"Span" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the fire burn better. Her face was rosy, flushed prettily with the glow from the blazing oak wood. Packard's eyes brightened as he looked at her, making a comprehensive survey of the trim little form from the top of her bronze hair to the heels of her spick-and-span boots. About her throat, knotted loosely, was a flaming-red silken scarf. The thought struck him that the Temple fortunes, the Temple ranch, the Temple master, all were falling or had already fallen into varying states of decay, and ...
— Man to Man • Jackson Gregory
... stalk is cut, particularly under the thick part, into span-long pieces, which are stuck obliquely into the earth. In five or six months the roots are fit for use, but they are usually allowed to remain some time longer in the earth. The stalks are sometimes cut off, and the roots left in the earth. They ...
— Travels in Peru, on the Coast, in the Sierra, Across the Cordilleras and the Andes, into the Primeval Forests • J. J. von Tschudi
... Station to the new palatial St. Enoch, and there a splendid set of offices was provided. This was another advantage much to my taste. St. Enoch was and is certainly a most handsome and commodious terminus. Originally it had one great roof of a single span, second only to that of St. Pancras Station. Other spans, not so great, have since been added, for the business of St. Enoch rapidly grew, and enlarged accommodation soon became necessary. In 1879 it had six long and spacious platforms, now it ...
— Fifty Years of Railway Life in England, Scotland and Ireland • Joseph Tatlow
... glorious of all the Undying, many-named, girt round with awe! Jove, author of Nature, applying to all things the rudder of law— Hail! Hail! for it justly rejoices the races whose life is a span To lift unto thee their voices—the Author and Framer of man. For we are thy sons; thou didst give us the symbols of speech at our birth, Alone of the things that live, and mortal move upon earth. ...
— The World's Best Poetry Volume IV. • Bliss Carman
... freedom is the only condition of a beautiful life. Those who, like Mrs. Alving, have paid with blood and tears for their spiritual awakening, repudiate marriage as an imposition, a shallow, empty mockery. They know, whether love last but one brief span of time or for eternity, it is the only creative, inspiring, elevating basis for a new race, ...
— Anarchism and Other Essays • Emma Goldman
... hand, and carries it to that enormous machine of his, that stood with a stiffness! a hardness! an upward bend of erection! and which, together with it bottom dependence, the inestimable bulse of ladies jewels, formed a grand showout of goods indeed! Then its dimensions, mocking either grasp or span, ...
— Memoirs Of Fanny Hill - A New and Genuine Edition from the Original Text (London, 1749) • John Cleland
... hill and the river bank near it with a wall, so that it might never be possible for an enemy to destroy the mills, and crossing the river, to carry on operations with ease against the circuit-wall of the city. So they decided to span the river at this point with a bridge, and to attach it to the wall; and by building many houses in the district across the river they caused the stream of the Tiber to be in the middle of the city. ...
— Procopius - History of the Wars, Books V. and VI. • Procopius
... Round span the wheel with mad velocity, now uncontrolled, jamming poor Davy's leg between the rudder beam and the wheel post, while Johnny lay sprawling on the deck, holding on like grim death to a stray end of the mizzen-halliard that had been cast loose from the cleats. Another turn of the ...
— Picked up at Sea - The Gold Miners of Minturne Creek • J.C. Hutcheson
... the night in a vermin-infested lodging house, upon the additional payment of thirty cents. Now, this may seem exaggerated, but honestly, my boy, I have given you just about the course of action of these scientific philanthropic enterprises. They are spic and span as the quarterdeck of ...
— Traffic in Souls - A Novel of Crime and Its Cure • Eustace Hale Ball
... in this volume have, in a general way, been arranged in chronological sequence. They span a period of twenty-nine years of Muir's life, during which they appeared as letters and articles, for the most part in publications of limited and local circulation. The Utah and Nevada sketches, and the two San Gabriel papers, were contributed, in the form of letters, ...
— Steep Trails • John Muir
... don't hunt after fame; it was Shakespeare who felt that Fame pieced out Life's span and made us "heirs of all eternity"; it was young Shakespeare who desired fame so passionately that he believed all other men must share his immortal longing, the desire in him being a forecast of capacity, as, indeed, it ...
— The Man Shakespeare • Frank Harris
... each wagon, and as they successively reached the other side of the channel the mules were unhitched, the pole of each wagon run under the hind axle of the one just in front, and the tailboards used so as to span the slight space between them. The plan worked well as long as the material lasted, but no other wagons than my twenty-five coming on the ground, the work stopped when the bridge was only half constructed. Informed of the delay and its cause, in sheer desperation ...
— The Memoirs of General Philip H. Sheridan, Vol. I., Part 3 • P. H. Sheridan
... There'll be the loco-boiler next an' thirty knots an hour! Thirty an' more. What I ha' seen since ocean-steam began Leaves me no doot for the machine: but what about the man? The man that counts, wi' all his runs, one million mile o' sea: Four time the span from earth to moon. . . . How far, O Lord, from Thee? That wast beside him night an' day. Ye mind my first typhoon? It scoughed the skipper on his way to jock wi' the saloon. Three feet were on the stokehold-floor — just slappin' to an' ...
— Verses 1889-1896 • Rudyard Kipling
... How much of history this view recalled, and what pathos of human life these graves made real. Read the names of those buried a couple of centuries ago—captains, elders, ministers, governors, wives well beloved, children a span long, maidens in the blush of womanhood—half the tender inscriptions are illegible; the stones are broken, sunk, slanting to fall. What a pitiful attempt to keep the world mindful of ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... in that State the choice of Presidential electors in districts. Why they did not send a memorial to Jay themselves, instead of placing Hamilton in a position to incur the full odium of such a suggestion, can only be explained by the facts that during the entire span of the party's existence, their leader had cheerfully assumed the responsibility in every emergency or crisis, and that if the distinguished formalist in the Executive Mansion of New York had a weak spot in him, ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton
... mistakes is that we confuse life and lifetime, and construe life to mean the span of life. In this conception the unit of measurement is so large that our concept of life evaporates into a vague generalization. Life is too specific, too definite for that. The quality of life may better be measured and tested in one-hour periods of duration. When the ...
— The Reconstructed School • Francis B. Pearson
... and upon the superior power and the inflexible will for victory that abide in the German nation. Nevertheless the deplorable fact remains, that the boundless egotism already mentioned has for that span of the future discernible to us destroyed the collaboration of the two nations which was so full of promise for the intellectual uplift of humanity. But the other party has willed it so. Upon England alone rests the monstrous guilt and the responsibility ...
— The Healing of Nations and the Hidden Sources of Their Strife • Edward Carpenter
... all, and you slave your life In a struggle to hold one man; You think you're paid if he call you wife And be true to you for a span. You keep his house and you bear his child And you walk with your head held high But most of his love, and his kisses go To the ...
— Rhymes of a Roughneck • Pat O'Cotter
... should tell it to you, you shall discover. Abi, there shall be a royal marriage in Memphis of such joy and feasting as has not been known in the history of the Northern or the Southern Land, and for your allotted span you shall sit by the side of Egypt's Queen and shine in her light. Have you not earned the place by right of blood, O conqueror of Pharaoh, and did not Pharaoh promise it to you in your sleep? ...
