"Slate" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... luxury at that epoch—in the numerous lofty windows, through which the rich hangings within were visible; and a projecting porch, reached by an imposing flight of broad stone steps, in the centre of the facade, marked the main entrance. The high, steep roof was of slate, in several shades, wrought into a quaint, pretty pattern, and the groups of tall chimneys were symmetrically disposed and handsomely ornamented. There was a look of gaiety and luxury about this really beautiful chateau which gave the idea of great prosperity, ...
— Captain Fracasse • Theophile Gautier
... What could such a man do without a big capital to work with? Why, Alfred E. Ricks, as we left him, was as helpless as turtle on its back. He couldn't have worked a scheme to beat a little girl out of a penny slate-pencil. ...
— The Gentle Grafter • O. Henry
... before the fire again, and snoring as if they thoroughly enjoyed it. There was Lord Nelson on one wall, in flaming watercolors; and there, on the other, was a portrait of Admiral Bartram's last flagship, in full sail on a sea of slate, with a salmon-colored ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins
... of that, but I gambled on Paolo's ignorance of the custom," said I. "I flattered myself that I'd totted up his character like a sum on a slate, and I acted on the estimate I formed. If I had kept entirely to facts, without giving the rein to my imagination, you might now be doomed to travel at this time next year to Buda-Pesth, and there drown yourself in the largest possible vat of beer. Had Paolo been unlucky in the matter ...
— The Princess Passes • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson
... to start Stella cried: "Where is Jack Slate? I don't see him. Isn't he coming to ...
— Ted Strong's Motor Car • Edward C. Taylor
... concluded without any contretemps, save that two of the Grammar School boys incurred an open and well-merited rebuke from the master for appearing in gloves of a much lighter slate colour than was in any way decorous, and that this circumstance reduced the youngest Miss Bulteel to such a state of hysteric giggling that her mother was forced to remove her from the church, and thus deprive her of spiritual ...
— The Nebuly Coat • John Meade Falkner
... obviously (to others) commonplace and even objectionable maidens and youths. But it holds good over the entire field of human activity. The hardest-headed materialist will become a consulter of table-rappers and slate-writers if he loses a child or a wife so beloved that the desire to revive and communicate with them becomes irresistible. The cobbler believes that there is nothing like leather. The Imperialist who ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma: Preface on Doctors • George Bernard Shaw
... England's greatest modern poet, was a devoted lover of the beautiful from the very beginning of his career. The earliest verses he composed, which were written upon his slate when but a child of seven or eight years of age, had for their subject, "The Flowers in the Garden." As a dreamy boy, he loved to throw himself upon the grass and listen to the bird voices in the adjoining ...
— The True Citizen, How To Become One • W. F. Markwick, D. D. and W. A. Smith, A. B.
... of every one of these places has, since the Revolution, much more than doubled. The population of some has multiplied sevenfold. The streets have been almost entirely rebuilt. Slate has succeeded to thatch, and brick to timber. The pavements and the lamps, the display of wealth in the principal shops, and the luxurious neatness of the dwellings occupied by the gentry would, in the seventeenth century, have seemed miraculous. ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... topped by a clock-face: Fenchurch Street Station. Beyond its dingy platforms, the metal track which contracts into the murk is the road to China, though that is, perhaps, the last place you would guess to be at the end of it. The train runs over a wilderness of tiles, a grey plateau of bare slate and rock, its expanse cracked and scored as though by a withering heat. Nothing grows there; nothing could live there. Smoke still pours from it, as though it were volcanic, from numberless vents. The region is without sap. Above its ...
— London River • H. M. Tomlinson
... mountain is composed of white quartz rock, and with it a little glossy clay-slate is associated. At the height of a few hundred feet above the plain patches of conglomerate adhered in several places to the solid rock. They resembled in hardness, and in the nature of the cement, ...
— The Voyage of the Beagle • Charles Darwin
... after getting into really cooshie quarters at last.... There they go again!" as a renewed tempest of shells rent the silence of night. "That old battery must be getting it in the neck!... Hallo, I could have sworn something hit the roof that time! A loose slate, ...
— All In It K(1) Carries On - A Continuation of the First Hundred Thousand • John Hay Beith (AKA: Ian Hay)
... place their resort; whose bathing began early in the morning and whose flirting continued far into the night, with forenoon and afternoon dawdling and dozing on the pebbles. At one end of the Terrace rose a prodigious headland, whose slope was scaled over with broken slate, like some mammoth heaving from the deep and showing an elephantine hide of bluish gray. At the other end was the Amusement Pier, with the co- educational college, which is part of the University of Wales, and with divers hotels. Somewhat behind and beyond were the ruins of one of those ...
— Seven English Cities • W. D. Howells
... craze creed tribe drone bean shape steep brine stone bead state sleek spire probe beam crape fleet bride shore lean fume smite blame clear mope spume spite flame drear mold fluke quite slate blear tore flume whine spade spear robe ...
