"Pebble" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... pebble from the shore far into the river, and the copper-colored children spring after it, as if the water were their own element, striving to get it before it sinks from ...
— Dahcotah - Life and Legends of the Sioux Around Fort Snelling • Mary Eastman
... to be aware what an important person you are—how almost sensationally important. Why, I am only a pebble on a shore like yours, a little unknown slip of a girl who ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... comrades, who, with his head about a couple of feet lower than his heels, carried him in triumph across the playground, and staggered half-way up the steep garden path, when Acton happening to tread on a loose pebble brought the whole procession to grief, and caused the noble band of conquering heroes to be seen all grovelling in a mixed heap upon ...
— The Triple Alliance • Harold Avery
... short time, considering this somewhat inconvenient mode of getting over ground, they had made their way to the hither bank of the river. But here they found themselves once more brought to a stand. Directly in front, as Burl ascertained by throwing in a pebble and noting the length of time between its sinking and the bubble's rising, the stream was almost, if not quite, six feet deep. To wade across, then go in battle with his garments all soaked and heavy with water—a serious hinderance, as this ...
— Burl • Morrison Heady
... Farewell By the Lake The Teacher Grace Darling The Indian Lines on the North-West Rebellion Louis Riel Ye Patriot Sons of Canada A Hero's Decision John and Jane The Truant Boy A Swain to his Sweetheart The Fisherman's Wife The Diamond and the Pebble Temptation Slander Woman Sympathy Love and Wine. How Nature's Beauties Should be Viewed To a Canary The School-Taught Youth A Dream A Snow Storm To Nova Scotia The Huntsman and His Hound The Maple Tree The Pine Tree A Sabbath Morning in the Country Catching Speckled Trout A ...
— Canada and Other Poems • T.F. Young
... on," said Mrs. Wake, skipping, as it were, another pebble, "if one fills one's place in life and does ...
— A Fountain Sealed • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... Every walk over hill and dale, every ramble by brookside or through wildwood, gave to her some fresh home-adornment. Some shy wildflower or fern, or brilliant-tinted leaf, a bit of moss, a curious lichen, a deserted bird's-nest, a strange fragment of rock, a shining pebble, would catch her passing glance and reveal to her quick artistic sense possibilities of use which were quaint, original, characteristic. One saw from afar that hers was a poet's home; and, if permitted to enter its gracious portals, the first impression ...
— The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss • George L. Prentiss
... 'Taylor was a very sensible acute man, and had a strong mind[404]; that he had great activity in some respects, and yet such a sort of indolence, that if you should put a pebble upon his chimney-piece, you would find it there, in the ...
— The Life Of Johnson, Volume 3 of 6 • Boswell
... night. I was cold. A semi-darkness was about me and over me many stars twinkled. I sat upon the shingle roof of the bowling alley. It was not a far leap to the ground below. But the pebble stones of the seminary garden pricked my bare feet. Moreover, when I wanted to get into the house, I found the gate closed. My God! how had I then come out? Somewhere I found an open window and climbed into the house and noiselessly up to the dormitory. The window ...
— Sleep Walking and Moon Walking - A Medico-Literary Study • Isidor Isaak Sadger
... forward. A curious little people, leading their solitary lives and greatly differentiated by the solitude, hardly any two alike, one nervous and excitable, another calm and unhurried; one careless in her work, another neat and thorough; this one suspicious, that one confiding; Ammophila using a pebble to pack down the earth in her burrow, while another species uses the end of her abdomen,—verily a queer little people, with a lot of wild nature about them, and a lot ...
— Ways of Nature • John Burroughs
... you have been untrue to the eternal fidelity which you swore to me here by this very stream? Oh, but I cannot believe it was thirty years ago, for not a grass-blade or a pebble has been altered; and I perfectly remember the lapping of water under those lichened rocks, and that continuous file of ripples yonder, which are shaped ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1919 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... hillucks, delicate faire large plaines, sweete cristall fountaines, and cleare running streames that twine in fine meanders through the meads, making so sweete a murmering noise to heare as would even lull the sences with delight a sleepe, so pleasantly doe they glide upon the pebble stones, jetting most jocundly where they doe meete and hand in hand runne downe to Neptunes Court, to pay the yearely tribute which they owe to him as soveraigne Lord of all the springs. Contained within the volume of the Land, Fowles in abundance, Fish in multitude; and ...
— The American Mind - The E. T. Earl Lectures • Bliss Perry
... thoughts whereby, though the eye saw nothing, that life was yet rendered happy among all. For we are well aware that what destiny has given, and what destiny holds in reserve, can be revolutionised as utterly by thought as by great victory or great defeat. Thought is silent; it disturbs not a pebble on the illusory road we see; but at the crossway of the more actual road that our secret life follows will it tranquilly erect an indestructible pyramid; and thereupon, suddenly, every event, to the very phenomena of earth and heaven, ...
