"Inconspicuous" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... spiders, two forms of protective modification: the first, including all cases of protective resemblance to vegetable and inorganic things—that is, all modifications of color or of color and form that tend to make them inconspicuous in their natural relations—I shall call direct protection. The second form, which I shall call indirect protection, includes two classes, the spiders which are specially protected themselves and those which mimic other creatures which ...
— A Book of Natural History - Young Folks' Library Volume XIV. • Various
... which had hitherto played but an inconspicuous part, was now to become the scene of the greatest naval battle of the war. A British army of 11,000 men under Sir George Prevost undertook the invasion of New York by advancing up the western bank of Lake Champlain. ...
— The Naval War of 1812 • Theodore Roosevelt
... We know that in certain plants the leaves will always be opposite each other on the stalk, and that in other plants the leaves will alternate; that certain plants will have conspicuous and others inconspicuous flowers; but how can we know what it is in the cells of the plants that determines these things? We can graft the scion of a sour apple tree upon a sweet, and vice versa, and the fruit of the scion will be true to its kind, but no analysis of the ...
— The Breath of Life • John Burroughs
... churchyard holds an inconspicuous place two tiers east of the Tiffany enclosure. It is the grave of Samuel Griffin, the inn-keeper's child, who died at the Red Lion Tavern. The gravestone is dated 1792, which is ancient for ...
— The Story of Cooperstown • Ralph Birdsall
... not see &c. (be blind) 442; lose sight of. Adj. invisible, imperceptible; undiscernible[obs3], indiscernible; unapparent, non-apparent; out of sight, not in sight; a perte de vue[French]; behind the scenes, behind the curtain; viewless, sightless; inconspicuous, unconspicuous[obs3]; unseen &c. (see see &c. 441); covert &c. (latent) 526; eclipsed, under an eclipse. dim &c. (faint) 422; mysterious, dark, obscure, confused; indistinct, indistinguishable; shadowy, indefinite, undefined; ill-defined, ill-marked; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... its struggles, privations, and sorrows. And besides, the future historian of that gigantic conflict may perhaps find here some original contribution to the accumulating material upon which he must draw. He will need the humble narratives of inconspicuous participants as well as the pretentious attempts of the partial historians who have preceded him. The river flows into the sea, but the river itself is supplied by ...
— Reminiscences of a Rebel • Wayland Fuller Dunaway
... stranger was available for the purpose. He asked many questions, and before long had a crowd about him—as if he were some sort of government commissioner, conducting an investigation. It was an all day job, apparently; I hung round, trying to keep myself inconspicuous. ...
— They Call Me Carpenter • Upton Sinclair
... quite near this time, everything else was forgotten, and after a few moments' eager suspense we saw our bird. He was little and inconspicuous in shades of brown, with tail stuck pertly up, wren fashion, foraging among the dead leaves and on old logs, entirely unconscious that he was one of the three distinguished singers of the wood; none but the hermit thrush and the veery being ...
— Upon The Tree-Tops • Olive Thorne Miller
... over such difficulties as the fact that bright colours in flowers do not attract insects in many cases, but much more inconspicuous flowers if they have a scent (mignonette, for example) do; passing over such a fact as that afforded by the violet, which (as some may not be aware) has two kinds of flower, one scented and of a beautiful colour, the other green and inconspicuous, and it is the latter, not the former ...
— Creation and Its Records • B.H. Baden-Powell
... Cleveland, and was created Earl of Sussex, was compelled through his extravagance to alienate the castle and manor of Herstmonceux. Are there any references to either of these peers, who played a not inconspicuous part in the events of their times, in any of the contemporary memoirs? Any information on any of the above ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 59, December 14, 1850 • Various
... what was the difference, for example, between a duke, a count, and a marquis. Unfortunately there was no fixed classification, at least before the thirteenth century. A count, for instance, might be a very inconspicuous person, having a fief no larger than the county of Charlemagne's time, or he might possess a great many of the older counties and rank in power with a duke. In general, however, it may be said that the dukes, counts, bishops, and abbots who held directly from the king were of the highest ...
— An Introduction to the History of Western Europe • James Harvey Robinson
... are clothed with green foliage to the topmost crags, wild pear-trees being no inconspicuous feature; charming little valleys wind about between the mountain-spurs, and last night's downpour has imparted a freshness to the whole scene that perhaps it would not be one's good fortune to see every day, even were ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... colours are masculine or feminine. They are so merely by association. The modern costuming of man the world over, if he appear in European dress (we except court regalia), is confined to cloth, linen or cotton, in black, white and inconspicuous colours; a prescribed and simple type of neckwear, footwear, hat, stick, ...
— Woman as Decoration • Emily Burbank
... irritant and repellent to the touch; some platter-shaped and cobalt-blue; some as living vases with the opalescent tints of Venetian glass, which, abhorring the hand of man, retreat into the sand until only an inconspicuous fringe of neutral tint is visible. Sea-slugs in almost endless form and variety of hue, and many other strange sea things, were among the inhabitants of the reef—a closely packed arena ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... in. broad or less, irregular, grouped at end of stem, and upheld by long leaf-like bracts. Calyx of 3 unequal sepals; 3 petals, 1 inconspicuous, 2 showy, rounded. Perfect stamens 3; the anther of 1 incurved stamen largest; 3 insignificant and sterile stamens; 1 pistil. Stem: Fleshy, smooth, branched, mucilaginous. Leaves: Lance-shaped, 3 to 5 in. long, sheathing the stem at base; upper leaves in a spathe-like bract folding ...
— Wild Flowers Worth Knowing • Neltje Blanchan et al
... has also been granted me to know the nature of the most crafty sensuous men. Their hell is deep down at the back, and they want to be inconspicuous. Therefore they appear to hover about there like spectres, which are their fantasies, and they are called genii. Some were sent out from that hell once for me to learn what they are like. They immediately addressed themselves to my neck below the occiput and ...
— Angelic Wisdom about Divine Providence • Emanuel Swedenborg
... recent acres of field daisies made it too common, so they changed their minds and proceeded to grow steadily for two months. When they were pinched in on top, they simply expanded sidewise; ordinary and inconspicuous staking failed to restrain them, and they even pulled away at different angles from poles of silver birch with stout rope between, like a festive company of bacchantes eluding the embraces of the police. A heavy wind storm in late September snapped and twisted their ...
— The Garden, You, and I • Mabel Osgood Wright
... a man; we kept passing men as we went along; and sometimes as we looked from a high perch over the interior of one of the great sheds, we would be vaguely conscious of men scattered about the place. But they were very small and gray and inconspicuous dots upon the surface of great things going on—going on, seemingly by themselves, with a sort of mad, mechanical, majestic, ...
— American Adventures - A Second Trip 'Abroad at home' • Julian Street
... thirty he was a handsome, well-groomed, rather bored personage, with sleekly-brushed blond hair and a short mustache. He looked important, and one suspected that he must have been at some pains to keep his waist line so inconspicuous. For the rest, he was as really cultivated and pleasing a pagan as one may find, and so wittily ironical he might have ...
— The Purple Heights • Marie Conway Oemler
... walls for a space of two feet, and this has the effect of apparently enlarging the room, since the added mass of light tint seems to broaden it. There still remain two feet of space between the picture moulding and ceiling-line which may be treated as a ceiling-border in inconspicuous design upon the same cream ground, the design to be in darker, but of the same tint ...
