"Span" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... and with it Miss Lucas, towing a brilliant bride, Mrs. Vivian, young, rich, pretty, and gay, with a waist you could span, ...
— A Simpleton • Charles Reade
... hand, and told me his name was THOMAS THUMB. I expressed great satisfaction in seeing him, nor could I help speaking my resentment against the historian, who had done such injustice to the stature of this great little man, which he represented to be no bigger than a span, whereas I plainly perceived at first sight he was full a foot and a half (and the 37th part of an inch more, as he himself informed me), being indeed little shorter than some considerable beaux of the present age. I asked this little hero concerning the ...
— From This World to the Next • Henry Fielding
... went away from the Preston farm with the passengers going to Canada by the U.G. Railway The next morning I began the task of fitting yokes to my two span of heifers, and that afternoon, I gave Lily and Cherry their first lesson. I had had some experience in driving cattle on Mrs. Fogg's farm in Herkimer County, but I should have made a botch job of it if it had not been for Mr. Preston, who knew all there was to ...
— Vandemark's Folly • Herbert Quick
... trefoils and quatrefoils, deeply sunk and backed with Purbeck marble; and, on the whole, the contrast of light and shade, depth and projection, produces a very fine effect. The clerestory arches are of the same span, but each is divided into three smaller ones, the centre arch being higher than those on either side, in order to admit light through the windows behind, which are three lancet-shaped lights under one arch in the outer wall, and are, we believe, original; ...
— Ely Cathedral • Anonymous
... "Span, n. A span of horses consists of two of nearly the same color, and otherwise nearly alike, which are usually harnessed side by side. The word signifies properly the same as yoke, when applied to horned cattle, from buckling or fastening together. But in America, span always implies resemblance ...
— Noah Webster - American Men of Letters • Horace E. Scudder
... Cast-iron has become an object of general utility. The Southwark or New London Bridge consists of three arches, the centre of which is a span of 240 feet, and the other two 210 feet each; the Vauxhall Bridge consists of nine arches, over a width of 809 feet; and it is a fact, that a Sugar-house is building with cast-iron floors, window-frames, ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... one after another by the wheel team, six men in each wagon, and as they successively reached the other side of the channel the mules were unhitched, the pole of each wagon run under the hind axle of the one just in front, and the tailboards used so as to span the slight space between them. The plan worked well as long as the material lasted, but no other wagons than my twenty-five coming on the ground, the work stopped when the bridge was only half constructed. ...
— The Memoirs of General Philip H. Sheridan, Vol. I., Part 3 • P. H. Sheridan
... breadth. At Lockport the canal descends 60 feet by means of 5 locks excavated in solid rock, and afterward proceeds on a uniform level for a distance of 63 miles to the Genesee River, over which it is carried on an aqueduct having 9 arches of 50 feet span each. Eight and a half miles from this point it passes over the Cayuga marsh, on an embankment 2 miles in length, and in some places 70 feet in height. At Syracuse, the "long level" commences, which extends for a distance of 691/2 miles to Frankfort, without an intervening lock. After ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 363, December 16, 1882 • Various
... kitchen range, suggesting, by its brightness and snapping, pine-knots full of pitch and resin. The front doors of the stove were open and the firelight danced across the room, filling it with cheer. It was one of those homelike kitchens where everything is spick and span, and the nickel on ...
— Black Bruin - The Biography of a Bear • Clarence Hawkes
... it will be well to mention that when I left I sold all my property there, consisting of some twenty-two lots, all in the heart of the city, for practically a song. Six of these lots were situated where now is a big planing mill. Several lots I sold to a German for a span of mules. The German is alive today and lives in Phoenix a wealthy man, simply because he had the foresight and acumen to do what I did not do—hang on to his real estate. If I had kept those twenty-two lots until now, without doing more than simply pay my taxes on them, my fortune ...
— Arizona's Yesterday - Being the Narrative of John H. Cady, Pioneer • John H. Cady
... no! a thousand cheerful omens give Hope of yet happier days, whose dawn is nigh: He who has tamed the elements, shall not live The slave of his own passions; he whose eye Unwinds the eternal dances of the sky, And in the abyss of brightness dares to span The sun's broad circle, rising yet more high, In God's magnificent works his will shall scan; And love and peace shall make their paradise with ...
— The Growth of Thought - As Affecting the Progress of Society • William Withington
... William Hooker terms "a singular Euphorbiaceous (?) plant[*]," destitute of flower and fruit. Branches very thick, and they, as well as the long petioles and underside of the leaves clothed with dense white wool. Leaves a span long, cordato acuminate; the laminae all pointing downwards, glossy green and glabrous above. Also a new DODONOEA, with very narrow, linear, pinnated leaves. The only hills visible, from a tree ascended by Yuranigh, ...
— Journal of an Expedition into the Interior of Tropical Australia • Thomas Mitchell
... which Lane renders "two clods." I have noted that the Tob (Span. Adobe Al-Tob) is a sunbaked brick. Beating the bosom with such material is still common amongst Moslem mourners of the lower class, and the hardness of the blow gives the measure of ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... were there, too, their uniforms spick and span, and unspotted by the soil of the Andes. Mine was dirty, bloodstained, and not altogether free from rents. I rode carefully, but my eyes were heavy and my limbs ...
— At the Point of the Sword • Herbert Hayens
... Reincarnation teaches gradual progress from lower to higher, through ages until the individual reaches perfection. It holds that each individual will become perfect like Jesus or Buddha or like the Father in heaven and manifest divinity either in this life or in some other. One span of life is too short for developing one's powers to perfection. If you should try to train an idiot to become a great artist or a philosopher, would you ever succeed in your attempt to make him so during his lifetime? No. And will you punish him because he cannot ...