— The Buried Temple • Maurice Maeterlinck
... was stooping down to pick up a pebble. Sometimes people do find things, Mrs. Jarvis thought, and yet in this hazy moonlight it was impossible to see anything, except bones, and little pieces ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf
... and leaned back, staring out at the luminous green roof of hazels above her. The small cat could be discerned half-way up the leafy tunnel swaying its body in preparation for a pounce, while overhead sounded an agitated twittering. Mabel seized a pebble, and threw it with such success that the swaying stopped, and a reproachful ...
— The Necromancers • Robert Hugh Benson
... reflection. Not one atom in creation, for example, exists by itself or for itself alone, but, directly or indirectly, influences and is influenced by every other atom. The movements of the tiniest wave which rises slowly over the dry pebble on the beach, marking the progress of the advancing tide in the inland bay, is determined by the majestic movements of the great ocean, with all its tides which sweep and circulate from pole to pole. ...
— Parish Papers • Norman Macleod
... to you," she said, playfully; "you would be astonished to see what a common-place pebble it is to ...
— A Noble Woman • Ann S. Stephens
... largest fire. Each person put in one stone to make a circle about it. The young people ran about with burning brands. Supper was eaten out-of-doors, and games played. After the fire had burned out, ashes were raked over the stones. In the morning each sought his pebble, and if he found it misplaced, harmed, or a footprint marked near it in the ashes, he believed he should ...
— The Book of Hallowe'en • Ruth Edna Kelley
... mesquite trees and greasewood and dotted here and there with brown specks which even the uninitiated will know are cattle, and the river, one of Arizona's minor streams, a few yards across and only a couple of feet deep, but swift-rushing, pebble-strew'd and clear ...
— Arizona's Yesterday - Being the Narrative of John H. Cady, Pioneer • John H. Cady
... pipe, A trophy which survived a hundred fights, A beacon which had cheered ten thousand nights. The fourth and last of this deserted group Walked up and down—at times would stand, then stoop 110 To pick a pebble up—then let it drop— Then hurry as in haste—then quickly stop— Then cast his eyes on his companions—then Half whistle half a tune, and pause again— And then his former movements would redouble, With something between carelessness and trouble. This is ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron
... a trader travelling along in the neighbourhood north of Cape Colony happened to stop at a farm. While there, he was interested in a small child who was toying with a bright and singularly lustrous pebble. His curiosity was aroused, and he suggested that the thing might be rare enough to be of some value. Thereupon the stone was sent to an expert in Grahamstown, who declared it to be a diamond. The stone weighed twenty-one carats and was valued at L500. From ...
— South Africa and the Transvaal War, Vol. 1 (of 6) - From the Foundation of Cape Colony to the Boer Ultimatum - of 9th Oct. 1899 • Louis Creswicke
... Ammonite, and the second time when he set out in war upon Amalek. It is significant of the enormous turn in the prosperity of the Jews during Saul's reign, that at the first census every man put down a pebble, so that the pebbles might be counted, but at the second census the people were so prosperous that instead of putting down a pebble, every man brought a lamb. There was a census in the reign of David, which, however, not having been ordered ...
— THE LEGENDS OF THE JEWS VOLUME III BIBLE TIMES AND CHARACTERS - FROM THE EXODUS TO THE DEATH OF MOSES • BY LOUIS GINZBERG
... is small! No lily-muffled hum of summer-bee But finds some coupling with the spinning stars; No pebble at your foot but proves a sphere: . . . . . Earth's crammed with Heaven, And every common bush afire with God; But only he who sees, takes ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... turtledoves, mountains of blue snow which are rocks of azure, green fields laid out in squares, brook rolling a golden pebble in the silence; first foliage of the waters, icy trembling of the body beside the springs when the sun lies burning ...
— Romance of the Rabbit • Francis Jammes
... is any special fun. It's the putting flowers back that you've pulled up by mistake that is such a Game in itself. You have to make little splints for them out of Forsythia twigs. You have to build little collars of pebble-stone all around them to keep marauding beetles from eating up their wiltedness. You have to bring them medicine-water from the brook instead of from the kitchen—so that nobody will scream and say, "Oh, what have you done now?—Oh, ...
— Fairy Prince and Other Stories • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... a horrible splash as he struck the water, far below: then again a slipping and trickling, as more of the ledge broke away—at first a pebble or two sliding—a dribble of earth— next, a crash and a cloud of dust. A last stone ran loose and dropp'd. Then fell a silence so deep I could catch the roar of the flames on the ...
— The Splendid Spur • Arthur T. Quiller Couch
... absolutely impossible to find anything more for his hands to do. He had swept the barn floor until it was as clean as a broom could make it; the wood in the shed had been piled methodically; a goodly supply of kindlings were prepared, and not so much as a pebble was to be seen ...
— Aunt Hannah and Seth • James Otis
... took to flight when he saw Ham-nibbler, and fled, plunging into the lake and throwing away his shield. Then blameless Pot-visitor killed Brewer and Water-larked killed the lord Ham-nibbler, striking him on the head with a pebble, so that his brains flowed out at his nostrils and the earth was bespattered with blood. Faultless Muck-coucher sprang upon Lick-platter and killed him with his spear and brought darkness upon his eyes: and Leeky saw it, and dragged Lick-platter by the foot, though he was dead, ...