— Morning Star • H. Rider Haggard
... the fallen monsters. We also attempted to form a ring with hands and arms extended around one of these trees, but our party was not numerous enough to encircle it. I felt a sense of insignificance when I realized the long life of some of these trees, estimated to span forty generations of men, and still in health and strength. We returned to the stage station and again mounted our horses and mules for the perilous adventure of a descent into the Yosemite valley. It so happened that Mr. Bell, the keeper of the station, was a former resident of ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman
... semicircular wall is left, spanning the valley from side to side, through which the stream issuing from the glacier may be seen cutting its way. It is important to notice that such terminal moraines may actually span the whole width of a valley, from side to side, and be interrupted only where watercourses of sufficient power break through them. To suppose that such transverse walls of loose materials could be thrown across a valley by a river were to suppose that it could build dams across ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 75, January, 1864 • Various
... conviction, but for a circumstance that forbids belief in this mode of exit: the ladders do not continue to the top of the cliff! A long space, which would require two or three more such ladders to span it, still intervenes between the top of the highest and the brow of the precipice; and this could not have been scaled without additional ladders. Where are they? It is scarcely probable they had been drawn up; and had they fallen back into the valley, they would ...
— The Cliff Climbers - A Sequel to "The Plant Hunters" • Captain Mayne Reid
... see me. He had evidently returned from the main body with a small scout the night before, and now was up and dressed in his best, spick and span and gay, fairly shining in the sunlight as he stood leaning against a log prop, talking with these ladies where they were seated on one of the rustic settles lately ...
— The Hidden Children • Robert W. Chambers
... quickest way to lessen their weight is by sweating themselves between blankets in a warm room; but this likewise is a practice by no means to be recommended, as it weakens the system by the excess of so general a stimulus, brings on a premature old age, and shortens the span of life; as may be further deduced from the quick maturity, and shortness of the lives, of the inhabitants of Hindostan, and other ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. II - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... on, and at the end of that time his father, as one means of adding something to his scanty resources, obtained the job of hauling a quantity of iron ore from the ore beds near Little York to a forge and furnace at Fullerville. Willard with an ox-team and his uncle Henry with a span of fine horses, were employed for the most part to ...
— Sword and Pen - Ventures and Adventures of Willard Glazier • John Algernon Owens
... town where I was born! Around those happy fields we span In boyish gambols;—I was lost Where I have been, but on this coast I feel I ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. II. • William Wordsworth
... wife was quite surprised to find Her spouse so much to frolicking inclined; Said she, what ails the man, he's grown so gay? A lad of twenty's not more fond of play. Well! let's enjoy the moments while we can; God's will be done, since life is but a span! ...
— The Tales and Novels, Complete • Jean de La Fontaine
... scarcely help believing that he could do so, if he was not afraid of being compelled to work. Ungka was in fact a baboon from the wilds of Sumatra. He had been caught young by a Malay lad, who sold him to Captain Van Deck. He was about two feet and a half high, and the span of his arms was four feet. His face was perfectly free from hair, except at the sides, where it grew like whiskers. It also rather projected over his forehead, but he had very little beard. His coat was jet black, as was the skin of his face. His hands and fingers were long, narrow, ...
— Mark Seaworth • William H.G. Kingston
... ancestors' work than of disturbing their graves. For now the house looked like a real live house, that had a history, and had grown and grown as the world grew; and that it was only an upstart fellow who did not know who his own grandfather was, who would change it for some spick and span new Gothic or Elizabethan thing, which looked as if it had been all spawned in a night, as mushrooms are. From which you may collect (if you have wit enough) that Sir John was a very sound-headed, sound-hearted squire, and just the man to keep the country ...
— The Water-Babies - A Fairy Tale for a Land-Baby • Charles Kingsley
... need was come to Maggie, with her short span of thirteen years. To the usual precocity of the girl, she added that early experience of struggle, of conflict between the inward impulse and outward fact, which is the lot of every imaginative and passionate nature; and the years since she hammered ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot
... in England, she must have in its place some other life that suited her special temperament, some other life that would answer to the call within her for material satisfactions, for strong bodily pleasures, for the joys of the pagan, the unbeliever, who is determined to "make the most of" the short span of human life ...
— Bella Donna - A Novel • Robert Hichens
... jewellery, and frizzled false hair, or else—far more horrible still—social hermaphrodites, who storm the posts that have been assigned to men ever since that venerable and sacred time when 'Adam delved and Eve span,' and who, forsaking holy home haunts, wage war against nature on account of the mistake made in their sex, and clamour for the 'hallowed inalienable right' to jostle and be jostled at the polls; to brawl in the market place, and to rant on the rostrum, like a bevy of bedlamities. Now when I begin ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... were falling swiftly, growing as they dropped. Dave felt his stomach twist, until he saw they were heading toward a huge bird that was cruising along under them, drawing closer. It looked like a cross between a condor and a hawk, but its wing span must have been over three hundred feet. It slipped under the egg, catching the falling object deftly on a cushion-like attachment between its wings, and then struck off briskly ...
— The Sky Is Falling • Lester del Rey
... doom, love's undershrieve, Why this reprieve? Why doth my she-advowson fly Incumbency? To sell thyself dost thou intend By candle's end, And hold the contrast thus in doubt, Life's taper out? Think but how soon the market fails, Your sex lives faster than the males; And if, to measure age's span, The sober Julian were th' account of man, Whilst you live ...
— Lives of the Poets, Vol. 1 • Samuel Johnson
... not leave her mother to her fate? A fate that could not be evaded? Why need she, whose capacity for suffering was so great, who had so much of life and love and all good things before her, remain to share the pains of one whose span in any case was nearing its end? Of one who had no longer power—or so it seemed—to meet the smallest shock, and must succumb before she knew more of suffering than the name. One whom a rude word might almost ...
— The Long Night • Stanley Weyman
... a ring around the date. It's the first time you've condescended to pay me a compliment in a year. You men are the limit. You take it as a matter of course that a girl should be neat and spick and span. If she wasn't you'd notice it soon enough. It's easy for a girl like this Miss Burnaby. I don't suppose she ever did a day's work or anything useful in her life. She orders her clothes from the best places, and gets them fitted and sent home, and that's ...
— Desert Conquest - or, Precious Waters • A. M. Chisholm
... them a son. They even asked the witches in their town why God would not give them a child. The witches told them that they would have one after a year, but that when born he would be no longer than a span. Nevertheless the couple ...
— Filipino Popular Tales • Dean S. Fansler
... Peliac summit Swam (as the tale is told) through liquid surges of Neptune Far as the Phasis-flood and frontier-land AEetean; Whenas the youths elect, of Argive vigour the oak-heart, Longing the Golden Fleece of the Colchis-region to harry, 5 Dared in a poop swift-paced to span salt seas and their shallows, Sweeping the deep blue seas with sweeps a-carven of fir-wood. She, that governing Goddess of citadels crowning the cities, Builded herself their car fast-flitting with lightest of breezes, Weaving plants of the pine conjoined in curve of ...
— The Carmina of Caius Valerius Catullus • Caius Valerius Catullus
... span, O'er dim Crane-neck was bended; One bright foot touched the eastern hills, ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... stranger: life is—why therefore should not life be lengthened for a while? What are ten or twenty or fifty thousand years in the history of life? Why in ten thousand years scarce will the rain and storms lessen a mountain top by a span in thickness? In two thousand years these caves have not changed, nothing has changed but the beasts, and man, who is as the beasts. There is naught that is wonderful about the matter, couldst thou ...