— Principles of Home Decoration - With Practical Examples • Candace Wheeler
... question made for a door which gave upon the rear terrace. Just as he was about to insert the key the door was opened from the outside and Wesley's wooley head was outlined in the moonlight. The spooks darted behind the refreshment table and the three watchers dropped into inconspicuous heaps ...
— A Dixie School Girl • Gabrielle E. Jackson
... of Fifth Avenue, were lost with a different life. She saw, however, the open door to another room full of clear light, and her self-possession rapidly returned. Judith—as she had threatened—at once deserted her; and Linda found an inconspicuous corner of a divan. ...
— Linda Condon • Joseph Hergesheimer
... "I do feel so inconspicuous and quiet and lady-like," remarked Billie when some time later they left the motor car in charge of Komatsu and went in to visit Shiba Temple in Shiba Park. These chapels are mostly the tombs of the Shoguns who for many years ...
— The Motor Maids in Fair Japan • Katherine Stokes
... the great building and crossed an alley to another of like size. Down toward its middle was the usual wall of canvas with half-a-dozen men about the opening at one corner. A curious whirring noise came from within. He became an inconspicuous unit of the group and gazed in. The lights were on, revealing a long table elaborately set as for a banquet, but the guests who stood about gave him instant uneasiness. They were in the grossest caricatures of evening dress, both men and women, and they were not beautiful. ...
— Merton of the Movies • Harry Leon Wilson
... carried safely into Alsace on a sudden snowslide. That man now lay among the trees on the crag's edge looking down into the terrific chasm below. He and the girl who crouched in the thicket of alpine roses behind him seemed a part of the light-flecked forest—so inconspicuous were they among dead leaves and trees in their ragged ...
— In Secret • Robert W. Chambers
... the Dhu Heartach; no pleasant assemblage of shelves, and pools, and creeks, about which a child might play for a whole summer without weariness, like the Bell Rock or the Skerryvore, but one oval nodule of black-trap, sparsely bedabbled with an inconspicuous fucus, and alive in every crevice with a dingy insect between a slater and a bug. No other life was there but that of sea-birds, and of the sea itself, that here ran like a mill-race and growled about the outer reef for ever, and ever and again, in ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... against the calm wisdom and quiet restrained humor of these women, with only that blessed Jeff and my inconspicuous self to compare with, Terry did ...
— Herland • Charlotte Perkins Stetson Gilman
... the true force. Light, which is silent, is mightier than all lightnings. The Spirit, which is the 'Spirit of love,' is therefore 'the Spirit of power.' The true type of Christian character, which the gospel has brought into being, looks modest, inconspicuous and humdrum, by the side of the more brilliant and vulgar beauties of the world's ideals. Just as the iridescent hues on a dove's neck, and the quiet blue of its plumage, look modest and Quaker-like beside gaudy parroquets and ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... ninety-foot sheer drop. It was the same impression, the same carriage, straight, slim, with rigid head and the two hands hanging lightly clasped in front—only now a small sunshade was dangling from them. I saw something fateful in that deliberate pacing towards the inconspicuous door with the words Hotel Entrance ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad
... supreme, fearing nothing but feared by all; the same was true in the pantenales. Where the interlocking branches of the trees formed a canopy that shut out the moonlight he moved like a specter in the blackness. In the open country his shadowy form was equally inconspicuous. Quick and terrible were his attacks. Like an avalanche he descended upon his victims, seemingly from nowhere, but with a violence and ferocity that bore down and crushed and rent all at the same time, and with a suddenness that prevented ...
— The Black Phantom • Leo Edward Miller
... avoiding these places. The meetings of the two were taking place in accordance with what she had read in the love stories of Paris. She was going in search of Julio, fearing to be recognized, tremulous with emotion, selecting her most inconspicuous suit, and covering her face with a close veil—"the veil of adultery," as her friends called it. They had their trysts in the least-frequented squares of the district, frequently changing the places, like timid birds that at the slightest ...
— The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... other. Basil Dashwood played a part in Yolande and Peter had not failed to take with some comfort the measure of his aptitude. He judged it to be of the small order, as indeed the part, which was neither that of the virtuous nor that of the villainous hero, restricted him to two or three inconspicuous effects and three or four changes of dress. He represented an ardent but respectful young lover whom the distracted heroine found time to pity a little and even to rail at; but it was impressed upon his ...
— The Tragic Muse • Henry James
... were furious with her for letting him talk to her so long at his aunt's garden-party, that he awoke to the exiguity of his surroundings; and then it was with a touch of irritation that he noticed Mr. Carstyle's inconspicuous profile bent above a newspaper in one of the lower windows. Vibart had an idea that Mr. Carstyle, while ostensibly reading the paper, had kept count of the number of times that his daughter had led her companion up and down between ...
— The Greater Inclination • Edith Wharton
... into the house in such a way as nearly to poison us. The landlord sent several plumbers down, and one after the other suggested drastic remedies,—a new chimney, a new furnace, etc. Finally the landlord and I investigated for ourselves. At the bottom of the chimney we found an inconspicuous loose brick which allowed air to enter the chimney beneath the entrance of the pipe from the stove. We got ten cents' worth of lime and fastened the brick in firmly. A complete cure, ...
— The Nervous Housewife • Abraham Myerson
... took again with me into the foreign Republic in time for the evening train. But he seemed even more anxious than I to attract no attention, and once in Empire requested that we take the shortest and most inconspicuous route to the police station; and my responsibility ...
— Zone Policeman 88 - A Close Range Study of the Panama Canal and its Workers • Harry A. Franck
... ranks, as they sway the men above them; and the education which fails to make the last consult public good rather than private good, will fail to make the first do it. The benefits of political purity are so general and remote, and the profit to each individual is so inconspicuous, that the common citizen, educate him as you like, will habitually occupy himself with his personal affairs, and hold it not worth his while to fight against each abuse as soon as it appears. Not lack of information, but lack of certain moral sentiment, is ...
— The Contemporary Review, January 1883 - Vol 43, No. 1 • Various
... incompleteness, namely, the fact that such men have in them the germ of a life which has no natural end but absolute completeness. The small seed may grow very slowly in the climate and soil which it finds here, and be only a poor little bit of ragged green, very shabby and inconspicuous by the side of the native flowers of earth flaunting around it, but it has a divine germinant virtue within, and waits but being carried to its own clime and 'planted in the house of the Lord' above, to 'flourish in the courts of our God,' when these others with ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... proved to be as long as I could bring myself to stay, and then I meekly retired to the furthest corner of the field, where I made myself as inconspicuous as possible, and hoped I might be allowed to remain. Kingbird and robins accepted the compromise and returned to their own affairs; but the veeries by turns fed the babies and reviled me from a tree near ...
— Little Brothers of the Air • Olive Thorne Miller
... at one of the more inconspicuous of the little round tables. On a stage, at one side, a girl was singing one of the latest ...
— The Dream Doctor • Arthur B. Reeve
... up carefully and used on the parapet for concealment or on the berm to make a square back wall for the dirt of the parapet. If possible this should be done with the parados wall, so as to make it as inconspicuous as ...