— Hesiod, The Homeric Hymns, and Homerica • Homer and Hesiod
... physiognomic expression to all the works of nature. Like a green field reflected in a calm and perfectly transparent lake, the image is distinguished from the reality only by its greater softness and lustre. Like the moisture or the polish on a pebble, genius neither distorts nor false-colours its objects; but on the contrary brings out many a vein and many a tint, which escape the eye of common observation, thus raising to the rank of gems what had been often kicked away by the hurrying foot of the ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... of 80 the serpent. The pointed and shattered summits of the ridges of the rocks made a rude mimicry of human concerns, and seemed to prophecy mutely of things that then were not; steeples, and battlements, and ships with naked masts. As far from the wood as a boy might sling a pebble of the brook, there 85 was one rock by itself at a small distance from the main ridge. It had been precipitated there perhaps by the groan which the Earth uttered when our first father fell. Before you approached, it ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... Stymphalian[72] wood; the weather was hot, and my toil had redoubled the intense heat. I found a stream gliding on without any eddies, without any noise, {and} clear to the bottom; through which every pebble, at so great a depth, might be counted, {and} which you could hardly suppose to be in motion. The hoary willows[73] and poplars, nourished by the water, furnished a shade, spontaneously produced, along the shelving banks. ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Vol. I, Books I-VII • Publius Ovidius Naso
... expected at this hour To hobnob with you on some public stunt. Francos: Hold, Seldonskip! Thy tongue unruly wags Like to the shuttle on its weaving way To fashion fabric of but little worth 'Twere well to throttle it or else belike A pebble small, in gear of great machine Disaster grave may work to wheels ...
— 'A Comedy of Errors' in Seven Acts • Spokeshave (AKA Old Fogy)
... briefly, clutching at random while the earth and crumbling cement gave way beneath her; then she slid forward and disappeared, almost out from between Esteban's hands. There was a noisy rattle of rock and pebble and a great splash far below; a chuckle of little stones striking the water, then a faint bubbling. Nothing more. The stepson stood in his tracks, sick, blind with horror; he was swaying over the opening when Asensio ...
— Rainbow's End • Rex Beach
... all mended with a curious stone, called Kunker, which is a nodular concretionary deposit of limestone, abundantly imbedded in the alluvial soil of a great part of India.* [Often occurring in strata, like flints.] It resembles a coarse gravel, each pebble being often as large as a walnut, and tuberculated on the surface: it binds admirably, and forms excellent roads, but pulverises into a most ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker
... he saw no glimmer of fire as he now approached the water-hole made him doubly cautious. Nearer, he crouched behind a bush. He threw a pebble at the pony. She circled the picket, awakening Collie, who spoke to her sleepily. Saunders crept back toward his horse. He knew that voice. He would track the young rider to the range and beyond—to the gold. He rode back to town through the night, entered the saloon, and ...
— Overland Red - A Romance of the Moonstone Canon Trail • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... or camel's milk, and his occasional pilau of mutton, give him the various elements which seem sufficient to make him the model of endurance, blitheness, and muscular power. So the Turkish burden-bearers who pick up a two-hundred-pound bag of coffee as one picks up a pebble, use much the same diet, though adding melons and cucumbers, which are eaten as we ...
— The Easiest Way in Housekeeping and Cooking - Adapted to Domestic Use or Study in Classes • Helen Campbell
... pebble came hurtling and struck me. Then a rain of pebbles, like hailstones was pelting ...
— Wandl the Invader • Raymond King Cummings
... of this diluting of Vermilion by overmuch grinding may be attributed to the Grindstone, or muller, for that some of their parts may be worn off and mixt with the colour, yet there seems not very much, for I have done it on a Serpentine-stone with a muller made of a Pebble, and yet observ'd ...
— Micrographia • Robert Hooke
... But there are no final statements in this world, least of all in Art. There are many things besides pines in the valley, and more important, and they can be drawn meanwhile. Besides, if all the pines, why not every pebble ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 77, March, 1864 • Various
... for no state election in Indiana. For every one knows that there is no hour of the day in any year when politics wholly cease from agitating the waters of the Wabash: somewhere some one is always dropping in a pebble to see how far the ripple will widen. In the torrid first days of September the malfeasance of the treasurer of an Ohio River county afforded the Republican press an opportunity to gloat, the official in question being, of course, ...
— A Hoosier Chronicle • Meredith Nicholson
... a low table beneath the window with his back to him, singing a portion of a chant whose sweet deep tones seemed to chain the boy to the spot, as he listened with a very pleasurable sensation, and watched the monk busily turning a big flattened pebble stone round and round as if grinding something black upon a square of ...
— The King's Sons • George Manville Fenn
... shame or annoyance at this vulgar mode of conveyance; I would have travelled barefooted through the snow, and not have felt less proud or less happy, for I was thus saving one or two louis with which I could purchase some days of happiness. I reached the barrier of Paris without having felt a pebble of the road. The night was dark, and it was raining hard; I took up my portmanteau, and soon after knocked at the door of the humble lodging of the Count ...