— She • H. Rider Haggard
... building of Rome, continue our journey down through Odin and Christ to—America. It is a wearisome while. And yet the lives of but sixty old women, such as live under the hill, say of a century each, strung together, are sufficient to reach over the whole ground. Taking hold of hands they would span the interval from Eve to my own mother. A respectable tea-party merely,—whose gossip would be Universal History. The fourth old woman from myself suckled Columbus,—the ninth was nurse to the Norman Conqueror,—the nineteenth was the Virgin Mary,—the twenty-fourth ...
— A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers • Henry David Thoreau
... around, and amongst the deep seams and fissures of its abrupt descent coastward, we suddenly come, midst rugged barreness and gloomy grandeur, upon these messengers from the inner earth. Some enjoying the sunlight, but for a brief span, disappearing again for ever as, suddenly as they were up-borne; others finding their way down to the habitable lowlands and to the sea. But, unfortunately, all these springs, some of great volume, find issue on the outer edge of the range; ...
— The History of Australian Exploration from 1788 to 1888 • Ernest Favenc
... make it look like a gardener's garden, all clipped an' spick an' span, would you?" he said. "It's nicer like this with things runnin' wild, an' swingin' an' catchin' ...
— The Secret Garden • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... his despair. He would bury the dead past, and go on into the future making the best of his life, maimed and marred as it was by his own folly. He was still in the prime of his age, thirty years younger than Mr. Clifford, whose intellect was as keen and clear as ever; there was a long span of time stretching before him, ...
— Cobwebs and Cables • Hesba Stretton
... of the wave-worn shore, They passed the Tropic's red meridian o'er; Nor long the hours—they never paused o'er time, Unbroken by the clock's funereal chime,[391] Which deals the daily pittance of our span, 350 And points and mocks with iron laugh at man.[fn] What deemed they of the future or the past? The present, like a tyrant, held them fast: Their hour-glass was the sea-sand, and the tide, Like her smooth billow, saw their moments glide Their clock the Sun, in his unbounded tower They reckoned ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron
... whetted up his axe, tried the lower margin of the head, found it was a trifle out of the true—that is, its under curve centred, not on the handle one span down, but half an inch out from the handle. A nail driven into the point of the axe-eye corrected this and the chiefs went forth to select a tree. A White Pine that measured roughly six inches through was soon found, and Sam was allowed to clear away the brush around ...
— Two Little Savages • Ernest Thompson Seton
... caught a slight noise above her head, as a few pebbles rolled down the almost perpendicular face of the wall and bounded from the trail where she stood, into the depths below. For a few minutes, the girl, on the little, shelf-like path that was scarcely wider than the span of her two hands, was as motionless and as silent as the cliff itself; while, with her face turned upward, she searched with keen eyes the rim of the gorge; her free, right hand resting upon the butt of the revolver at her hip. Then she ...
— The Eyes of the World • Harold Bell Wright
... of man is able to construct monuments far more permanent than the narrow span of his own existence; yet these monuments, like himself, are perishable and frail; and in the boundless annals of time his life and his labors must equally be measured as a fleeting moment. Of a simple and solid edifice it is ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IV (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland II • Various
... maiden in her heart, "I know with certainty that I shall set my brothers free," and went and sought a high tree and seated herself in it and span, and neither spoke nor laughed. Now it so happened that a king was hunting in the forest, who had a great greyhound which ran to the tree on which the maiden was sitting, and sprang about it, whining, and barking at her. Then the King came by and saw the beautiful King's daughter with the ...
— Household Tales by Brothers Grimm • Grimm Brothers
... disclosed to view. There was not even a spot or trace of ink anywhere upon his enamelled coat, the tree-stump, the milestone or the three-cornered hat, he had been washed and cleaned for the cabinet with a vengeance, and looked as beautiful and as spick and span as the day the artist had turned him ...
— The Tale of Lal - A Fantasy • Raymond Paton
... dawn (Beloved of all the happy, often sought In the slow east by hollow eyes that watch) She seemed to husked find clownish gratitude, That could but kneel and thank. Of industry She was the fair exemplar, us she span Among her maids; and every day she broke Bread to the needy stranger at her gate. All sloth and rudeness fled at her approach; The women blushed and courtesied as she passed, Preserving word and smile like precious gold; And where on pillows clustered ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 47, September, 1861 • Various
... satisfaction out of life as he can, between his birth and his death, why shouldn't he go about it in any old way that suits himself? What real difference does it make whether he chooses to indulge in alcohol, opium, and other dissipations for a short while, or prefers to prolong his span by sticking to wheat, potatoes and sobriety? Purely a matter of personal taste, to be decided by each individual ...
— Heart and Soul • Victor Mapes (AKA Maveric Post)
... little girls ran forward and to their satisfaction were helped into Mr. Atkinson's boat with Mr. and Mrs. Dallas and Bubbles as fellow-passengers, Bubbles grinning from ear to ear and looking very spick and span in a clean pink calico frock and a white apron. A string of blue beads adorned her neck; she had added it as a ...
— A Sweet Little Maid • Amy E. Blanchard
... fate is that which sends some of us out into the restless world to grow away from our old ideals and make others, and restrains some in the monotonous rut of village life, to drone peacefully their little span! But happy he, who, knowing nothing, misses nothing. If there were any village Hampdens, or mute, inglorious Miltons among my playmates, they gave no present indications. I found the girls considerably older than ...
— The Romance of an Old Fool • Roswell Field
... corsets and steamship stays, growing small by degrees and beautifully less, she needs but the forty-minute girdle of Puck De Sauty to so contract her waist at the equator that any impudent traveller may span it with a carpet-bag and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 26, December, 1859 • Various
... very well for those that like it," observed Mr. Windsor to the Duke, "but give me a box buggy and a span of long-tailed horses. ...
— The King's Men - A Tale of To-morrow • Robert Grant, John Boyle O'Reilly, J. S. Dale, and John T.
... reveille every young man sprang from his bed. Then followed hasty but orderly dressing and the making of the toilet. The cadet must be spick and span. ...
— Dick Prescott's First Year at West Point • H. Irving Hancock
... reverently. He sat in silence for some minutes, gazing dreamily before him, a puzzled look on the red face. At last—"Now there's the question of the future to consider!" he said anxiously. "I'm getting old—sixty-four next birthday, precious near the allotted span of life, but she is twenty years younger—she may have a long life before her still. It would break my heart to let her go on working, but she'd be too proud to take money from me, unless— unless— Mrs Trevor, you ...
— Betty Trevor • Mrs. G. de Horne Vaizey
... life 's a pain and but a span; I know my sense is mock'd in everything; And, to conclude, I know myself a Man— Which is a proud and ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... colossal span of the mighty bridge; then for a little while Liberty towers above our passing,—seeming first to turn towards us, then to turn away from us, the solemn beauty of her passionless face of bronze. Tints brighten;—the heaven ...
— Two Years in the French West Indies • Lafcadio Hearn
... may repaint iron and wood; but who can restore the faded colours to broken hopes and a bankrupt ambition? You see these arches here which with so light a span bear the burden of the house above them. So was the span of my heart on that opening day. No weight of labour then seemed to be too much for me. The arches remain and will remain; but as ...
— The Struggles of Brown, Jones, and Robinson - By One of the Firm • Anthony Trollope
... it seems but a span to the modern scientific point of view; for that, however, neither Schiller nor Kant was ripe, since both thought it necessary to assume that human history began about six thousand years ago and began substantially as reported in Genesis, however the original ...