— Reincarnation • Swami Abhedananda
... off my hobby, and I went right quiet to the pit, and I looked down. Well, what should there be but the funniest little black thing you ever set eyes on. And what was that doing, but that had a little spinning-wheel, and that was spinning wonderful fast, and twirling that's tail. And as that span that sang: ...
— English Fairy Tales • Joseph Jacobs (coll. & ed.)
... joints are there to the body? Note the short fine hair all over the body which gives it the appearance of green velvet. What color is the head? How does the caterpillar feed? Write a brief description of the worm. Do not mistake it for the cabbage span-worm which is also green, but which walks ...
— An Elementary Study of Insects • Leonard Haseman
... Algiers, and after the war in Italy brought a bullet in his leg to New Orleans. He was long past fifty—spare, broad-shouldered and hard as a log of oak. His sharp features were bronzed to the richest mahogany color, and garnished with a moustache and peak of grizzled hair "a cubit and a span"—or nearly—in length. And the short, grizzled hair had been shaved far back from his prominent temples, giving a sinister and grotesque effect to his naturally hard face. Turc was a favorite with the officers, and his dress was rather cleaner than that of the others; ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon
... furnished, and a window, thick with dust, looked out on the dingy back-wall of a bank or some public building. The floor was uncovered, the walls were hung with yellow maps of gold-mines all in the West African district. Da Souza himself, spick and span, with glossy boots and a flower in his buttonhole, was certainly the least ...
— A Millionaire of Yesterday • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... into the hall, rendering its aspect much more light and cheerful. By eight o'clock the vast hall was crowded to overflowing. Scarcely a foot of space was unoccupied; from the very edge of the ceiling to the orchestral platform in the centre, around the immense span of the building, there was but one dense mass of heads. We should, at a rough guess, estimate the number in the auditory at SEVEN THOUSAND. A much larger proportion than on former nights were ladies, and for the first time we caught glimpses ...
— A Unique Story of a Marvellous Career. Life of Hon. Phineas T. • Joel Benton
... 5th the last of the steel for Span Number One reached the front, and erection was begun. The men fell to with a vim and an enthusiasm impossible to describe. With incredible rapidity the heavy sections were laid in place; the riveters ...
— The Iron Trail • Rex Beach
... capital, indeed, was superimposed; one felt that always at this time, when the glow came and stood in the air among the tamarinds, and there was nothing anywhere but luminous space and indolent stillness, and the wrangling and winging of crows. What persisted, then, under the span of the sky was the old India of rich traditions, and a thinking bullock beneath the yoke, jogging through the evening to his own place where the blue haze hid the little huts on the rim of the city, the real India, and the ...
— Hilda - A Story of Calcutta • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... You are always so quick-witted and voluble, Free Hope, you don't get time to see how often you err, and even, perhaps, sin and blaspheme. The Author of all has intended to confine our knowledge within certain boundaries, has given us a short span of time for a certain probation, for which our faculties are adapted. By wild speculation and intemperate curiosity we violate His will, and incur dangerous, perhaps fatal, consequences. We waste our powers, and, becoming morbid and visionary, are unfitted to obey positive precepts, ...
— At Home And Abroad - Or, Things And Thoughts In America and Europe • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... del Castello ("castle bridge"), for they seem but parts of one great fortification, turreted and battlemented, built by Can Grande II. in 1355. The bridge is an extraordinary structure, the arches being extremely unequal in size: the span of the largest is about a hundred and sixty feet. The mass, the irregularity, the strength of these piles, the dark river hurrying below, give the spot a grimness not often found on the sunny side of the Alps. The castle has been altered by many successive hands of course, for the history ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 20, August 1877 • Various
... the Earl's Bower; but generally bold and naked, and sombre in tint as the colours employed by the savage Rosa. Such were the distinguishing features of the gorge of Cliviger when Nicholas traversed it. Now the high embankments and mighty arches of a railway fill up its recesses and span its gullies; the roar of the engine is heard where the cry of the bird of prey alone resounded; and clouds of steam usurp the place of the mist-wreaths on ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... Alexander now sent for them all, and paid them their wages, with an extra sum as a gratuity for their good conduct. To Bremen and Swanevelt, who had invariably conducted themselves faithfully, and who had been the leading and most trustworthy men, he gave to each a wagon and span of ten oxen as a present by which they might in future obtain their livelihood, and the poor fellows considered themselves as rich as the king of England. The other wagons and cattle of every description were left with ...
— The Mission • Frederick Marryat
... first great crash there ensued a moment's hesitation. Then a second span succumbed. There followed a series of minor chutes with short intervening silences. At last so long an interval of calm ensued that we plucked up courage to believe it all over. A single stone rolled a few feet and hit the rock floor with a bang. Then, immediately ...
— The Killer • Stewart Edward White
... civilized empire. The plough, the loom, and the forge, are introduced on the banks of the Volga, the Oby, and the Lena; and the fiercest of the Tartar hordes have been taught to tremble and obey. The reign of independent Barbarism is now contracted to a narrow span; and the remnant of Calmucks or Uzbecks, whose forces may be almost numbered, cannot seriously excite the apprehensions of the great republic of Europe. [6000] Yet this apparent security should not tempt us ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 3 • Edward Gibbon
... experiment to reality. American industry and agriculture are making increasing use of radioisotopes to improve manufacturing, testing, and crop-raising. Atomic energy has improved the ability of the healing professions to combat disease, and holds promise for an eventual increase in man's life span. ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... agony of suspense which racked our souls during those six days? It seemed to us as though a life was being offered in sacrifice for the thousands which it was to contribute in saving. Across the span of thirteen years the memory of the last moments comes to me most vividly and thrilling, when the light of reason left his brain and shut out of his mind the torturing thought of the loving wife and daughter far away, and of the unborn child ...