— Raphael - Pages Of The Book Of Life At Twenty • Alphonse de Lamartine
... beautiful sight to behold that imposing fleet of canoes, apparently so frail in texture that the dropping of a pebble between the skeleton ribs might be deemed sufficient to perforate and sink them, yet withal so ingeniously contrived as to bear safely not only the warriors who formed their crews, hut also their arms of all descriptions, and such ...
— The Canadian Brothers - or The Prophecy Fulfilled • John Richardson
... in his overcoat pocket and drew out the small, hard pellet. He gripped it in his fingers, stood as nearly as possible underneath the spot from which he had been projected, coolly swung his arm back, and flung the black pebble against the sliding door. The explosion which followed shook the very ground under his feet. The walls cracked about him. Blue fire seemed to be playing around the blackness. He jumped on one side, barely in time to escape a shower of bricks. For minutes afterwards everything around ...
— The Black Box • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... Methinks he seems no bigger than his head. The fishermen that walk upon the beach Appear like mice; and yond tall anchoring bark Diminish'd to her cock; her cock, a buoy Almost too small for sight. The murmuring surge That on the unnumber'd idle pebble chafes, Cannot be heard so high. I'll look no more, Lest my brain turn and the ...
— Composition-Rhetoric • Stratton D. Brooks
... the dock. Indeed, Poketown was so compactly built on the steep hillside that there was scarcely a house within its borders from which a boy could not have tossed a pebble into the waters of the cove. Jason strolled along in the shade, passing the time of day with such neighbors as were equally disengaged, and spreading the news of his ...
— Janice Day at Poketown • Helen Beecher Long
... are neither white like those to the east, nor grey as are the rugged bulwarks to the west. They are of a deep red, warm and pleasant to the eye, with clumps of green showing brightly up against them on every little ledge where vegetation can get a footing; while the beach is neither pebble, nor rock, nor sand, but a smooth, level surface sloping evenly down; hard and pleasant to walk on when the sea has gone down, and the sun has dried and baked it for an hour or two; but slippery and treacherous when freshly wetted, for the red cliffs are of clay. Those ...
— With Wolfe in Canada - The Winning of a Continent • G. A. Henty
... north of east. The little Moondaisy was full of sacks, old boots and gear. Past Refuge Cove we sailed, past Dog Tooth Ledge, and across the out-ground of Landlock Bay, which holds the last long stretch of pebble beach for some miles down. Uncle Jake pointed to the western end of it. "If ever yu'm catched down here by a sou'wester, yu can al'ays run ashore, just there—calm as a mill-pond no matter how 'tis blowing. Yu can beach there when yu can't beach to Seacombe for the roughness ...
— A Poor Man's House • Stephen Sydney Reynolds
... moment. His eyelids closed, languorously. He stretched his arms out and up deliciously, bringing his stomach in and his chest out. He took off his cap and stuffed it into his pocket. He strolled across the thick cool nap of the grass, deserting the pebble path. At the west edge of the island a sign said: "No One Allowed in the Shrubbery." Ignoring it, Nick parted the branches, stopped and crept, reached the bank that sloped down to the cool green stream, took off his coat, and lay relaxed upon the ...
— Gigolo • Edna Ferber
... how he was captured. It was in the broad day, when he was quite a child, playing by a little brook, and picking up stones to throw in the water. The officer says, that in his dreams, he often sees the silvery bubbles and rings of the water rising after he had thrown the pebble into the brook; and, especially, does he see the ever-flown visions of his green and flowery pastimes of childhood, whilst he is out on duty in the open and thirsty desert, lying dozing under an intense sun, darting its beams ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... grimly. "They'll wind up drifting around in space halfway between Mars and Jupiter. Finding them will be about as easy as looking for a pebble ...
— Treachery in Outer Space • Carey Rockwell and Louis Glanzman
... upon, the mode of constructing them will depend upon the kind of stone at hand. In some localities, round pebble-stones are found scattered over the surface, or piled in heaps upon our farms; in others, flat, slaty stones abound, and in others, broken stones from quarries may be more convenient. Of these, probably, ...
— Farm drainage • Henry Flagg French
... caribou track in the hard earth. It was scarcely distinguishable, and I had to look very closely to make it out. Then he showed me other signs that I could make nothing of at all—a freshly turned pebble or broken twig. These, he said, were fresh deer signs. A caribou had passed toward the larger ...
— The Long Labrador Trail • Dillon Wallace
... have reflected in your sager moods, an ordinary pebble may roll where it likes, for individualism of the multitudinously obscure little affects us. Not so the costly jewel, which is a congregation of ourselves, in our envies and longings and genuflexions thick about its lustres. The lapses of precious things must needs carry us, both ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... A pebble rolled down the face of the wall against which she leaned. Weaver looked up quickly—to find ...
— Mavericks • William MacLeod Raine
... be the observing powers of these wonderful little creatures! Every patch of ground must, for them, have its own character; a pebble here, a larger stone there, a trifling tuft of grass—these must be their landmarks. And the wonder of it is that their interest in each nest is so temporary. A burrow is dug, provisioned and closed up, all in two or three days, and then another is made in a new place ...
— A Book of Natural History - Young Folks' Library Volume XIV. • Various
... another valley, lay a lake, the Lake Behind the Peak, spangled with light, marbled like onyx or malachite, with the sheen of a jewel. Almost at his feet below, the near end of it lay. He could have tossed a pebble into it, seven-thousand feet below, where the white foaming river came ramping through a great pile of moraine that dammed up this end of the Pass to the width of a bridle trail. The outlaws would have to cross the lake to escape ...
— The Freebooters of the Wilderness • Agnes C. Laut
... tossed the pure white pebble stones into the playing waters, and saw them carried up by the force of the jets, and now half rising to his elbow, startled the gold and silver fish in the basin by a tiny shower of gravel, but still with a strange tenacity, ever watching both the Sultan and his slave, though not appearing ...
— The Circassian Slave; or, The Sultan's Favorite - A Story of Constantinople and the Caucasus • Lieutenant Maturin Murray
... fine, clear sand. About twenty feet from the entrance begins a lake, the water of which is transparent, and extends to an unsearchable distance; for the darkness of the cave prevents all possibility of acquiring a knowledge of it. I threw a small pebble towards the interior parts of it with my utmost strength: I could hear that it fell into the water, and, notwithstanding that it was of so small a size, it caused an astonishing and horrible noise, that ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 1 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... dared not take her through the trees, he said, while she was in such a humour; she would dash herself to pieces. They told him there was a road straight from the stables to the shore, and there miles of pure sand without a pebble. Nothing could be better. ...
— The Marquis of Lossie • George MacDonald
... then the horse stamped in the barn, or a cow lowed; a dog was barking, away over on the next farm, with an anxious tone, as if something were happening that he could not understand. The sea boomed along the shore beyond the marshes; the men could hear the rote of a piece of pebble beach a mile or two to the southward; now and then there was a faint tinkle of sleigh-bells. The fields looked wide and empty; the unusual warmth of the day before had been followed by clear cold. Suddenly a straggling company of women were ...
— The Life of Nancy • Sarah Orne Jewett
... things considered, mate—though not such a hell-fire, roaring lad o' mettle as yourself, comrade. David slew Goliath o' Gath wi' a pebble and you broke Black Pompey's back wi' your naked hands! Here's a thing as liketh me mighty well! Wherefore I grieve to find ye such ...
— Martin Conisby's Vengeance • Jeffery Farnol
... cannot think how soft her speech was.) "Poor leetle docks, that go flap, flap; not yet zey have learned to swim, no! But here now, see a bird of ze water, a sea-bird what you call." She turned her wrist and sent the flat pebble flying; it skimmed along like a live thing, flipping the little crests of the ripples, going miles, it seemed to Petie and me, till at length we lost sight ...
— Rosin the Beau • Laura Elizabeth Howe Richards
... promise that ye'd never lie any more? It's one's duty to maintain one's dignity of character, and, John, I want ye to open yer mouth in defense of the rights of liberty on the occasion; and do yer duty, and bring down the Philistine with a pebble-stun, and 'twill be a glorious night ...
— In The Boyhood of Lincoln - A Tale of the Tunker Schoolmaster and the Times of Black Hawk • Hezekiah Butterworth
... metaphysical system there are two things exceedingly distinct. There is, first, the immense and prodigious, but terrible mathematical skeleton, which his subtle intellect binds up and throws as calmly into space as we drop a pebble into the water, and whose bones, striking against the wreck of all that is sacred in belief, or bold in speculation, rattle a wild response to our wildest phantasies, and drive us almost to think in despair that ...
— Ancient and Modern Celebrated Freethinkers - Reprinted From an English Work, Entitled "Half-Hours With - The Freethinkers." • Charles Bradlaugh, A. Collins, and J. Watts
... pace, and as they went Cuculain leaped lightly from his seat and as lightly bounded back again, holding a great pebble in his hand, such as a man using all his strength could with difficulty raise from the ground, and sat still, rejoicing in his purpose, and grasping the pebble with ...
— The Coming of Cuculain • Standish O'Grady
... wake my mother. My shoes creaked, so I took them off and carried them. Crossing the hall, I softly drew the bolts of the front door; then I passed into the moonlight. The gravel of the carriage-drive cut through my stockings, and a pebble bruised one of my heels so that I nearly fell. When I got safely under the shadow of the large cedar of Lebanon in the middle of the lawn, I stopped and looked up at my mother's window to see if she were a watcher. The blinds were ...
— Aylwin • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... his turn would come at last; and so it did. For the lady called him up, and held out her fingers with something in them, and popped it into his mouth; and lo and behold, it was a nasty, cold, hard pebble. ...
— Journeys Through Bookland V2 • Charles H. Sylvester
... as he handed over the lines to the sullen driver, "you should have found that bunch of cockle burrs. It was all your fault, not the horse's. And if he hadn't responded to the backing, I'd have tied a pebble in his ear and left him for a few minutes to think it over. Then he'd have gone all right; it never fails. I tell you there aren't any baulky horses if they ...
— The Preacher of Cedar Mountain - A Tale of the Open Country • Ernest Thompson Seton
... comfort is, that as His Majesty's patent does not oblige you to take this money, so the laws have not given the crown a power of forcing the subjects to take what money the King pleases: For then by the same reason we might be bound to take pebble-stones or cockle-shells or stamped leather for current coin, if ever we should happen to live under an ill prince, who might likewise by the same power make a guinea pass for ten pounds, a shilling for twenty shillings, and so on, by which he would in a short time get all the silver ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. VI; The Drapier's Letters • Jonathan Swift
... with giddy velocity around it; or of the great truth demonstrated by Newton, that our ponderous planet is kept from falling off into empty space by the operation of the same law that impels a descending pebble towards the ground! A great miracle wrought in proof of the truth of the revelation might serve to enforce the belief of it on the generation to whom it had been given; but the generations that followed, to whom the miracle would exist as a piece of mere testimony, ...
— The Testimony of the Rocks - or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed • Hugh Miller
... been imprudent, Father? I have sacrificed a pebble, and saved a diamond: My death preserves a life valuable to the world, and more dear to me than my own. Yes, Father; I am poisoned; But know that the poison once circulated in ...
— The Monk; a romance • M. G. Lewis
... the sound was as faint as a memory. Moreover, it might have been a freakish whistling in the wind, which rose stronger and stronger. It had piled the thunder-clouds higher and higher, and now and again a heavy drop of rain tapped at her window like a thrown pebble. ...
— Riders of the Silences • Max Brand
... of Sponkannis lies so quietly upon a protected spot on our Atlantic coast that it makes no more stir in the world than would a pebble which, held between one's finger and thumb, should be dipped below the surface of a millpond and then dropped. About the post-office and the store—both under the same roof—the greater number of the houses ...
— The Magic Egg and Other Stories • Frank Stockton
... little goose," said Betty, adding with a chuckle: "You've been spoiled, that's all. You've been so used to being the only pebble on the beach, dear, that you can't be content with ...
— The Outdoor Girls at Wild Rose Lodge - or, The Hermit of Moonlight Falls • Laura Lee Hope
... throat. Except possibly in very hot weather, one canteen of water should last for the entire day's march. Excessive water drinking on the march will play a man out very quickly. Old soldiers never drink when marching. A small pebble carried in the mouth keeps it moist and therefore reduces thirst. Or a small piece of chocolate may occasionally be eaten. Smoking is very depressing during ...
— Manual for Noncommissioned Officers and Privates of Infantry • War Department
... basin hidden snugly in the gorge. A wisp of pungent smoke rose to his nostrils. The pony began cautiously the sharp descent. The escarpment was of disintegrated granite which rang beneath the hoofs of the animal. A pebble rolled to the edge of the bluff and dropped into the black ...
— A Man Four-Square • William MacLeod Raine
... a little pebble; I wiped it clean on my coat sleeve and put it into my mouth so that I might have something to mumble. Otherwise I did not stir, and didn't even wink an eyelid. People came and went; the noise of cars, the tramp of hoofs, and chatter of tongues filled the air. I might try with ...
— Hunger • Knut Hamsun
... narrow shelf where a slip on some pebble might send them crashing to death in the tumbled mass of ice below. They scaled an all but perpendicular wall, to drag their sleeping-bag and the few other belongings, which they had dared attempt to carry, after them by the aid of a skin-rope. Then, after a few minutes' rest, they would ...
— The Blue Envelope • Roy J. Snell
... have found it much more intelligible than his palette, when he heard the boy saying, over his shoulder: "I don't think that looks very much like it." He had last been aware of the boy sitting at the grassy edge of the lane, tossing small bits of earth and pebble across to his dog, which sat at the other edge and snapped at them. Then he lost consciousness of him. He answered, dreamily, while he found a tint he was trying for with his brush: "Perhaps you don't know." He was so sure of ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... been brought about by the shot fired by Red Ben. That small concussion had started rolling a single pebble that was the keystone. Recent rains had loosened that pebble. Others followed it, and a bit of earth began to slip downward. This dislodged larger stones, and soon the ...
— Frank Merriwell's Pursuit - How to Win • Burt L. Standish
... said Hallin, promptly. But his remark had a deplorable lack of unction, for the goldfish, startled by George's pebble, were at that moment performing evolutions of the greatest interest, and his black eyes were greedily bent ...
— Sir George Tressady, Vol. I • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... of that island beneath you," replied the voice. "A pebble dropped from your hand would strike ...
— Myths and Legends of All Nations • Various
... what's the matter with their bills?" said Dame Scratchard. "Why, my dear, these chicks are deformed! I'm sorry for you, my dear; but it's all the result of your inexperience. You ought to have eaten pebble-stones with your meal when you were sitting. Don't you see, Dame Kertarkut, what bills they have? That'll increase, and ...
— Queer Little Folks • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... to beat a retreat, his foot rolled upon a pebble; he fell against the wall with an ejaculation, and his sword rang loudly on the stones. Two or three voices demanded who went there - some in French, some in English; but Denis made no reply, and ran the faster down the lane. Once upon the terrace, he paused to look ...
— New Arabian Nights • Robert Louis Stevenson
... heavy, and even the merest pebble has a perceptible weight, yet the entire planet, toward which both gravitate, floats more lightly than any feather. In literature somewhat analogous may be observed. Here also are found the insignificant lightness of the pebble and the mighty lightness of the planet; ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 51, January, 1862 • Various
... writes [553] that in Rajputana the washermen's wells dug at the sides of streams are deemed the most impure of all receptacles. And one of the most binding oaths is that a man as he swears should drop a pebble into one of these wells, saying, "If I break this oath may all the good deeds of my forefathers fall into the washerman's well like this pebble." Nevertheless the Dhobi refuses to wash the clothes of some of the lowest castes as the Mang, Mahar and Chamar. Like ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume II • R. V. Russell
... wakeful Diane watched the stream glide endlessly on, each reed and pebble silvered. Rex lay on the bank beside her, whither he had followed faithfully a very long while ago, snapping at the insects which rose from the grass. So colorless and fixed was the face of his mistress that it seemed a beautiful ...
— Diane of the Green Van • Leona Dalrymple
... blossoms of Las Mariposas. The men had suddenly awakened to the fact that there were beauty and significance in these trifles, which they had so long trodden carelessly beneath their feet. A flake of glittering mica, a fragment of variegated quartz, a bright pebble from the bed of the creek, became beautiful to eyes thus cleared and strengthened, and were invariably put aside for The Luck. It was wonderful how many treasures the woods and hillsides yielded that "would do for Tommy." Surrounded by playthings such as never ...
— The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... turned upwards, and fixed, apparently, upon some object amongst the branches of the tree next to them. The meditations of youth are seldom so profound as not to yield to the slightest, impulse of curiosity, as easily as the lightest pebble, dropped casually from the hand, breaks the surface of a limpid pool. Quentin hastened his pace, and ran lightly up the rising ground, in time enough to witness the ghastly spectacle which attracted the notice of these gazers—which was nothing less than the body of a man, convulsed ...
— Quentin Durward • Sir Walter Scott
... white pebble, or a white dinner plate, into the blackest Atlantic water; as it sinks it becomes greener and greener, and, before it disappears, it reaches a vivid blue green. Break such a pebble, or plate, into fragments, these will behave like the unbroken mass: grind the pebble to powder, every particle will ...
— Six Lectures on Light - Delivered In The United States In 1872-1873 • John Tyndall
... as well face the fact," he said, "that I, Henry Kingsbury, of Pebble Point, Northport, L.I., and recently in my right mind, am now, this very moment, looking at a—a mermaid ...
— The Green Mouse • Robert W. Chambers
... thanked the governor for his kind offer to take them home, and they directed their steps towards the house, which was not far off. On reaching it the youth threw a pebble up at a grating, and immediately a woman-servant who was waiting for them came down and opened the door to them, and they went in, leaving the party marvelling as much at their grace and beauty as at ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... spherical. These wash back and forth in shallow water on a sandy bottom, and are sometimes cast on the shore. They are either solid grass, or have a little sand in the middle. At first you would say that they were formed by the action of the waves, like a pebble; yet the smallest are made of equally coarse materials, half an inch long, and they are produced only at one season of the year. Moreover, the waves, I suspect, do not so much construct as wear down a material which has already acquired consistency. They preserve their form ...
— Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience • Henry David Thoreau
... the kind my father had been seeking, a smooth dark sandy loam, which made it possible for a lad to do the work of a man. Often the share would go the entire "round" without striking a root or a pebble as big as a walnut, the steel running steadily with a crisp craunching ripping sound which I rather liked to hear. In truth work would have been quite tolerable had it not been so long drawn out. Ten hours of it even on a fine day made about twice ...
— A Son of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... Swan himself had told her in the days when he laughed. He told her also of the lawyers' drain upon his wealth, starving her days together to make a pebble of saving ...
— The Flockmaster of Poison Creek • George W. Ogden
... like a child," observed he, "playing on the sea-shore, and picking up here and there a curious shell or a pretty pebble, while the boundless ocean of ...
— True Stories from History and Biography • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... informed of the arrival of the new-comers. The fowls were waved over the heads of the people by the old men, while they prayed the porcupines to give them long life and health, and a token of their goodwill in the form of a smooth rounded pebble. On an occasion of this sort it is highly probable that the required token will be found; for the secret helper would no doubt be surreptitiously helped by some member of the household who, being deficient in faith, prefers to make a certainty of so important a matter rather than leave it entirely ...
— The Pagan Tribes of Borneo • Charles Hose and William McDougall
... masses, like the shades of watered silk. Cleveland stands in that beautiful country without a hill, of which my fellow-passenger spoke—a thriving village yet to grow into a proud city of the lake country. It is built upon broad dusty ways, in which not a pebble is seen in the fat dark earth of the lake shore, and which are shaded with locust-trees, the variety called seed-locust, with crowded twigs and clustered foliage—a tree chosen, doubtless, for its rapid growth, ...
— Letters of a Traveller - Notes of Things Seen in Europe and America • William Cullen Bryant
... Amphitheatre, it has been buffeted in the storms of ages and is war-worn without, to the highest reach of a mounted man, and dinted above that by every missile invented in twelve hundred years, from the slinger's pebble or leaden bullet to the cannon ball of the French artillery. Like the Colosseum, it is the crestless trunk of its former self. But it has life in it still, whereas the Colosseum died to a ruin when Urban the Eighth showed his successor ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 2 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... see the many in the one and the one in the many. Did Sir Isaac think what he was saying when he made HIS speech about the ocean,—the child and the pebbles, you know? Did he mean to speak slightingly of a pebble? Of a spherical solid which stood sentinel over its compartment of space before the stone that became the pyramids had grown solid, and has watched it until now! A body which knows all the currents of ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... warts to rub them with a cinder, and this tied up in paper, and dropped where four roads meet, will transfer the warts to whoever opens the parcel. Another mode of transferring warts is to touch each wart with a pebble, and place the pebbles in a bag, which should be lost on the way to church; whoever finds the bag gets the warts." A common Warwickshire custom was to rub the warts with a black snail, stick the snail on a thorn bush, ...
— Three Thousand Years of Mental Healing • George Barton Cutten
... succeeded in amusing myself, I was no trifler. The shores of Cromarty are strewed over with water-rolled fragments of the primary rocks, derived chiefly from the west during the ages of the boulder clay; and I soon learned to take a deep interest in sauntering over the various pebble-beds when shaken up by recent storms, and in learning to distinguish their numerous components. But I was sadly in want of a vocabulary; and as, according to Cowper, "the growth of what is excellent is slow," it was not until long after that I bethought me of the obvious enough expedient of representing ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... his throbbing flanks arise Smokes of fever and of sweat,— Over him the pebble flies From his swift feet swifter yet,— Through the tempest and the night, Like a winged ...
— Modern Italian Poets • W. D. Howells
... it a moment, almost in disbelief, then stooped and picked up one for himself—a diamond that would have made the Kohinoor look like a pebble. ...
— Astounding Stories, July, 1931 • Various
... from the loosed bow-string. But at length a dim idea of aim occurred to him. He lifted the bow—his left fist grasping its middle—to the level of his eyes, at arm's length. He got the cord accurately in the center of the pebble, and drew toward his nose. This effort was so successful that the stone went perfectly straight—and caught him fair on ...
— In the Morning of Time • Charles G. D. Roberts
... is a china egg in the nest), but upon matter straining upon its leash, and in a state of expectancy. We do not know how the activity of the molecules of the egg differs from the activity of the molecules of the pebble, under the influence of warmth, but we know there must be a difference between the interior movements of organized ...
— The Breath of Life • John Burroughs
... those the woman brought were in the same condition, and she picked up a good-sized pebble and tapped it against the depression, showing that the injury must have been done ...
— Diamond Dyke - The Lone Farm on the Veldt - Story of South African Adventure • George Manville Fenn
... bad as possible; but my mule advanced sturdily, by jumps and jerks, till we reached the top of the pass. There we were, I am afraid to pay how many hundred feet above the sea, but overhanging it so completely that a pebble dropped from one's hand fell into the waves. The Ragusan steamer looked like a ...
— The Grateful Indian - And other Stories • W.H.G. Kingston
... rubber bands of his sling. In the leather piece was a round pebble. Nort took aim at ...
— The Boy Ranchers at Spur Creek - or Fighting the Sheep Herders • Willard F. Baker
... before it the light steel- framed "lunettes," and, fearful to relate, they fell to the estrade. A score of times ere now had I seen them fall and receive no damage— this time, as Lucy Snowe's hapless luck would have it, they so fell that each clear pebble became ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... surprise, the sailor raised no difficulties, but just as he was regarding the trunk with that faith which is the substance of things hoped for, a big, ugly hand laid hold of it, and began to rock it about like a pebble. ...
— The Manxman - A Novel - 1895 • Hall Caine
... most precious service, a service that every man, woman, and child in the thirty-eight States is to some extent receiving the benefit of to-day, and I for one here cheerfully and reverently throw one pebble on the ...
— Arrows of Freethought • George W. Foote
... windlass and the newly purchased rifle across my knees, I found that cowardice, like other base passions, may suddenly develop an infection. With nerves twittering and muscles tensely set, I was ready to become a homicidal maniac at the snapping of a twig or the rolling of a pebble down the hillside. ...
— Branded • Francis Lynde
... warned him, "do not go back home to-night. Come to the Amour peintre. Do not ring; throw a pebble at my shutters. I will come and open the door to you myself; I will ...
— The Gods are Athirst • Anatole France |