— The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller • Calvin Thomas
... their magnificence breathe ever of romance, but kings could not be magnificent were it not for the labour of the conscientious common people, those who go daily to their task, asking nothing better than to live their little span in humble endeavour. The weavers, the tapissiers of that far-away time in Flanders are intensely appealing now when their beautiful work hangs before us to-day. They send us a friendly message down through the centuries. It ...
— The Tapestry Book • Helen Churchill Candee
... Ah, I'll tell you—it was in his twenty-fifth year—about three in the afternoon, by the clock, October Twenty-first, Eighteen Hundred Thirty-five. The day was Indian summer, warm and balmy. He sat there reading in the window of his office on Court Street, Boston, a spick-span new law-office, with four shelves of law-books bound in sheep, a green-covered table in the center, three armchairs, and on the wall a steel engraving of ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 7 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Orators • Elbert Hubbard
... broad, and twice that length; his mouth wide enough to receive, or take into it, the head of a man; his stomach, seven or eight inches broad. He is of a slow motion; and usually lies or lurks close in the mud; and has a moveable string on his head, about a span or near unto a quarter of a yard long; by the moving of which, which is his natural bait, when he lies close and unseen in the mud, he draws other smaller fish so close to him, that he can suck them into his mouth, and so devours ...
— The Complete Angler • Izaak Walton
... the front door was open, but nobody was to be seen. Bob and Jim, the two small boys, had not yet returned from seeing the gray span taken to the mill, and the women and girls had gone through to ...
— Crowded Out o' Crofield - or, The Boy who made his Way • William O. Stoddard
... he turned to follow his prey; George jumped down and got several more stones, and held one foot advanced and his arm high in air. Up came the savage panting for breath. The fish made a dart, George threw a stone; it struck him with such fury on the shoulders that it span off into the air and fell into the sea forty yards off. Down went the man, and the fish after him. The next time they came up, to George's dismay, the sea-tiger showed no signs of being hurt and the man was greatly distressed. The moment he was ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade
... sons had been crowned in the arena: "Die, for thou hast nothing short of divinity to desire." These ambitions had been ended in Tahiti by the frowns of the missionaries, to whom athletics were a species of diabolical possession, unworthy souls destined for hell or heaven, with but a brief span to avert their birthright of damnation in sackcloth ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien
... payment of his fees. He lived to be the fifth Viscount Dunborough, a man neither much worse nor much better than his neighbours; and dying at a moderate age—in his bed, of gout in the stomach—escaped the misfortune which awaited some of his friends; who, living beyond the common span, found themselves shunned by a world which could find no worse to say of them than that they lived in their age as all men of fashion had lived in ...
— The Castle Inn • Stanley John Weyman
... 'neath the arches grand That with garlands span our greeting. With a silent prayer that an hour as fair May smile on each after meeting: And long may the song, the joyous song, Roll on in the hours before us, And grand and hale may the elms of Yale For many a ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No 3, September, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... am mortal and a day my span I know and own, Yet when the circling ebb and flow I scan Of stars thick-strewn, No longer brush the earth my feet, And I abide, While God's own food ambrosial doth replete, ...
— Roads from Rome • Anne C. E. Allinson
... was long and long ago our love began; It is something all unmeasured by time's span: In an era and a spot, by the Modern World forgot, We were lovers, ere God named us, Maid ...
— The Kingdom of Love - and Other Poems • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... when the old woman had come she had promised to go and live with them, all at once I heard an awful racket, and looked toward the road, and oh cricky! what do you think I saw? Tearing round Deacon Stiles's corner, lickety-split, was a span of horses and a buggy, with the reins dragging in the dust, and the buggy spinning from one side of the road to the other, and in it was a lady with great wide-open eyes, and a face as white as a sheet, clutching a little girl in ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, January 1878, No. 3 • Various
... that folks no longer eyed him with sly, amused, knowing smiles whenever he opened a newspaper. Perhaps some of their amusement had been the sight of a youngster struggling with a full-spread page, employing arms that did not quite make the span. But most of all he hated the condescending tolerance; their everlasting attitude that everything he did was "cute" like the little girl who decked herself out in mother's clothing from high heels and brassiere to evening gown, costume ...
— The Fourth R • George Oliver Smith
... changing, her hair alight with mystic color, the passion that had prompted him to this end was stirred anew, dissipating any intrusive doubts. The veering and flickering sheen seemed but a web of entangling irradiation. A span of silence became an interminable period to her, with no sight of fresh horses nor sign of preparation ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... massed together like packed figs; these, too, give out a pleasant perfume. But what strikes one most is the air of perfect repair and cleanliness of everything. No grimy walls, no soiled curtains, here; all is clean as a new pin, all is spick and span. The courtyard is shaded by orange trees covered with bloom, and the heavy odour of neroli pervades the place. Many of the last year's fruit have been left upon the trees for ornament, and hang in bright yellow clusters out of reach. A ...
— A Ride to India across Persia and Baluchistan • Harry De Windt
... of labouring and living for others? I suppose, Lucy Snowe, the orb of your life is not to be so rounded: for you, the crescent-phase must suffice. Very good. I see a huge mass of my fellow-creatures in no better circumstances. I see that a great many men, and more women, hold their span of life on conditions of denial and privation. I find no reason why I should be of the few favoured. I believe in some blending of hope and sunshine sweetening the worst lots. I believe that this life is not all; neither the beginning nor ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... And then, in the span of a few brief seconds, the hopes of both these men were shattered. The one forgot even his greed in the panic of terror—the other was plunged into total forgetfulness of the past by a jagged fragment of rock which gashed a ...
— Tarzan and the Jewels of Opar • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... through the glowing air Approaching, drives! Fresh from his banquet-meats, Flushed with Olympian nectar, angrily He guides his fourfold span of furious steeds, Convoyed by that bold Hour whose ardent torch Burns up the dew, toward the narrow beach, This long, projecting spit of cloudy gold Whereon I wait to greet him when he comes. Think not I fear thine anger: this day, thou, Lord of the silver ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. VI.,October, 1860.—No. XXXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... shaken-witted thing, 'Plaining his little span. But of proud virgin joy the appropriate birth, The Son of God ...
— The Faith of the Millions (2nd series) • George Tyrrell
... act. On the other side we have the conception that all we see around us and feel within us—the phenomena of physical nature as well as those of the human mind—have their unsearchable roots in a cosmical life, if I dare apply the term, an infinitesimal span of which is offered to the investigation of man.' Among thinking people, in my opinion, this last conception has a higher ethical value than that of a personal artificer. Be that as it may, I make here ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... His friends were few, and the best of them thought His life a mistake. It takes more than the span of our lives to measure their size. It is better that a great soul should be called a failure than that it should die a shrivelled success. Earth measures by what the hands hold; heaven by the heart. The hands at last lose their grasp, but the heart wealth goes on from ...
