was a weird chorus from the ropes and stays, and then a loud report as one of the storm sails burst into ribbons and was torn piecemeal ...
— Steve Young • George Manville Fenn
... What actually happens is that the warm air melts the surface sufficiently to cause drops of water to trickle down slightly, where, on meeting colder layers of snow, they freeze again, forming a honeycomb of icy nodules instead of the soft, powdery, granular snow that ...
— South! • Sir Ernest Shackleton
... the tip of their tongue present the first honey of the new life. But the bee, that has come from another world, is bewildered still, trembling and pale; she wears the feeble look of a little old man who might have escaped from his tomb, or perhaps of a traveller strewn with the powdery dust of the ways that lead unto life. She is perfect, however, from head to foot; she knows at once all that has to be known; and, like the children of the people, who learn, as it were, at their birth, that for them there shall never be time to play or to laugh, ...
— The Life of the Bee • Maurice Maeterlinck
... which were reflected from the glittering frozen surfaces, though the sun itself was hidden by clouds. The fissures in the glacier were few and very narrow, and we employed the ladder but once or twice in the immense plain of powdery snow which, towards eight o'clock, opened before us. It was then that our real sufferings began. The heat was excessive; walking, slow and very difficult, for at each step we sank almost to our knees. Sometimes the foot could find no bottom, and when we withdrew it we found a yawning azure-tinted ...
— Celebrated Women Travellers of the Nineteenth Century • W. H. Davenport Adams
... varieties of the apple. The pips or seeds (as I know by comparison) likewise differ considerably in shape, size, and colour. The fruit is adapted for eating or for cooking in different ways, and keeps for only a few weeks or for nearly two years. Some few kinds have the fruit covered with a powdery secretion, called bloom, like that on plums; {349} and "it is extremely remarkable that this occurs almost exclusively among varieties cultivated in Russia."[700] Another Russian apple, the white Astracan, ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Vol. I. • Charles Darwin
... re-enter the stream progressing along the road. The dust was ankle-deep there, choking thick when stirred by feet and hoof to a powdery cloud. In contrast, there were no clouds in the sky, and the sun promised to be a ...
— Ride Proud, Rebel! • Andre Alice Norton
... splashes of blood amongst the greys and blues and faint pearly whites of the innocent, new-born day. On the garden side of the stream there is a long row of silver birches, and on the other side a rye-field reaching across in powdery grey waves to the part of the sky where a solemn glow was already burning. I sat down on the twisted, half-fallen trunk of a birch and waited, my feet in the long grass and my slippers soaking in dew. Through the trees I could see the house with its closed shutters and drawn blinds, ...
— The Solitary Summer • Elizabeth von Arnim
... grinding machine, the roar and clatter of which made it possible for Tom and the others to talk and move about without being overheard. Into this machine certain ingredients were put, and they were then pulverized, and taken out in powdery form. ...
— Tom Swift Among The Diamond Makers - or The Secret of Phantom Mountain • Victor Appleton
... blooming with it—to all those which I have named and to the taller ones, so tall that they reach half-way up, and some even quite up, to the eaves of the lowly houses they stand against—hollyhocks and peonies and crystalline white lilies with powdery gold inside, and the common sunflower—I begin to perceive that they all possess something of ...
— A Shepherd's Life • W. H. Hudson
... her and flushed. The schoolmaster came up to her and stood silent beside her. He was very full of Naples. His shoes were dustless, though everyone else was covered in the fine, impalpable powdery dust of Naples. His high collar was spotless, his coat incredibly black. He looked irresistibly as if ...
— Captivity • M. Leonora Eyles
... passengers to clutch wildly to keep from being precipitated into a mass on the floor. As the traces straightened, Miss Molly, clinging desperately to a strap, caught her first fair glance at the newcomer. His hat was tilted back, the light revealing lines of weariness and a coating of the gray, powdery dust of the alkali desert, but beneath it appeared the brown, sun-scorched skin, while the gray eyes looking straight at her, were resolute and smiling. His rough shirt, open at the throat, might have ...
— Molly McDonald - A Tale of the Old Frontier • Randall Parrish
... Others are stalked (Arcyria, Stemonitis) (Fig. 5, J, K), and of various colors,—red, brown, etc. The outer part of the structure is a more or less firm wall, which breaks when ripe, discharging a powdery mass, mixed in most ...
— Elements of Structural and Systematic Botany - For High Schools and Elementary College Courses • Douglas Houghton Campbell
... ricks of mountain drift lay strewn for miles to mark the vanished stream. What a power it had been in its might, floating sycamores and ironwoods as if they were reeds, lapping high against the granite walls, moving the very rocks in its bed until they ground together! But now the sand lay dry and powdery, the willows and water-moodies were dead to the roots, and even the ancient cottonwoods from which it derived its name were dying inch by inch. A hundred years they had stood there, defying storm and cloudburst, but at last the drought was sucking away their life. On the mesa the waxy greasewood ...
— Hidden Water • Dane Coolidge
... golden-red hair, whose silken wealth of naturally waving locks rested above the brow in two bands, like the gleaming wings of some bright-hued tropical bird, while the light of the candles, shining on the braids, struck out strange, satiny, metallic reflections, and a powdery, glimmering sparkle, as though the hair was dusted with gold or ruby powder. Her sole ornaments were a diamond star in the hair and an antique gold circlet on one of her bare arms. The white dress, trimmed on one side of the bosom to the opposite side of the waist ...
— How Women Love - (Soul Analysis) • Max Simon Nordau
... the dam, a little cavalcade moved slowly through the darkness of a moonless, cloudy night. A southeast wind was blowing, but it was a drying wind, with no promise of rain. It had blown for days steadily, until it had sucked every vestige of moisture from the top earth, leaving it merely powdery dust. Because of it, too, no dew had fallen; the nights were as dry as ...
— Desert Conquest - or, Precious Waters • A. M. Chisholm
... a cloudless west behind the roof-ridge and tall chimneys of the Brethren's houses, cast a shadow even to the sundial that stood for centre of the wide grass-plot. All else was softest gold—gold veiling the sky itself in a powdery haze; gold spread full along the front of the 'Nunnery,' or row of upper chambers on the eastern line of the quadrangle, where the three nurses of St. Hospital have their lodgings; shafts of gold penetrating the shaded ambulatory below; gold edging the western ...
— Brother Copas • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... murmur in his veins, murmuring like a sinful city summoned from its sleep to hear its doom. Little flakes of fire fell and powdery ashes fell softly, alighting on the houses of men. They stirred, waking from sleep, ...
— A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man • James Joyce
... rifle-bullet. But he was too far-seeing a guide for that. He contented himself with climbing a little lower till he attracted the giant's attention to himself, and then dropping half a handful of tobacco, dry and powdery, into those snorting ...
— Kings in Exile • Sir Charles George Douglas Roberts
... structure, but in the course of months a slow change takes place in it. The bark becomes softened and falls from the wood. The wood also becomes more or less softened; it is preyed upon then by insect life; its density decreases more and more, until finally it crumbles into a soft, brownish, powdery mass, and eventually the whole sinks into the soil, is overgrown by mosses and other vegetation, and the tree trunk has disappeared from view. In the same way the body of the dead animal undergoes the process of the softening of its ...
— The Story Of Germ Life • H. W. Conn
... begins to be deposited on the cathode in a powdery form, for which reason it is a good plan to begin by wrapping the latter in filter paper. The process has gone on for a sufficient time when a clean bit of platinum foil immersed in the place of the cathode becomes properly gilt at a current density of about ...
— On Laboratory Arts • Richard Threlfall
... insignificant, inconsiderable, trivial; infinitesimal, homoeopathic[obs3]; atomic, subatomic, corpuscular, molecular; rudimentary, rudimental; embryonic, vestigial. weazen|!, scant, scraggy, scrubby; thin &c. (narrow) 203; granular &c. (powdery) 330; shrunk &c. 195; brevipennate[obs3]. Adv. in a small compass, in a nutshell; on a small scale; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... very dry, crumbling soil, we should expect the shaft and the chamber at the bottom to have soft, powdery walls, subject to petty landslips, if no work were done but that of excavation. On the contrary, the walls are neatly daubed, plastered with a sort of clay-like mortar. They are not precisely smooth, indeed they are distinctly rough; but their irregularities are covered with a layer of plaster, ...
— Social Life in the Insect World • J. H. Fabre
... stepped out into a vast, well-lighted room, gray with clay-dust and thronging with powdery workers. At benches, before revolving wheels, and beside turning-lathes toiled busy workmen with ...
— The Story of Porcelain • Sara Ware Bassett
... a particularly cold night. A sudden thaw had nearly cleared the streets the day before, but now they were traversed again with a powdery wraith of loose snow that travelled in wavy lines before the feet of the wind, and filled the lower air with a fine-particled mist. There was no sky— only a dark, ominous tent that draped in the tops of the streets and was in reality a vast approaching army ...
— Flappers and Philosophers • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... the hot rocks threw it back in many little honeycomb channels, and by the spreading of these channels the rocks were at last crumbled to pieces. The hard black lava on the glass-like obsidian were changed to white kaolin as soft and powdery as chalk. And as the water fought its way, gaining a little every year, steadily working between the joints in the enemy's armor and as surely being thrown back with violence if it penetrated too far, the animals and the plants ...
— A Book of Natural History - Young Folks' Library Volume XIV. • Various
... literally threw itself into the air, bursting into flaming fragments as it rose, and then tumbling back upon itself in a smoking pile that lay projecting half into the water of the lake. There was no fire—what smoke there was drifted off mingling with the sunshine, and for a few minutes longer a powdery dust of marble drifted from the great featureless pile that had once been the house of jewels. There was no more sound and the three people were alone ...
— Tales of the Jazz Age • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... on sharp corners. In a street a crazed man groans: You, oh, you— If only I could find you... A crowd around him is surprised and grins derisively. Three little people play blind man's bluff— A gentle tear-stained god lays the grey powdery hands Of afternoon ...
— The Verse of Alfred Lichtenstein • Alfred Lichtenstein
... body, long weak legs, large wings, and an enormously developed head, ornamented with a magnificent crest, and armed with a sharp-pointed hoofed bill of immense size and strength. The plumage is entirely black, but has all over it the curious powdery white secretion characteristic of cockatoo. The cheeks are bare, and of an intense blood-red colour. Instead of the harsh scream of the white cockatoos, its voice is a somewhat plaintive whistle. The tongue is a ...
— The Malay Archipelago - Volume II. (of II.) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... The surrounding folk dress for market, instead of dressing for Sunday, and exhibit the whitest of bornouses above the dustiest of legs as they sit crooning over trays of eggs or onions, brought far on foot through the powdery roads. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - April, 1873, Vol. XI, No. 25. • Various
... glanced round surreptitiously like a thief. She could not see the Casa Perucca. She was alone on this solitary mountain-side. Slowly she collected the debris of the broken rock, which was mixed with a red powdery soil. ...
— The Isle of Unrest • Henry Seton Merriman
... of wind and light drifting snow, expressively called poudre by the French, and peewun by the Indians, fill the atmosphere, and render it impossible to distinguish objects at a short distance. The fine powdery flakes of snow are driven into the smallest crannies of buildings and fixtures, and seem to be endowed with a subtle power of insinuation, which renders northern joinerwork but a poor defence. It is not uncommon for the sleeper, on waking up in the ...
— The Myth of Hiawatha, and Other Oral Legends, Mythologic and Allegoric, of the North American Indians • Henry R. Schoolcraft
... led steeply up through deep, powdery snow that was unmarred by sled-track or moccasin impression. Smoke, in the lead, pressed the fragile crystals down under his fat, short snow-shoes. The task required lungs and muscle, and he flung himself into it with all his strength. Behind, on the surface ...
