"Oval" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... dry kernel of corn and notice that on one side there is a slight oval-shaped depression (Fig. 41-1). Now take a soaked kernel and cut it in two pieces making the cut lengthwise from the top of the kernel through the centre of the oval depression and examine the cut surface. A more or less triangular-shaped body will ...
— The First Book of Farming • Charles L. Goodrich
... Landor one day, "at the time that Bonaparte made his entrance as First Consul. I was standing within a few feet of him when he passed, and had a capital good look at him. He was exceedingly handsome then, with a rich olive complexion and oval face, youthful as a girl's. Near him rode Murat, mounted upon a gold-clad charger,—and very handsome he was ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... at him with dark eyes, unafraid. Through all his dazed astonishment he saw the wonder of those eyes, the perfect oval of that face, the warm, rich tints of her skin even though overspread with ...
— The Flying Legion • George Allan England
... Chateau. It was, and is, a truly grand apartment, with diamond-paned windows, and rich, dark wall decorations on which Catherine's device, a crowned C and her monogram in gold, frequently appears. There was, moreover, a great oval window, opposite which stood her altar, and a doorway led to her writing-closet, with its secret drawers and wall panels, which well served her purpose of intrigue ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 4 (of 10) • Various
... went," said Irais, "Elizabeth and I would be placed with great ceremony on a sofa behind a large, polished oval table with a crochetmat in the centre—it has got a crochet-mat in the centre, hasn't it?" I nodded. "And you would sit on one of the four little podgy, buttony, tasselly red chairs that are ranged on the other side of the table facing the sofa. They are red, ...
— Elizabeth and her German Garden • "Elizabeth", AKA Marie Annette Beauchamp
... frank in speech, had lost all provincial dialect, was quite the gentleman. He had put off the rustic air entirely. He was grown a very handsome fellow, with oval face, full hair on his head, somewhat curling, and his large brown eyes were sparkling with pleasure at being again at home. In his whole bearing ...
— The Broom-Squire • S. (Sabine) Baring-Gould
... easy to concede that Alexis III. was a man apart from his people. Swarthy old Stampoff, Prince Michael Delgrado, the pink and white Julius Marulitch, even the olive skinned, oval faced Beliani, might have mingled with the throng on the platform and found each his racial kith and kin; not so Alec. His stature, his carriage, his fair complexion tanned brown with an open air life, picked him out among these Balkan folk almost as distinctly as a Polar ...
— A Son of the Immortals • Louis Tracy
... through which passes a long string, which is wrapped several times round the wrist. We also suspected that they use slings on some occasions; for we got some pieces of the haematites, or blood-stone, artificially made of an oval shape, divided longitudinally, with a narrow groove in the middle of the convex part. To this the person, who had one of them, applied a cord of no great thickness, but would not part with it, though he had ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 16 • Robert Kerr
... Before seeing her face one might have imagined her to be a child of scarcely more than fourteen or fifteen. This was Derrick's first impression; but when she turned toward him he saw at once that it was not a child. And yet it was a small face, with delicate oval features, smooth, clear skin, and stray locks of hazel brown hair that fell over the low forehead. She had evidently made a journey of some length, for she was encumbered with travelling wraps, and in her hands she held a little flower-pot containing a cluster of ...
— That Lass O' Lowrie's - 1877 • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... is to be plump)—and so beginning the sentence over again, being a plump little body, there is a neck to account for—a neck which we may look at, but which is so exquisite that it would be hardly polite to consider it in terms of language. Only when we come to the chin that tips the oval of the face may we descend to language, and even then we must rise and flick the red mouth with, but a passing word. But this much must be plainly spoken. The nose does turn up—not much—but a little (Bob used to say, just to be good and out of the way)! That, however, is mere personal opinion, ...
— A Certain Rich Man • William Allen White
... out on a little clearing among the trees, and showed them, set on high, the out-lines of a native house. Like all Tahitian houses, it was on the model of a bird cage, and the oval wall of bamboos, set side by side, let through vertical streaks of light from the lamp or fire within. As the whole party drew nearer, they heard, deep below them on the other side, the pleasant sound of falling water, and realized the cliff they ...
— Wild Justice: Stories of the South Seas • Lloyd Osbourne
... he could reply, I leaned over the chair he had quitted. Lying in the corner of the faded upholstery was an oval of gold. Before he perceived my intention, I had picked it up, and almost at the same moment his hand fell on my arm. I looked up quickly. His face was close to mine, closer than I had ever seen it, placid still, but somehow ...
— The Unspeakable Gentleman • John P. Marquand
... prairie. The fur coat has already been exchanged for the pea-jacket. No longer is the fur cap crushed down upon the head and drawn over the ears until little more than the oval of the face is exposed to the elements; it is still worn occasionally, but now it rests upon the head with the jaunty cant of an ...
— The Story of the Foss River Ranch • Ridgwell Cullum
... to indicate changes in value and before long outline notes (called empty notes) came into use, these being easier to make than the solid ones. The transition from square- and diamond-shaped notes to round and oval ones also came about because of the greater facility with which the latter could be written, and for the same reason notes of small denomination were later "tied together" or stroked. This latter usage began ...
— Music Notation and Terminology • Karl W. Gehrkens
... those of you who in your long vacations have ever stayed near Dumblane will be, I think, disappointed in no small degree by this study of the abbey, for which I showed you the sketch at last Lecture. You probably know that the oval window in its west end is one of the prettiest pieces of rough thirteenth-century carving in the kingdom; I used it for a chief example in my lectures at Edinburgh; and you know that the lancet windows, in their fine proportion and rugged masonry, ...
— Lectures on Landscape - Delivered at Oxford in Lent Term, 1871 • John Ruskin
... Ohio (Fig. IV) is the leading early potato in Minnesota. The type is oval with a pinkish or flesh colored skin. It is particularly suited to the black, rich, ...
— Trees, Fruits and Flowers of Minnesota, 1916 • Various
... branches. He looked a long time at the bottle, shook it, and held it to the sun as he contemplated the little beads that sparkled at the edge of the liquor line. He read its label, and seemed deeply interested in the lines of fine print contained upon an oval sticker that adorned its back. Still holding the bottle, he once more stared out over the bad lands. Then he drew the cork and smelled of the liquor, breathing deeply of its fragrance, and turning, gazed intently toward the little white ...
— The Texan - A Story of the Cattle Country • James B. Hendryx
... opened the little box which revealed to view a spangling collection of diamonds. It was an oval locket, profusely set with diamonds with her initials turned artfully on the surface. Inside were the miniature pictures of her father and mother. She laid down the costly gift and went over to her benefactor ...
— Honor Edgeworth • Vera
... consists in this, that the ideas of the former, being sensible, are always clear and determinate, the smallest distinction between them is immediately perceptible, and the same terms are still expressive of the same ideas, without ambiguity or variation. An oval is never mistaken for a circle, nor an hyperbola for an ellipsis. The isosceles and scalenum are distinguished by boundaries more exact than vice and virtue, right and wrong. If any term be defined in geometry, the mind readily, of itself, substitutes, on all occasions, the definition for the ...
— An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding • David Hume et al
... that I had altogether forgotten the cricket-match and the noble strangers who were about to come to our shores. Of course I had heard of it before, and had been informed that Lord Marylebone was to be our guest. I had probably also been told that Sir Lords Longstop and Sir Kennington Oval were to be entertained at Little Christchurch. But when I was reminded of this by Jack a few days later, it had quite gone out of my head. But I now at once began to recognise the importance of the occasion, and to see that for the next two months Crasweller, the college, and the Fixed ...
— The Fixed Period • Anthony Trollope
... satisfaction was in seeing the veil disclose the face of eight years back, the same soft, clear, olive skin, delicate, oval face, and pretty deep-brown eyes, with the same imploring, earnest sweetness; no signs of having grown older, no sign of wear and tear, climate, or exertion, only the widow's dress and the presence of the great boys enhancing her soft youthfulness. The smile ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge
... lamp, and which threw a sickly light upon the bed. A girl lay there who must have been extremely beautiful when in health; even although the hand of death was upon her now, she gave evidence of that beauty. Her eyes were coal-black, her face was a perfect oval, and every feature was striking and handsome. Her hair was raven-black and lay in great waving tresses ...
— The Day of Judgment • Joseph Hocking
... or less across, very numerous, in stiff-branching, spike-like, dense-flowered panicles. Perianth of 6 oblong segments; 6 short curved stamens; 3 styles. Stem: Stout, leafy, 2 to 8 ft. tall. Leaves: Plaited, lower ones broadly oval, pointed, 6 to 12 in. long; parallel ribbed, sheathing the stem where they clasp it; upper leaves gradually ...
— Wild Flowers Worth Knowing • Neltje Blanchan et al
... few moments, she hesitated, and I seized the opportunity to examine her more attentively. Hair as black as the raven's wing, large blue eyes, a face perfectly oval, a mouth of the smallest and the most expressive mold, lips the reddest and most faultless it is possible to imagine, composed the details of the lovely whole, which at the first glimpse had dazzled and attracted me. Probably ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. V, May, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... was a friend of my family before he wrote Lavengro, few men have ever made so deep an impression on me as George Borrow. His tall, broad figure, his stately bearing, his fine brown eyes, so bright yet soft, his thick white hair, his oval, beardless face, his loud rich voice, and bold heroic air, were such as to impress the most indifferent of lookers-on. Added to this there was something not easily forgotten in the manner in which he would unexpectedly come to our gates, ...
— George Borrow and His Circle - Wherein May Be Found Many Hitherto Unpublished Letters Of - Borrow And His Friends • Clement King Shorter
... to Manila in the old days exhausted his vocabulary in praise of the Luneta, the old Spanish city's pleasure ground, which overlooked the bay and Corregidor Island. It was an oval drive, with a bandstand at each end, inclosing a pretty grass plot. Here, as evening came on, all Manila congregated to hear the band play and to meet friends. The Manilan does not walk, so the broad drive was filled with several rows of carriages passing slowly around the ...
— The Critic in the Orient • George Hamlin Fitch
... beauty in a small coral reef, when seen from a ship's mast-head, at a short distance, in clear weather. A small island with a white sand-beach and a tuft of trees, is surrounded by a symmetrically oval space of shallow water, of a bright grass-green colour, enclosed by a ring of glittering surf as white as snow; immediately outside of which is the rich dark blue of deep water. All the sea is perfectly clear from any mixture of sand or mud. It ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 385. November, 1847. • Various
... are now universally admitted to be Rajputs; and the Chitaur family have so often married the daughters of the former, that several members of it have acquired the Tartar countenance, while some of the mountain families, by intermarriages with pure but indigent Rajputs, have acquired oval faces and high noses. Not only the colony, therefore, from Chitaur, if the Palpa family be such, but all the descendants of the hill chiefs, are now called Rajputs; and, until the absorption of all power in the Gorkha family, the Rajputs ...
— An Account of The Kingdom of Nepal • Fancis Buchanan Hamilton
... oval tuber of the fashionable nigger-brown shade. Never had a day's illness. Every "Adonis" potato is inoculated for wireworm before leaving ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, March 14, 1917 • Various
... Rajput. Three years earlier, at Schlangenbad, I remembered he had struck me as strangely Oriental-looking: he had the features of a high-born Indian gentleman, without the complexion. His large, poetical eyes, his regular, oval face, his even teeth, his mouth and moustache, all vaguely recalled the highest type of the Eastern temperament. Now, he had blackened his face and hands with some permanent stain—Indian ink, I learned later—and ...
— Miss Cayley's Adventures • Grant Allen
... other birds and animals. The room was built in the hollow of a dead tree—it was quite snug, but not half so nice as the squirrel house, for there was no pretty wall paper, and a great spider-web instead hung across one corner of the room; on one side was an oval window, out of which could be seen wood and meadow, and on a peg against the wall hung a warm winter cloak of soft moleskin. The owl now gravely folded and sealed several legal-looking documents, and gave them to the pigeon, who, tucking them away in the same pocket, flapped his wings, ...
— The Pigeon Tale • Virginia Bennett
... knights, marched eighty thousand foot-soldiers, carrying long oval shields and armed with lances, swords, cross-bows, or heavy clubs. Behind these soldiers, trudged thousands of women ...
— With Spurs of Gold - Heroes of Chivalry and their Deeds • Frances Nimmo Greene
... secret of the haunting familiarity of the beautiful girlish face. The delicate oval outline, the pale wild-rose colouring, the reddish-brown of the fine, glistening tresses, the amber-hazel of the wistful, brilliant eyes, reproduced to a wonderful degree the modelling and tinting of the wonderful Guido portrait, the white-draped head in the Barberini ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... been properly filled out; as it was, she was thin, but only too thin for her proportions—her thinness, had she been three inches shorter, would have passed for a graceful slenderness. But Brent took this in at a glance; his attention was more particularly concentrated on the girl's face—a delicate oval, framed in a mass of dark hair. She was all dark—dark hair, an olive complexion, large, unusually lustrous dark eyes, fringed by long soft lashes, an almost dark rose-tint on her cheeks. And in the look which she gave him there was something as soft as her eyes, which were those of a shy ...
— In the Mayor's Parlour • J. S. (Joseph Smith) Fletcher
... countenance with such an expression of agonised anxiety as I had never seen before. Clearly she did not know if he would live or die. Five minutes slowly passed and I saw that she was abandoning hope; her lovely oval face seemed to fall in and grow visibly thinner beneath the pressure of a mental agony whose pencil drew black lines about the hollows of her eyes. The coral faded even from her lips, till they were as white as Leo's face, ...
— She • H. Rider Haggard
... perhaps in the expectation of finding finger prints there, and was passing on to other things, when a change in his position caused his eye to catch a large oval smudge on the glass, which was visible when the light struck it at the right angle. Quickly he dusted it over with the powder, and brought out the detail more clearly. As I examined it, while Craig made preparations to cut out the glass to preserve it, ...
— The War Terror • Arthur B. Reeve
... is the huipil worn as it was meant to be. Usually at church the wearer draws the garment over her upper body, but does not put her arms into the sleeves, nor her head through the neck-opening, simply fitting her face into this in such a way that it appears to be framed in a broad, oval, well-starched border of pleated lace. Usually, however, the garment is not even worn in this manner, but is turned upside down and carelessly hung upon the head so that the broad lower fringe of lace falls back upon the hair, ...
— In Indian Mexico (1908) • Frederick Starr
... lagoons contain Unios, Paludinas, and the lanceolate and oval Limnaeas. Fine dry weather has set in; the northerly breeze is still very regular; but the mornings, from eight to eleven, are very hot. A few mosquitoes have made their appearance, probably in consequence of the late rains. Charley killed a Diamond ...
— Journal of an Overland Expedition in Australia • Ludwig Leichhardt
... and savory, was the prelude at all dinners in New France. A salmon speared in the shallows of the Chaudiere, and a dish of blood-speckled trout from the mountain streams of St. Joachim, smoked upon the board. Little oval loaves of wheaten bread were piled up in baskets of silver filigree. For in those days the fields of New France produced crops of the finest wheat—a gift which Providence has since withheld. "The wheat went away with the Bourbon lilies, and never grew ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... Europe. Its chief merits are fine colour, large head, neat habit, and easy culture. The flowers are 1in. across, borne in close heads, having stalks over an inch long springing from stout scapes; the six long oval petals are of a shining yellow colour; the seed organs also are all yellow and half the length of petals; the scape is about a foot high, naked, round, and very stout; the leaves are nearly as broad as tulip leaves, and otherwise much ...
— Hardy Perennials and Old Fashioned Flowers - Describing the Most Desirable Plants, for Borders, - Rockeries, and Shrubberies. • John Wood
... awning. Toward sunset, a dense black wall of cloud settled upon the western horizon, aft of us. But suddenly, just at the moment the sun must have been descending below the horizon to the south of it, the black wall of cloud slowly parted, and the opening so made widened until it became an enormous oval, reaching from horizon half-way to zenith, framing a scene of astounding beauty and grandeur. Range after range of cloud crests that looked like mountain folds rose one above another, with the appearance of vast intervening ...
— The Red-Blooded Heroes of the Frontier • Edgar Beecher Bronson
... on the following page is from an example in the same museum, shewing a different decoration, the oval plaques of figures and coats of arms being of carved ivory let into the surface of the coffer. This is an early specimen, and belongs as much to the last ...
— Illustrated History of Furniture - From the Earliest to the Present Time • Frederick Litchfield
... present, Pompeii is an irregular oval area of about 160 acres, planted on a small natural hill and girt with a stone wall nearly two miles in circumference (fig. 13). On the west there was originally access to the sea, and on this side the walls ...
— Ancient Town-Planning • F. Haverfield
... apparatus known as the "Bateau-plongeur," and used at the "barrage" on the Nile. This consists of a barge fitted with an air-tight cabin provided with an air-lock, and having in the center of its floor a large oval opening, surrounded by a casing standing up above the water-line. In this casing, another casing slides telescopically, the upper part of which is connected to the top of the fixed casing by a leather ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 488, May 9, 1885 • Various
... and was seated on an oval lounge gazing into the open fire. He was standing before it, looking taller and stronger than ever, in a gray lounging suit. A cigarette depended loosely from the corner of his mouth. ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... duplicate copies of the inscription in wax, and transmitted them to Europe. The inscription consists of twenty-three letters, together with a pictorial device, apparently a man's head on a pike. It is made on a small hard stone, of an oval shape, and was found in a vault along with human bones, sea shells, and various ornaments of a rude age. Professor Charles Rafn, of Copenhagen, deems the character Celtiberic. I have recently received a memoir from M. ...
— Incentives to the Study of the Ancient Period of American History • Henry R. Schoolcraft
... milksop, though slight; carried himself with ease and grace; and was certainly not only well endowed with bone and muscle, but bore the appearance, somehow, of a person not unpractised in the use of it. His face was manly like his person; not so round as full, it presented a perfect oval to the eye; the forehead was broad, high, and intellectual—purely white, probably because so well shadowed by the masses of his dark brown hair. His eyes were rather small, but dark and expressive, and derived additional expression from their large, ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms
... to get to Grandmama first, but sixty-three does not rise from low deck chairs so swiftly as forty-three. So she had to watch her daughter leading her mother, and to note once more with a familiar pang the queer, unmistakable likeness between the smooth, clear oval face and the old wrinkled one, the heavily lashed deep blue eyes and the old faded ones, the elfish, close-lipped, dimpling smile and the old, elfish, thin-lipped, sweet one. Neville, her Neville, flower of her flock, her loveliest, first and best, her dearest ...
— Dangerous Ages • Rose Macaulay
... description of those known as the 'Northern Geyser' and its tributary springs. One of these, the 'Uxhaver' or 'Ox Spring' is named from an Ox having fallen into it, and in a short time having been thrown out in the form of boiled beef. This hot spring emanates from an oval basin, 30 feet in circumference, and 4 feet in diameter. Its spurts are very regular, occurring about every 6 minutes, and about 10 feet high. After a spurt the water in the basin is lowered from 4 to 6 feet, but quickly refills, whilst the water thrown up is clear as crystal, and its spray ...
— A Girl's Ride in Iceland • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie
... off in it. My impression of it was quite vivid enough without that, and the vision of the Colosseum remained, and still remains, the immense skeleton of the stupendous form stripped of all integumental charm and broken down half one side of its vast oval, so that wellnigh a quarter of the structural bones ...
— Roman Holidays and Others • W. D. Howells
... usual way. Cook the bacon with spinach to give it flavor. When spinach is tender, remove bacon, drain spinach and chop fine. Season with salt, pepper and nutmeg. Add butter, mix well and pack into an oval mold. Keep hot over hot water, cut eggs in halves lengthwise, remove yolks and rub through a sieve. Add ham, salt, pepper, parsley and onion juice. Moisten with Cream Salad Dressing to bind mixture together. Refill halves of eggs ...
— Fifty-Two Sunday Dinners - A Book of Recipes • Elizabeth O. Hiller
... arresting oddity of his appearance, which he worked, as the phrase goes, for all it was worth. His dark red hair parted in the middle was literally like a woman's, and curved into the slow curls of a virgin in a pre-Raphaelite picture. From within this almost saintly oval, however, his face projected suddenly broad and brutal, the chin carried forward with a look of cockney contempt. This combination at once tickled and terrified the nerves of a neurotic population. He seemed like a walking blasphemy, a blend of ...
— The Man Who Was Thursday - A Nightmare • G. K. Chesterton
... She was pretty in a daringly demure fashion, like a wicked little Puritan, or a poverty-stricken Cleo de Merode, with her smooth brown hair parted in the middle, drawn severely down over her ears, framing the lovely oval of her face and ending in a simple coil at the neck. Some serpent's wisdom had told Sophy to eschew puffs. But I think her prettiness could have triumphed even ...
— Buttered Side Down • Edna Ferber
... very fresh at south; and there were places in the river where its surface looked green and angry, though the wind had hardly sweep enough to raise the water into foam. The shape of the little island was nearly oval, and its greater length was from east to west. By keeping in the channels that washed it, in consequence of their several courses and of the direction of the gale, it would have been possible for a vessel to range past the island on either of its principal sides, and ...
— The Pathfinder - The Inland Sea • James Fenimore Cooper
... nor from the loss of visibility brought about by distance, but from the very nature of vision, however perfect it be. It is thus, for instance, that the circle seen sideways is changed into that kind of oval which among geometricians is known as an ellipse, and sometimes even into a parabola or a hyperbola, or actually into a straight line, ...
— Theodicy - Essays on the Goodness of God, the Freedom of Man and the Origin of Evil • G. W. Leibniz
... weird spectacle,—that frail, fading oval, gliding against the sky, floating in the serene azure, the little vessel swinging silently beneath, and a hundred thousand martial men watching the loss of their brother in arms, but powerless to relieve or recover him. Had Fitz John Porter been drifting down the ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend
... was of her mother, taken long, long ago, before Gwendolyn was born. The oval face was delicately lovely and girlish. The mouth curved in a smile that was ...
— The Poor Little Rich Girl • Eleanor Gates
... paintings, and at the statuary, which seemed to beckon to me like moving figures. But I passed on to the room where Mr. Stuart and his friends awaited me. Here the first thing that struck me was the glowing carpet across which I must tread. It was lying in an oval saloon, which had been built, they told me, for the carpet itself. The light was admitted only from the ceiling, which was so decorated that no clear sunlight could penetrate it; but down below the sunbeams lay ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, No. 38, December, 1860 • Various
... an idol, shrined alone, Watched by secret oval eyes, Where the ruby wishing-stone Smouldering in the darkness lies, Anyone that wanted things Touched the jewel and they came; We were wealthier than kings Could we ...
— Collected Poems - Volume One (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... pressure to the same surface of the small student's stomach and relieving agitation of his backward heels. I make out that it had decidedly been given to Mlle. Delavigne to represent to my first perception personal France; she was, besides not being at all pink or shy, oval and fluent and mistress somehow of the step—the step of levity that involved a whisk of her short skirts; there she was, to the life, on the page of Gavarni, attesting its reality, and there again did that page in ...
— A Small Boy and Others • Henry James
... there had been a motion of her blanched lips as if to speak, and Madama di Thenouris still held her fascinated gaze. Her eyes had suddenly dilated with a look of terror, yet almost instantly reassumed their long oval shape—the lids closing to more than their narrow wont: her embroidery had slipped to the floor, as she rose, and she was treading it under her feet—bruising and grinding it passionately, as if it were some safe, unnoticed outlet to the fear and anger that might smother ...
— The Royal Pawn of Venice - A Romance of Cyprus • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull
... isolated, wood-environed retreat was its complete absence of all kinds of growth, except for a sort of silky grass which covered its uneven surface like a rich carpet of the deepest green tint. Near the centre was an oval elevation of rock and earth higher by a few feet than knobs and miniature hills which ...
— Jack North's Treasure Hunt - Daring Adventures in South America • Roy Rockwood
... wonderful; and that at any time between his twelfth and sixtieth year, he could with ease have swum across the Hellespont. In his earliest years, in all his amusements and employments, his inventive genius was at work in searching out expedients. To facilitate rapidity in swimming he formed two oval pallets, much resembling those used by painters, about ten inches long, and six broad. A hole was cut for the thumb and they were bound fast to the palm of the hand. Sandals of a somewhat similar construction were bound to the soles of the feet. With these appliances Franklin ...
— Benjamin Franklin, A Picture of the Struggles of Our Infant Nation One Hundred Years Ago - American Pioneers and Patriots Series • John S. C. Abbott
... is that ant-like down's appearance circling the oval of thy face; Yet musky shade is not a stranger within the Hall which ...
— Persian Literature, Volume 1,Comprising The Shah Nameh, The - Rubaiyat, The Divan, and The Gulistan • Anonymous
... new pottery, from which bell-shaped dames come forth, all a-glitter with silver and gold, to milk the cows in the white-hedged fields, or spread the linen on flowery lawns, cut into patterns of oval and ...
— The Life of the Bee • Maurice Maeterlinck
... around this base by firmly binding upon it wisps or handfuls of loose excelsior until the shape of the natural body is approximated. To be correct this form should appear oval from side view and pear-shaped from end ...
— Taxidermy • Leon Luther Pray
... family is especially noticeable because it is decorated with colours of which a gaily plumaged bird might be envious, though it has no other claim to comeliness. Most primitive in form—merely a flattened sac, oval and four inches long by three inches broad, with a purple and white mouth puckered as if contracted by a drawn string. Its general tint is grey; longitudinal bands of scarlet, green, violet, and purple radiate from the posterior and converge at the mouth, the hues blending rainbow-like. The ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield
... white brow, clean cut and strongly outlined, shone a pair of bright gray eyes encircled by a margin of mother-of-pearl, two blue veins on each side of the nose bringing out the whiteness of that delicate setting. The Bourbon curve of the nose added to the ardent expression of an oval face; it was as if the royal temper of the House of Conde shone conspicuous in this feature. The careless cross-folds of the bodice left a white throat bare, and half revealed the outlines of a still youthful figure and ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... crease on each leg of the deceased man's trousers as if they had been turned up half-way to the knee; and in the waistcoat pocket I found the stump of a 'Contango' pencil. On the floor of the bedroom, I found a portion of an oval glass somewhat like that of a watch or locket, but ground at the edge to a double bevel. Dr. Jervis and I also found one or two beads and a bugle, all of ...
— The Mystery of 31 New Inn • R. Austin Freeman
... looked so exactly as she used to look, at about that hour of the morning, in our parlour at Blunderstone, that I could have fancied I had been breaking down in my lessons again, and that the dead weight on my mind was that horrible old spelling-book, with oval woodcuts, shaped, to my youthful fancy, like the glasses ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... Indian reservation of an oval shape, sixty-nine miles long by forty-two miles wide. Its climate is cold. Its soil is not remarkably good. It has had its independent government since the time of Cortez. Its means of subsistence have been increased, and ...
— Mexico and its Religion • Robert A. Wilson
... of the strange position of this hoary island-citadel (a metropolis, already, in neolithic days). It is of oval shape, the broad sides washed by the Ionian Sea and an oyster-producing lagoon; bridges connect it at one extremi-y with the arsenal or new town, and at the other with the so-called commercial quarter. It is as if some precious gem were set, ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas
... precisely enamelled; several scent boxes of rock crystal, and other implements and utensils of the toilet, some formed of shells, some of mother-of-pearl, and others of ivory, covered with ornaments of gold in extraordinary taste. Two large figures, modelled in silver with antique purity; supported an oval swing mirror, which had for its rim, in place of a frame curiously carved, a fresh garland of natural flowers, renewed every day like a ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... their European ancestors, had ever beheld. Of commanding stature and physique, with an air of highest breeding and repose, he looked both a man of the great world and an intolerant leader of men. His long oval face was thin and somewhat lined, the mouth heavily moulded and closely set, suggestive of sarcasm and humor; the nose long, with arching and flexible nostrils. His eyes, seldom widely opened, were light blue, very keen, usually cold. Like many other men of his position ...
— Rezanov • Gertrude Atherton
... was regarded by all young people was extraordinary. I had already called on him, and had been kindly received by him. Not of tall stature; elegant without being lean; soft and rather pensive eyes; a very fine forehead; a nose aquiline, but not too much so; a delicate mouth; a face of an agreeable oval,—all made his presence pleasing and desirable. It cost some trouble to reach him. His two /Famuli/ appeared like priests who guard a sanctuary, the access to which is not permitted to everybody, nor at every time: and such a precaution was very necessary; for he would ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... variable as the trees themselves, not only in the exterior appearance, but in the character of the meats as well. The ideal commercial nut should be of medium size, about one and one-eighth to one and one-half inches in diameter, of regular oval form somewhat elongated, with smooth surface, and light brown color, and uniform for these characters. The cracking quality of the nuts is quite as important as their exterior appearance. The nuts should be well sealed so they will not crack open in shipping. ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Sixth Annual Meeting. Rochester, New York, September 1 and 2, 1915 • Various
... profile head of a young man with delicate aquiline nose, thoughtful oval face, and artistic, abstracted air, which will be easily recognised as a portrait of Lord Ronald Gower, who is himself known as an artist and sculptor. But no one would discern in these five pictures the genius that painted the Home at Bethlehem ...
— Miscellanies • Oscar Wilde
... little cedarn chest below the cornice, was that of the wasteful but elegant Marcellus, with the quaint resemblance in its yellow waxen features to Marius, just then so full of animation and country colour. A chamber, curved ingeniously into oval form, which he had added to the mansion, still contained his collection of works of art; above all, that head of Medusa, for which the villa was famous. The spoilers of one of the old Greek towns on the coast had flung away or lost the [20] thing, as it seemed, ...
— Marius the Epicurean, Volume One • Walter Horatio Pater
... indifferent painting, the picture was elaborately like the sitter. The pointed oval of the face had been faithfully drawn, and its straight nose and small brown eyes were set characteristically in the head. Remembering a photograph of his daughter, Mr. Innes fetched it from the other end of the room, and stood with it under the portrait, so that ...
— Evelyn Innes • George Moore
... skins, the former dressed without the hair, and the latter with the thick outer coat taken off, and the rest shaved thin, so as to allow of the transmission of light through it. These were put together in a clumsy and irregular patchwork, forming a sort of bag of a shape rather oval than round, and supported near the middle by a rude tent-pole composed of several deer's horns or the bones of other animals lashed together. At the upper end of this is attached another short piece of bone at right angles, for the purpose of extending the skins a little at the top, which is ...
— Three Voyages for the Discovery of a Northwest Passage from the • Sir William Edward Parry
... something similar in appearance, but useless or hurtful, is contrasted with the thing asked by the child. The round loaves of the East are not unlike rounded, wave-washed stones, water-serpents are fishlike, and the oval body of a quiescent scorpion is similar to an egg. Fathers do not play tricks with their hungry children. Though we are all sinful, parental love survives, and makes a father wise enough to know what will nourish and ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... three performances a week are admitted between the acts in accordance with a usage established in 1870. Three immense looking-glasses cover the back wall of the FOYER, and a chandelier with one hundred and seven burners supplies it with light. The paintings include twenty oval medallions, in which are portrayed the twenty danseuses of most celebrity since the opera has existed in France, and four panels by M. Boulanger, typifying 'The War Dance', 'The Rustic Dance', 'The Dance of Love' and 'The Bacchic Dance.' While the ladies ...
— The Phantom of the Opera • Gaston Leroux
... slender girl of thirteen with a delicate oval face and well-shaped features framed in a wealth of gold brown hair. Her eyes were soft and limpid, and they held an expression of dreaminess in ...
— Phyllis - A Twin • Dorothy Whitehill
... twenty-eighth day of December, in the thirty-third year of her age, and in the sixth of her reign, to the inexpressible grief of the king, who for some weeks after her death could neither see company nor attend to the business of state. Mary was in her person tall and well-proportioned, with an oval visage, lively eyes, agreeable features, a mild aspect, and an air of dignity. Her apprehension was clear, her memory tenacious, and her judgment solid. She was a zealous protestant, scrupulously exact in all the duties of devotion, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... saw was a small, slender girl, too childish, too impish, to think of as a "young woman." She had a little oval face with a pointed chin. It was pale, but not washed-out, and her lips were red. An obstinate, impudent mouth, Roger thought. As for her eyes—he had never seen such great eyes in a human face. They were like ...
— The Lion's Mouse • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... belt of an Augustine monk, and the other had the attire of a man addicted to the seas, without, however, being so decidedly maritime as to leave his character a matter that was quite beyond dispute. The former was fair, ruddy, with an oval, happy face, of which internal peace and good-will to his fellows were the principal characteristics, while the latter had the swarthy hue, bold lineaments, and glittering ...
— The Headsman - The Abbaye des Vignerons • James Fenimore Cooper
... Indians use its incisor teeth, which are very large and hard, to cut the bone or horn with which they tip their spears. It is a rodent, or gnawing animal. It has a broad, horizontal, flattened tail, nearly of an oval form, which is covered with scales. The hind feet are webbed, and, with the aid of the tail, which acts as a rudder, enable it to swim through the water with ease and rapidity. Except in one respect, I do not know that it can be considered a sagacious animal; but it is ...
— Afar in the Forest • W.H.G. Kingston
... event. Lingard struck a match to light his cheroot, and his powerful face with narrowed eyes stood out for a moment in the night and vanished suddenly. Then two shadowy forms and two red sparks moved backward and forward on the poop. A larger, but a paler and oval patch of light from the compass lamps lay on the brasses of the wheel and on the breast of the Malay standing by the helm. Lingard's voice, as if unable altogether to master the enormous silence of the sea, sounded muffled, very calm—without the ...
— The Rescue • Joseph Conrad
... that he stood thus rooted to the spot, following her with his eyes; for the countenance which accident had revealed to him was already impressed upon his heart. It was one of those lovely Georgian faces, oval in shape, and with a complexion formed of milk and roses, which have at all times been prized in the East, as the very perfection of female beauty; a face which, without intellectual expression, possesses an ineffable witchery, and all the charms calculated to fascinate the beholder. The eyes were ...
— Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf • George W. M. Reynolds
... knots a small instrument is used, called a shuttle. This shuttle consists of two oval pieces, flat on one side and convex on the other, and is made of ...
— Beeton's Book of Needlework • Isabella Beeton
... floated, or seemed to float, a huge red oval—the Great Red Spot of Jupiter. She had heard of it before. But what caught her immediate attention was a tiny flare of intense illumination, right in the very heart of the Spot. Bright orange it was, tinged with yellow, ...
— Pirates of the Gorm • Nat Schachner
... variations, if not entirely, to the rest. But the language of meum and tuum they collectively comprehended without translation. In a half-charmed spell-bound state they had congregated in knots, standing, or sitting in hollow circles round the notorious oval tables marked with figures and lines. The eyes of all these sets of people were watching the Roulette. Somerset went from table to table, looking among the loungers rather than among the regular players, for faces, or at least for one face, ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy
... church. She would have thought it rather sacrilegious to leave it off—as bad as forgetting her Bible or her collection dime. That amethyst brooch was Marilla's most treasured possession. A seafaring uncle had given it to her mother who in turn had bequeathed it to Marilla. It was an old-fashioned oval, containing a braid of her mother's hair, surrounded by a border of very fine amethysts. Marilla knew too little about precious stones to realize how fine the amethysts actually were; but she thought them very beautiful ...
— Anne Of Green Gables • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... and refinement. The individuals of the same tribe are constantly assembled, but they are assembled in a camp; and the native spirit of these dauntless shepherds is animated by mutual support and emulation. The houses of the Tartars are no more than small tents, of an oval form, which afford a cold and dirty habitation, for the promiscuous youth of both sexes. The palaces of the rich consist of wooden huts, of such a size that they may be conveniently fixed on large wagons, and drawn by a team perhaps of twenty or thirty ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... replaced her—a little carelessly—with the profoundest sigh. For that I cannot vouch. For an hour or so he watched people fighting for places in the omnibuses at the end of Piccadilly. He was seen looming over Kennington Oval for some moments in the afternoon, but when he saw these dense thousands were engaged with the mystery of cricket and quite regardless of him he went his ...
— The Food of the Gods and How It Came to Earth • H.G. Wells
... reproduction of the famous portrait of Laura which was painted at the request of Petrarch by Simon Menimi and charmed him into verse with its loveliness? It represented simply the head and bust. The face was elongated, the cheeks hollow, the hair smoothed down below the ears. The long, oval, half-shut eyes wore a horrible leer, as though the owner were making a painful effort to close them. On the head was a stiff, ungainly jewelled helmet, which terminated low on the forehead in a triangular ornament. The long, slender throat was encircled by three ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. July, 1878. • Various
... way of reply Marcos handed him a second paper, bearing at its foot the oval seal of the Vatican. It was the usual dispensation, easy enough to procure, for the marriage of ...
— The Velvet Glove • Henry Seton Merriman
... shore, for the eddy has cleared away the earth around them. Now, walking behind the waves that roll away from you, dark shadowy spots fluctuate to and fro in the trough of the water. Before a glance can define its shape the shadow elongates itself from a spot to an oval, the oval melts into another oval, and reappears afar off. When, too, in flood time, the hurrying current seems to respond more sensitively to the shape of the shallows and the banks beneath, there boils up from below a ceaseless succession of irregular circles as if ...
— Nature Near London • Richard Jefferies
... and was soon asleep. I woke shortly after the train started to find we were travelling through a big city along the banks of the River Loire. We halted about seven in the morning to feed and water the horses and make tea for the men in their dixies or oval camp kettles. It is rather a serious business looking after a thousand men and over sixty horses and mules, but our organization stood the test well. My Quartermaster, Captain Duguid, knew his work. I had Lieutenant Dansereau as our scouting and interpreting officer. He was a graduate of the ...
— The Red Watch - With the First Canadian Division in Flanders • J. A. Currie
... grammasin Aithiopikois oy demotikois, alla basilikois]." This distinction between the royal and popular system of hieroglyphics, as well as the etiquette, before mentioned, of inscribing the title of the king within a circle or oval, is borrowed, as need hardly be mentioned, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various
... to the distant fields. Every leaf was at rest in the sunshine, the familiar scene was changeless, and seemed to represent the prospect of her life, full of motiveless ease—motiveless, if her own energy could not seek out reasons for ardent action. The widow's cap of those times made an oval frame for the face, and had a crown standing up; the dress was an experiment in the utmost laying on of crape; but this heavy solemnity of clothing made her face look all the younger, with its recovered bloom, and the sweet, ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... silence, the guests sought, each in his or her own fashion, for the solution to this truly amazing conundrum. The order may be seen from a glance at the foregoing list of guests. It has only to be remembered that they were seated around a large oval table and ...
— The Sins of Severac Bablon • Sax Rohmer
... looking out over the desert, where she no longer saw the stretches of yellow sand, nor the airing of camels stalking away into the distance, nor the mud houses and patient bullocks. No! nothing of all these, but instead, just one man's face, oval, lean-featured, eyes brilliantly black and deep-set under thick eyebrows, an aquiline nose, the lower part of the face covered in a sharp pointed beard, and the thick virile hair by a snow-white kahleelyah, bound by a band to the ...
— Desert Love • Joan Conquest
... called it a paradise, Natasha had used almost the only word that would fitly describe the scene that opened out before them as the Ariel sank down after her leap across the ridge. The interior of the mountain mass took the form of an oval valley, as nearly as they could guess about fifty miles long by perhaps thirty wide. All round it the mountains seemed to rise unbroken by a single gap or chasm to between three and four thousand feet above the lowest ...
— The Angel of the Revolution - A Tale of the Coming Terror • George Griffith
... southward to North Africa; while eastward, it appears in the Crimea and in Syria, and may be traced as far as the shores of the Sea of Aral, in Central Asia. If all the points at which true chalk occurs were circumscribed, they would lie within an irregular oval about 3,000 miles in long diameter—the area of which would be as great as that of Europe, and would many times exceed that of the largest existing inland ...
— Discourses - Biological and Geological Essays • Thomas H. Huxley
... original position. Then, leaving one side of the flake untouched, they trimmed the surface of the remaining face, and, as the edges grew blunt with use, kept touching them up with the hammer-stone—there it is also lying by the hearth—until, perhaps, the flake loses its oval shape and becomes a pointed triangle. A third expert is called in, and has no difficulty in recognizing these knives as the characteristic handiwork of the epoch known as the Mousterian. If one of these worked flints ...
— Anthropology • Robert Marett |