— Levels of Living - Essays on Everyday Ideals • Henry Frederick Cope
... to another,—these are the mainsprings; new names, but no new qualities in the men and women. Hence the vain endeavor to keep any bit of this fairy gold, which has rolled like a brook through our hands. A thousand thoughts awoke; great rainbows seemed to span the sky; a morning among the mountains;—but we close the book, and not a ray remains in the memory of evening. But this passion for romance, and this disappointment, show how much we need real elevations and pure poetry; ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... to the elderly woman who presided behind the nickel-plated American cash-register. The only thing that rang false about the place was that register, perked up there spick-span new. Hawkins insisted that it was a typewriter, and as we passed out he took a handful of matches (thinking them toothpicks) and asked the cashier to play a tune on the thingumabob, ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 1 of 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Good Men and Great • Elbert Hubbard
... out in spick an' span clean clothes come Sund'ys. Ever'body wore homespun clo'es den. De mistis an' de res' o' de ladies in de Big House made mos' of 'em. De cullud wimmins wore some kin' o' dress wid white aprons an' de mens wore overalls an' homespun pants an' shirts. Course, all de time us gits han'-me-downs from ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves - Mississippi Narratives • Works Projects Administration
... work, as the men of the 65th and Wheat's Tigers speedily found, crossing the wagon bridge over the Shenandoah! One span was all afire. The flooring burned their feet, flames licked the wooden sides of the structure, thick, choking smoke canopied the rafters. With musket butts the men beat away the planking, hurled into the flood below burning scantling and brand, and trampled ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston
... men when they are from sixty to eighty years old, begins after twenty to thirty months in a rat. He is then about through. But when an operation is performed on a senile rat he gets from six to eight months' new life. In other words, the addition to his normal span is 20 to 30 per cent. That would be a large fraction of life for a man to live over again. The rat lives it vigorously, ...
— The Goat-gland Transplantation • Sydney B. Flower
... me the importance of the Bulair Lines and urged me to throw the new Divisions against them. He seems to think he is mooting to me a spick and span new idea—that he has invented something. Finally, he suggests ten shillings and a free pardon be offered to every Turk who deserts to our lines with his rifle and kit: he believes we should thus get rid of the whole of the ...
— Gallipoli Diary, Volume I • Ian Hamilton
... miles east and west, two thousand miles north and south, white tiled bathrooms have sprung like mushrooms seemingly in a single night, charming houses, enchanting gardens, beautiful cities, cultivated people, created in thousands upon thousands of instances in the short span of one generation. Certain great houses abroad have consummate quality, it is true, but for every one of these, there are a thousand that are mediocre, even offensive. In our own country, beautiful houses and appointments flourish like field flowers in ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post
... know for certain that the GRAND OLD MAN Drank tea at midnight with complete impunity, At least he long outlived the Psalmist's span And from ill-health enjoyed a fine immunity; Besides, robust Antipodeans can And do drink tea at every opportunity; While only Stoics nowadays contrive To shun the cup that gilds the hour ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Oct. 24, 1917 • Various
... a span," she repeated, looking out into the sunshine, with a light that was almost ...
— The Battle Ground • Ellen Glasgow
... made two other Models [of bridges]. One is pasteboard, five feet span and five inches of height from the cords. It is in the opinion of every person who has seen it one of the most beautiful objects the eye can behold. I then cast a model in metal following the construction of that in paste-board and of the ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... but father would. He wa'n't doin' very well that year. I was a little mite of a thing then, an' I remember it all as if 'twa'n't but yesterday. Father come in, an' he says: 'Well, I guess I've saved the judge a pretty good smash-up. That span o' colts run away down the river road.' 'Who's in the carriage?' says mother. 'He drivin' himself?' 'No,' says father. 'He'd jest lifted Annie in, an' there was a paper blew along the road, an' they started.' 'Annie?' says mother, 'that little mite? He don't deserve to have a child. Why, father,' ...
— Country Neighbors • Alice Brown
... those warm hearts too, throbbing under your bodices, or who would drive you wilder to possess him, than that gallant young sailor standing on the "Monongahela's" deck. Ay, observe him well, that tall, graceful youth, with a waist you might span with one of your short plump arms; those slim patrician feet, that might wear your own little satin slippers; then that swelling chest and those elegantly turned shoulders, which will take both of your arms, one of these days, to entwine and clasp ...
— Captain Brand of the "Centipede" • H. A. (Henry Augustus) Wise
... drowned in a heap, And Southey's last Pan has pillowed his sleep; That Felo de se who, half drunk with his Malmsey, Walked out of his depth and was lost in a calm sea, 10 Singing "Glory to God" in a spick and span stanza, The like (since Tom Sternhold ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Vol. 7. - Poetry • George Gordon Byron
... shifting, the political axis of the world perpetually changing. But we are now far enough off to discern how stupendous a thing was done when, after two cycles of bitter war, one foreign, the other civil and intestine, Pitt and Washington, within a span of less than a score of years, planted the foundations ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein
... whims. Let me indulge my own whims, Louisa dear, and punish me with a cold bite when I come in late for meals. I'm not even going to church again. It was horrible there yesterday. The church is so offensively spick-and-span brand ...
— Chronicles of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... it was otherwise. Many vehicles came dashing down Tinplate Street: carriages, public and private, of every variety, from the rattletrap cab hired off the stand, or the decent coach from the livery stable, to the smart spick-and-span brougham, with its well-appointed horses and servants in neat livery. They all set down at the same door, and took up from it at any hour between midnight and dawn, waiting patiently in file in the wide street round the corner, ...
— The Thin Red Line; and Blue Blood • Arthur Griffiths
... Aniline. Discovered 1826 (anil. Span. indigo). First prepared from indigo by means of caustic potash, found in coal, 1834. Manufactured on a large scale after Perkin's discovery of mauve ...
— Vegetable Dyes - Being a Book of Recipes and Other Information Useful to the Dyer • Ethel M. Mairet
... away, rested the back of his left hand, in which he was holding his hat, on his haunch, fixed an eyeglass in his eye, and looked round with an expression of great gravity, twirling first one end and then the other of his little light moustache slowly as he did so. He was extremely spic-and-span in appearance, and wore light-coloured kid gloves. The room was pretty full by that time, and he seemed to have some little difficulty in finding the person whom he sought, but at last he made out Edith and Evadne ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... railway company had come thro' that day on the first train. There was Strathcona, who was plain Donald Smith in them days, an' Van Horn, who was manager, an' Ross, who was contractor! A'd been workin' m' crews on the high span bridge, there,—y' don't know,—well no matter, 'tis the highest in the Rockies an' dangerous from a curve! A didn't want that train load o' directors to risk crossin': wasn't safe! M' crew hadn't one ...
— The Freebooters of the Wilderness • Agnes C. Laut
... solitary place, with the walled field which was once Calleva Atrebatum at my feet, I yet have a sense of satisfaction, of security, never felt in a land that had no historic past. The knowledge that my individual life is but a span, a breath; that in a little while I too must wither and mingle like one of those fallen yellow leaves with the mould, does not grieve me. I know it and yet disbelieve it; for am I not here alive, where men have inhabited for thousands of years, ...
— Afoot in England • W.H. Hudson
... by Canning, was cautiously treading in the path towards free trade. The brightest star in this cheerful constellation was the rare youth who, though his shining course was run in two-and-twenty years, yet in that scanty span was able to impress with his vigorous understanding and graceful imagination more than one of the loftiest minds of his time.[29] Arthur Hallam was a couple of years younger than Gladstone, no narrow gulf at that age; but such ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... for. The Whigs made an unco crawing what they wad do with their auld enemies, and in special wi' Sir Robert Redgauntlet. But there were ower mony great folks dipped in the same doings, to mak a spick and span new warld. So Parliament passed it a' ower easy; and Sir Robert, bating that he was held to hunting foxes instead of Covenanters, remained just the man he was. [The caution and moderation of King William III, and his principles of unlimited toleration, ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... to quench it. Two heads are better than one. Waste not, want not. We easily forget our faults when nobody knows them. We never know the worth of water till the well is dry. When Adam delved and Eve span, who was then the gentleman? When the cat is away, the mice will play. Strike when the iron is hot. Where there's a will, there's a way. You cannot eat your cake and have it too. You must take ...