— Smoke Bellew • Jack London
... thing, when did you come?" she fairly bubbled, as she clasped me in the most hospitable of arms, and bestowed a slightly powdery kiss on both my cheeks. I weakly and femininely enjoyed the hug, not that a man might not have—Sallie is a dear, and I always did like her ...
— The Tinder-Box • Maria Thompson Daviess
... imperceptible degrees, found themselves on a relatively easy track that forked suddenly into a genuine country road, stretching far to left and right of them. It was a new country to Caroline; she found no landmarks whatever. The road glared with heat, the dust was powdery, the shade nowhere, once they had cleared the wood. She sighed with fatigue and emptiness; it seemed a long pull, and the harbor far from worth the voyage, when ...
— While Caroline Was Growing • Josephine Daskam Bacon
... away with the wind to wherever it was going. Lljub's pale glow was out for good, and his crystalline heart was as opaque as a dead eye. Only a few pieces of Urdaz's tank were visible, and Urdaz himself had already turned to a powdery food that the wind ate slowly in ...
— Has Anyone Here Seen Kelly? • Bryce Walton
... the fretful wind awakes; I hear him girding at the trees; He strikes the bending boughs, and shakes The quiet clusters of the bees To powdery drift; He tosses them away, He drives them like spray; He makes them veer and shift Around his blustering path. In clouds blindly whirling, In rings madly swirling, Full of crazy wrath, So furious and fast they fly They blur the earth and blot the sky In ...
— The Poems of Henry Van Dyke • Henry Van Dyke
... rustic seat, putting the newspaper, which she had left for the purpose, behind her back as she leaned against the tree, to keep the powdery bark from marking her blue coat, and leaning back contentedly, she drank in ...
— Purple Springs • Nellie L. McClung
... Out of the powdery, purple gloom across the bay floated a long line—the funeral canoes. In the blurred distance they took shape one by one, the paddles dipping in solemn rhythm. . . . Nearer they came, . . . and nearer. Then over ...
— Where the Sun Swings North • Barrett Willoughby
... tropical countries where the dog becomes dumb, or degenerates into a mere growler, his trumpet never rusts. It is true that he was cradled in the torrid zone, yet in all Western lands, where he "shakes off the powdery snow," with vigorous wings, his voice sounds as loud and inspiriting as in the hot jungle. Pale-faced Londoners, and blacks, and bronzed or painted barbarians, all men all the world over, wake at morn to the "peaceful crowing of the cock," just ...
— Birds in Town and Village • W. H. Hudson
... we have seen boiled potatoes from an untaught cook coming upon the table like lumps of yellow wax—and the same article, under the directions of a skillful mistress, appearing in snowy balls of powdery whiteness. In the one case, they were thrown in their skins into water, and suffered to soak or boil, as the case might be, at the cook's leisure, and after they were boiled to stand in the water till she was ready to peel them. In ...
— The American Woman's Home • Catherine E. Beecher and Harriet Beecher Stowe
... foot, as on furnaces of fire in the excess of the fury she smothered. And lo, Baba Mustapha worked diligently, and Shagpat was behind an exulting lather, even as one pelted with wheaten flour-balls or balls of powdery perfume, and his hairiness was as branches of the forest foliage bent under a sudden fall of overwhelming snow that filleth the pits and sharpeneth the wolves with hunger, and teacheth new cunning to the fox. ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... meantime there was much clatter in and about the old Britt house, tumble of timbers and rip of wainscotings and snarl of drawing nails. Out from the gaping windows floated the powdery drift of the plastering which the broad shovels had tackled. The satirists said that it was noticeable that the statue of Tasper Britt in the cemetery had settled down heavier on its heels, as if making grimly ...