— Popular Science Monthly Volume 86
... were foreign-born; (1905, state census) 4523. It is served by the Chicago & North-Western and Chicago, Milwaukee & St Paul railways, by interurban electric lines and by lake and river steamboat lines, it being the head of lake navigation on the Fox river. Two bridges here span the Fox, which is from {1/3}m. to m. in width. It is a shipping and transfer point and has paper mills, machine shops, flour mills, sash, door and blind factories, a launch and pleasure-boat factory, and knitting ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 2 - "Demijohn" to "Destructor" • Various
... words the beautiful span settled down as quiet as lambs and swung into a gait which whirled the surrey along the picturesque, woodland road at a rate not to be despised, while Peggy drove with the master- hand of experience. Indeed she seemed to guide more by words than reins, or some perfectly understood ...
— Peggy Stewart: Navy Girl at Home • Gabrielle E. Jackson
... he should be irritated by the little life so constantly interfering with his pleasure and so surely undermining Katy's health. For Katy did not improve, as Wilford hoped she might; and with his two hands he could almost span her slender waist, while the beautiful neck and shoulders, once his chiefest pride, were no longer worn uncovered, for Katy would not display her bones, whatever the fashion might be. In this dilemma Wilford sought his mother, and the result of that consultation brought a more satisfied look ...
— Family Pride - Or, Purified by Suffering • Mary J. Holmes
... name. George Ives was a Wisconsin boy from near Racine. Both he and Plummer were twenty-seven years of age when killed, but they had compressed much evil into so short a span. Plummer himself was a master of men, a brave and cool spirit, an expert with weapons, and in all not a bad specimen of the bad man at his worst. He was a murderer, but after all was not enough a murderer. No outlaw of later years so closely resembled ...
— The Story of the Outlaw - A Study of the Western Desperado • Emerson Hough
... the light Aye looks on brightened colors. Like the dawn (Beloved of all the happy, often sought In the slow east by hollow eyes that watch) She seemed to husked find clownish gratitude, That could but kneel and thank. Of industry She was the fair exemplar, us she span Among her maids; and every day she broke Bread to the needy stranger at her gate. All sloth and rudeness fled at her approach; The women blushed and courtesied as she passed, Preserving word and smile ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 47, September, 1861 • Various
... about in the crimson ray was not an easy target. When the gun was empty, it seemed still unharmed. And its wings had increased to a span of a foot. ...
— The Pygmy Planet • John Stewart Williamson
... citizen who does not, like his fellows, bring to the decision the interests and apprehensions of a father. While those of you who have passed your prime must congratulate yourselves with the thought that the best part of your life was fortunate and that the brief span that remains will be cheered by the fame of the departed. For it is only the love of honour that never grows old; and honour it is, not gain, as some would have it, that rejoices the heart of age ...
— The Wrack of the Storm • Maurice Maeterlinck
... express train which is capable of running anywhere, never stops, never requires fuel, and always goes along at sixty miles an hour. Suppose we commence by employing it to gauge the size of our own planet, the earth. Let us send it on a trip around the equator, the span of which is about 24,000 miles. At its sixty-miles-an-hour rate of going, this journey will take nearly 17 days. Next let us send it from the earth to the moon. This distance, 240,000 miles, being ten times as great as the last, will of course take ten times as long to cover, namely, 170 days; that ...
— Astronomy of To-day - A Popular Introduction in Non-Technical Language • Cecil G. Dolmage
... room almost bare of furniture, and both tried to rise on our entrance; but one, who was young as years go, had her lap full of little worn shoes, and the other, who looked older than the allotted span, was nursing a ...
— The Princess Passes • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson
... he reached the floor of the valley and walked Bess across the three bridges that span the branches of the Bridal Veil Creek, saw the bow of promise in the misty spray that seemed to ever hang in mid-air against the cliffs, galloped down the Long Meadow, past the Valley Chapel, and pulled up at the ...
— The Transformation of Job - A Tale of the High Sierras • Frederick Vining Fisher
... Bond Streets on the Surrey side Shall flaunt their gems and rare chinchillas To swell the local mummer's pride, And every bridge shall span the tide ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, January 28, 1914 • Various
... park, and the old house where Robert Morris held his court in a former generation was changing to a public restaurant. A suspension-bridge cobwebbed itself across the Schuylkill where that audacious arch used to leap the river at a single bound,—an arch of greater span, as they loved to tell us, than was ever before constructed. The Upper Ferry Bridge was to the Schuylkill what the Colossus was to the harbor of Rhodes. It had an air of dash about it which went far towards redeeming the dead level of respectable average ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 62, December, 1862 • Various
... pepper, spice, cinnamon, nutmegs, cloves, and some of the very best Maccaboy snuff. Oh, let me see! I want a new foot-stove. Our old one is all banged up, and I am ashamed to be seen filling it at noon in winter in Deacon Stonegood's kitchen, with all the women looking on, and theirs spick and span new." ...
— Daughters of the Revolution and Their Times - 1769 - 1776 A Historical Romance • Charles Carleton Coffin
... not yet (in 1268) conquered by the Tartars.[11] Like Venice, Kinsai stood upon lagoons of water and was intersected by innumerable canals. It was a hundred miles in circuit, not counting the suburbs which stretched round it, and there was not a span of ground which was not well peopled. It had twelve great gates, and each of the twelve quarters which lay within the gates was greater than the whole of Venice. Its main street was two hundred feet wide, and ran from end to end of the city, broken every four miles by ...
— Medieval People • Eileen Edna Power
... glance is the brightest, Thy voice is the sweetest, Thy step is the lightest, Thy shape the completest: Thy waist I could span, dear, Thy neck's like a swan's, dear, And roses the sweetest On thy cheeks ...
— Life and Remains of John Clare - "The Northamptonshire Peasant Poet" • J. L. Cherry
... herself with the duties behind the urn, and Ruth and Mollie in serge skirts and spick and span white blouses looked as fresh as paint, and a great many times as pretty. They were laughing and chatting with Victor Druce, who had donned Norfolk jacket and knickerbockers, and was quite the country gentleman both in appearance and in his manner ...