— Verse and Prose for Beginners in Reading - Selected from English and American Literature • Horace Elisha Scudder, editor
... cruelties which tarnished the conquest of America have been re-enacted before our own eyes in times which we suppose to be characterized by vast progress, information and general refinement of manners. Within the interval embraced by the span of one life we have seen the reign of terror in France, the expedition to St. Domingo,* (* The North American Review for 1821 Number 30 contains the following passage: Conflicts with slaves fighting for their ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America V3 • Alexander von Humboldt
... comic tragedy, and I can never think sadly of the brave-hearted happy Irishman. He was too full of the sunny joy of existence, his heart beat with too much of good-will toward men, to be remembered otherwise than as a bright-faced, sweet-spirited boy whose span of years was short. How he ever endured the hardships and reached Springvale again is a miracle, and I wonder even now, how, waiting patiently for the inevitable, he could go peacefully through the hours, making us forget everything ...
— The Price of the Prairie - A Story of Kansas • Margaret Hill McCarter
... was something prosaic, almost sordid. It made his heart sink as he thought of the sacred splendors of the Zion he had imaged in his suffering soul. The rainbows builded of his bitter tears did not span the firmament of this dingy Eastern city, set amid sterile hills. Where were the roses and lilies, the cedars and the fountains? Mount Moriah was here indeed, but it bore the Mosque of Omar, and the Temple of Jehovah was but one ruined wall. The Shechinah, the Divine Glory, ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... of a man holding the centre span of a bridge of which every span on either side of him has ...
— Real Soldiers of Fortune • Richard Harding Davis
... months!—how short a space of time, and yet, perchance, how pregnant with events affecting the happiness and the destiny of millions! Within that brief span—the millionth fraction of a single sand in Time's great hour-glass—thousands have begun their existence, to pursue through life a career of honor, of profit, of ambition, or of crime!—and thousands, too, have ceased their existence, and their places are filled by others in the great ...
— City Crimes - or Life in New York and Boston • Greenhorn
... in a sad state of dilapidation. One remarkable monument found at Kabah resembles a triumphal arch. It stands by itself on a ruined mound apart from the other structures. It is described as a "lonely arch, having a span of 14 feet," rising on the field of ruins "in solitary grandeur." Figure 41 ...
— Ancient America, in Notes on American Archaeology • John D. Baldwin
... agree in relating that Porus was four cubits and a span high, and that when he was upon his elephant, which was of the largest size, his stature and bulk were so answerable, that he appeared to be proportionably mounted, as a horseman on his horse. This elephant, during the whole battle, gave many singular proofs of sagacity and of particular ...
— The Boys' and Girls' Plutarch - Being Parts of The "Lives" of Plutarch • Plutarch
... not won until the steps of the War Department were reached. Every inch of progression was toughly contested, and when the President was declared victor, it was only by a hand span. He appeared to be as much pleased as if he had ...
— Lincoln's Yarns and Stories • Alexander K. McClure
... Females are too apt to be struck with Images of Beauty; and that the Passage where the Gentleman is said to span the Waist of Pamela with his Hand, is enough to ruin a ...
— Samuel Richardson's Introduction to Pamela • Samuel Richardson
... it and suck it, the green sugar cane, Whatever is sweet is costly and vain; He'll cut you a joint as long as a span, And charge two piastres. ...
— The Women of the Arabs • Henry Harris Jessup
... a limited span and naught may avail to extend it. This is manifested by the impermanence of human beings. But yet whenever necessary I will hereafter make my appearance from time to time as a god, a sage, or a Buddha."—Last words of Shaka ...
— The Religions of Japan - From the Dawn of History to the Era of Meiji • William Elliot Griffis
... arose from the failure of several wooden structures, to the great inconvenience of the public, this being really a creek rising and falling with the tide. The obstacle, and the steepness of the left bank, which was considerable, have been triumphantly surmounted by a noble arch of 110 feet span which carries the road at a very slight inclination to the level of the opposite bank. The bridge is wholly the work of men in irons who must have been fed, and must consequently have cost the public just as much if they had done nothing all the while; and it may be held ...
— Three Expeditions into the Interior of Eastern Australia, Vol 2 (of 2) • Thomas Mitchell
... felt a new interest in this strange lad, who had been a wanderer the brief span of his days, and yet strange to say seemed to possess the instincts ...
— Darry the Life Saver - The Heroes of the Coast • Frank V. Webster
... usually small, the men silent and studious of the weather. Nares, in one of his rusty humours, afforded me no shadow of a morning salutation. He, too, seemed to observe the behaviour of the ship with an intent and anxious scrutiny. What I liked still less, Johnson himself was at the wheel, which he span busily, often with a visible effort; and as the seas ranged up behind us, black and imminent, he kept casting behind him eyes of animal swiftness, and drawing in his neck between his shoulders, like a man dodging a blow. From these signs ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the average life of the working dog is longer by a year or two than that of his more beautiful cousin. Pampering and artificial living are not to be encouraged; but, on the other hand, neglect has the same effect of shortening the span of life, and bad feeding and inattention to cleanliness provoke the skin diseases which ...
— Dogs and All About Them • Robert Leighton
... sixteenth century is so strong that no other is felt. The eye follows the terraces with graceful balustrades in the shadow of old trees, dwells on the fanciful Renaissance bridge, that looks as if its first intention was to span the stream in the usual manner, but, having gone some distance across, changed its mind, and turned off at an abrupt angle; then the little pavilion in the style of Francis I., connected with a machicolated gateway, fixes the attention. There is something in the air of the ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker
... still dark and raining when the two beleaguered freighters continued their journey next morning. Hiram, with eight of his own black horses hitched to the wagon, and four span of mules and horses leading, went ahead, as usual. They left the level mountain valley that swaddled the lake and started down the steep grades toward the Julia ...
— The She Boss - A Western Story • Arthur Preston Hankins
... left Coffin's Point to-day, so that we can go there now whenever we can get the house ready. Then we shall have horses and vehicles more at our disposal; you may hear of our carriage and span yet, but I shall hate to leave here. This moon is lovely, and to-night the flats are covered with water by the full moon tide, and the sea looks as if it came ...
— Letters from Port Royal - Written at the Time of the Civil War (1862-1868) • Various
... worked it out," said Redell. "But I can give you a rough idea. The human eye can't resolve any object that subtends less than three minutes of arc. For instance, a plane with a hundred-foot wing span would only be a speck twenty miles away, if you saw it ...
— The Flying Saucers are Real • Donald Keyhoe
... ordinance of death in itself an accusation against the Most High; we are not specially shocked or outraged by the thought that the whole population of the globe dies out within quite a moderate span of time, nor even by the reflection that several hundred thousand persons die every year in the United Kingdom alone. We know quite well that every one of those who perished in Messina must have paid his debt to nature in, at most, ...
— Problems of Immanence - Studies Critical and Constructive • J. Warschauer
... there were councils which gave their decisions in accordance with the highest ideal of human justice before there were any cities on this continent; before there were bridges to span the Mississippi; before this network of railroads was dreamed of! There were primitive communities upon the very spot where Chicago or New York City now stands, where men were as children, innocent of all the crimes now committed there daily and nightly. ...
— Indian Heroes and Great Chieftains • [AKA Ohiyesa], Charles A. Eastman
... dedication of the pile of stone and mortar which had stood before the face of the wind as sturdily as old Harpeth itself. His words held the simplicity of those of a great poet and each was a separate jewel that could be imbedded in the hearts of his people to last for the span of their lives. He made a grateful acknowledgment of the safety of the chapel and of the spared lives of those before him, and in a few ringing sentences he prayed that we all be delivered from the ...