— McGuffey's Eclectic Spelling Book • W. H. McGuffey
... Mission Church, in connection with St. Mary of the Angels, in Westmoreland Road. It was built about thirty-three years ago by Rev. D. Rawes at his own cost, and contains some very beautiful panels on slate by Westlake representing the Stations of the Cross, which were the first done on that material in England. There is also a painting by the same artist on the pulpit. The baptistery, added later, was designed by Bentley, the late architect of the new cathedral at Westminster. The schools adjacent ...
— The Kensington District - The Fascination of London • Geraldine Edith Mitton
... sunshine was illuminating her chamber, while the rattling of teams along the paved streets reminded her that she was in the great metropolis of New England. She missed the green foliage and healthy perfume and bird songs of her pleasant country home: all she could see was a combination of bricks, slate, and stone; and not a green thing was visible in the street, save a few Irish servants, who were washing off the doorsteps and sidewalks. In the middle of the cobble stones lay the curtain which had fallen ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 1 January 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... which I had often dreamed, on stormy days, when the wind was so strong that Francoise, as she took me to the Champs-Elysees, would warn me not to walk too near the side of the street, or I might have my head knocked off by a falling slate, and would recount to me, with many lamentations, the terrible disasters and shipwrecks that were reported in the newspaper. I longed for nothing more than to behold a storm at sea, less as a mighty spectacle than as a momentary revelation of the true life of nature; or rather there were ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... imperious and prevailing claim of temperament. Beside Huxley and Clifford, lay Newman's 'Sermons' and 'Apologia,' and a little High Church manual of self-examination. And on the wall above the book-table hung a memorandum-slate on which were a number of addresses and dates—the addresses of some forty boys whom the minister taught on Sunday in one of the Unitarian Sunday schools of Manchester, and visited in the week. The care and training of street arabs had been his passion when ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... if it pleased the surgeon to leave him there he could not possibly get out. Neither his size nor his phenomenal strength could assist him in the least. There was no furniture in the place. Half a dozen slabs of slate for the bodies were built against the wall, solid and immovable, and the door was of the heaviest oak, thickly studded with huge iron nails. If the dead men had been living prisoners their place of confinement could not have been more ...
— Sant' Ilario • F. Marion Crawford
... rabble of men and women who had been threatened, the dwellers in those twelve houses next the inn, who came dragging our brick-faced knave of a host, with that hard-polished countenance of his slack and clammy—slate-gray in color too, all the red tan clean ...
— Red Axe • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... figgurs on de slate—de queerest figgurs I ebber did see. Ise gittin' to be skeered I tell you. Hab for to keep mighty tight eye pon him noovers.[10] Todder day he gib me slip fore de sun up, and was gone de whole ob de blessed day. I had a big stick ready cut for to gib ...
— Short-Stories • Various
... then began, uncertainly, to sing. It was a beautiful song of the spring. At the end of the first part, Beckmesser scratched horribly upon his slate, and sighed in a most disconcerting manner. Walther listened and his heart nearly failed him, but he began again. This time he sang of winter, and as he went on he became so much inspired that he forgot his tremendous anxiety, ...
— Operas Every Child Should Know - Descriptions of the Text and Music of Some of the Most Famous Masterpieces • Mary Schell Hoke Bacon
... at the back of the hotel, stretched a waste of low ground finally merging into a small salt-marsh. Across this wandered a thin plank walk on stilts which, over the clear water beyond the marsh, became a rickety landing-stage. At some distance out from the latter a long, slender, slate-coloured motor-boat rode at its moorings, a rowboat swinging from its stern. In the larger craft Eleanor could see the head and shoulders of a man bending over the engine—undoubtedly Mr. Ephraim Clover. While she watched ...
— The Bandbox • Louis Joseph Vance
... astonishment no rain was falling; no rain had fallen. I felt the slate window-sill; some dew had gathered there—no more. There was no wind, no cloud: only a still moon high over the eastern slope of the coombe, the distant plash of waves, and the fragrance of many roses. I went back to bed and listened again. Yes, the trickling ...
— Old Fires and Profitable Ghosts • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... Royal jewels have been pawned before this—to support extravagant mistresses or to bolster a crumbling throne; but Elisabeth of Belgium has pawned her jewels to buy supplies for wounded soldiers. Battle-scarred old Belgium has not always had a clean slate; but certainly this act of a generous and devoted queen should ...
— Kings, Queens And Pawns - An American Woman at the Front • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... for the most part there was gloom, gloom, gloom under the evening sky. Sometimes the reflections of distant rockets would shudder and fade across the pale blue; incessantly, from every corner of the world, came the screaming rattle of carts, a sound like many pencils drawn across a gigantic slate—and always the dust rose and fell in webs and curtains of filmy ...