— The Fortunes of the Farrells • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... cookie, and Mr Mark knows as well as as I do that he'd break down before we had gone a couple of score yards. Wish I'd got my waggon here, and the span of oxen. That would just ...
— Dead Man's Land - Being the Voyage to Zimbambangwe of certain and uncertain • George Manville Fenn
... deserted, and no sign of life could be discovered anywhere below. In the galley were the embers of a dead fire, and the table in the captain's cabin was spread out ready for a meal which had never been eaten. On deck everything was spick and span, and not the slightest evidence of a storm or any other disturbance could be found. The theory of a derelict was impossible. Apparently all had been well on board, and they had been sailing with good weather, when, without any warning, her crew had been suddenly ...
— Great Pirate Stories • Various
... in these words which every young woman should heed. Life is not play, for it has its solemn responsibilities, its sacred duties; and eternity lies beyond this little span. I call you to earnestness, moral earnestness. Determine to make the most and the best of your life. Get an education to fit you for life's duties, even though it must be gotten in the little fragments of time that you can redeem from ...
— Girls: Faults and Ideals - A Familiar Talk, With Quotations From Letters • J.R. Miller
... flat coil with the spruce roots, and sewed it together with the willow bark for thread, until it was a span wide. And whenever a new root was to be added, she cut both old piece and new, to a long point, so they would overlap ...
— Woodland Tales • Ernest Seton-Thompson
... and four days later arrived at Fredericton, where he secured a hunting license. The next morning he reached Two Rivers, and Jacques met him with a span of ponies, attached to a queer spring vehicle, mounted on wheels that seemed out of all proportion to the body of the carriage. Ray wondered if it was a relic of Acadia, but did not like to ask. They ...
— The Junior Classics Volume 8 - Animal and Nature Stories • Selected and arranged by William Patten
... Malcolm, she was the widow of a Clyde shipmaster that was lost at sea with his vessel. A genty body, she never changed her widow's weeds, and span frae morning tae nicht to keep her bairns and herself. When her daughter Effie was ill, I called on her in a sympathising way, and offered her some assistance frae the Session, but she refused help out of the poor's-box, ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IV. • Editors: Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... the ground and are ready to see what dates can be given. Though the numbers we use seem to be very large indeed, they are so only in comparison with our brief span of life. They are insignificant as compared with the extent of time that has surely rolled by since life appeared on the globe. Let us, therefore, not be dismayed at the figures ...
— The Prehistoric World - Vanished Races • E. A. Allen
... death which had lost its sting—of that grave which had lost its victory; for in the might of her earthly love—in the ardour of her living faith, she discerned the shortness of time, the fulness of eternity; life seemed to her now but a little span, and she could say in the spirit of David, "I may not stay with thee, but ...
— Ellen Middleton—A Tale • Georgiana Fullerton
... grandfather, spick and span, clean shaved, hat brushed, white buckskin gloves, bamboo cane, brown great-coat, walking as upright and solemn as may be, having ...
— The Second Funeral of Napoleon • William Makepeace Thackeray (AKA "Michael Angelo Titmarch")
... is able to construct monuments far more permanent than the narrow span of his own existence; yet these monuments, like himself, are perishable and frail; and in the boundless annals of time, his life and his labors must equally be measured as a fleeting moment. Of a simple and solid ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon
... had put on a span-new dress, observing, modestly, that a genius could appear in anything, but she hadn't the position which would stand wearing ...
— Phemie Frost's Experiences • Ann S. Stephens
... cleanliness, order, etc. Usually everyone except the guard, one cook, and others whose presence elsewhere can not be spared, are required to attend inspections, appearing in their best clothes, their arms and accouterments being shipshape and spick and span in every respect. ...
— Manual of Military Training - Second, Revised Edition • James A. Moss
... tuneful and well measur'd Song First taught our English Musick how to span Words with just note and accent, not to scan With Midas Ears, committing short and long; Thy worth and skill exempts thee from the throng, With praise enough for Envy to look wan; To after age thou shalt be writ the man, That ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... it leaped out of the darkness in an iridescent sheen: an arch a scant ten feet in height, and in span double the width of a big man's shoulders, woven across like a weaver's frame with ribbons of pale fire. But the ribbons were of steel—steel blades, sharp, bright, gleaming: a countless array of curved tulwars and crescent scimetars, broad jataghans, short and ugly kukurees, ...
— The Bronze Bell • Louis Joseph Vance
... thick, oppressive, feverish; there is not a breath or a murmur of wind; even the swell of ocean, which is never-ending, here approaches as near as possible to an end. The ocean rolled but slightly, but the light undulations gave a lazy, listless motion to the ship, the span creaked monotonously, and the great sails napped idly in ...
— Cord and Creese • James de Mille
... an automobile shop with a card at the door: "Town and touring cars for hire by day, week, or month." A gorgeous Mercedes, too spick, too span, altogether too celestial for earthly use, occupied most ...
— The Lion's Share • E. Arnold Bennett
... Pterosauria, or Pterodactyles, the remains of which are met with throughout the series of Mesozoic rocks, from the lias to the chalk, and some of which attained a great size, their wings having a span of eighteen or twenty feet. These animals, in the form and proportions of the head and neck relatively to the body, and in the fact that the ends of the jaws were often, if not always, more or less extensively ensheathed ...
— American Addresses, with a Lecture on the Study of Biology • Tomas Henry Huxley
... affords; the genuine divining rods, mandrake roots, change pennies, money extractors, the napkins of Rolando's Squire, and divers other miracle- workers,—a choice assortment; but all this is not fit for you—better that you should have Fortunatus's wishing-cap, restored spick and span new; and also a fortune-bag which belonged to him." "Fortunatus's fortune-bag!" I exclaimed; and, great as had been my terror, all my senses were now enraptured by the sound. I became dizzy,—and nothing but double ducats ...
— Peter Schlemihl • Adelbert von Chamisso
... down under the arches," grumbled another young fellow. By "arches" he meant the shore arches where begin the bridges that span the Thames. "I was down under the arches wen it was ryning its 'ardest, an' a bobby comes in an' chyses me out. But I come back, an' 'e come too. ''Ere,' sez 'e, 'wot you doin' 'ere?' An' out I goes, but I sez, 'Think I want ter ...
— The People of the Abyss • Jack London
... recently visited Sampaolo will remember the Hotel de Rome as a small, new, spick-and-span establishment, built at the corner of the Piazza San Guido and the Riva Vittorio Emmanuele, and presenting none of that "local colour in the shape of dirt and discomfort" which we are warned to expect in Italy, ...
— The Lady Paramount • Henry Harland
... which cannot be abandoned for a change of humour, or cast aside in light indifference and independence because a man is bored by it and would have something new. It is a routine and drudgery to which some few are born, for which they are prepared, to which they must devote their span of life, and in which they must die. "How shall we pass the day?" asked a weary Roman emperor, "I am even tired of ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli
... watch'd the crystal stream, And fishes poising where the waters ran, And lo! upon the glass a golden gleam, And purple as of robes Sidonian, Then, sudden turning, she beheld a man, That knelt beside her; as her own face fair Was his, and o'er his shoulders for a span Fell the bright tresses of his ...
— Helen of Troy • Andrew Lang
... fetch clear water out of the spring The little maid Margaret ran; From the stream to the castle's western wing It was but a bowshot span; On the sedgy brink where the osiers cling Lay a dead ...
— Poems • Adam Lindsay Gordon
... the span of a few brief seconds, the hopes of both these men were shattered. The one forgot even his greed in the panic of terror—the other was plunged into total forgetfulness of the past by a jagged fragment of rock which gashed a deep cut upon ...
— Tarzan and the Jewels of Opar • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... expected, as I found afterward, to be made mighty much of, but nobody minded them; but the best jest was, that when they saw themselves not regarded, they would go away, and it was horrible foule weather; and my Lady Batten walking through the dirty lane with new spicke and span white shoes, she dropped one of her galoshes in the dirt, where it stuck, and she forced to go home without one, at which she was horribly vexed, and I led her; and after vexing her a little more in mirth, I parted, and to Glanville's, where I knew Sir John Robinson, ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... contains a great deal, and means a great deal; and that, if we estimate things by a spiritual standard, a man's earthly being may contain more than all the cycles of the material world. From the best point of view, life is not merely a term of years and a span of action; it is a force, a current and depth of being. Indeed, considered in its most literal sense, as the vital spark of our animal organism, it is something more than a measurement of time;—it is a mysterious, informing essence. No man has ...
— The Crown of Thorns - A Token for the Sorrowing • E. H. Chapin
... of these gates, as they can be made with a less number of joints, and greater strength and stiffness secured with lighter materials, than in any other style of gate we know of. The principle is the one used in railroad bridges and roofs of great span, and our own experience with them, having built and tested all the gates here illustrated, is, that they possess very decided ...
— Woodward's Country Homes • George E. Woodward
... so charmed with this address that he ordered a little chair to be made, in order that Tom might sit upon his table, and also a palace of gold, a span high, with a door an inch wide, to live in. He also gave him a coach, drawn by ...
— Childhood's Favorites and Fairy Stories - The Young Folks Treasury, Volume 1 • Various
... much like it, tho the tower is simpler and the two rows of windows in the Fulton Street building become one row of great windows on Henry Street. But it has all stood the test of time. The old hand-hewn oak timbers still span the lofty ceiling, the glistening gray stone walls still stand four-square against all the winds that blow. The hand-made hinges and numbers are still on the pew doors, and the so-called slave galleries are still there, tho ...
— The Kirk on Rutgers Farm • Frederick Bruckbauer
... work is very diversified, since no two bridges are alike. At one time he might be ordered to span a stream in the midst of a populous country where every aid is at hand, and his next commission might be the building of a difficult bridge in a foreign wilderness far beyond ...
— Stories of Inventors - The Adventures Of Inventors And Engineers • Russell Doubleday
... considerable time after the tide had begun to flow, the artificers were occupied in removing the forge from the top of the building, to which the gangway or wooden bridge gave great facility; and, although it stretched or had a span of forty-two feet, its construction was extremely simple, while the roadway was perfectly firm and steady. In returning from this visit to the rock every one was pretty well soused in spray before reaching the tender at two o'clock p.m., where things awaited the landing party ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... night it was otherwise. Many vehicles came dashing down Tinplate Street: carriages, public and private, of every variety, from the rattletrap cab hired off the stand, or the decent coach from the livery stable, to the smart spick-and-span brougham, with its well-appointed horses and servants in neat livery. They all set down at the same door, and took up from it at any hour between midnight and dawn, waiting patiently in file in the wide street ...
— The Thin Red Line; and Blue Blood • Arthur Griffiths
... not pleased that she had undertaken it without her knowledge and consent, and fretted, and cast difficulties in the way, till Shenac, more harassed and unhappy than she had ever been before, offered to break the bargain and send back the wool. Her mother did not insist on this, however, and Shenac span on in the midst of her murmurings. Then Hamish took the mother away to visit her sister in the next township, and during their absence Shenac kept little Flora away from the school to do such little things as she could do about the house, and finished the wool by doing six days' ...
— Shenac's Work at Home • Margaret Murray Robertson
... alarms were given, but when at last the bridal party walked from the wings on to the stage, Dick's appearance provoked a little good-natured laughter, so respectable did he look in a spick-and-span new frock-coat and his tall hat. Kate never looked prettier; Mortimer said her own husband wouldn't ...
— A Mummer's Wife • George Moore
... sure, that on some hour Coquetting soft 'twixt sun and shower, He stooped and broke a daisy-flower With heart of tiny span, And bore it as a lover's dower ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 2 (of 4) • Various
... house was a great stone bridge, of lofty span, stretching across a little glen, in which ran a brown stream spotted with foam—the same that entered the frith beside the Seaton; not muddy, however, for though dark it was clear—its brown being a rich transparent hue, almost red, gathered from the peat bogs of the great moorland ...
— Malcolm • George MacDonald
... a certain woman who did not pay due reverence to Mother Friday, but set to work on a distaff-ful of flax, combing and whirling it. She span away till dinner-time, then suddenly sleep fell upon her—such a deep sleep! And when she had gone to sleep, suddenly the door opened and in came Mother Friday, before the eyes of all who were there, ...
— Russian Fairy Tales - A Choice Collection of Muscovite Folk-lore • W. R. S. Ralston
... boiling current toward a dark bend. The Canonita was nowhere to be seen. No living thing was visible. The narrow black gorge rose in sombre majesty to the everlasting sky. What was a mere human life or two in the span of eternity? I was about preparing to climb up on the bottom of the boat when I perceived Jones clinging to the ring in the stern, and in another second the Major and Jack shot up alongside as if from a gun. ...
— A Canyon Voyage • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh
... year—about three in the afternoon, by the clock, October Twenty-first, Eighteen Hundred Thirty-five. The day was Indian summer, warm and balmy. He sat there reading in the window of his office on Court Street, Boston, a spick-span new law-office, with four shelves of law-books bound in sheep, a green-covered table in the center, three armchairs, and on the wall a steel engraving of "Washington ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 7 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Orators • Elbert Hubbard
... kings and their magnificence breathe ever of romance, but kings could not be magnificent were it not for the labour of the conscientious common people, those who go daily to their task, asking nothing better than to live their little span in humble endeavour. The weavers, the tapissiers of that far-away time in Flanders are intensely appealing now when their beautiful work hangs before us to-day. They send us a friendly message down through the centuries. ...
— The Tapestry Book • Helen Churchill Candee
... teachers and by large parties in the Church, and is a logical sequence from the popular theology. It is not a great many years since people heard, it is said, the celebrated statement that "hell is paved with the skulls of infants not a span long!" Think of the everlasting bliss or misery of a helpless infant depending on the petty accident of whether it was baptized or not! There are hypothetical cases like the following: If one man had died a year earlier, when he was a saint, ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... Coffin's Point to-day, so that we can go there now whenever we can get the house ready. Then we shall have horses and vehicles more at our disposal; you may hear of our carriage and span yet, but I shall hate to leave here. This moon is lovely, and to-night the flats are covered with water by the full moon tide, and the sea looks as if it came ...
— Letters from Port Royal - Written at the Time of the Civil War (1862-1868) • Various
... fine, cool, bright one, and how we did appreciate it!) was spent by all hands in getting the ship spick and span for the inspection of visitors, who were sure to be ...
— A Gunner Aboard the "Yankee" • Russell Doubleday
... but the structures were in a sad state of dilapidation. One remarkable monument found at Kabah resembles a triumphal arch. It stands by itself on a ruined mound apart from the other structures. It is described as a "lonely arch, having a span of 14 feet," rising on the field of ruins "in solitary grandeur." Figure 41 ...
— Ancient America, in Notes on American Archaeology • John D. Baldwin
... speckle-backed beauties. The painting from which this engraving was taken was the work of Theodore Lane, who, although his work is limited to the short space of five or six years, seems to call for special mention by virtue of his tragic ending, the short span allotted to his life and labours, and the superiority of his talent and genius to those of many of his contemporaries. Lane was literally a comic artist of the nineteenth century, having been born at Isleworth in 1800. He was apprenticed to a colourer of prints ...
— English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century. - How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times. • Graham Everitt
... carriage and a fine black span. This expenditure involved a coachman, and to fill that position an old friend of Williams'—a talkative and officious old miner—was employed. She next secured a Chinese cook, the best to be had, and a girl to do the chamber-work. They were all busy as hornets, and Bertha ...
— Money Magic - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... and thou art young; the world is large and thou art small; Cease, atom of a moments span, To hold thyself ...
— The Kasidah of Haji Abdu El-Yezdi • Richard F. Burton
... shaken and powerless before this thing that had come to him. He knew that even his beloved bridges were as nothing when weighed against the smile in a girl's eyes and the word on a girl's lips. He realized that the most wonderful span in the world to him would be the thing that could help him to cross the chasm of fear and doubt that he felt lay between him and Pollyanna—doubt because of ...
— Pollyanna Grows Up • Eleanor H. Porter
... hopelessly. 'The girls in these parts are far too proud to be hired to work in a house. Why, the best folks in town mostly does their own work; there's Mrs. Reid, so rich, just has a woman to do the charing; and Eelan—that's the beauty, you know—makes the pies and keeps the house spick-and-span. But you couldn't keep your own house clean, could you, sir?—let alone the meals; and you wouldn't live long ...
— A Dozen Ways Of Love • Lily Dougall
... there happened to be only two Semper Augustuses in all Holland, one in Haarlem and one in Amsterdam. The Haarlem one was sold for twelve acres of building lots, and the Amsterdam one for a sum equal to $1,840,00, together with a new carriage, span of grey ...
— The Humbugs of the World • P. T. Barnum
... boys did not wear overalls, like Johnnie Green. But they did not seem to mind that. They knelt right down beside him in their spick-and-span velvet suits and stared curiously at ...
— The Tale of Buster Bumblebee • Arthur Scott Bailey
... in time does not exist until we reach the point of its beginning, but may appear in anticipation, in time perspective, when we approach it, the more distinctly, the closer we approach it, until we reach the threshold of the time span covered by the event, and the event begins to exist, the life is born. So to us, if we could move only from north to south, the house would begin to exist only when we reached its north door. That point would be the "birth" of the house. Passing through the span of space covered ...
— A Book of Exposition • Homer Heath Nugent
... country was setting in," and even the pilot suggested turning back to take refuge for a time. When Vasco da Gama heard of turning backward he cried that they should not speak such words, because as he was going out of the bar of Lisbon he had promised God in his heart not to turn back a single span's breadth of the way, and he would throw into the sea whosoever spoke such things. None could withstand such an iron will, and they struggled on to Mossel Bay, already discovered by Diaz. Here they landed "and bought a fat ox for three bracelets. This ox we dined ...
— A Book of Discovery - The History of the World's Exploration, From the Earliest - Times to the Finding of the South Pole • Margaret Bertha (M. B.) Synge
... fixed our faith firm as a rock upon our righteous cause, and upon the superior power and the inflexible will for victory that abide in the German nation. Nevertheless the deplorable fact remains, that the boundless egotism already mentioned has for that span of the future discernible to us destroyed the collaboration of the two nations which was so full of promise for the intellectual uplift of humanity. But the other party has willed it so. Upon England ...
— The Healing of Nations and the Hidden Sources of Their Strife • Edward Carpenter
... on her sharply. "Tons and lives!" he cried. "Tons and lives be damned! It's not for them she's been run to a thumb-span and tended like a sick baby. It's for the clean honesty of it, to do a captain's work like a wise captain and not soil a record. D'ye think I stump my bridge for forty-eight hours on end because of the underwriters and the deck ...
— The Second Class Passenger • Perceval Gibbon
... heart was great; for yet So royally was never strong man born, Nor queen so nobly bore as noble a thing As this my son was: such a birth God sent And such a grace to bear it. Then came in Three weaving women, and span each a thread, Saying This for strength and That for luck, and one Saying Till the brand upon the hearth burn down, So long shall this man see good days and live. And I with gathered raiment from the bed Sprang, and drew forth the brand, and cast on it Water, and trod the flame ...
— Atalanta in Calydon • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... fortune for himself and his bride, the father retired to San Antonio, whither the friends and cronies of his early days were drifting. There he settled down and proceeded to finish his allotted span exactly as suited him best. The rancher's ideal of an agreeable old age comprised three important items—to wit, complete leisure, unlimited freedom of speech, and two pints of rye whisky daily. He enjoyed ...
— Heart of the Sunset • Rex Beach
... pounds mine ear with noisy talk, Whose brazen gall no ire can balk And wearies me of life's short span? The accident insurance man. ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume III. (of X.) • Various
... old blackguard could no longer row out on the ship's port side and board her on the starboard, pretending to come from ocean's depths; and shave the novices with a rusty hoop and dab a soapy brush in their mouths. But champagne popped, the sexes flirted, and the sailors span fathomless yarns, and danced rattling hornpipes, fiddled to by the grave Fullalove. " If there is a thing I can dew, it's fiddle," said he. He and his friend, as he systematically called Vespasian, taught the crew Yankee steps, ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... thing! I knew how the philosophers had spoken; I repeated their musical phrases about the mortal span—yet never till now believed them. And this is all? A man's life can be so brief and so vain? Idly would I persuade myself that life, in the true sense, is only now beginning; that the time of sweat and fear was not ...
— The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft • George Gissing
... Bayport in the train, but the morning set for his departure was such a beautiful one that Mr. Peabody, who had the day before returned from the city, suggested driving over. So the open carriage, drawn by the Peabody "span," was brought around to the front steps, and the captain, bundled up until, as he said, he felt like a wharf rat inside a cotton bale, emerged from the house which had sheltered him for a weary month and climbed to the back seat. The attorney got in ...
— Cy Whittaker's Place • Joseph C. Lincoln
... presenting it very favorably for observation. It seemed here to be broken by vertical cracks into large rhomboidal blocks. Further up this creek in a wild and secluded spot, observed a Natural Bridge with six feet of this chert bed at its base, and Silicious Magnesian Limestone above. The span of this bridge is about thirty feet, an elevation of opening about fifteen feet above the water, the thickness of the rock above is about twelve feet, and width on top about fifteen feet. Two small streams come together, one from ...
— Cave Regions of the Ozarks and Black Hills • Luella Agnes Owen
... which would make me only still more unhappy. What were my thoughts amid the glorious scenery of my father-land? The hope alone of a happier future, which would have been mine but for this affliction! Oh! I could span the world were I only free from this! I feel that my youth is only now commencing. Have I not always been an infirm creature? For some time past my bodily strength has been increasing, and it is the same with my mental powers. I feel, though I cannot describe it, that I daily ...
— Beethoven's Letters 1790-1826, Volume 1 of 2 • Lady Wallace
... shop wanted livening up with a coat of paint. He would put new shelves up, run a partition across, and dress the windows like the shops down town. In his eager thoughts he saw the dingy shop transformed under his touch, spick and span, alive with customers, who jostled one another as they passed in and out, the coin ...
— Jonah • Louis Stone
... Bathos lie drowned in a heap, And Southey's last Pan has pillowed his sleep; That Felo de se who, half drunk with his Malmsey, Walked out of his depth and was lost in a calm sea, 10 Singing "Glory to God" in a spick and span stanza, The like (since Tom Sternhold was ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Vol. 7. - Poetry • George Gordon Byron
... and took a key from a box. "I'll show you your locker," he said; and presently Bonbright, minus his coat, was incased in the uniform of a laborer. Spick and span and new it was, and gave him a singularly uncomfortable feeling because of this fact. He wanted it grimed and daubed like the overalls of the men he saw about him. A boyish impulse to smear it moved him—but he was ashamed to ...
— Youth Challenges • Clarence B Kelland
... quickly the signs of the wind and weather were effaced, until the great, square-set house was all as spick-and-span as though it had been erected yesterday. There were abundant signs that money was no consideration to General Heatherstone, and that it was not on the score of retrenchment that he had taken ...
— The Mystery of Cloomber • Arthur Conan Doyle
... engineer, born in Laurenceburg, Indiana; designed ingenious boats for floating submerged ships; built with remarkable speed warships for the Federalists in 1861; constructed a steel bridge spanning the Mississippi at St. Louis, noteworthy for its central span of 520 ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... armour from their shoulders; some in dust Grovelled in terror 'neath their shields: the steeds Fled through the rout unreined of charioteers. In rapture of triumph charged the Amazons, With groan and scream of agony died the Greeks. Withered their manhood was in that sore strait; Brief was the span of all whom that fierce maid Mid the grim jaws of battle overtook. As when with mighty roaring bursteth down A storm upon the forest-trees, and some Uprendeth by the roots, and on the earth Dashes them down, the tail stems blossom-crowned, And snappeth some athwart the ...
— The Fall of Troy • Smyrnaeus Quintus
... end of its span, the fisheries came of age. Inequities were being ironed out, methods were being perfected, and planners were at work on ways of employing more and more of the fast-growing population in searching out and making available the bounty ...
— The Bounty of the Chesapeake - Fishing in Colonial Virginia • James Wharton
... Statesman whose far-seeing eyes Saw in the germ the nation that should be, Saw how a mighty empire should arise And span the continent from sea to sea, And building for the future, led the way With prescience and high courage, daring fate, An emperor's domain in a single day Bought for a purse of gold! a vast estate, From ...
— New York at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition, St. Louis 1904 - Report of the New York State Commission • DeLancey M. Ellis
... a couple of merchant captains, one asleep with his head on the table and little rings shining in his great red ears; the other very spick and span—of what they called the new school then. His name was Williams—Captain Williams of the Lion, which he part owned; a man of some note for the dinners he gave on board his ship. His eyes sparkled blue ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... heights around Briancon, especially towards the east. The Fort Janus is no less than 4000 ft. above the town. The parish church, with its two towers, was built 1703-1726, and occupies a very conspicuous position. The Pont d'Asfeld, E. of the town, was built in 1734, and forms an arch of 131 ft. span, thrown at a height of 184 ft. across the Durance. The modern town extends in the plain at the S.W. foot of the plateau on which the old town is built and forms the suburb of Ste Catherine, with the railway station, and an important ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various
... This great speed is another point that often gives rise to doubts, yet it is found to be equally the case with all animals who are taught: I cannot account for it—I can merely say that it is so. I have thought at times that the reason may lie in the fact that dogs and horses have but a short span of life in comparison to man's, and therefore, a briefer period of youth wherein to acquire their stock of learning; that this might account for an animal being quicker than a child, which has ampler ...
— Lola - The Thought and Speech of Animals • Henny Kindermann
... doth my she-advowson fly Incumbency? To sell thyself dost thou intend By candle's end, And hold the contrast thus in doubt, Life's taper out? Think but how soon the market fails, Your sex lives faster than the males; And if, to measure age's span, The sober Julian were th' account of man, Whilst you live ...
— Lives of the Poets, Vol. 1 • Samuel Johnson
... an old Mexican bridge near Tezcuco which seems to be the original Puente de las Bergantinas, the bridge where Cortes had the brigantines launched on the lake of Tezcuco. This bridge has a span of about twenty feet, and is curious as showing how nearly the Mexicans had arrived at the idea of the arch. It is made in the form of a roof resting on two buttresses, and composed of slabs of stone with the edges upwards, with mortar in the interstices; the slabs being sufficiently ...
— Anahuac • Edward Burnett Tylor
... convinced me that, though there might be a little risk, there was no paralyzing danger. I had forgotten the narrowness of the gully through which alone we could gain the cliffs. From the open span of beach where we were now standing, there was no chance of leaving the caves except as we had come to them, by a boat; for on each side a crag ran like a spur into the water. The comparatively open space permitted the tide to lap in ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma • Hesba Stretton
... far resigned to my lot that I feel small pain at the thought of having to part from what has been called the pleasant habit of existence, the sweet fable of life. I would not care to live my wasted life over again, and so to prolong my span. Strange to say, I have but little wish to be younger. I submit with a chill at my heart. I humbly submit because it is the Divine Will, and my appointed destiny. I dread the increase of infirmities that will make ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James
... it, which arose only from his great indolence of temper, and his continual itching after gaming. When he had money, he went to the gaming tables about town, and when reduced by losses sustained there, would put on an old ragged coat and get out to play at chuck, and span-farthing, amongst the boys in the street, by which, sometimes he got money enough to go to his old companions again. But this being a very uncertain recourse, he made use more frequently of picking pockets; for which being several times apprehended and committed to Bridewell, his friends, especially ...
— Lives Of The Most Remarkable Criminals Who have been Condemned and Executed for Murder, the Highway, Housebreaking, Street Robberies, Coining or other offences • Arthur L. Hayward
... luminous span, or through it where the crossing gullies ran, Mary Anerley rode at leisure, allowing her pony to choose his pace. That privilege he had long secured, in right of age, and wisdom, and remarkable force of character. Considering his time of life, ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various
... the water, these are now stopped to keep it in. Which is not only to nourish the Corn, but to kill the weeds. For they keep their Fields as clean as a Garden without a weed. Then when the Corn is grown about a span high, the Women come and weed it, and pull it up where it grew too thick, and transplant it where it wants. And so it stands overflown till the Corn be ripe, when they let out the water again to make it dry for reaping. They never use ...
— An Historical Relation Of The Island Ceylon In The East Indies • Robert Knox |