— The Heart's Kingdom • Maria Thompson Daviess
... allusions to Lord Lister's journeyings to France, and the article in Harper's Monthly for April, 1909, were from the pen of the author of Animal Experimentation—a work which is reviewed in the Appendix to the present edition. To his advanced age—now far beyond the allotted span—we may ascribe the inaccuracies which, at an earlier period of his career, would doubtless have ...
— An Ethical Problem - Or, Sidelights upon Scientific Experimentation on Man and Animals • Albert Leffingwell
... change of scene and some little passage of time are inevitable. Thus in any short story there is usually a slight hiatus of thought, due to these causes, which must be bridged over. The tyro will span the chasm by means of stars or some such arbitrary signs, but the master will calmly ignore such gaps and preserve the unity of his narrative so deftly that even the lines of the dovetailing will be scarcely visible. Thus in "The Ambitious Guest" ( 9, 10) ...
— Short Story Writing - A Practical Treatise on the Art of The Short Story • Charles Raymond Barrett
... first bridge ever built on the tubular principle. The importance of crossing the strait was very great, as it lay in the direct route to Holyhead and Ireland. Telford, the engineer, daringly resolved to span the strait with a suspension bridge 100 feet above the water. He began it in 1818, and on the last day of January 1826 the London mail coach passed over the estuary. The bridge remains to this day ...
— The Iron Horse • R.M. Ballantyne
... sojourn in the country. It was not habitable, nor had it been so for years. The road by which he travelled lay near it, and he could not pass without looking upon the place where a long line of gallant ancestors had succeeded each other, lived their span, and disappeared in ...
— The Poor Scholar - Traits And Stories Of The Irish Peasantry, The Works of - William Carleton, Volume Three • William Carleton
... Moses. He had heard of me, and came to see what manner of man I was. We became very well acquainted. He was a man anxious to obtain information, and he asked me questions which embarrassed me very much; but I do not know that he suspected I had lived beyond the ordinary span of life. There are a good many traditions about this visit of Moses, some of which are extant at the present day; but these, of course, are the result of what might be called cumulative imagination. Many of them are of Moslem origin, and the great Arabian ...
— The Vizier of the Two-Horned Alexander • Frank R. Stockton
... and took a key from a box. "I'll show you your locker," he said; and presently Bonbright, minus his coat, was incased in the uniform of a laborer. Spick and span and new it was, and gave him a singularly uncomfortable feeling because of this fact. He wanted it grimed and daubed like the overalls of the men he saw about him. A boyish impulse to smear it moved him—but he was ashamed ...
— Youth Challenges • Clarence B Kelland
... span of a generation has passed since W. E. Henley, after reading two chapters, sent me a verbal message: "Tell Conrad that if the rest is up to the sample it shall certainly come out in the New Review." The most gratifying recollection of ...
— Notes on My Books • Joseph Conrad
... yellow paint and a new roof, but the Society for the Preservation of Colonial Landmarks had decreed that the figure of the soldier on the sign-board should remain untouched by the brush. Thus the uniform that had once shone so spick and span in streaks of buff and blue would better recall the ragged regimentals ...
— The Mayor of Warwick • Herbert M. Hopkins
... Figs. 3, 4, and 5.—Suitable for spans of 30 ft. or less. The two frames lock together at the center of the span; their slope must not be more than 4 on 7. The bridge can be erected by two or three noncommissioned officers and 20 men, one-half on each side of the gap. Heavy ...
— Manual of Military Training - Second, Revised Edition • James A. Moss
... poetry is to be judged either by universality of appeal or by extent and variety of range. L'Allegro and Il Penseroso will always have far more readers: and Paradise Lost embraces an immeasurably {240} greater span of human life. But, if not the greatest, Samson is probably for its own audience the most moving of Milton's works. It is not everybody who has in him the grave emotions to which it appeals: but whoever has will find them stirred by Samson as few other books in all the literature of the world ...
— Milton • John Bailey
... mellowed, o'er the waters sweep; 'T is sweet to see the evening star appear; 'T is sweet to listen as the night-winds creep From leaf to leaf; 't is sweet to view on high The rainbow, based on ocean, span the sky. ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... a hasty retreat was made across the Tennessee by the railroad bridge; but before all the Confederate troops had succeeded in crossing Leadbetter caused to be exploded two hundred pounds of powder, with a view of blowing up the east span of the bridge. The explosion did not do the work, hence the drawbridge at the east end was fired, to complete its destruction.( 9) But few captures were made. Leadbetter also abandoned his camp east of the river, and was forced to abandon two ...
— Slavery and Four Years of War, Vol. 1-2 • Joseph Warren Keifer
... pounds. It seemed incredible that she should owe so much, that a girl's frivolous fancies and extravagances could amount to such a sum within so short a span. But thoughtless purchases, ignorant orders, had run on from week to week, and the main result was an indebtedness of close ...
— Phantom Fortune, A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... clearings—her parents were old country folks, and she had most grand larning, and was out and out a regular first-rater. Washington and her didn't feel at all small together—they took a liking to each other right away, and a prettier span was never geared. Well, our Jake was born, and the old woman got smart, and about house again. Wash took one of our team horses, and he and Ellen went off to the squire's to get yoked. It was a most beautiful morning when they started, but ...
— Sketches And Tales Illustrative Of Life In The Backwoods Of New Brunswick • Mrs. F. Beavan
... no explanations, unaware that the example she set in that way was to bear strange and unexpected fruit. But though Elizabeth carried the reflex of the anxiety of those about her, she was scarcely sixteen, and youth and joy and life claimed her attention and the affairs of her stage in life's span crowded out ...
— The Wind Before the Dawn • Dell H. Munger
... a straight line with those of the next boy, each shoulder-strap set at the same angle as its fellows, each gun was as well polished as its neighbor, and the spick and span appearance the line presented, after its long fatiguing march, spoke volumes in favor ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 27, May 13, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... of these animals were eccentric in their ways, others were remarkably well behaved. In fact, there was a school for dogs in the city, established expressly for training them. Ben probably saw some of its graduates. Many a time he noticed a span of barkers trotting along the street with all the dignity of horses, obeying the slightest hint of the man walking briskly beside them. Sometimes, when their load was delivered, the dealer would jump in the cart and ...
— Hans Brinker - or The Silver Skates • Mary Mapes Dodge
... silent and noncommittal, had returned to the office, but took little part in the conduct of his company's underwriting affairs. And in this manner March wore itself almost out—and it seemed as though the Guardian's span of life ...
— White Ashes • Sidney R. Kennedy and Alden C. Noble
... a board stable, and took her through to a large, roofed inclosure in the rear. There he led to her a span of sturdy dappled chestnuts, with cream-colored ...
— The Valley of the Moon • Jack London
... conviction, when we do nothing to pervert it, is that the perception of matter is not, either wholly, or in part, a condition of the human soul; is not bounded in any direction by the narrow limits of our intellectual span, but that it "dwells apart," a mighty and independent system, a city fitted up and upheld by the everlasting God. Who told us that we were placed in a world composed of matter, which gives rise to our subsequent internal perceptions ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, No. 382, October 1847 • Various
... further security. Despite these precautions, it usually looked as if it needed brushing. Her clothes, too, were prone to accidents because of her habit of roosting on picket fences or tree branches. Today, however, she was almost as spick and span as Katy and Gertie. She had just been through the painful process of ...