— The Dark Forest • Hugh Walpole
... bristly thick-skinned beings here manifest intelligence, perhaps humour of character; at any rate, a touching, trustful submissiveness to Man,—who, were he but a Swineherd, in darned gabardine, and leather breeches more resembling slate or discoloured-tin breeches, is still the ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... resulted from their use, and the cause was investigated; many of the tiles were found to be choked up with clay, and many to be broken longitudinally through the crown. For the first evil, two remedies were adopted; a sole of slate, of wood, or of its own material, was sometimes placed under the tile, but the more usual practice was to form them with club-feet. To meet the case of longitudinal fracture, the tiles were reduced in size, ...
— Draining for Profit, and Draining for Health • George E. Waring
... was yearning for life, with its joys and adventures—and it was his destiny to sit ten hours a day by the side of a chute, with the rattle of coal in his ears and the dust of coal in his nostrils, picking out slate with his fingers. He was one of many scores ...
— King Coal - A Novel • Upton Sinclair
... feet the lake, dappled with rosy tints by the floating rays of the setting sun. One single image filled for me the immensity of this horizon; it rose from the chalets where we had met; from the doctor's garden, the pointed slate roof of whose house I could recognize above the smoke of the town; from the fig-trees of the little castle of Bon-Port at the bottom of the opposite creek; from the chestnut-trees on the hill of Tresserves; from the woods ...
— Raphael - Pages Of The Book Of Life At Twenty • Alphonse de Lamartine
... to Puysange, Adhelmar climbed the stairs of the White Turret,—slowly, for he was growing very feeble now,—and so came again to Melite crouching among the burned-out candles in the slate-colored twilight which ...
— The Line of Love - Dizain des Mariages • James Branch Cabell
... to your room in the turret, I placed you under my influence and under the influence of four other brains acting in conjunction with myself. We took entire possession of your mentality, and made it as far as possible like a blank slate, on which we wrote what we chose. The test was to see whether your Soul, which is the actual You, could withstand and overcome our suggestions. At first hearing, this sounds as if we had played a trick upon you for our ...
— The Life Everlasting: A Reality of Romance • Marie Corelli
... all there under the chanting palms—saices, orderlies, pedlars, water-carriers, street-cleaners, chicken-sellers and the slate-coloured buffalo with the china-blue eyes being talked to by a little girl with the big stick. Behind the hedges of well-kept gardens squatted the brown gardener, making trenches indifferently with a hoe or a toe, and under the municipal lamp-post lounged the bronze policeman—a touch ...
— Letters of Travel (1892-1913) • Rudyard Kipling
... fifty miles; and rocks thickly scattered, enough to prove fatal to the strongest wheels that ever issued from "Hutton's." Miss O'Dowd knew this well; she had upon one occasion been upset in travelling it—and a slate-coloured silk dress bore the dye of every species of mud and mire to be found there, for many a year after, to remind her of her misfortune, and keep open the wound of her sorrow. When, therefore, ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Vol. 1 • Charles James Lever
... of the Revolution, to till their grants and to found families. There were gentry, too, from the tide-waters, come to retrieve the fortunes which they had lost by their patriotism. There were storekeepers like Mr. Scarlett, adventurers and ne'er-do-weels who hoped to start with a clean slate, and a host of lazy vagrants who thought to scratch the soil ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... manner was urbane but, observing him closely, Mrs. Toomey noted that his eyes suddenly presented the curious illusion of two slate-gray pools covered with skim ice. It was not an encouraging sign and her heart sank in spite of the superlative suavity of the tone ...
— The Fighting Shepherdess • Caroline Lockhart
... painted a slate-gray, and her ballast was so adjusted that with the seven men who manned her on board, one to steer, one to look after the torpedo, and five to turn the propeller crank, her low hatch scarcely rose above the water. In that condition, and ...
— A Little Traitor to the South - A War Time Comedy With a Tragic Interlude • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... Solomon held his curly head high among his school-fellows, and never lacked personal possessions, though they were not negotiable at the pawnbroker's. He had a peep-show, made out of an old cocoa box, and representing the sortie from Plevna, a permit to view being obtainable for a fragment of slate pencil. For two pins he would let you look a whole minute. He also had bags of brass buttons, marbles, both commoners and alleys; nibs, beer bottle labels and cherry "hogs," besides bottles of liquorice water, vendible either ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... gentleman to another, and I asks whether we can't agree against this selfish and corrupt game of Merritt and Dorman. For, you see, I don't get a smell out of what they're doin'. I'm out in the cold if their slate goes through." ...
— The Bread-winners - A Social Study • John Hay
... principal village, was for years the headquarters of the mission. This was so down to the time of Loyard's death. His successor, Danielou, ministered to the Indians of Medoctec, also, as is shown by the presence of his name on the slate-stone tablet of the Medoctec chapel. But it is probable that Danielou was frequently at Aukpaque, and he certainly had the spiritual oversight of the Acadians at St. ...
— Glimpses of the Past - History of the River St. John, A.D. 1604-1784 • W. O. Raymond
... from the sale of charms and medical nostrums. They shave the sides of the head, and coil the remaining hair in a tuft on the crown, in the ancient Chinese manner; moreover, says Williams, they "are recognised by their slate-coloured robes." On the feast of one of their divinities whose title Williams translates as "High Emperor of the Sombre Heavens," they assemble before his temple, "and having made a great fire, about 15 or 20 feet in diameter, go over it barefoot, preceded by the ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... strode with rattling steps up and down in the stable, followed by two ragged-looking dogs. She wore a badly fitting riding habit of slate-colored cloth, with a black derby that had seen better days. In her right hand she carried a whip with which now and then she cut the rank atmosphere in a reckless manner, so that the dogs slunk ...
— A Little Garrison - A Realistic Novel of German Army Life of To-day • Fritz von der Kyrburg
... little slate upon which he wrote his wants, but nobody had discovered any way of communicating with him save by taking his hand and guiding it to the object for which he had asked. For a long time he had written the one word "Paint" on his slate. That was the beginning of his ...
— The Bondboy • George W. (George Washington) Ogden
... not less fertile internally, is externally inept and is called madness. Ineptitude is something which language needs to shake off. Better surrender altogether some verbal categories and start again, in that respect, with a clean slate, than persist in any line of development that alienates thought from reality. The language of birds is excellent in its way, and those ancient sages who are reported to have understood it very likely had merely perceived that it was not meant to be intelligible; ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... destroyed—and how much depends on slates in a kindergarten you know, madam, better than I do. Here is all that is left of one of them"—and he showed Hart's aunt a bit of burnt wood that looked like it had been part of a slate-frame afore it got afire. ...
— Santa Fe's Partner - Being Some Memorials of Events in a New-Mexican Track-end Town • Thomas A. Janvier
... O'Brien was then in gaol, but that he was allowed to be torn from the midst of a people for whom he had perilled his life, without a hand being raised in his defence. We then returned to the scene of our former meetings, and met, for the last time, beside a little brook near the Waterford slate-quarries. My ambassadress had also returned, and there were present three or four others. The reunion was gloomy. But one question remained for discussion: Was there any hope left? The message I received as to the means of escape was dark and discouraging. Nothing ...
— The Felon's Track • Michael Doheny
... have won our knowledge of it by long experience, by careful study, by keeping the thousand threads of the rope of success twisted tightly together. Any fool could buy this business, but only an expert could run it successfully. You know that. So I am glad this interfering boy is wiped off the slate forever." ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces Out West • Edith Van Dyne
... their parcels. They had brought several presents which they thought would amuse the child during the long hours he probably spent in bed, a jig-saw puzzle, a drawing-slate, a box of coloured chalks, a painting-book, and a lovely volume of new fairy tales. His delight was pathetic. He looked at each separately, and touched it with a finger, as if it were a great treasure. The fairy book, with its coloured pictures of gnomes ...
— A Patriotic Schoolgirl • Angela Brazil
... the number of the Psalm In white upon a slate, And many a time the last lines sung Of Brady ...
— John Keble's Parishes • Charlotte M Yonge
... apart from the ideas and mental force they are capable of arousing in the mind of the maker. Solomon's Seal is no more powerful, when drawn upon virgin parchment, with a weak will, or in a mechanical state of mind, than a child's innocent scribbling upon its slate. But, if the artist realizes the mysteries symbolized by the interlacing triangles, and can place his soul en rapport with the invisible elements they outwardly represent; then, powerful ...
— The Light of Egypt, Volume II • Henry O. Wagner/Belle M. Wagner/Thomas H. Burgoyne
... the book open at the thirtieth chapter of Proverbs." Yes, I sometimes find it hard to understand what Harrington, a man of really fine sensibilities, sees in Mrs. Harrington. The very suggestion of locking up books to prevent their being carried away hurts like the screech of a pencil upon a slate. I think of Mrs. Harrington and then I think of Cooper. Cooper's shelves are continuously being denuded by his friends. But if you think of Cooper as a helpless victim you are sadly mistaken. There is an elaborate scheme behind it all, a scheme ...
— The Patient Observer - And His Friends • Simeon Strunsky
... but we could clearly distinguish his situation through the watery barrier. The fall of the cataract is nearly perpendicular. The bank over which it is precipitated is of concave form, owing to its upper stratum being composed of lime-stone, and its base of soft slate-stone, which has been eaten away by the constant attrition of the recoiling waters. The cavern is about one hundred and twenty feet in height, fifty in breadth, and three hundred in length. The entrance was completely invisible. By screaming in our ears, the guide contrived ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 262, July 7, 1827 • Various
... certen house next unto the sam Chapel apperteynyug, called the library, all waies res'ved for students to resorte unto, wt three chambres under nithe the saide library, which library being covered wt slate is valued together wt the chambres at xiijs. iiijd. yerely.... The sated library is a house appointed by the sated Maior and cominaltie for . . . resorte of all students for their education in Divine Scriptures."[2] Stow, writing in 1598, ...