— When Egypt Went Broke • Holman Day
... apparently capricious versatility. Nature, round about Harmouth, is never in the same mood for a mile together. The cliffs change their form and colour with every dip in the way; now they are red like blood, and now a soft and powdery pink with violet shadows in their seams. Inland, it is a medley of fields and orchards, beech-woods, pine-woods, dark moorland and sallow down, cut by the deep warm lanes where hardly a leaf stirs on a windy day. It is not so much a landscape as the fragments ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair
... horticulturists well know that it is in the nature of a heap of couch-grass, when kindled in calm weather, to smoulder for many days, and even weeks, until the whole mass is reduced to a powdery charcoal ash, displaying the while scarcely a sign of combustion beyond the volcano-like smoke from its summit; but the continuance of this quiet process is throughout its length at the mercy of one particular whim of Nature: that is, a sudden breeze, ...
— Desperate Remedies • Thomas Hardy
... slab of wood with the speed of its rotation—a small sound of protest drowned by the bellowing of the storm and the ringing songs of McTee. Now the smoke rose again and this time the peg kept firm. The smoke grew pungent; there was a spark, then a glow, and it spread and widened among the powdery, rotten wood which Harrigan had ...
— Harrigan • Max Brand
... corner at the bottom. Sometimes, at long intervals, there would be a letter for her from Aunt Lavvy or Dan or Mrs. Sutcliffe. She couldn't tell when it would come, but she knew on what days the long trolleys would stop by Mr. Horn's yard loaded with powdery sacks of flour, and on what days the brewer's van would draw up to the King's Head and the Farmers' Arms. When she looked out across the Green she caught the hard stare of the Belks' house, the ...
— Mary Olivier: A Life • May Sinclair
... Glenwarlock to go to the village—mainly to see Grannie. He tramped the two miles and a half in all the joy of youthful conflict with wind and weather, and reached the old woman's cottage radiant. The snow lay deep and powdery with frost, and the struggle with space from a bad footing on the world had brought the blood to his cheeks and the sparkle to his eyes. He found Grannie sitting up in bed, and Aggie getting her tea—to which Cosmo contributed a bottle of milk he had carried her—an article ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... rummage through a little condensed chaos of handkerchiefs, gloves, powder-puff, powdery dollar bills, powdery coins, loose bits of paper, samples, thread, ...
— In a Little Town • Rupert Hughes
... the faint clashing swinging sound of cymbals, melting the air with his beams, and with such rapid steps the morning travels, that already his rays are gilding the distant western mountains. Meanwhile we step hastily along through the powdery snow, warmed by an inward heat, enjoying an Indian summer still, in the increased glow of thought and feeling. Probably if our lives were more conformed to nature, we should not need to defend ourselves ...
— Excursions • Henry D. Thoreau
... it had been when they first saw this chamber. The breech of the huge cannon had cooled and its massive block was open. Tommy was there, fishing the radium capsule from the powdery residue in order that it might be used in exciting the next charge. A mechanical precision marked ...
— The Copper-Clad World • Harl Vincent
... dawn, and as we stretched our cramped legs full length on the mail-sacks, and gazed out through the windows across the wide wastes of greensward clad in cool, powdery mist to where there was an expectant look in the Eastern horizon, our perfect enjoyment took the form of a tranquil and contented ecstasy. The stage whirled along at a spanking gait, the breeze flapping the curtains and suspended coats in a most exhilarating way; the cradle swayed and swung luxuriously, ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... second room, and returned with a small enamelled dish, and placed it upon the table. The miners rose and gathered round, and saw lying on the bottom about an ounce and a quarter of fine powdery gold. ...
— Chinkie's Flat and Other Stories - 1904 • Louis Becke
... part of his face hidden by his beaver collar and his head slightly bent. His face was fresh and rosy, his white-plumed hat, tilted to one side, disclosed his curled and pomaded hair besprinkled with powdery snow. ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... stiffly; but as I pulled the door inwards it brushed aside a mass of spider's web, white and matted, that could not be less than a month old. Also it brushed a clump of ivy overgrowing the lintel, and shook down about half an ounce of powdery dust into my hair and eyes. I scarcely troubled to look through. Clearly, the door had not been opened for many weeks—possibly not since my ...