— Military Instructors Manual • James P. Cole and Oliver Schoonmaker
... both feathers and scales. But in course of time, owing perhaps to the growth of the scales being arrested, the coat of the birds, instead of consisting throughout of well-developed scales and small inconspicuous feathers, was almost entirely made up of a countless number of downy feathers, well-developed scales only persisting below ...
— The Worst Journey in the World, Volumes 1 and 2 - Antarctic 1910-1913 • Apsley Cherry-Garrard
... A rarely seen, deciduous climber, bearing rather inconspicuous greenish-yellow flowers, succeeded by attractive, violet-tinted berries. The foliage is neat and pretty, the individual leaves being ovate in shape and slightly undulated or wavy. It is a twining shrub that ...
— Hardy Ornamental Flowering Trees and Shrubs • A. D. Webster
... insignificant compared with that from a cross with a distinct plant, and especially with one of a fresh stock. Should this suspicion be hereafter verified, it would throw light, as we shall see in the next chapter, on the existence of plants bearing small and inconspicuous flowers which are rarely visited by insects, and therefore are ...
— The Effects of Cross & Self-Fertilisation in the Vegetable Kingdom • Charles Darwin
... one belonging to Major Wayne Jackson, the Administration Officer and second in command at Fort Roye—another native son and an old acquaintance. He then turned away, dropped to the woods ten miles south and made a second inconspicuous approach under cover of the trees. There might be casual observers in the area, and while his meeting with Jackson and Celia Adams today revealed nothing in itself, it would be better if no one ...
— Watch the Sky • James H. Schmitz
... good-by with affection, you know there was amusement in the little smile with which you watched me go. I, a modest citizen, accustomed to shrink from publicity, was exposed in broad day in a badly fitting uniform, in color inconspicuous, to be sure, but in pattern evidently military and aggressive. What a guy I felt myself, and how every smile or laugh upon the street seemed to mean Me! The way to the railroad station had never seemed so long, nor so thronged with curious folk. I ...
— At Plattsburg • Allen French
... not uncommon (Cereocarpus parvifolius, Nutt.) and though its green flowers are inconspicuous, its long, solitary plumes at ...
— The Lake of the Sky • George Wharton James
... himself, who, stretched upon the slippery black leather lounge, hoarse as a frog from much addressing of obdurate electors, was endeavoring to sing "Just Before the Battle, Mother," hitting the tune only in the most inconspicuous places! ...
— The Black Creek Stopping-House • Nellie McClung
... as a part of the universal strangeness that was in her erect bearing, her proud head, her deep eyes that looked so straight into their own—a strangeness that was in that belt and those stockings and those shoes, inconspicuous as they were, to which she saw every eye in time covertly wandering as to tangible symbols of a mystery that was beyond their ken. Old Hon and the step-mother alone talked at first, and the others, even Loretta, ...
— The Trail of the Lonesome Pine • John Fox, Jr.
... is the epic of the exhilaration of the shy man. As such it is of incalculable value in our time, of which the curse is that it does not take joy reverently because it does not take it fearfully. The shabby and inconspicuous governess of Charlotte Bronte, with the small outlook and the small creed, had more commerce with the awful and elemental forces which drive the world than a legion of lawless minor poets. She approached ...
— Varied Types • G. K. Chesterton
... manner, notwithstanding her plain, inconspicuous clothes, commanded attention. Francis Ledsam was a little puzzled. Small things meant much to him in life, and he had been looking forward almost with the zest of a schoolboy to that hour of relaxation at his club. He was impatient of even ...
— The Evil Shepherd • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... spectacle is no longer to be seen in India. Four or five inconspicuous railway carriages or motor-cars now take the ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... as an interesting example of the value which the painter put upon color only; another composer would have thought it necessary to exalt the future apostle by some peculiar dignity of action or expression. The posture of the figure is indeed grand, but inconspicuous; Tintoret does not depend upon it, and thinks that the figure is quite ennobled enough by being ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume III (of 3) • John Ruskin
... wealthy but inconspicuous substratum was the compact and dominant group which the Mingotts, Newlands, Chiverses and Mansons so actively represented. Most people imagined them to be the very apex of the pyramid; but they themselves (at ...
— The Age of Innocence • Edith Wharton
... This interesting, though inconspicuous object, then, was chosen by Bessel to be put to the question with his heliometer, while Struve made a similar and somewhat earlier trial with the bright gem of the Lyre, whose Arabic title of the "Falling Eagle" survives as a time-worn remnant in ...
— A Popular History of Astronomy During the Nineteenth Century - Fourth Edition • Agnes M. (Agnes Mary) Clerke
... intended to make the outing with his unwonted wife an inconspicuous one. Uxoriousness was a weakness that the precepts of the Caribs did not countenance. If any of his friends of the track, the billiard cloth or the square circle had wives they had never complained of the fact in public. There were a number of table d'hote places on the cross streets ...
— The Voice of the City • O. Henry
... at the same time incapable of understanding colonial conditions and aspirations, ignorant of the principles and working of representative institutions, and too ready to apply arbitrary methods to the administration of civil affairs. Then they have had men who were suddenly drawn from some inconspicuous position in the parent state, like Sir Francis Bond Head, and allowed by an apathetic or ignorant colonial office to prove their want of discretion, tact, and even common sense at a very critical stage of Canadian affairs. Again there have been governors of the highest rank ...
— Lord Elgin • John George Bourinot
... two of 1898 and 1899, and certainly three more in the autumns of 1900, 1901, 1902. The Islanders liked him but were a little puzzled by him. He was an unassertive, unassuming man, with a genius for being inconspicuous. He has told us that his usual method in a poor man's cabin was to make them forget that he was there, but in Aran on these visits he always tried to add to the fun, and to his personal prestige with conjuring tricks, fiddling, piping, taking photographs, etc. Some of the Islanders were much attached ...
— John M. Synge: A Few Personal Recollections, with Biographical Notes • John Masefield
... asked the Night-Violet [Footnote: An inconspicuous flower which in Denmark is very fragrant in the evening, the "night-smelling rocket" (Hesperis triatto).], who stood there giving forth fragrance just to ...
— The Junior Classics Volume 8 - Animal and Nature Stories • Selected and arranged by William Patten
... had made himself as inconspicuous as possible while in Okar, waiting for the train, and he was certain that none of Dale's ...
— Square Deal Sanderson • Charles Alden Seltzer
... nearest I propose to get to it: but under the majestic image of pure wind marching in a movement wholly circular I seem to see, as in a vision, something of your mind. But the grand isolation of your thoughts leads you to express them in such words as are gratifying to yourself, and have an inconspicuous or even an unfortunate effect upon others. If anything were really to be made of your moral campaign against the English nation, it was clearly necessary that somebody, if it were only an Englishman, ...
— The Crimes of England • G.K. Chesterton
... usually his companion. He wore a blue flannel hunting-shirt quite different from the common army blouse. It was made with a broad yoke at the neck, and belt at the waist, the body in plaits. He was without sash or side arms, or any insignia of rank except inconspicuous shoulder-straps. On this day he was going into Washington, and I rode down with him to the bridge. Bodies of troops of the new levies were encamped at different points near the river. In these there seemed to ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V1 • Jacob Dolson Cox
... inconspicuous book called The New Party, edited by Andrew Reid and containing selections from many "labor" leaders, these words occur: "We have had politics for politics' sake, religion for religion's sake, science for science's ...
— The Family and it's Members • Anna Garlin Spencer
... other animals, especially when as often happens he balances cleverly on his hind legs. By means of it also he can, with his body completely concealed, look over the top of ordinary cover and see you long before you have made out his inconspicuous little head. Then he departs. He seems to have a lamentable lack of healthy curiosity about you. In that respect he should take lessons from the kongoni. After that you can follow him as far as you please; you will get only glimpses at three or four ...
— The Land of Footprints • Stewart Edward White
... songs, the smoking, and the lazy fun, Rosy-Lilly would slip from one big woodsman to another, an inconspicuous little figure in the smoke-gloomed light of the two oil-lamps. Man after man would snatch her up to his knee, lay by his pipe, twist her silky, yellow curls about his great blunt fingers, and whisper wood-folk tales or baby nonsense into her ...
— The Backwoodsmen • Charles G. D. Roberts
... genuine unadulterated tropics.' But as to painting the tropics without the palms, he might just as well think of painting the desert without the camels. At eight or ten years old the tree flowers, bearing blossoms of the ordinary palm type, degraded likenesses of the lilies and yuccas, greenish and inconspicuous, but visited by insects for the sake of their pollen. The flower, however, is fertilised by the wind, which carries the pollen grains from one bunch of blossoms to another. Then the nuts gradually swell out to ...
— Falling in Love - With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science • Grant Allen
... surface. They live, moreover, in every country of the globe, and their system of intercommunication is so perfect that even birds and flying things can learn from it. They prove their breeding by their perfect taste in dress, the well-bred ever being inconspicuous; and their simplicity conceals enormous, undecipherable wonder. One daisy out of doors is worth a hundred shelves of text- books in the house. Their mischief, moreover, is not revenge, though some might think it so—but a natural desire to be recognised and thought and ...
— The Extra Day • Algernon Blackwood
... president of a large university might be a matter of indifference to a young instructor, inconspicuous among his many colleagues; but to be transferred to a full professorship in a small college was to come into close, daily contact with the ruling power, a contact from which there was no escape, in which instinctive likes and antipathies might make or mar ...
— The Mayor of Warwick • Herbert M. Hopkins
... for the same reason. All birds and mammals which take care of their young are teachable, though in very various degrees, and all in like manner show individual peculiarities of disposition, though in most cases these are slight and inconspicuous. In dogs, horses, and apes there is marked teachableness, and there are also marked differences ...
— The Destiny of Man - Viewed in the Light of His Origin • John Fiske
... flower-buds and their peduncles (which are elongated apparently through the principle of compensation) are brightly coloured, but so is the upper part of the spike—all, no doubt, for the sake of guiding insects to the inconspicuous perfect flowers. From such cases as these we may pass on to certain Labiatae, for instance, Salvia Horminum in which (as I hear from Mr. Thiselton Dyer) the upper bracts are enlarged and brightly coloured, no doubt for the ...
— The Different Forms of Flowers on Plants of the Same Species • Charles Darwin
... the ground and began to crawl imperceptibly towards the bushes and the engineer followed in as close an imitation of his leader as possible, and about six feet behind him. The grass was four or five inches high and they looked to be only a couple of inconspicuous and inoffensive logs. Jim did not make the mistake of cranching swiftly through the darkness, for motion was the one thing that would attract the attention of even an unwary eye. So much James had learned from his old-time enemies, the crafty ...
— Frontier Boys in Frisco • Wyn Roosevelt
... line effects in the furniture heights and in the wall-paper, which, if in pronounced patterns, must balance in conspicuous wall members and show the broken junctures or bad matchings in inconspicuous or ...
— Color Value • C. R. Clifford
... reply. I saw him stare at her, and then I saw his glance take me in. I sat in a corner as inconspicuous as I could make myself. I wondered whether I was a sempstress or a tutor, and whether either of these functionaries were introduced, and whether they shook hands ...
— Sylvia's Marriage • Upton Sinclair
... upon. We all piled into the lorry, and Bish took it to an inconspicuous place on the Second Level and let down. Ramon Llewellyn and the others got out. Then we went up to Main City Level. We passed within a few blocks of Hunters' Hall. There was a lot of noise, but ...
— Four-Day Planet • Henry Beam Piper
... in countless millions of lessons of success and failure, his perfectly powerful claws and execution methods; and, living in the same jungle, and with him as one of the conditions of life, are small deer, alert, swift, light of build, inconspicuous of colour, sharp of hearing, keen-eyed, keen-scented— because any downward variation from these attributes means swift and certain death. To capture the deer is a condition, of the tiger's life, to escape the tiger a condition of the deer's; and they play a great contest under these conditions, ...
— Text Book of Biology, Part 1: Vertebrata • H. G. Wells
... rode to the S.P. depot feeling like a criminal trying to escape. He took his luggage and sneaked into the waiting room, sought an inconspicuous place and waited, his whole head and shoulders hidden behind a newspaper which he was not reading. Cliff Lowell could have found nothing to criticize in Johnny's manner of screening his presence there; ...
— The Thunder Bird • B. M. Bower
... Greenbackers, and issued a call for a National Greenback Labour Reform convention to assemble at Syracuse on July 25. This sudden extension of the movement attracted widespread attention, and although the convention was marked by great turbulence and guided by inconspicuous leaders, it seemed as if by magic to take possession of a popular issue which gathered about its standard thousands of earnest men. Gideon J. Tucker, a former Democratic secretary of state, who had led the Americans in 1859, was nominated for judge of ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... late to the farmers and labourers on the estate, it would not have mattered much to anybody if he had not been there. Nobody ever connected any romantic thought with him. There was something in his strong build, pale but healthy aquiline face, his inconspicuous brown eyes and hair, which seemed from the beginning to mark him out as the ordinary earthy dweller in an ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... aboord. 'Twud hurt business. 'Boys,' says he to th' rayporthers, 'th' King's on me yacht. D'ye hear me? Th' King's on me yacht. But don't say annything about it. I don't want to have it known. Don't print it onless ye have to, an' thin put it in an inconspicuous place, like th' first page. He's here sure enough, boys. Th' mast just fell on his Majesty. It nearly kilt him. I'm not sure it didn't kill him. He remained perfectly cool throughout. So did I. I was almost cold. ...
— Mr. Dooley's Philosophy • Finley Peter Dunne
... means, say by either increasing the amplitude of vibration of A or increasing its sensitiveness, the response of A is very greatly enhanced, then the positive effect would be predominant and the negative effect would become inconspicuous. When the two constituent responses are of the same order of magnitude, we shall have a positive response followed by a negative after-vibration; the first twitch will belong to the one which responds earlier. If the response of A is very much ...
— Response in the Living and Non-Living • Jagadis Chunder Bose
... such as the tapeworms and the trichina, there is a direct interchange of disease with animals, certain phases of the life cycle of the organisms are passed in man and others in various of the domestic animals. A small inconspicuous tapeworm inhabits the intestine of dogs and seems to produce no ill effects. The eggs are passed from the dog, taken into man, and result in the formation of large cystic tumors which not infrequently cause death. Where the companionship between ...
— Disease and Its Causes • William Thomas Councilman
... to stop talking, since they must walk in single file. Presently Benita looked up and saw that she was under the thorn which grew in the cleft of the rock. Also, with some trouble she found the bunch of reeds that she had bent down, to mark the inconspicuous hole through which she had crept, and by it her lantern. It seemed weeks since she had ...
— Benita, An African Romance • H. Rider Haggard
... inopportune times. The half-hour which followed Captain Polkington's coming down-stairs was a trying one. The Captain went to the back door to look out; Mr. Gillat followed him, though scarcely like his shadow; he was not inconspicuous, and neither he nor his motive were easy to overlook. The Captain said something approbious about the weather and the high wind and occasional heavy swishes of rain; then he went to the sitting-room which lay behind the kitchen, ...
— The Good Comrade • Una L. Silberrad
... this pretty slender herb is seldom more than five or six inches high, and its blossoms are so inconspicuous as to be often overlooked. The flowers droop gracefully before expansion. In country places it is often called Mill Mountain, and its infusion is an old remedy for rheumatism. If bruised, and applied externally, it reddens ...
— Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure • William Thomas Fernie
... prosecutor is bound to bring him to trial. Public attention demands it. He may know him to be insane, but he must still prosecute him. The jury declare him insane. After years he is released from the asylum, the public thinks it a miscarriage of justice, forgetting in the meanwhile the inconspicuous poor man who unnoticed has gone through the same experience, and been ...
— The Man in Court • Frederic DeWitt Wells
... suddenly dropped to earth. A man's figure was stumbling along the little path which led diagonally from the back of the Birch premises through a gateway and off toward a back street, the route by which Lanse was accustomed to take an inconspicuous short cut toward the locomotive shops, ...
— The Second Violin • Grace S. Richmond
... sincere nature-lover, and gives a soft hint to which the soul of the spectator can add its own emotion. To Hugh it was much a matter of mood. He would go to a gallery of ancient or modern art, and find that there many pictures had no message or voice for him; and then some inconspicuous picture would suddenly appeal to him with a mysterious force—the pathetic glance of childish eyes, or an old face worn by toil and transfigured by some inner light of hopefulness; or a woodland scene, tree-trunks rising amid a copse; or the dark water of a sea-cave, lapping, ...
— Beside Still Waters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... children freedom in play but obviates the possibility of loss of books through their being left on benches and swings. The playground is a place of freedom and fun and good fellowship, and the library's rules should be made as inconspicuous as possible. ...
— Library Work with Children • Alice I. Hazeltine
... of this feeling, for not only did he take care to proceed to the Quai d'Orsay in as inconspicuous a manner as possible, but he also applied to the authorities to detail a policeman to accompany him in ...
— Paris War Days - Diary of an American • Charles Inman Barnard
... impatiently, the rancher went toward the house, shoulders low, making himself as inconspicuous as possible. The distance between the house and where Dick was waiting was not far, but it was all open, and with the moon lighting up the scene almost like day, a person crossing might ...
— The Boy Ranchers on Roaring River - or Diamond X and the Chinese Smugglers • Willard F. Baker
... long gaberdine and his hat, buttoning the former loosely about the pump, which it almost concealed, and hanging the latter upon the summit of the structure. The handle of the pump, when depressed, curved outwardly between the coat-skirts, singularly like a tail, but with this inconspicuous exception, any unprejudiced observer would have pronounced the thing ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Volume 8 - Epigrams, On With the Dance, Negligible Tales • Ambrose Bierce
... incongruous as it was in that neighbourhood, few people that he passed paid any attention to him, none gave him more than a casual glance—Jimmie Dale swung along, upright, with no attempt to make himself inconspicuous, hurrying a little, as one intent upon a definite errand. As he neared his house he slowed his pace a little until a couple, who were passing in front of it, had gone on; then he went up the steps, but noiselessly as a shadow now, to the front door, opened ...
— The Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... by Jullien's Band in 1853. Also a "Grand Symphony" in 1855 and "The Pilgrims' Cantata" by C. C. Perkins, were performed in Boston, and we have record of an oratorio, "The Cities of the Plains," by Dawley, in 1855. Apart from these efforts the American composer seems to have been inconspicuous. In fact there were no facilities for the study of music or for the hearing of music which could be compared, as a training school for composers, with the musical centres of Europe, so that the efforts of these earlier composers may ...
— Annals of Music in America - A Chronological Record of Significant Musical Events • Henry Charles Lahee
... was now quite normal. The brow and cheeks were of a flesh color, the nose politely inconspicuous. He had fixed his aunt with the bright-yellow eye, giving her that acute and exaggerated attention that young males are accustomed to render to all females who ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... near Barilloche, out on the bare Patagonian plains. They behaved like pipits or longspurs, running actively over the ground in the same manner and showing the same restlessness and the same kind of flight. But whereas pipits are inconspicuous, the red-backs at once attracted attention by the contrast between their bold coloring and the grayish or yellowish tones of the ground along which they ran. The silver-bill tyrant, however, is much more conspicuous; I saw it in the same neighborhood as the red-back and ...
— Through the Brazilian Wilderness • Theodore Roosevelt
... meekly across the hall, hardly daring to lift her eyes; and when the man threw open the drawing-room door and ushered her in, Fanny unconsciously moderated her usual hearty footstep and endeavoured to make her entry as inconspicuous ...
— The Making of a Soul • Kathlyn Rhodes
... fell back a step, and dropped easily into the sonorous declamation that made the stalwart Judge no inconspicuous figure on the floor of the Legislature. The newspapers, of course, were responsible for his language—as for the rest of his education; but such as it was, he used it fluently, and the declamatory manner was, to his constituency, quite an essential of eloquence—the prime difference, in fact, between ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 9 • Various
... test it. Captain after captain, upon being asked to name a selected man, had to confess ignorance; not so my skipper. He knew them all. "What is that man's name?" asked the Brigadier, indicating an inconspicuous and rather terrified private, just that sort of man whose name one would never know or want to know. (It was something rather like Postlethwaite, I believe). "Two paces forward, Private Johnson," ordered my skipper emphatically, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, October 14, 1914 • Various
... habit is a matter of taste on which I can offer no advice, except that a lady who requires to wear her habit until it exhibits signs of old age, would do well to select an inconspicuous tint. I have always found dark blue the most serviceable shade, because it does not fade, even in tropical climates, nor does it, like black, turn green and rusty-looking before it is worn out. Besides, it admits of a new skirt or new coat, as the case may be, ...
— The Horsewoman - A Practical Guide to Side-Saddle Riding, 2nd. Ed. • Alice M. Hayes
... was an ambitious woman, though one with definite limitations. Among different surroundings and in an atmosphere less sordidly striving and commonplace, she was fitted to have become, with some encouragement, an admirable and utterly inconspicuous wife and mother. But here, in this narrow, money-getting environment, many things prevented; among them, primarily, the way in which she had been brought up. For her father, too, had been driven by this lust for riches; and though he had failed, to the last he had ...
— Stories from Everybody's Magazine • 1910 issues of Everybody's Magazine
... countries. He divides the Macedonian Slavs into pure Slavs, Slavized Bulgars and pure Slavs influenced by Slavized Bulgars: "all three categories," he says, "have been subjected to a strong and often continuous Greek influence, to say nothing of the Turks and the inconspicuous Vlachs," so that in his opinion it is rash to make sharp divisions among a people who have thus acted and reacted on one another. A large proportion of the Macedonians[53] have no knowledge of the race to which their ancestors belonged; and one is brought to the conclusion that it is much ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 1 • Henry Baerlein
... It starts with Christ's ancestors, beginning with the story of Anna and Joachim, and giving the legend in minute images. Out of deference perhaps to the Inspired Books, this history creeps along the wall, making itself small so as to be inconspicuous, and narrates, as if in secret, by artless mimicry, poor Joachim's despair when a scribe of the Temple named Reuben reproves him for being childless, and rejects his offerings in the name of the Lord who has not blessed him; then Joachim, in sorrow, separates from his wife and ...
— The Cathedral • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... the meaning of the device struck us. A hundred yards to the right the ground dropped sharp, leaving an edge; here was the real position and the natural cover. We walked over, and found the usual little hollows and inconspicuous stones arranged. Here was where their riflemen had lain, with a view right up the valley. And the meaning of those conspicuous edifices was now plain. Stuck up on the bare brow, plain to be seen at 2000 yards, they were simply meant to draw our fire. The smokeless Mausers would have told no ...
— With Rimington • L. March Phillipps
... said that coffee shared with bread and bacon the distinction of being one of the three nutritive essentials that helped win the World War for the Allies. So this symbol of human brotherhood has played a not inconspicuous part in "making the world safe for democracy." The new age, ushered in by the Peace of Versailles and the Washington Conference, has for its hand-maidens temperance and self-control. It is to be a world democracy of right-living and clear thinking; and among its most ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... and during a momentary lull in the amiable siege of which he was the distressed object, he whispered tragically to me: "Can't we get out of this?—Do you know the way to the back door?" I said I did, and led him through an inconspicuous doorway into a comparatively deserted corridor behind the staircase. I procured for him, through the strategic employment of a passing servant, something to eat, and we staid in concealment there until the function had come to an end, and his wife had begun to search for him. He was ...
— Edward MacDowell • Lawrence Gilman
... the rocky point only to meet a charge of B.B.'s from my gun. She was a beautiful bird with a delicate crown of slender feathers, a yellow and blue face patch and a green neck and back, but her plumes were short and inconspicuous when compared with ...
— Camps and Trails in China - A Narrative of Exploration, Adventure, and Sport in Little-Known China • Roy Chapman Andrews and Yvette Borup Andrews
... no reasons for believing, that, as a schoolmaster, he was particularly well qualified. He did very well however, and satisfied the entire township, so that, had he been content with that that very honorable, but somewhat inconspicuous life, he might doubtless have remained there until this day. Up to this period he had been a strict temperance man. No intoxicating drink had as yet passed his lips; and an early experiment with a pipe had so sickened him, that ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 46, August, 1861 • Various
... sail next Saturday on the Jupiter I think. We haven't got our suite, but Mr. Bliss says he is sure he can arrange it for me. If we can't get one on the Jupiter, we'll take some other boat that is just as inconspicuous. You see, I want to go on a ship that isn't likely to be packed with people I know, for it is my intention to travel incog, as they say in the books. No one shall stare at me and say: 'There is that Maud Blithers we were reading about ...
— The Prince of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... o'clock he approached the palace; and although a host of showy people were about him, moving in the same direction, he was not inconspicuous—his costume took care of that. He watched these people's faces narrowly, hoping to find a charitable one whose possessor might be willing to carry his name to the old lieutenant—as to trying to get into the palace himself, that was simply ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... two spies in the night of terror after the defeat and retreat to the ships. The Trojan spy, Dolon, also wears a leather cap. The three spies put on no corslets, as far as we can affirm, their object being to remain inconspicuous and unburdened with glittering bronze greaves and corslets. The Trojan camp was brilliantly lit up with fires, and there may have been a moon, so the less bronze the better. In these circumstances alone the heroes of the Iliad are unequipped, certainly, ...
— Homer and His Age • Andrew Lang
... simply tacking them together with a large needle and coarse thread—will not answer at all in this new development of rug making. The filling must be smooth, without lumps or rag ends, and the joinings absolutely fast and fairly inconspicuous. Some of the new rags from cotton or woolen mills come in pieces from a quarter to a half-yard in length and the usual width of the cloth. These can be sewed together on the sewing machine, lapping and basting them ...
— How to make rugs • Candace Wheeler
... something almost great in this ravenous thirst for knowledge, combined with incredulity of all tradition. It is a model such as this that the poets should have had for their naive characters. In Goethe's Roman Elegies, the Roman woman's figure is very inconspicuous; she is not drawn as a genuine woman of the people, she is not naive. He knew a Faustina, but one feels that he afterwards slipped a German model into her place. Filomena has the uncompromising honesty and straightforwardness of an unspoilt soul. Her glance is not exactly pure, ...
— Recollections Of My Childhood And Youth • George Brandes
... journey up-country from Madras, some twelve years ago, that I first met Dr. Paru. She and I shared the long seat of the small second-class compartment, and in that close neighborliness I soon fell to wondering. From her dress I knew her to be a Hindu, yet her jewels were few and inconspicuous. She was most evidently of good family, yet she was ...
— Lighted to Lighten: The Hope of India • Alice B. Van Doren
... But in the Oblonskys' household, as in all families indeed, there was one inconspicuous but most valuable and useful person, Marya Philimonovna. She soothed her mistress, assured her that everything would come round (it was her expression, and Matvey had borrowed it from her), and without fuss or hurry proceeded to set to work herself. She had immediately ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy
... to where it belonged. "Yes, I know. But we're talkin' about Texas. Still, I reckon you ought not to have any trouble on this trip. Don't let anybody know why you are at the fort. Don't gamble or drink. Get the money from Major Ponsford and melt away inconspicuous into the brush. Hit the trail hard. A day and a night ought to ...
— Oh, You Tex! • William Macleod Raine
... exception of their rude inconspicuous flints, and the accumulated remains of their feasts in the 'mirnyongs,' or native shell-mounds, along our coasts, which only have significance to the careful observer, we have no other visible evidence ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris
... a popular exposition of an inconspicuous but very beautiful phenomenon of the rocks. Minute darkened spheres—a microscopic detail—appear everywhere in certain of the rock minerals. What are they? The discoveries of recent radioactive research—chiefly due to Rutherford—give the answer. ...
— The Birth-Time of the World and Other Scientific Essays • J. (John) Joly
... to drive back over the neutral territory the rock of Gibraltar suddenly bulked up before us, in a sheer ascent that left the familiar Prudential view in utterly inconspicuous unimpressive-ness. Till one has seen it from this point one has not truly seen it. The vast stone shows like a half from which the other half has been sharply cleft and removed, that the sense of its precipitous magnitude may unrelievedly strike the eye; and it seems to have in that moment the ...
— Roman Holidays and Others • W. D. Howells
... an excitable mood to-night," said the lieutenant; "we had therefore better make ourselves as inconspicuous as possible. I wonder what has occurred? Possibly there may have been some battle, in which the Bolivians have been defeated. I would not have come ashore had I thought that the city was likely to be in this state of unrest. However, as we are here we may as well go forward; ...
— Under the Chilian Flag - A Tale of War between Chili and Peru • Harry Collingwood
... their experiments is proved by the extraordinary variety of shades of blue, ranging from a sort of greyish robin's-egg to the darkest navy, in which the army is clothed. The result attained is the conviction that no blue is really inconspicuous, and that some of the harsh new slaty tints are no less striking than the deeper shades they have superseded. But to this scale of experimental blues, other colours must be added: the poppy-red of the Spahis' tunics, and various other less familiar colours—grey, and a certain greenish khaki—the ...
— Fighting France - From Dunkerque to Belport • Edith Wharton
... instincts. And this takes us a stage further. The extreme claim is that all instincts, in fact all thoughts and operations, are in the last analysis chemical or chemico-physical. Let us examine this claim for a moment. The adrenals are two inconspicuous ductless bodies situated immediately above the kidneys. Not many years ago, when the present writer was a medical student, all that was known about these organs was that when stricken with a certain ...
— Science and Morals and Other Essays • Bertram Coghill Alan Windle
... novelty is alexandrae, in honour of that Princess who, we may reasonably hope, is destined at some future time to be the Queen of these realms and their dependencies, of which Australia is by no means the most inconspicuous. ...
— Explorations in Australia, The Journals of John McDouall Stuart • John McDouall Stuart
... we see a butte in the form of a fallen cross. It is several miles away, but it presents no inconspicuous figure on the landscape and must be many hundreds of feet high, probably more than 2,000. We note its position on our map and name it "The Butte of ...
— Canyons of the Colorado • J. W. Powell
... dwelling, but it was used also as a storehouse. At Aurora, Dr. Keil's house accommodates a dozen or twenty of the older unmarried people, who live in common with him. At Amana, the houses of the leaders are so inconspicuous and plain that they are not distinguishable from the rest. A Shaker elder sits at the head of the table of his family or commune, and even the highest elder or bishop of the society has not a room to himself, and is expected to ...
— The Communistic Societies of the United States • Charles Nordhoff
... to remember all about it, a whole swarm of disqualifying details arrived on the ground: the town would have known of the circumstance, Mary would have known of it, it would glare like a limelight in his own memory instead of being an inconspicuous service which he had possibly rendered "without knowing its full value." And at this point he remembered that ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... Gas-Engines! The sign was as inconspicuous as the firm was famous in the middle West. Roger, after two days of waiting, was staring at the faded gilt letters until the moment of his interview with Mr. Haskell arrived. He was a little uncertain about ...
— The Forbidden Trail • Honore Willsie
... finely. On one side of this old palace—for he was sure it could be nothing short of a palace—was a flight of steps which led up to a small door. This entrance was an inconspicuous one, which could not be said of the several porticoed entrances. Beside the steps, in the angle made by the meeting of the wall with them, was conveniently set a small, pine box. Johnnie had hunted a vacant building with the intention of entering it. But ...
— The Rich Little Poor Boy • Eleanor Gates
... exhaustion comes, and the tiny form falls in its tracks, how small an object it is to detect in the great world of outdoors! A little bundle of dusty garments in a ditch, in a wayside hollow, in tall grass, or among the tufts and hummocks of a marsh—how easy it is for so inconspicuous an object to escape the eye of the most zealous searcher! A young animal lost cries incessantly; the lost child cries out his pitiful little cry, finds itself lifted to no tender bosom, soothed by no gentle voice, ...
— Jersey Street and Jersey Lane - Urban and Suburban Sketches • H. C. Bunner
... Mont-rouge and the road to Orleans, which led also to Balzac's beloved Tours. The principal staircase was outside, because Balzac, in designing the house, found that a staircase seriously interfered with the symmetry of the rooms. Therefore he placed it in an inconspicuous position in a special construction at the back, and owing to the extremely steep slope the visitor entered by the top floor, and made his way down instead of up. There were three stories, the lowest containing the drawing-room and dining-room, the second a bedroom ...
— Honore de Balzac, His Life and Writings • Mary F. Sandars
... as the prevailing styles are not harmful. Odd as it may seem, these are matters which are not without significance for the physical well-being of a prospective mother. Neat and comfortable clothing will help her to overcome a natural inclination to become a "stay-at-home," and on this account an inconspicuous way of dressing is often more valuable than medicine. So long as they do not attract attention, most prospective mothers go out in the day time, mingle with their acquaintances, and attend public places of amusement. Deference to fashion, therefore, may contribute ...
— The Prospective Mother - A Handbook for Women During Pregnancy • J. Morris Slemons
... their left and the Mount of Olives on their right. From the bottom of the valley he saw the place where the Temple had been, but no Temple was there now—only the dome of the Muhammedan mosque. Of the Holy Sepulchre there was nothing visible, for it lay within the City and was inconspicuous. He came to Gethsemane, where Christ had suffered, and he climbed the Mount of Olives, from whence he could look over Jerusalem. He did so, and wept. After he had paid his devotions in the ruins of the Church of the Resurrection, he went on northwards ...
— Historical Miniatures • August Strindberg
... closely akin to it; it no doubt exists in the minds of many really successful people, and if it is not flagrantly betrayed, it is often an important constituent of their success. But the happy part of it is that the dramatic sense is often freely bestowed upon the most inconspicuous and unintelligent persons, and fills their lives with a consciousness of romance and joy. It concerns itself mostly with public appearances, upon however minute a scale, and thus it is a rich source of consolation and self-congratulation. ...
— At Large • Arthur Christopher Benson
... binary names. One is the typical V. tricolor, with broad flowers, variously colored and veined with yellow, purple and white. It occurs in waste places on sandy soil. The second is called V. arvensis or the field-pansy; it has small inconspicuous flowers, with pale-yellowish petals which are shorter than the sepals. It pollinates itself without the [40] aid of insects, and is widely dispersed in cultivated fields. The third form, V. alpestris, ...
— Species and Varieties, Their Origin by Mutation • Hugo DeVries
... into the lounge archway. Strange, tense scene. I saw Anita at once. Her robed figure lurked in an inconspicuous corner; her eyes were upon me as Moa and I entered, but she did not move. The thirty-odd passengers were huddled in a group. Solemn, white-faced men; frightened women. Some of them were sobbing. One Earth ...
— Brigands of the Moon • Ray Cummings
... has waited many years to hear the truth about the Mormons; here it is—told with sympathy, with affection, by a man who steadfastly defended and fought for the Mormon people when their present leaders were keeping themselves carefully inconspicuous. The Mormon system of religious communism has long been known as one of the most interesting social experiments of modern civilization; here is an intimate study of it, not only in its success but in the failure that has come ...
— Under the Prophet in Utah - The National Menace of a Political Priestcraft • Frank J. Cannon and Harvey J. O'Higgins
... his face and hands from the scratchy foliage, and also to render himself inconspicuous, he wore a tight-fitting robe of dark brown muslin, which concealed even his face and arms, though eyeholes allowed him to see where ...
— Patty's Summer Days • Carolyn Wells
... describes his people in a way that shows that he has them in the eye of his imagination; as in this portrait of a Mrs. Tappelmine: "With face, hair, eyes, and garments of the same color, the color itself being neutral; small, thin, faded, inconspicuous, poorly clad, bent with labors which had yielded no return, as dead to the world as saints strive to be, yet remaining in the world for the sake of those whom she had often wished out of it," etc. The book is in every way clever, and its purpose is admirable—the lesson which it is written ...
— The Galaxy - Vol. 23, No. 1 • Various
... Abe Kauffman and his black satchel. For it grew dark early at this time of year, and already the brief twilight was fading. So the girl hastened to her room and exchanged her gray walking suit for a darker one that was inconspicuous and allowed free movement. Then she slipped her little pearl-mounted revolver—her father's gift—into her handbag and decided she ...
— Mary Louise and the Liberty Girls • Edith Van Dyne (AKA L. Frank Baum)
... Troopers drew bridles in the yellowing October forest. Their smart drab uniforms touched with purple blended harmoniously with the autumn woods. They were as inconspicuous as two deer in the dappled shadow. There was a sunny clearing just ahead. The wood road they had been travelling entered it. Beyond ...
— The Flaming Jewel • Robert Chambers
... little hunt went on, the mother watching gravely under a bush where she was inconspicuous, and the cubs, full of zest and inexperience, missing the flying tidbits more often than they swallowed them, until they learned at last to locate all game accurately before chasing or alarming it; and that is the rule, learned from hunting grasshoppers, which a wolf follows ever afterward. ...
— Northern Trails, Book I. • William J. Long
... finishing nothing; that his artistic tastes are the extravagant dreams of a Nero; that he loves publicity as a worn and obese soprano loves the centre of the stage; that his indiscretions would bring about the discharge of the most inconspicuous petty official. Others speak and write of him as a hero of mythology, as a mystic and a dreamer, looking for guidance to the traditions of mediaeval knighthood; while others, again, dub him a modernist, insist that he is a commercial traveller, ...
— Germany and the Germans - From an American Point of View (1913) • Price Collier
... become naturalized much more readily than large ones; they are volatile, and can more quickly find suitable feeding-ground, and safe roosting and nesting places; their food is also more abundant and easily found; their small size, which renders them inconspicuous, gives them safety; and, finally, they are very much more adaptive ...
— Birds in Town and Village • W. H. Hudson
... red, but which has been known to cause the more discriminating to draw heavily on the dictionary for adjectives. My face is small and heart-shaped, with features strictly for use and not for ornament, but fortunately inconspicuous. As for my eyes, I think tawny quite the nicest word, though Aunt Jane calls them hazel and I have even ...
— Spanish Doubloons • Camilla Kenyon
... telegram or Dick's letter. Things were looking up. It might be Amelia had been elected to some new and absorbing organization for putting the social edifice still more irretrievably into the disorder it seemed bent for, in which case she might forget the inner wobblings of such an inconspicuous nomad as a brother in metaphysical pangs. He became recklessly optimistic, as the train climbed higher into the hills, and luxuriated in it, conscious all the time that it was altitude that was intoxicating him, not any real hope of hoodwinking Amelia. You ...
— Old Crow • Alice Brown
... branches of the hollow tree. The Chinese lanterns are alight. There is dancing in the house; the music sounds now loud, now soft. MISS BEECH is sitting on the rustic seat in a black bunchy evening dress, whose inconspicuous opening is inlaid with white. ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... coasts of New Guinea and in the Moluccas I was never able to obtain a skin. We are therefore quite ignorant of the habits of this bird, and also of its female, though the latter is no doubt as plain and inconspicuous as in all the other ...
— The Malay Archipelago - Volume II. (of II.) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... Leo the inconspicuous constellation of the Crab may be found; the most striking object it contains is the misty patch called Praesepe or the Bee-Hive, which the smallest opera-glass will resolve into its ...
— The Story of the Heavens • Robert Stawell Ball
... worker in his particular occupation. His arsenal is the kitchen shelf, the trash pile, his own usual kit of tools and supplies. The targets of his sabotage are usually objects to which he has normal and inconspicuous ...
— Simple Sabotage Field Manual • Strategic Services
... his friend were familiar with the manners of the country, so that they felt at home among the narrow adobe streets, the lounging, good-natured peons, and the imitation Moorish architecture. They found rooms at a quiet, inconspicuous hotel, and began making their plans for an immediate departure in the event that they succeeded in ...
— Bucky O'Connor • William MacLeod Raine
... lying to the north of Greece, for a long time had been an inconspicuous part of the ancient world. Its people, though only partially civilized, were Greeks in blood and language. No doubt they formed an offshoot of those northern invaders who had entered the Balkan peninsula before the dawn of history. The Macedonian kings, from the era of the ...
— EARLY EUROPEAN HISTORY • HUTTON WEBSTER
... station by the tall library mantel and wandered across the room to an inconspicuous corner, where he propped his manly form up against the wall and followed Arethusa with his eyes, totally unregardful of anything else in their line of vision, as she swayed and dipped like a snow fairy in her airy white gown, about the room. He was no great adept in the concealment ...
— The Heart of Arethusa • Francis Barton Fox
... see for a short distance, but when they stopped at the edge of the channel the punt was not about. She was, however, painted an inconspicuous gray, and Jim thought she was not far off. While he hesitated, wondering which way to turn, a heavy report came out of the ...
— Partners of the Out-Trail • Harold Bindloss
... Fort Wrigley, and are boarded by priests and Indians all interested in the new steamer and impressed with its size. One asks if it is a boat or an island, and another declares it is "just like a town." Fort Wrigley is an inconspicuous post with a dreary enough record of hunger and hardship. We find it rich in flowers and will always remember it as the one place in the North in which we gathered the fringed gentian (Gentiana crinata) with its lance-shaped leaves, ...
— The New North • Agnes Deans Cameron
... a volunteer in the person of Tobias Dramm came forward. Until then he had been an inconspicuous unit in the life of the community. He was a live-stock dealer on a small scale, making his headquarters at one of the town livery stables. He was a person of steady habits, with a reputation for sobriety and frugality among his neighbours. ...
— From Place to Place • Irvin S. Cobb
... that I left. As I was listening to the Dowager's parting remarks about being inconspicuous and reflecting credit on the school by my nice manners, Martin sent in word that Princess was lame and couldn't be driven. So instead of going to the station in the hearse, I went with Mam'selle in the trolley car. When we got in, it was cram full of men. The entire Yale ...
— Just Patty • Jean Webster
... rough riding-boots under our chairs, to avoid marking the contrast with our host's resplendent jack-boots of patent-leather, and buttoning up our coat collars, we endeavoured to make ourselves as inconspicuous as possible in this brilliant assembly. But in spite of our tramp-like garb, we ...
— The Land of the Black Mountain - The Adventures of Two Englishmen in Montenegro • Reginald Wyon
... all of these somewhat inconspicuous galleries is most satisfactory. They contain in well-arranged fashion the real art of the people, the things that people who cannot afford to buy paintings can easily afford to own. Original etchings, mezzotints, and wood block prints and other process work often more truly contain ...
— The Galleries of the Exposition • Eugen Neuhaus
... which have come down to us, even in their crudest forms (eoliths), are very far from representing the earliest achievements of man in the accumulation of culture. Those dim, remote cycles must have been full of great, but inconspicuous, originators who laid the foundations of civilization in discoveries and achievements so long taken for granted that we do not realize that they ever had to be made ...
— The Mind in the Making - The Relation of Intelligence to Social Reform • James Harvey Robinson
... huge reddish-brown head with bulging cheeks; his blotched body, adorned with wicked spines, tapered slimly off to an inconspicuous tail. ...
— Jim Spurling, Fisherman - or Making Good • Albert Walter Tolman |