— Old English Libraries, The Making, Collection, and Use of Books • Ernest A. Savage
... you've been roarin' At this infernal rate; I wonder if all you've been pourin' Could be cipher'd on a slate. ...
— Life in the Clearings versus the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... mud-pies, but tracing figures, comic or grotesque as might happen, and always quite wonderful for their lack of resemblance to anything human. That patch of reddish-brown clay was his sole resource, his slate, his drawing-book, and woe to anybody who chanced to walk over little Dick's arabesques. Patient and gentle in his acceptance of the world's rebuffs, this he would not endure. He was afraid of Mr. Shackford, yet one day, when the preoccupied man happened ...
— The Stillwater Tragedy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... lay through the district of Rovtcha, which is considered the poorest for the agriculturist in all the Berdas. It is very hilly, and the rock is, where we passed, a rotten slate which the rains and the torrents cut away rapidly, carrying the alluvium down to the plains and Lake of Scutari. Digging and bridging, we reached, early in the afternoon, the village of Gornje-Rovtcha, and were then informed that it would be impossible to reach another habitation ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume II • William James Stillman
... over school tasks, with a huge slate-pencil his crumpled fingers held like a walking-stick, watched and listened in silence. He was ever fearful, perhaps, lest his superior man's knowledge might be called upon and found wanting. Questions poured and crackled like grapeshot, while ...
— A Prisoner in Fairyland • Algernon Blackwood
... is in lat 50 deg. 12' S. [long. 81 deg. 15' W.] being situated in a most barren soil, composed only of sand and slate. It is of small extent, being about 275 yards in length along the shore of the bay, and 130 yards in breadth, containing less than two hundred families. The houses are only ground floors, their walls composed of split canes and mud, and the roofs thatched with ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 11 • Robert Kerr
... conozco, Carmen! ... She must not die twice ... I died twice ... I am going to die again. She only once. Till the heavens be no more she will not rise ... Moi, au contraire, il faut que je me leve toujours! They need me so much;—the slate is always full; the bell will never stop. They will ring that bell for me when I am dead ... So will I rise again!—resurgam! ... How could I save him?—could not save myself. It was a bad case,—at seventy years! ... There! Qui ...
— Chita: A Memory of Last Island • Lafcadio Hearn
... slate, he adds: "Mais ces petites veines nous donnent lieu de faire une observation importante; c'est qu'elles se presentent assez communement perpendiculaire, tandis que les grands bancs d'ardoises, ceux qu'on exploite, sont, comme nous l'avons dit, couches ...
— Theory of the Earth, Volume 2 (of 4) • James Hutton
... the coop, perversely diving about the yard and circling the out-buildings until even Young Pete's ambition flagged. Out of breath he marched to the house. Annersley's rifle stood in the corner. Young Pete eyed it longingly, finally picked it up and stole gingerly to the doorway. The slate-colored hen had cooled down and was at the moment contemplating the cabin with head sideways, exceedingly suspicious and ruffled, but standing still. Just as Young Pete drew a bead on her, the big red rooster came ...
— The Ridin' Kid from Powder River • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... are disavowed, new situations occur with bewildering rapidity, for dealing with which there is no recognized machinery available. Society reverts from a state in which a high grade of individual initiative and development was possible to a relatively communistic and paternalistic state, the slate is wiped clear, and a start can be made anew along lines of progress mapped out by the ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... distance back. Although George W. Stener was in a way a political henchman and appointee of Mollenhauer's, the latter was only vaguely acquainted with him. He had seen him before; knew of him; had agreed that his name should be put on the local slate largely because he had been assured by those who were closest to him and who did his bidding that Stener was "all right," that he would do as he was told, that he would cause no one any trouble, etc. In fact, during several previous administrations, Mollenhauer ...
— The Financier • Theodore Dreiser
... even many decades, before he had anything like a public appreciation, but a very great part of the minority of those who were destined to appreciate him came over to his standard upon the publication of Paracelsus. The celebrated John Forster had taken up Paracelsus "as a thing to slate," and had ended its perusal with the wildest curiosity about the author and his works. John Stuart Mill, never backward in generosity, had already interested himself in Browning, and was finally converted by the same poem. Among other early admirers were Landor, Leigh Hunt, Horne, Serjeant Talfourd, ...
— Robert Browning • G. K. Chesterton
... with richness and profusion of blossoms, and sweet with many fragrances. The old farmhouse itself had become an object of admiration to Eleanor. Long and low, built of dark red stone and roofed with slate, it was now in different parts wreathed and draped in climbing roses and honeysuckle as well as in the ivy which did duty all winter. To stand under these roses at the back of the house, and look down over the gorgeous ...
— The Old Helmet, Volume II • Susan Warner
... ugly that the city ought to offer premiums to house-owners who would build their facades of cut-stone blocks. Seven windows lighted the gray front of this house which was raised three storeys, ending in a mansard roof covered with slate. The porte-cochere, heavy and solid, showed by its workmanship and style that the front building on the street had been erected in the days of the Empire, to utilize a part of the courtyard of the vast old mansion, built at an epoch when the quarter ...
— The Lesser Bourgeoisie • Honore de Balzac
... Anitra and she had run this road too many times when they were children. That is all I have to tell of my intercourse with these ladies prior to our appearance at the hotel. I think it right for me to clear the slate, Ransom. Who knows what we may wish to write upon ...
— The Chief Legatee • Anna Katharine Green
... brother and laid his hand upon the fisherman's arm. He stood the smaller in stature, though of strong build. His clean-shaved face had burned much darker than John's; he was indeed coffee-brown and might have been mistaken for an Indian but for his eyes of ordinary slate-grey. Without any pretension to good looks, Martin Grimbal displayed what was better—an expression of such frank benignity and goodness that his kind trusted him and relied upon him by intuition. Honest and true to the verge of quixotism was this ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts
... dead now—all are gone. In the cemetery at Norwich is a plain, slate slab, "To the Memory of Elizabeth Martineau, Mother of Harriet Martineau." * * * And so she sleeps, remembered for what? As the mother of a stupid little girl who tried hard to be good, but didn't succeed very well, and who did not listen ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 2 of 14 - Little Journeys To the Homes of Famous Women • Elbert Hubbard
... wall for a few minutes, and finally took the lift to the fourth floor. Exactly opposite to him across the uncarpeted corridor was a door from which half the varnish had peeled off, on which was painted in white letters—MR. ANDREW SLATE. A knock on the panel resulted in an immediate invitation to enter. Wingate turned the handle, entered and closed the door behind him. The man who was the solitary occupant of the room half ...
— The Profiteers • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... Couesnon, at one of the farthest points of which, along the horizon, lay the town of Fougeres. From here the officers could see, to its full extent, the basin of this intervale, as remarkable for the fertility of its soil as for the variety of its aspects. Mountains of gneiss and slate rose on all sides, like an ampitheatre, hiding their ruddy flanks behind forests of oak, and forming on their declivities other and lesser valleys full of dewy freshness. These rocky heights made a vast enclosure, circular in form, in the centre ...
— The Chouans • Honore de Balzac
... sat for hours, nourishing the calm and solemn thoughts we had just brought from the quiet corner of the churchyard where we had sat by Wordsworth's grave. It was growing dark, but we could just read on the plain slate head-stone the ...
— A Brief Memoir with Portions of the Diary, Letters, and Other Remains, - of Eliza Southall, Late of Birmingham, England • Eliza Southall
... 20 at any part, while it was wide and well protected along its whole extent. Mr. Telford pursued the same system that he had adopted in the formation of the Carlisle and Glasgow road, as regards metalling, cross-draining, and fence-walling; for the latter purpose using schistus, or slate rubble-work, instead of sandstone. The largest bridges were of iron; that at Bettws-y-Coed, over the Conway—called the Waterloo Bridge, constructed in 1815—being a very fine ...
— The Life of Thomas Telford by Smiles • Samuel Smiles
... daintily lined with silk, and confined close up to the throat by an embossed silver clasp, but hanging loosely down to the heels, in thick, full folds. The petticoat is very short; the trim ancles are cased in close-fit hose of dark, sober, slate colour; and the shoes, though thick and serviceable like all the rest of the costume, fit the foot as neatly as those which are not made ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... left the parlour, Sidney and Master Tom were therein, seated on two stools, and casting up division sums on their respective slates—a point of education to which Mr. Morton attended with great care. As soon as his father's back was turned, Master Tom's eyes wandered from the slate to the muffin, as it leered at him from the slop-basin. Never did Pythian sibyl, seated above the bubbling spring, utter more oracular eloquence to her priest, than did that muffin—at least the parts of it yet extant—utter to the fascinated senses of Master Tom. First ...
— Night and Morning, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... No. 2 chimney bars, to cope gable ends with old stone. No. 2 hearthstones. No. 2 plain stone chimney-pieces. No. 2—2 ft. 6 in. Register stoves. To lath and plaster ceiling, side walls, and partitions with lime and hair two coats, and set to slate the new roof with good countess slates and ...
— A Week's Tramp in Dickens-Land • William R. Hughes
... which is larger and fiercer. There was not one Barbary falcon, for on making inquiry Owen was told that the bird he was looking at was a goshawk, a much more beautiful hawk it seemed to him than the peregrine, especially in colour; the wings were not so dark, inclining to slate, and under the wings the breast was white, beautifully barred. It stood much higher than the other hawks; and Owen admired the bird's tail, so long, and he understood how it governed the bird's flight, even before he ...
— Sister Teresa • George Moore
... nearer and nearer to the heart of being; they touched through her the deep elemental forces of the world. The sea had joined what the land had kept asunder. At this last hour of Durant's last day they were drifting rather than sailing past a sunken shore, a fringe of gray slate, battered by the tide and broken into thin layers, with edges keen as knives; above it, low woods of dwarf oaks stretched northward, gray and phantasmal as the shore, stunted and tortured into writhing, unearthly ...
— The Return of the Prodigal • May Sinclair
... touches them, and the spirit writing begins. Sometimes the slates are held on the head or shoulders of the visitor. At one of his seances at Oakland, it is said that he held the slates for thirty-five persons within two hours, and obtained for each a slate full of writing in answers to questions placed between the slates. At a public seance in Santa Cruz, following a lecture, folded ballots were sent up by the audience and the answers were sometimes written on closed slates and sometimes by the doctor's hands. Dr. S. has also succeeded in ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, September 1887 - Volume 1, Number 8 • Various
... apple orchard came a large share of the Thayer income, and Barnabas was vitally interested in such matters now, for he was to be married the last of June to Charlotte Barnard. He often sat down with a pencil and slate, and calculated, with intricate sums, the amounts of his income and their probable expenses. He had made up his mind that Charlotte should have one new silk gown every year, and two new bonnets—one for summer and one for winter. His mother had often noted, with scorn, that Charlotte Barnard ...
— Pembroke - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... two-arched bridge without a parapet. The dull brick walls, which here and there made a grand, straight sweep; the ugly little cupolas of the wings, the deep-set windows, the long, steep pinnacles of mossy slate, all mirrored themselves in the tranquil river. Newman rang at the gate, and was almost frightened at the tone with which a big rusty bell above his head replied to him. An old woman came out from the gate-house and opened the creaking portal just wide ...
— The American • Henry James
... any better, Bobby, if you had torn the hair off of my doll's head or broken my slate a dozen times," she laughed at me again as we slid together the last slide in the dance. "Now come over and be introduced to Mrs. Taylor. You have only a few minutes, for you and Buzz must both be back ...
— The Daredevil • Maria Thompson Daviess
... water, is enormous,—far more than we should at first imagine,—it follows that it must be capable of resisting pressure both from above and from within. The floor and stand, the frame and joints must be strong and compact, and the walls of plate or thick crown glass. The bottom should be of slate; and if it is designed to attach arches of rock-work inside to the ends, they, too, must be of slate, as cement will not stick to glass. The frame should be iron, zinc, or well-turned wood; the joints closed with white-lead putty; the front and back of glass. There is one ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 47, September, 1861 • Various
... granite of the globe, the bursting through of eruptions from the central fire, extruding and uplifting mountains, and the subsidence of the ocean from one ripple-marked sea-beach to another lower down. In those dim geologic epochs, where annals are written on Mica Slate, Clay Slate, and Silurian Systems, on Old Red Sandstones and New, on Primary and Secondary Rocks and Tertiary Chalk-beds, there were topsy-turvyings amongst the hills and gambollings and skippings of mountains, to which the piling of Pelion upon Ossa was a mere cobblestone ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 15, January, 1859 • Various
... a fringe of tamarisk along the broken sea-wall—Tandy's, at the date in question, boasted a couple of bowed sash-windows on either side the front and back doors; and a range of five other windows set flat in the wall on the first floor. There was no second storey. The slate roofs were mean, low-pitched, without any grace of overshadowing eaves. At either end, a tall chimney-stack rose like the long ears of some startled, vacant-faced small animal. Behind the house, a thick plantation of beech and sycamore served to make its ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... formed part of a street, laid out on the plan of the Jebel el-Safra, the hauteville of Maghair Shu'ayb. On the right bank of the Wady appeared a heap of stones suggesting a Burj. Fine, hard, compact, and purple-blue slate was collected in the ruins; and the red conglomerates on either side of the watercourse suggested ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 1 • Richard Burton
... de colored peoples never get no learnin but what little dey catch from de plantation men in dem night schools. Oh, dey give everyone of us a slate en slate pencil en we study dere in de quarter in de night time by de light of de fire. Studied dem Blue Back Websters. Dat was de text ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves • Works Projects Administration
... have not our tiffs, and there are some of our people—mostly of Irish stock—who are always mad with England; but the most of us have a kindly thought for the mother country. You see, they may be aggravating folk sometimes, but after all they are our own folk, and we can't wipe that off the slate." ...
— A Desert Drama - Being The Tragedy Of The "Korosko" • A. Conan Doyle
... of the next hut is not at home. This is indicated by two great slabs of slate, one at the entrance to his porch and one over his front (and only) window. These are more for protection against ...
— With the Harmony to Labrador - Notes Of A Visit To The Moravian Mission Stations On The North-East - Coast Of Labrador • Benjamin La Trobe
... learned to copy from Marion's slate whatever she needed, and, as Marion sat next her in the class, this was an easy thing to do; and as Miss Palmer, wisely, seldom asked Carrie any but the simplest questions, well knowing how useless any others ...
— Miss Ashton's New Pupil - A School Girl's Story • Mrs. S. S. Robbins
... blocks of porphyry—I believe there are three—in Cornwall, lying one on serpentine, one, I think, on slate, which—so I was always informed as a boy—were the stones which St. Kevern threw after St. Just when the latter stole his host's chalice and paten, and ran away with them to the Land's End. Why not? Before we knew anything about the action of icebergs and glaciers, that is, until the ...
— Scientific Essays and Lectures • Charles Kingsley
... I spent in this way at the lounge window! How many new specimens of underwater flora and fauna I marveled at beneath the light of our electric beacon! Mushroom-shaped fungus coral, some slate-colored sea anemone including the species Thalassianthus aster among others, organ-pipe coral arranged like flutes and just begging for a puff from the god Pan, shells unique to this sea that dwell in madreporic cavities and whose bases are twisted into squat spirals, and finally a ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne
... things to do. She scrubbed her kitchen floor and prepared food for cooking; she washed, ironed, kneaded dough for bread, and mended clothes. In the evening, when she made the boy read to her out of one of the school books or do sums on a slate, she kept her hands busy knitting socks for him or for her husband. Except when something had crossed her so that she scolded and her face grew red, she was always cheerful. When the boy had nothing ...
— Poor White • Sherwood Anderson
... There is the word for that, too. For being so smart, Miss Chicken, you can learn it 'fore you get any more to drink. If I have good luck to-day, I'm going to blow in about six o'clock with a slate and pencil for you; and then you can print the words you learn, and make pictures. That'll help make the ...
— Michael O'Halloran • Gene Stratton-Porter
... that shadow is pure purple my eyes are liars. It looks a kind of slate colour to me. Lord! if what you fellows say in your pictures is true, the whole earth must be blazing and burning and ...
— The Third Violet • Stephen Crane
... Bay. Result of Explorations in King's Sound. Interview with Natives. Coral Reefs. Discover Beagle Bank. Arrival at Port George the Fourth. Examination of Collier Bay in the boats. Brecknock Harbour. The Slate Islands. Freshwater Cove. An Eagle shot. Its singular nest. Rock Kangaroos. A Conflagration. Sandstone Ridges. Doubtful Bay. Mouth of the Glenelg. Remarkable Tree. Fertile Country near Brecknock Harbour. Return to the Ship. Meet with Lieutenant Grey. His sufferings and discoveries. ...
— Discoveries in Australia, Volume 1. • J Lort Stokes
... cliffs, about eighty feet in height at the highest point, were formed of vertically lying slate rocks—a very uniform series of phyllite and sericite-schist. At their base lay great clinging blocks of ice deeply excavated by the restless swell. One island was separated from the parent mass by a channel cut sheer to the deep blue water. Behind ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson
... and opened into space affording an unobstructed view for miles. The desert sloped up in steps, and in the morning light, with the sun bright on the mesas and escarpments, it was gray, drab, stone, slate, yellow, pink, and, dominating all, a dull rust-red. There was level ground ahead, a wind-swept floor as hard as rock. Link rushed the car over this free distance. Madeline's ears filled with a droning hum like the sound of a monstrous, hungry bee and with a strange, incessant crinkle which ...
— The Light of Western Stars • Zane Grey
... by the chisel of the sculptor. These curious pyramids cover the plateau along a distance of more than two miles: sometimes standing closely together, and sometimes at considerable distances apart. The whole line of chalk and slate mountains extending from Ayacucho to Huancavelica is shattered, and presents similar, though ...
— Travels in Peru, on the Coast, in the Sierra, Across the Cordilleras and the Andes, into the Primeval Forests • J. J. von Tschudi
... to that, and afterwards Lady Greswold talked to Octavia, and asked her if she thought it would look better perhaps to begin gold with the soup, and have the hors d'oeuvres on specimen Sevres just to make a point. I hate gold plate myself, one's knife does make such slate-pencilish noises on it. ...
— The Visits of Elizabeth • Elinor Glyn
... has a crust—that is, the outside or cooled part, let the first sketch (Figure 10) represent this crust, before the mountains and valleys were formed. The slightly curved horizontal lines merely represent the different layers of the crust, such as rock, clay, coal, slate, and the like. When the cooling process took place the earth grew smaller within, so that ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: Exploring the Island • Roger Thompson Finlay |