— Poison Island • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)
... dianthus, you will find their texture is produced by a crystalline or sugary frost-work upon them. In the lychnis of the high Alps, the red and white have a kind of sugary bloom, as rich as it is delicate. It is indescribable; but if you can fancy very powdery and crystalline snow mixed with the softest cream, and then dashed with carmine, it may give you some idea of the look of it. There are no colours, either in the nacre of shells, or the plumes of birds and insects, which are so pure as those of clouds, opal, or flowers; but the force of purple ...
— Lectures on Art - Delivered before the University of Oxford in Hilary term, 1870 • John Ruskin
... with the help of our muskets! Down hills with a rush of snow-shoes that set the powdery snow flying! Skimming the levels with the silent speed of wings! Past the snow mushrooms topping underbrush and the snow cones of the evergreens and the snow billows of under rocks and the snow-wreathed antlers of the naked forest in a world ...
— Heralds of Empire - Being the Story of One Ramsay Stanhope, Lieutenant to Pierre Radisson in the Northern Fur Trade • Agnes C. Laut
... during the night had chased all clouds to remote quarters and had with the morning suddenly gone, leaving the city to the entire mercy of the sun. It was August and very dry and in the corners of buildings huddled little heaps of dust and elusive trash, withered and powdery. On the pavements and walls the sunlight lay like white-hot gold and the shadows cast by the awnings of Bessire's department store were sharply chiselled as by a stencil. Mary Louise paused for a moment in ...
— Stubble • George Looms
... down his shoulders and making tracks through the powdery red dust which streaked him, Jellico got to his feet and walked over to the I-S champion who had not moved or made a sound since his fall. The Captain went down on one ...
— Plague Ship • Andre Norton
... rode round the corner of the hotel to reach Main Street he saw Luke Tweezy single-footing into town from the south. The powdery dust of the trail filled in and overlaid the lines and creases of Luke Tweezy's foxy-nosed and leathery visage. Layers of dust almost completely concealed the original colour of the caked and matted hide of Luke Tweezy's well-conditioned horse. ...
— The Heart of the Range • William Patterson White
... 6-8 meters high, covered with stellate groups of short yellow hairs. Leaves alternate, petiolate, rhomboid-oval or lanceolate, acuminate, 3-nerved, entire or slightly dentate, upper surface glabrous, lower surface covered with woolly hairs and powdery red glands. Flowers yellowish-green, small, dioecious, apetalous, in spikes. Staminate: By 3's in the axil of each bract; perianth, 3 or 5 deeply cut, lanceolate lobules; stamens 15-25, free, inserted in the center ...
— The Medicinal Plants of the Philippines • T. H. Pardo de Tavera
... gaseous, abandoning the hills, and streaming into the valleys and ditches and watercourses even as I have heard the carbonic-acid gas that pours from volcanic clefts is wont to do. And where it came upon water some chemical action occurred, and the surface would be instantly covered with a powdery scum that sank slowly and made way for more. The scum was absolutely insoluble, and it is a strange thing, seeing the instant effect of the gas, that one could drink without hurt the water from which it had been strained. The vapour did not diffuse as ...
— The War of the Worlds • H. G. Wells
... home in a cab. Soon, in the great theatre, the lights will be put out, and the empty stage will be left to ghosts. Hark! midnight from the church tower vibrates through the frosty air. I look out on the brilliant heaven, and see a milky way of powdery splendour wandering through it, and clusters and knots of stars and planets shining serenely in the blue frosty spaces; and the armed apparition of Orion, his spear pointing away into immeasurable space, gleaming overhead; and the ...
— Dreamthorp - A Book of Essays Written in the Country • Alexander Smith
... than downy-mildew in the East, powdery-mildew (Uncinula necator), unless checked, is capable of destroying the entire crop of European grapes on the Pacific slope. In the East it sometimes causes great loss on the several varieties known as "Rogers hybrids" and, curiously enough, is often ...
— Manual of American Grape-Growing • U. P. Hedrick
... a thousand yards away. The first mile was across flat desert. He picked his way cautiously, his boots churning up clouds of powdery dust. He remembered the Russian reports of the weird and deadly creatures they had encountered ...
— The Quantum Jump • Robert Wicks
... on the farther side of the plateau above the native town of Rabat. The mighty wall enclosing them faces the city wall of Rabat, looking at it across one of those great red powdery wastes which seem, in this strange land, like death and the desert forever creeping up to overwhelm ...
— In Morocco • Edith Wharton
... he blew out of his mouth some of the powdery spice. "Faugh! Tobacco!" he cried next. His father's package of smoking-tobacco had shared the fate of the ginger. Sandy's supper was spoiled; and resigning himself to spending the night hungry in the wilderness, ...
— The Boy Settlers - A Story of Early Times in Kansas • Noah Brooks
... thing had struck, three hundred yards across the field. We found a great funnel-shaped pit torn in the naked earth. It was a dozen yards across, fifteen feet deep, and surrounded with a powdery ring of white ...
— Astounding Stories, March, 1931 • Various
... by regular pressure, and has shown that every Alpine glacier begins as a snow-drift at its summit, and ends in a transparent ice-cavern below. "The blue blocks which span the sources of the Arveiron were once powdery snow upon the slopes ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 52, February, 1862 • Various
... the powdery snow, As feet unseen did pass; While, waiting in its bed below, Green ...
— The Poetical Works of George MacDonald in Two Volumes, Volume I • George MacDonald
... pyramids, with branches that bent beneath their load, and there were no inequalities on the drop to the river. Every projection was leveled up, the hollows were filled, and the snow ran unbroken among the trunks in a smooth white sheet. It was not drying and getting powdery, because the frost was not very keen, and he imagined that Festing meant to get as much lumber as possible down while the surface could be ...
— The Girl From Keller's - Sadie's Conquest • Harold Bindloss
... walker, as though he carried some charm to make a hollow space around him where the breath of the mist may not live. Yet, out in it for long, the clothes become sodden, while every grass-blade and leaf can be seen to hold its burden of a glittering drop, though the earth itself remains dry and powdery and on the hard, pale roads the dust lies all day, as though the actual soil were not of the texture to respond ...
— Secret Bread • F. Tennyson Jesse
... new supermarket. During my absence the National Guard had arrived and focused the great incandescent beams on the mound which now covered five houses and whose threat had driven the inhabitants from as many more. The powdery blue lights gave the grass an uncanny yellowish look, as though it had been stricken ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... back to the sleigh, on the rear of which the frozen fish was piled. I noticed that it had a faint, slightly aromatic odor. I flung the hard masses aside and scooped up a powdery substance with ...
— Jacqueline of Golden River • H. M. Egbert
... she ensconced herself amongst her Germans, feeling additionally secure.... Fraulein had spent many years in England. Perhaps that explained the breakfast of oatmeal porridge—piled plates of thick stirabout thickly sprinkled with pale, very sweet powdery brown sugar—and the eggs to follow with ...
— Pointed Roofs - Pilgrimage, Volume 1 • Dorothy Richardson
... of windy sunset lay spread over the white valley, and the freshening gusts drove the powdery snow before them, and sent little stabs of pain through John's shrinking body. Yet how glad he was to find himself again between those familiar hedges, to see the church-tower in front of him, the long hill ...
— Bessie Costrell • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... sack of powdery tobacco, and spilled some grains into a brown cigarette paper, twisting it deftly and bending over the ends. Then he smoked with such enjoyment that I ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service
... centre of the Cathedral, where the transepts meet, is a vast heap of bricks, stone, and powdery dirt. This heap rises irregularly like a range of hills towards the choir; it overspreads most of the immense interior, occupying an area of, perhaps, from 15,000 to 20,000 square feet. In the choir it rises ...
— Over There • Arnold Bennett
... in behind Roger, who in turn followed Tom who walked some ten feet ahead. A light breeze sprang up and blew across the surface of the powdery sand. Ten minutes later, when they stopped to adjust their shoulder packs, they looked back. The breeze had obliterated their tracks and the mountain of sand covering the spaceship appeared to be no different from any of the other small dunes on the desert. The New Sahara ...
— Stand by for Mars! • Carey Rockwell
... this meat, and what is going on in the water which surrounds it? How long will it be before all the smell of putrefaction has gone and the water is clear again? For it does in time become clear, and instead of the meat we find a fine powdery substance at the bottom of the test tube. It may take weeks before this process is completed, depending on the rate at which it goes on. Now, if we take a drop of this water and examine it with the microscope, we find that it contains vast numbers of very small living creatures or "organisms." ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 417 • Various
... rose from her wheel, And brushed off the powdery snow: Her daughter, forsaking the reel, Ran briskly the cinders to blow: The children, who sat on the hearth, Leaped up without murmur or frown, An oaken stool quickly brought forth, And smilingly bade me ...
— Cottage Poems • Patrick Bronte
... change from that of Middle Minoan II. Polychrome decoration steadily declines, and is superseded by monochrome. The beautiful lustrous black glaze ground of the vases is replaced by a dull purple slip on which the decoration is often laid in a powdery white paint. The best designs are found in this white upon a lilac or mauve ground. In the designs themselves conventionalism and geometric ornament pass away, and are followed by a development of naturalism. Dr. Mackenzie has pointed out that it is to this growth ...
— The Sea-Kings of Crete • James Baikie
... heavy snowstorm with a gale of wind. The snow here is not flaky, but fine and powdery, fills the air so you cannot see ahead, and sifts through every crevice. Thankful when the blast died down. Mrs Auld declares if the summer heat and the winter cauld were carded through ane anither Canada would ...
— The Narrative of Gordon Sellar Who Emigrated to Canada in 1825 • Gordon Sellar
... I clean forgot my tobacco. I knowed you wasn't a chawin' man, but yore uncle is, an' he mought have left a piece of a plug lyin' round. My old woman tried to git me to use her snuff as a make-shift, but lawsy me! the blamed powdery truck jest washes down my throat like leaves in a mill-race. I never could see how women kin set an' rub an' rub the'r gums with it like they do. I reckon it's jest a ...
— Westerfelt • Will N. Harben
... was deepest. Evil little puffs of gale stirred the powdery snow into myriads of tiny dancing white devils. It had been a fearful winter, thus far; colder than for a score of years; so cold that many a wild woodland creature, which usually kept far back ...
— Further Adventures of Lad • Albert Payson Terhune
... lay prone before the threshold, his out-stretched hands almost touching it, his moccasins already covered out of sight by the powdery snow which ran and trickled incessantly—trickled between his long, dishevelled locks, and over the back of his gloves, and ran in a thin stream past ...
— Old Fires and Profitable Ghosts • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... resinous dead limbs from the pine trees, and perhaps the heart of a dead pine stub or stump. Then, with infinite patience, you may be able to tease the flame. Sometimes a small dead birch contains in the waterproof envelope of its bark a species of powdery, dry touchwood that takes the flame readily. Still, it is easy enough to start a blaze—a very fine-looking, cheerful, healthy blaze; the difficulty is to prevent its petering out the moment your ...
— The Forest • Stewart Edward White
... toadstool-like things alluded to by the Chinaman exploded, as the white ray sought them out in the darkness which alone preserved their existence. A brownish cloud—I could not determine whether liquid or powdery—arose in ...
— The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu • Sax Rohmer
... thought how they had no lovers. May had her boys—she could keep them. Sally had Toby. Toby was not a boy: he was a man. He shaved; she had felt the roughness of his chin. May's boys looked as if they had smooth faces, or if they shaved it made their skins powdery. Miss Jubb had never had a boy at all, she shouldn't think. You couldn't fancy Miss Jubb as a young girl. She must be quite old—as old as Sally's mother—perhaps forty. But ma had been unlucky to strike dad. He had never been any good. Not like Toby. ...
— Coquette • Frank Swinnerton |