— Chicken Little Jane • Lily Munsell Ritchie
... two, And lengthen their vital span, That justice they may, and equity, Do long in ...
— The Mermaid's Prophecy - and Other Songs Relating to Queen Dagmar • Anonymous
... the whole strength of Poland? Did you see all the regiments together? Well, you did not. But their strength consists in the people's wrongs and treachery; there, they do not even possess one span of land. They received our princes there in the same manner as a beggar receives in his house, and they presented gifts, but they have grown powerful, they have bitten the hand which fed them, like abominable mad dogs. They seized the ...
— The Knights of the Cross • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... Councillor Rushton, he (Dr Weakling) had intended to propose that the wages of the Corporation workmen should be increased to the standard recognized by the Trades Unions. (Loud laughter.) It had been proved that the notoriously short lives of the working people—whose average span of life was about twenty years less than that of the well-to-do classes—their increasingly inferior physique, and the high rate of mortality amongst their children was caused by the wretched remuneration they received for hard and tiring work, the excessive ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell
... upon these is much work in gold, with many precious stones. In this chair is placed an idol, also of gold, embowered in roses and flowers. On one side of this chair, on the dais below, stands a head-dress; this also is made in the same manner; it is upright and as high as a span, the top is rounded, it is all full of pearls and rubies and all other precious stones, and on the top of it is a pearl as large as a nut, which is not quite round. On the other side is an anklet for the foot made in the same fashion; it is another state jewel, ...
— A Forgotten Empire: Vijayanagar; A Contribution to the History of India • Robert Sewell
... rolled her big, gray eves toward the tray and asked listlessly, "What you got for dinner, ma?" The brown-skinned one, tidily dressed from her carefully combed head with its crisp, black mass that was scarcely hair, held in place by spick-and-span hair ribbons, to the toes of her stout, handsome shoes, got up quickly and came forward to ...
— Stories from Everybody's Magazine • 1910 issues of Everybody's Magazine
... which way soever I looked. If you do not believe this, you will not believe me either when I tell you that when I looked between my brows, I saw myself so near heaven, that between me and it there was not a span and a half. And, forsooth, it is a huge place! and we happened to travel that road where the seven she-goats are; and, faith and troth, I had such a mind to play with them (having been once a goatherd myself) that I should have burst, had I not done it. What do I do ...
— The Children's Hour, v 5. Stories From Seven Old Favorites • Eva March Tappan
... husbands to ask their father to divide the family property. At first the old man refused, but when his sons persisted, he told them to bring him a log two cubits long and so thick that two hands could just span it, and he said that if they could break the log in two, he would divide the property; so they brought the log and then asked for axes, but he told them that they must break it themselves by snapping it or twisting ...
— Folklore of the Santal Parganas • Cecil Henry Bompas
... bandaging began I took care to make them swallow a good dose of punch, and, then we proceeded to play. The two girls let me span their thighs several times, laughing and falling over me whenever my hands ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... on one of the little bridges that span the gutterwide Oosbach, idly gazing into the water and wondering whether a good sized Rangely trout could swim the stream without personal inconvenience, when the porter of the Badischer Hof came ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 10 • Various
... at the thought of the destined check to Job's gobbling career and, replacing his spectacles, carefully carried in the supper, prolonging its simple service to the uttermost, with the single idea of adding precious minutes to the doomed turkey's span ...
— Uncle Noah's Christmas Inspiration • Leona Dalrymple
... point on the route. One of the largest Customs stations in the province of Yuen-nan is here situated at the east end of a one-span suspension bridge, about one hundred and fifty feet in length. No ponies carrying loads are allowed to cross the bridge, the roads east of this being unfit for beasts of burden. There is then a fearful climb to a place called Teo-sha-kwan, a stage of ...
— Across China on Foot • Edwin Dingle
... them, and she had no fellowship with her gossiping neighbors, to whose flings she could not always be deaf. Mrs. Flin began to be more social, much to her regret, for she had little sympathy with her loquacious guest. What was it to her if the Airly's did keep a span, and drive out every day? she was willing Mrs. Flin's friends should accumulate riches, and enjoy them, too, if she did live in an humble attic, and stitch from morn till night for her daily bread. What if Mrs. Airly had a new silk, spring and ...
— The Elm Tree Tales • F. Irene Burge Smith
... newer and stronger far, still remained standing. But even from that distance Stern could quite plainly see, without the telescope, that the Williamsburg Bridge had "buckled" downward and that the farther span of the Blackwell's Island Bridge was ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... May once more when Buzz Werner's train came into the little red-brick depot at Chippewa, Wisconsin. Buzz, spick and span in his uniform, looked down rather nervously, and yet with a certain pride at his left leg. When he sat down you couldn't tell which was the real one. As the train pulled in at the Chippewa Junction, just before reaching the town proper, there was old Bart Ochsner ...
— Cheerful—By Request • Edna Ferber
... the price of admission. Of this price the Government has a share, and its revenues from this source are some hundred thousand pesos a year. It is said this license fee of vice serves to build schools, open roads, span rivers, and establish prizes for the encouragement of industry. Blessed be vice when it produces so happy results! In this entry are found girls selling buyo, cigars, and cakes. Here gather numerous children, brought by their fathers ...
— An Eagle Flight - A Filipino Novel Adapted from Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... and fleeting than an act of feeling or of will, and I comprehended the older doctrine of association of 'ideas' to be no longer tenable.... Besides all this, experimental observation yielded much other information about the span of consciousness, the rapidity of certain processes, the exact numerical value of certain psychophysical data, and the like. But I hold all these more special results to be relatively insignificant by-products, and by no means the important thing."—Philosophische Studien, x. 121-124. ...
— Talks To Teachers On Psychology; And To Students On Some Of Life's Ideals • William James
... "Victoria, the Empress of the Arena," is to-night to perform her unparalleled feats in the ring in the presence of His Excellency. This was the only tribute we saw paid in India to Her Majesty's spick-and-span brand-new title of Empress. We attended the performance, which was really creditable, but the natives sat unmoved throughout every scene; so different from the conduct of the Japanese, who scream with delight like children under similar circumstances. The Indians ...
— Round the World • Andrew Carnegie
... of its spick and span newness, its yellow frame shanties and shining shingles, it had carried it off as if it had been a hen coop and set it down somewhere in Texas, a state that had been longer settled and was therefore a better place for houses and fences, and left ...
— The Way of the Wind • Zoe Anderson Norris
... indefatigable Jackson, the axe was called into use again and the remaining shrouds cut away, the fore and main-braces being passed round the stump of the foremast, which stood some twenty feet or so from the deck, in order to prevent the span from going adrift ...
— The White Squall - A Story of the Sargasso Sea • John Conroy Hutcheson
... the stone rushed like an arrow from a bow, till it reached the narrow waist of the bridge, whereof the general conformation bore some resemblance to that of a dead wasp lying on its back. Indeed, from where Leonard and Juanna stood, the span of ice at this point seemed to be no thicker than a silver thread, while Otter and the stone might have been a fly upon the thread. Now of a sudden Leonard distinctly saw the rock sledge and its living burden, which just then was travelling its swiftest, move ...
— The People Of The Mist • H. Rider Haggard
... prettier things than Carlsbad by night from one of the many bridges which span the Tepl in its course through the town. If it is a starry night, the torrent glides swiftly away with an inverted firmament in its bosom, to which the lamps along its shores and in the houses on ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells |
