"Slab" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... over nearer to her: "Do you know where I am standing?" he asked, while the blue veins in his temples swelled and hammered: "Well, I'll tell you. I am standing on a marble slab above an abyss. To the right and left of this abyss are nothing but blood-thirsty wolves. There is no choice left to me except either to leap down into the abyss, or to allow myself to be torn to pieces by the wolves. ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann
... narrow valley; perpendicular precipices rose on each side; and beyond, the gigantic brotherhood of the Alps, in two long files of steep pointed summits, divided by deep ravines, stretched away in the sunshine to the northeast. In the face of one the precipices by the way-side, a marble slab is fixed, informing the traveller that the road was opened by the late Emperor of Germany in the year 1830. We followed this romantic valley for a considerable distance, passing several little blue lakes lying in their granite basins, one of which is called the Lago morto or Dead Lake, ...
— Letters of a Traveller - Notes of Things Seen in Europe and America • William Cullen Bryant
... the ram into the water, and Billy straightens out his little curly tail and waves it in the air like a flag. And holler! I wisht you could have heard that pig! Nothing could been more human. "I've got the deady-deady on you, you hook-nosed, slab-sided, second cousin of a government mule!" says he. "Oh! I've got you where I want you and the way I want you, and it's up to you to convert yourself into cash at the earliest opportunity, for you won't be worth much ...
— Red Saunders' Pets and Other Critters • Henry Wallace Phillips
... terrific job of all was to furl the main-sail, which, at the commencement of the squalls, had been clewed up, coaxed and quieted as much as possible with the bunt-lines and slab-lines. Mad Jack waited some time for a lull, ere he gave an order so perilous to be executed. For to furl this enormous sail, in such a gale, required at least fifty men on the yard; whose weight, superadded to that of the ponderous stick itself, still further jeopardised their ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville
... bowlfuls are needed, but these are poured by Mrs. Agelan without further ceremony. The solemn hush is over. With a long bush-knife, Mama cuts the pudding into strips and squares and distributes it, and the meal proceeds amid general satisfaction. I am given a large slab; fortunately it tastes very good and is easily digestible, for politeness ordains that one must eat enormous quantities. At one stage of the proceedings the girls are sent to take some food to the neighbours as a present. ...
— Two Years with the Natives in the Western Pacific • Felix Speiser
... moderate fire, in a crucible, or even in an open test tube, it will melt (at 120 deg. C. commercial acid), then give off vapours which catch fire upon contact with air, and burn with a sooty flame, without exploding. If the burning liquid be poured out upon a cold slab, it will soon go out. A small quantity carefully heated in a tube, closed at one end, can even be completely volatilised without apparent decomposition. It is thus obvious that picric acid is much less explosive than the nitric ethers, such as nitro-glycerol and nitro-cellulose, ...
— Nitro-Explosives: A Practical Treatise • P. Gerald Sanford
... has been warmed by placing it upon a steam table, an impression of it is taken in a composition resembling wax which is spread upon a metal slab to the thickness of about one-twelfth of an inch. Both the surface of the type and of the wax are thoroughly coated with plumbago or black lead, which serves as a lubricant to prevent the wax ...
— The Building of a Book • Various
... dinner was afterwards served up, at which the guests sat on carpets, with their legs across. There were twenty tables, and five or six people at each table. That of the General-in-Chief and the sheik El Bekri was in the middle; a little slab of a precious kind of wood ornamented with mosaic work was placed eighteen inches above the floor and covered with a great number of dishes in succession. They were pillaws of rice, a particular kind of roast, entrees, and pastry, all very highly spiced. The sheiks picked everything ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, v3 • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... dressed more carefully than usual, in view of a visit to Bellefontaine Road. Whereupon the Judge demanded whether he were contemplating marriage. Without waiting for a reply he pointed to a rope and a slab of limestone on the pavement below, and waved his hand unmistakably ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... subsequent burials, the side slab of a previous burial was used as a portion of the second cist. All of the ...
— An introduction to the mortuary customs of the North American Indians • H. C. Yarrow
... gouged a mighty channel from out the solid rock. This channel to-day is Yosemite Valley. But to return to the Half Dome. On its northeastern side, by circuitous trails and stiff climbing, one may gain the Saddle. Against the slope of the Dome the Saddle leans like a gigantic slab, and from the top of this slab, one thousand feet in length, curves the great circle to the summit of the Dome. A few degrees too steep for unaided climbing, these one thousand feet defied for years the adventurous spirits who fixed yearning eyes ...
— Dutch Courage and Other Stories • Jack London
... found there a premature and early grave at the age of only one hundred and fifty-two years. He lies in Westminster Abbey, it is true, but he would probably have preferred the upper side of his own hearth-stone to the under side of the slab ...
— Our Hundred Days in Europe • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... offered the Harvester. "Simple matter of a few pillars already cut, joists joined, and some slab shingles left from the cabin. Anything else ...
— The Harvester • Gene Stratton Porter
... Captain Bonneville visited a place in the neighborhood which is quite a region of natural curiosities. An area of about half a mile square presents a level surface of white clay or fuller's earth, perfectly spotless, resembling a great slab of Parian marble, or a sheet of dazzling snow. The effect is strikingly beautiful at all times: in summer, when it is surrounded with verdure, or in autumn, when it contrasts its bright immaculate surface with the withered herbage. Seen from a distant eminence, it then shines like a ...
— The Adventures of Captain Bonneville - Digested From His Journal • Washington Irving
... platter, which is the easiest utensil to procure, produces fairly good results. For larger amounts, as, for instance, when candy is being made to sell, some more convenient arrangement must be made. The most satisfactory thing that has been found for cooling purposes is a marble slab such as is found on an old-fashioned table or dresser. If one of these is not available, and the kitchen or pastry table has a vitrolite or other heavy top resembling porcelain, this will make a ...
— Woman's Institute Library of Cookery, Vol. 5 • Woman's Institute of Domestic Arts and Sciences
... either side of these doors, in deep alcoves, were divans with mattings and head-rests for opium smokers. The walls were painted blue and hung with vertical Cantonese legends in red and silver, while all around the sides of the room small ebony tables alternated with ebony stools, each inlaid with a slab of mottled marble. A chandelier, all a-glitter with tinsel, swung from the centre of the ceiling over a huge round table ...
— Blix • Frank Norris
... thank you for the complimentary manner in which you have mentioned my work. Since the notice appeared, we have done a deal of heavy work in this mill; and a plate large enough to shear 11' 0" and 10' 2" and 1/2" thick has been rolled in five minutes. The slab went through the roll 17 times before being rolled to the width and turned round, and 18 times after turning and of the full width; making a total of 35 passes—the turning occupying 20 seconds. When ...
— James Nasmyth's Autobiography • James Nasmyth
... Lodge is interested in precognition. You wouldn't walk in here claiming the power if you didn't know we want to find it, and rarely can. But you certainly came ill-prepared. Going to marry Lefty, eh? Why, you can't predict the right time!" He banged his fist on the big slab of walnut. ...
— The Right Time • Walter Bupp
... small quantity of the stuff could induce him to assume a rebellious attitude towards the scheme of the universe. And now, throwing his body over the rail, he shouted impudently into the night, turning his face towards that far-off and invisible slab of imported granite upon which Lingard had thought fit to record ...
— An Outcast of the Islands • Joseph Conrad
... lonely home of the Brontes. It was a dark, drizzly October day, intensifying all the gloomy memories of the place. She sat in the old church pew where those shivering girls endured such discomforts through the fearful services, with their benumbed feet on the very stone slab that from time to time was taken up to deposit in the earth beneath their loved dead! She was shown through the house, paused at the place under the stairs where the imperial Shirley had her fierce encounter with that almost human dog, Keeper; she stood in the drawing-room ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... to the cabin in the valley. But after a while, in the gray stillness, he lost the face, and suddenly thought, instead, of the stone that was to cover his father's grave. The ship that was to bring the great, dark, carven slab should be in by now; the day after his return to Williamsburgh the stone must be put in place, covering in the green sod and that which lay below. Here, lieth in the ...
— Audrey • Mary Johnston
... Hermes Trismegistus, who is said to have lived a little later than the time of Moses. Representations of Hermes Trismegistus are found on ancient Egyptian monuments. We are told that Alexander the Great found his tomb near Hebron; and that the tomb contained a slab of emerald whereon thirteen sentences were written. The eighth sentence is rendered in ...
— The Story of Alchemy and the Beginnings of Chemistry • M. M. Pattison Muir
... Sandusky next, Logan beside him, and Gale Morgan, at the other end of the line, pretended to pound the bar for service. De Spain, following mountain etiquette in the circumstances, spread his open hands, palms down, on the bar. Sandusky's great palms slid in the same fashion over the checked slab in unspoken recognition of the brief armistice. Logan's hands came up in turn, and Morgan still pounded for some ...
— Nan of Music Mountain • Frank H. Spearman
... the Turk consisted of a marble cover taken from some ancient sarcophagus, and sustained at the corners by four small pillars of masonry—the top was not higher than an ordinary table, and below the marble slab there was an empty space between the columns. It has long since disappeared; but that is not wonderful, since King Otho and his subjects have contrived to destroy almost every picturesque monument ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 344, June, 1844 • Various
... through an endless vista ot ghostly grey gums and ironbarks, when I came in sight of the long wavering line of vivid green foliage which showed me that I had reached my destination—a roughly-built slab hut with a roof of corrugated iron. This place was to be my home for six months, and stood on the bank of Five-Head Creek, twenty-five miles from the rising city of Townsville in ...
— "Five-Head" Creek; and Fish Drugging In The Pacific - 1901 • Louis Becke
... morning's fog. The river became swifter, and the scenery more pleasing than before. The banks were steep and clayey for the most part, and trickling with water, and where a spring oozed out a few feet above the river the boatmen had cut a trough out of a slab with their axes, and placed it so as to receive the water and fill their jugs conveniently. Sometimes this purer and cooler water, bursting out from under a pine or a rock, was collected into a basin close to the edge of and level with the river, a fountain-head of the Merrimack. So near along ...
— A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers • Henry David Thoreau
... Cistercians in Britain, came to Melrose, to order him, on his canonical obedience, to accept the see. But Waltheof was weak in health, and knew that another call had gone forth. He pointed to a stone slab on the floor of the chapter-house. "There," said he, "is the place of my rest. Here will be my ...
— Cameos from English History, from Rollo to Edward II • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... out a grave, laid the little creature to rest at the foot of a tree in whose trunk the remnant of its winter store of nuts was carefully garnered. When at length he turned to leave the spot the tiny grave was marked by a pine slab, on ...
— A Beautiful Possibility • Edith Ferguson Black
... the slabs with my back. Knowing where the nails were driven in, I carefully cut around them, making as little noise as possible. It was, I calculated, about midnight when I had finished my preparations. The slab lifted even more easily than I had expected. I listened for some minutes, expecting to hear the tread of a sentry, but not a sound reached my ears. I had great hopes that he had fallen asleep. Creeping through, I replaced the slab, and ...
— Villegagnon - A Tale of the Huguenot Persecution • W.H.G. Kingston
... sanctuary is a subterranean grotto, and is committed to the joint-guardianship of the Romans, Greeks, and Armenians, who vie with each other in adorning it. Beneath an altar gorgeously decorated, and lit with everlasting fires, there stands the low slab of stone which marks the holy site of the Nativity; and near to this is a hollow scooped out of the living rock. Here the infant Jesus was laid. Near the spot of the Nativity is the rock against which the ...
— Eothen • A. W. Kinglake
... moment the smoke rising under the slab of the chimney bent itself with a peculiar gracefulness, and formed rotundities quite likely to be taken for well-arched loins by a rather strangely strained imagination. Therefore I did not tell an absolute lie by saying that, maybe, ...
— The Queen Pedauque • Anatole France
... sand-banks stretching out a considerable distance. Sometimes both paddled, sometimes Godfrey steered only and Luka laid in his paddle. Three times in the course of the day the big canoe was pulled up, and Luka went on board and cooked a meal, the flat slab on which they lit their fire having been raised three or four inches above the bottom to keep it out of the water. Hitherto Godfrey had done all the steering when the boat was under sail, but he now instructed Luka. Little teaching was, indeed, needed, as the steering ...
— Condemned as a Nihilist - A Story of Escape from Siberia • George Alfred Henty
... he advanced. Kennedy saw that it was no unnecessary precaution, for the passages had become more complexed and tortuous than ever, with a perfect network of intersecting corridors. But these all ended in one large circular hall with a square pedestal of tufa topped with a slab of marble at one end of it. "By Jove!" cried Kennedy in an ecstasy, as Burger swung his lantern over the marble. "It is a Christian altar—probably the first one in existence. Here is the little consecration cross ...
— The Green Flag • Arthur Conan Doyle
... choir, and aisle on the south. Near the west entrance was a small chamber called St. Columba's tomb. Over the crossing is a square tower, 70 feet high, and supported by arches resting on four pillars. It is lighted on one side by a window formed by a slab with quatrefoil openings, and on the other by a marigold or Catherine-wheel window with spiral mullions. The capitals of the pillars are carved with beautiful ornamentation and grotesque figures, which ...
— Scottish Cathedrals and Abbeys • Dugald Butler and Herbert Story
... more. They are safe at last from their old enemies, from dogs and carriages and boys. Waiting for death, they move about in a stupid and dazed manner. Sunlight streams down upon their bodies. One would think they preferred to expire in the shade of some pillar or slab. Apparently not. Apparently it is all the same. It matters nothing where one ...
— Alone • Norman Douglas
... hilltop that was a slab of rock and sand carrying a city, he asked: "Where shall I put you down that will be near your place of ...
— Caste • W. A. Fraser
... of the nave of the collegial church of Ecouis, in the cross aisle, was found a white marble slab on which was ...
— The Tales Of The Heptameron, Vol. III. (of V.) • Margaret, Queen Of Navarre
... Yellowhead John—Tete Jaune, they called him—died years before that, and no one knows where his grave is. We had five men die before the steel came, but there wasn't a FitzHugh among 'em. Crabby—old Crabby Tompkins, a trapper, is buried in the sand on the Frazer. The last flood swept his slab away. There's two unmarked graves in Glacier Canyon, but I guess they're ten years old if a day. Burns was shot. I knew him. Plenty died after the steel came, but ...
— The Hunted Woman • James Oliver Curwood
... involuntary persistency at an empty space upon the wall that seemed to yawn expectant. By a terrible impression she was pursued, the thought of a fresh slab which might soon, perhaps, be placed there, with another name which she did not even dare to think ...
— An Iceland Fisherman • Pierre Loti
... next stop was at the door of Kerrigan's shop. The elder Kerrigan was leaning against the wooden slab on which he was accustomed to cut up joints. ...
— General John Regan - 1913 • George A. Birmingham
... at work; and for an hour or two at noon the little store was entirely free from customers. The day after the doctor's visit, Dermot came in at this time to speak to Harold, and as soon as Alice knew of his presence (there was a mere partition of slab between her bed and the shop), she eagerly and nervously bade him stay and keep watch that no one should come near to see or hear. Then, when certain that she was alone with her son, she produced from hiding-places ...
— My Young Alcides - A Faded Photograph • Charlotte M. Yonge
... make the stucco-work, with the stone ornaments for those little doors and the doors of bronze. In the middle of the sacristy, where the priests don their vestments, he had a tomb made for his father Giovanni, under a great slab of marble supported by four little columns; and in the same place he made a tomb for his own family, separating that of the women from that of the men. In one of the two little rooms that are on ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol 2, Berna to Michelozzo Michelozzi • Giorgio Vasari
... round at the old oak hall, on the walls of which were hung several portraits, and from which ascended one of those noble staircases never found in a modern London mansion. At the end of the hall, on a slab of porphyry, was a marble bust, with this inscription on it, 'Fundator.' It was the first ...
— Tancred - Or, The New Crusade • Benjamin Disraeli
... the Californian custom, the officers range themselves along the marble slab; bending over ...
— The Flag of Distress - A Story of the South Sea • Mayne Reid
... manifests sufficient strength to crack great stones, and lift great slabs of pavement, as may be noticed by examining the sidewalks of suburban towns and parks. An English paper prints a report of four enormous mushrooms having lifted a huge slab of paving stone in a crowded street overnight. Think of this exhibition of Energy and Power. This wonderful faculty of exerting force and motion and energy is fundamental in the Will, for indeed every physical change and growth is the result of motion, and motion arises only from ...
— A Series of Lessons in Gnani Yoga • Yogi Ramacharaka
... Houston County, if we couldn't get game we breakfasted on codfish. I think it was the biggest slab of codfish I ever saw when we started. It made us thirsty. The fish called for water and many's the time mother and I knelt down and drank from stagnant pools that would furnish fever germs enough to kill a whole city nowadays, but I suppose we had so much fresh air that the germs ...
— Old Rail Fence Corners - The A. B. C's. of Minnesota History • Various
... The plain marble slab which stood in the face of the monument is still preserved by a member of the King family. It is thirty-six inches long by twenty-six and a half inches wide and bears the following inscription: "As an expression of their affectionate regard to his Memory and their deep ...
— The Hudson - Three Centuries of History, Romance and Invention • Wallace Bruce
... they were ready for breakfast, and as they began Melchior drew from the pannier a portion of the provision he had brought, smiling as he placed it upon the slab of rock which served them ...
— The Crystal Hunters - A Boy's Adventures in the Higher Alps • George Manville Fenn
... her bar manners and her town manners, and she slipped on the former as she would an article of clothing when she lifted the slab and passed behind. They consisted principally of cordial smiles, personal observations, and a look of vacancy which she assumed when the conversation became coarse. From behind the bar she spoke authoritatively, she was secure, it was different—it was behind ...
— Spring Days • George Moore
... satisfying conviction she settled herself upon a slab of a rock, whipped out the sketch-book, that hung permanently in a flat leather bag at her waist, and plunged headlong into her picture. For in her case, impression and expression were almost simultaneous: the most distinctive quality of her work being the rapidity and certainty ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver
... another in regular order, and cemented with snow— as bricks are with lime. The form of the wall was circular, and the slabs were so shaped that they sloped inwards, thus forming a dome, or large bee-hive, with a key-stone slab in the top to keep all firm. A hole was then cut in the side for a door—just large enough to admit of a man creeping through. In front of this door a porch or passage of snow was built. The only way of getting into the ...
— Fast in the Ice - Adventures in the Polar Regions • R.M. Ballantyne
... childhood. Seventy-eight years had passed away since they had fallen asleep, and during that interval not a member of the family had been buried there. For some years Burr's grave was without a stone. At last, a plain but elegant slab of Italian marble was placed at its head. The inscription is simple, yet one can not but start when for the first time he reads that name of thrilling memories. It has been said that the monument was ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol I, Issue I, January 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... bracelets. In the houses fronting the square is sold, scarlet, amber, silks from Morocco, and tobacco, which looks like Levant tobacco, and comes by way of Tombuctoo. Adjoining this is the salt market, part of which occupies one corner of the square. A slab of salt is sold commonly for eight thousand cowries; a large butcher's stall, or shade, is in the centre of the square, and as good and fat meat sold every day as any in England. The beer market is at a little distance, under two large trees; and there are often ...
— The Journal Of A Mission To The Interior Of Africa, In The Year 1805 • Mungo Park
... they resumed their journey to the mortuary, where they found Hunter waiting for them, engaged in earnest conversation with the keeper. The electric light was switched on, and as Crass and Sawkins came in they saw that the marble slab was empty. ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell
... case which may represent all. It is an excellent illustration of Cuvier's sagacity, and he evidently takes some pride in telling his story about it. A split slab of stone arrived from the quarries of Montmartre, the two halves of which contained the greater part of the skeleton of a small animal. On careful examinations of the characters of the teeth and of the lower jaw, which happened to be exposed, Cuvier assured himself ...
— On the Method of Zadig - Essay #1 from "Science and Hebrew Tradition" • Thomas Henry Huxley
... Midas, with the healthy appetite of the peasant-born, would have eaten largely of the savoury food that his cooks prepared, he found that his teeth only touched roast kid to turn it into a slab of gold, that garlic lost its flavour and became gritty as he chewed, that rice turned into golden grains, and curdled milk became a dower fit for a princess, entirely unnegotiable for the digestion ...
— A Book of Myths • Jean Lang
... destruction, and his wife Parvati seated behind him; they have both snakes in their hands, and Siva has a large one round his loins as a waistband. There are several demons in human shape lying prostrate under the belly of the bull, and the whole are well cut out of one large slab of hard basalt from a dyke in the marble rock beneath. They call the whole group 'Gauri Sankar', and I found in the fair, exposed for sale, a brass model of a similar one from Jeypore (Jaipur), but not so well shaped and proportioned. On noticing this we were told that 'such difference ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... to do is to get a true N and S meridian mark. This can be approximately obtained by a good compass, and allowance made for the magnetic declination at your own place. Secure a slab of stone or some other solid flat surface, level this and have it firmly fixed facing due south with a line drawn through the center and put the equatorial on the surface with XII on the south end of the line. Then set the pointer D to the declination of the ...
— The Boy Mechanic: Volume 1 - 700 Things For Boys To Do • Popular Mechanics
... from the dust, he took off his clothes and dived head foremost into the pool. He came up shivering and sputtering. It was certainly the coldest water into which he had ever leaped! After such a dash one might lie on a slab of ice to warm. Dick forgot that every drop in the brook had come from melting snows far up on the peaks, but, once in, he resolved to fight the element. He dived again, jumped up and down, and kicked and thrashed those waters as no beaver had ever done. Gradually ...
— The Last of the Chiefs - A Story of the Great Sioux War • Joseph Altsheler
... Lady Frances Kniveton, daughter of Alice Leigh, Duchess of Dudley. The daughter's tomb remains a memorial of her mother's benefactions to the parish. The monument of Andrew Marvell, a plain black marble slab, is on the north wall. Marvell was buried in the church "under the pews in the south side," but the present monument was not erected until 1764, eighty-six years after his death, owing to the opposition ...
— Holborn and Bloomsbury - The Fascination of London • Sir Walter Besant
... call Uraniburg, or The City of the Heavens. Having made the necessary arrangements, he repaired to the island on the 8th of August, and his friend Charles Danzeus laid the foundation stone of the new observatory, which consisted of a slab of porphyry, with ...
— The Martyrs of Science, or, The lives of Galileo, Tycho Brahe, and Kepler • David Brewster
... knocking the door was opened, and my grand-aunt was found kneeling at her bedside, dead. The day of her death was March 14, 1873, corresponding exactly with the date seen in her dream a twelvemonth before. My grand-aunt was buried in Glasnevin, and on her tombstone (a white marble slab) was placed the inscription which she had read in her dream." Our correspondent sent us a photograph of the ...
— True Irish Ghost Stories • St John D Seymour
... mentioned the church of S. Apostolo at Florence above, I will here give an inscription which may be read on a marble slab on one of the sides of the high altar, ...
— The Lives of the Painters, Sculptors & Architects, Volume 1 (of 8) • Giorgio Vasari
... and John Whyley took at trot up, and was returning when he saw a dim light shine through the long glazed slits at the sides of the principal door, and directly after he heard a click a if a candlestick were set down on a marble slab, and one of the narrow windows showed a human shape in ...
— The Bag of Diamonds • George Manville Fenn
... with a poor girl, and now I am expected to walk into the same trap, and cringe to her ladyship, for the sin of being poor. I guess not! I'll teach school till I die first, and he can think of me as having a 'slab of granite so gray' to keep ...
— Uncle Terry - A Story of the Maine Coast • Charles Clark Munn
... making paste requires much practice, dexterity, and skill: it should be touched as lightly as possible, made with cool hands and in a cool place (a marble slab is better than a board for the purpose), and the coolest part of the house should be selected for the ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... ordinary monument the stones in the neighborhood would have sufficed. Still nearer the center were five groups of three great stones each, and immediately within these a horseshoe of smaller stones. Finally, near the head of the horseshoe, a great slab of sandstone is supposed to have served for an altar. The date of the two structures just described has been ...
— The Prehistoric World - Vanished Races • E. A. Allen
... candle from the vault, and prepared to let down the slab. 'Well, Mr. Power, and what is ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy
... Vicar's seat; you'll hear The doctrine of a gentle Johnian, Whose hand is white, whose voice is clear, Whose phrase is very Ciceronian. Where is the old man laid? Look down, And construe on the slab before you: "Hic jacet Gulielmus Brown, Vir nulla ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 4 (of 4) • Various
... To dig up, drag forth, render smooth from rough Mind's flooring,—operosity enough? Still the successive labor of each inch, Who lists may learn: from the last turn of winch That let the polished slab-stone find its place, To the first prod of pick-axe at the base Of the unquarried mountain,—what was all Mind's varied process except natural, Nay, easy, even, to descry, describe, After our fashion? "So worked Mind: its tribe Of ...
— Browning's England - A Study in English Influences in Browning • Helen Archibald Clarke
... and new bough gunyahs, and the fires were alight at the doors? of many of them. We could not see the people because they hid themselves, but I knew quite well they were watching us close by. There was a large bare slab of rock, in which existed two fine cisterns several feet in depth, one much longer than the other, the small one containing quite a sufficient supply for all my horses. I called these Hogarth's Wells, and the two hills ...
— Australia Twice Traversed, The Romance of Exploration • Ernest Giles
... For such these plants are more than a relief. Observe my Oncidium. It stands in a pot, but this is only for convenience—a receptacle filled with moss. The long stem feathered with great blossoms springs from a bare slab of wood. No mould nor peat surrounds it; there is absolutely nothing save the roots that twine round their support, and the wire that sustains it in the air. It asks no attention beyond its daily bath. From the day I tied it on that ...
— About Orchids - A Chat • Frederick Boyle
... old pit amongst the Christian graves to the south-east of the camp, and below the left jamb of the "Gate." Here also the Bedawin had been at work; and, when unable to work deep enough, they told us wonderful tales of an alabaster slab, which doubtless concealed vast treasures. In Arabia, as in Africa, one must look out for what there is not, as well as for what there is. After spending a morning in sinking a twelve-feet shaft, we came upon a shapeless coralline-boulder, ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 1 • Richard Burton
... club (said to have been originally cut on a slab of black marble) were placed above the fire-place. They were devised by Ben Jonson, in imitation of the rules of the Roman entertainments, collected by the learned Lipsius; and, as Leigh Hunt says, they display the author's usual style of elaborate ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... in the vicinity for the night, and the next morning attended to the burial of the dead. They were deposited in two pits, the English in one and the Indians in another. A marble monument now marks the spot where this battle occurred, and a slab is placed over the mound which covers ...
— King Philip - Makers of History • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott
... and began to cry. That slab of pudding in the face had totally unnerved the gentle girl. Alice's eyes were red, and her face was puffy with crying; but she spoke ...
— New Treasure Seekers - or, The Bastable Children in Search of a Fortune • E. (Edith) Nesbit
... recall the events of that evening in any kind of clear detail. I remember that it was bitterly cold, with a sky that was flooded with stars. The snow had a queer metallic sheen upon it as though it were coloured ice, and I can see now the Nevski like a slab of some fiercely painted metal rising out of the very smack of our horses' hoofs as my sleigh sped along—as though, silkworm-like, I spun it out of the entrails of the sledge. It was all light and fire and colour that night, with towers of gold and frosted green, and even the black crowds ...
— The Secret City • Hugh Walpole
... replied Stephen. "But the place may not be quite as he left it. I found one or two of his books on the table and put them back in the shelves, but I found no manuscript or notes such as he used to make. I noticed, too, that his ink-slab which he used to keep so scrupulously clean is covered with dry smears and that the stick of ink is all cracked at the end, as if he had not used it for months. It seems to point to a great change in ...
— The Mystery of 31 New Inn • R. Austin Freeman
... neighborhood, but had never troubled myself any further about them. Seeing Grilly busy with them, I thought I would join him in his work or sport, and in a little time we had the pile reduced to the floor. There, I saw, was a square slab, having on it certain characters and a drawing of a serpent held firmly in the talons of a condor. These symbols excited my curiosity not a little, and I noticed that the stone, which was about three feet square, was loosely resting in its place. I managed to pry it up, and found a dark cavity beneath. ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, January 1878, No. 3 • Various
... making room for the dancing, the Baron leaned back against the marble slab of a console, folded his arms, and stood absorbed in watching the two ladies talking. From time to time he followed the glances which both frequently directed to the stranger. Then, comparing the Countess with the new beauty, made ...
— Domestic Peace • Honore de Balzac
... or the Nautilus scuttled a ship or two in its terrific course. A bell rang, and the doctor popped his head out to see if he was wanted. It was only a message for Aunt Plenty, and he was about to pop in again when his eye was caught by a square parcel on the slab. ...
— Rose in Bloom - A Sequel to "Eight Cousins" • Louisa May Alcott
... rusted hooks were the names of the four early opponents of Spanish rule whose heads had once hung there. Inside the corridor stood the statue of the peon who is said to have reached and fired the building under cover of the huge slab of stone on his back. When I had waited a while in the anteroom, the jefe politico, the supreme commander of the city appointed by the governor of the State, appeared, the entire roomful of officials ...
— Tramping Through Mexico, Guatemala and Honduras - Being the Random Notes of an Incurable Vagabond • Harry A. Franck
... widow of a well-known man, requested that the words "My sorrow is greater than I can bear" be placed upon the marble slab of ...
— More Toasts • Marion Dix Mosher
... porches of the temples; the owl roosts in the casements of the palaces; the jackal roams among the ruins in vain; there is not a bone left for him to gnaw of the multitudes which have passed away. There is their handwriting upon the temple wall, upon the granite slab which has mocked at Time; but there is no man to decipher it. There are the gigantic idols before whom millions have bowed; there is the same vacant stare upon their features of rock which gazed upon the multitudes of yore; but they no ...
— Eight Years' Wandering in Ceylon • Samuel White Baker
... around a well that men, in 1857, knew as Sycamore Ridge. The Indians filled the dusty area between the two rows of gray houses on either side of the street, and the town flocked from its ten front doors before half the train had arrived. The last door of them all to open was in a slab house, nearly half a mile from the street. A washing fluttered on the clothes-line, and the woman who came out of the door carried a round-bottomed hickory-bark basket, such as might hold clothes-pins. Seeing the invasion, she hurried across the prairie, toward ...
— A Certain Rich Man • William Allen White
... barbed wire fence. (Some of the marks caused by this episode remain with me to this day.) We had one or two nice walks weekly, on parole, escorted by a German officer. One day, during a long walk through some pine woods, we had reached the top of a hill when we came upon a large slab of rock, about four feet thick, resting on two smaller ones, with a broad crack right through it near the centre. The German officer told us a legend about this, which affirms that at this spot somewhere about the eighth century ...
— 'Brother Bosch', an Airman's Escape from Germany • Gerald Featherstone Knight
... about two feet in length, two feet in breadth, and eight inches thick, and are joined close together. In this manner the edifice is erected, contracting at each successive tier, until there only remains a small aperture at the top, which is filled by a slab of clear ice, that serves both as a keystone to the arch, and a window to light the dwelling. An embankment of snow is raised around the wall, and covered with skins, which answers the double purpose of beds and seats. The inside of the hut presents the figure ...
— Notes of a Twenty-Five Years' Service in the Hudson's Bay Territory - Volume II. (of 2) • John M'lean
... book on fish. But the learned men of Montpellier, and of all Europe, had a very different opinion of him. His body was buried at Realmont; but before the schools of Toulouse they set up a white marble slab, and an inscription thereon setting forth his learning and his virtues; and epitaphs on him were composed by the learned throughout Europe, not only in French and Latin, but in Greek, Hebrew, ...
— Historical Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... digg'd i' the dark, Liver of blaspheming Jew, Gall of goat, and slips of yew Sliver'd in the moon's eclipse, Nose of Turk, and Tartar's lips, Finger of birth-strangl'd babe Ditch-deliver'd by a drab,— Make the gruel thick and slab: Add thereto a tiger's chaudron, For the ingredients of ...
— Macbeth • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... was lying on a cool slab of blue marble which was shaded by overhanging fruit trees, and his nobles were sitting all round him. Suddenly the King sat up, and, turning ...
— The Book of Romance • Various
... not much of furniture in the laboratory. The table in the centre, a stone slab with a drain in one corner, the two armchairs on which Raymond and Clarke were sitting; that was all, except an odd-looking chair at the furthest end of the room. Clarke looked at it, ...
— The House of Souls • Arthur Machen
... these dreams and the revelation to the patient of their alleged meaning was entrusted to a priest, who served as an intermediary between Esculapius and the patient. Several of these oracular prescriptions, inscribed upon a marble slab, were found on the site of an Esculapian temple near Rome. Translations of two of them ...
— Primitive Psycho-Therapy and Quackery • Robert Means Lawrence
... years ago, when I went to visit the old place, only one of the trees remained, (the mulberry seen in our sketch); in a nook at one side of the garden was a nut-walk, with a high wall and a row of filbert-trees that arched triumphantly over it; at one end of this walk was a stone slab, on which Hogarth used to play at nine-pins; at the other end were the two little tombstones to the memory of a bird and a dog." The house is as you see it here, the rooms with low ceilings and all sorts of odd ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... her hand and motioned Eloisa to a corner among the cushions on the curving marble slab, grotesquely wrought with talismanic symbols, which outlined the end of the loggia where they sat. "Thou art come a-propos: for the Lady Margherita hath promised us a tale of ancient Cyprus, and we of Venice wish to know these legends ...
— The Royal Pawn of Venice - A Romance of Cyprus • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull
... to a lower step—as Smith, bringing all his weight to bear upon the ring, turned the huge stone slab upon its hidden pivot, so that it fell back upon the ...
— The Hand Of Fu-Manchu - Being a New Phase in the Activities of Fu-Manchu, the Devil Doctor • Sax Rohmer
... of this battery stands the tomb of Moore, built by the chivalrous French, in commemoration of the fall of their heroic antagonist. It is oblong and surmounted by a slab, and on either side bears one of the simple and sublime epitaphs for which our rivals are celebrated, and which stand in such powerful contrast with the bloated and bombastic inscriptions which deform the walls of ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... lion carved in rock to commemorate the siege of 1870. This lion is part of the precipice under the castle, and is of enormous size—- how large I do not know, but I saw that a man looked quite small by one of his paws. The precipice was first smoothed like a stone slab or tablet, and then this lion was carved into and out of it in high relief by Bartholdi, the same man that made the statue of Liberty in ...
— The Path to Rome • Hilaire Belloc
... among them. Be it so! for methinks this earth could not afford a more lovely, a more tranquil, or more sacred spot. I remarked one tomb, which is an exact model, and in the same material with the sarcophagus of Cornelius Scipio, in the Vatican. One small slab of white marble bore the name of a young girl, an only child, who died at sixteen, and "left her parents disconsolate:" another elegant and simple monument bore the name of a young painter of genius and promise, and was ...
— The Diary of an Ennuyee • Anna Brownell Jameson
... was sold he did not seem to know it. He approached a large slab of silver which did duty as a mirror, and contemplated his personal appearance with ...
— The Twilight of the Gods, and Other Tales • Richard Garnett
... Sandy stood by a slab in the mortuary, and, drawing back a sheet which covered the burden on it, stood face to face with his dead wife. The black brows were drawn, the small hands clenched. What struck Sandy with peculiar horror was that one delicate wrist was broken, having ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... trees. Sitting in his saddle he watched the midnight wanderer, whose eccentric movements continued to cause him surprise. He saw the latter walk on to the little woodland cemetery, take stand by the side of a grave, bending forward as if to read the epitaph on its painted slab. Soon after kneeling down as in prayer, then throwing himself prostrate along the earth. Woodley well knew the grave thus venerated. For he had himself assisted in digging and smoothing down the turf that covered it. He had also been instrumental in erecting the frail tablet that stood over. ...
— The Death Shot - A Story Retold • Mayne Reid
... paces up the road, and stopped beside a house, a little larger than the rest, with a rough verandah by the door. Here a middle-aged man was seated, plaiting something out of reeds, but evidently listening for sounds within the house, with an air half-tranquil, half-anxious; by him on a slab stood something that looked like a drum, and a spray of azalea flowers. While I watched, a man of a rather superior rank, with a dark flowered jacket and a curious hat, looked out of a door which opened on the verandah and beckoned him in; a sound of low subdued wailing came out from ...
— The Child of the Dawn • Arthur Christopher Benson
... My brain was clear, but I felt the crisis was coming. I took a good grip with my hands of the marble slab covering the radiator behind me to give me confidence. The slab yielded: mechanically I noted that ...
— The Man with the Clubfoot • Valentine Williams
... of 'em?" repeated Raidler in a husky voice. Mechanically he began to look around for McGuire's grave. He had in his mind a white slab such as he had seen in the Alabama church-yard. But immediately he knew that ...
— Heart of the West • O. Henry
... the rood screen; one tearing the golden crown from the head of the crucifix, another the golden footstool from its feet. [Footnote: The crucifix was probably of the Greek pattern, in which the figure stood upon a flat slab, projecting from ...
— Hereward, The Last of the English • Charles Kingsley
... striking feature of the exhibit was an immense slab of Potsdam sandstone from Bidwell's Crossing, Clinton county, which was part of the premoidial or cambrian beach laid down about the shores of the Adirondack continental nucleus. The slab shows the trails ...
— New York at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition, St. Louis 1904 - Report of the New York State Commission • DeLancey M. Ellis
... graves or more on Cape Sunrise; Betty Cruise no longer lies alone out on the windswept point. Crudely chiseled on the rough headstones are names that have not been mentioned in this chronicle, still not the less enduring. One name is there, however, chipped in a great black slab from the face of Split Mountain, that will never be forgotten as long as Trigger Island exists: it is ...
— West Wind Drift • George Barr McCutcheon
... a grave. When you find this hollow dig it out; but it will be hard work, for the earth has been pressed down into it with care. Still, work away till you find solid rock on all sides of you, and soon you will come to a square slab of stone; force it out of the wall, and you will stand at the entrance of the treasure house. Into this opening you must crawl, holding a lamp in your mouth. Keep your hands free lest you knock your nose against a stone, ...
— The Crimson Fairy Book • Various
... amusement which is much more easily begun with full pockets than left off with the same; and though Wildeve in a cooler temper might have prudently declined this invitation, the excitement of his recent success carried him completely away. He placed one of the guineas on a slab beside the reddleman's sovereign. "Mine is ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy |
