"Span" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... chasms that shrewd people can bestride without such a structure. You can hire logic, in the shape of a lawyer, to prove anything that you want to prove. You can buy treatises to show that Napoleon never lived, and that no battle of Bunker-hill was ever fought. The great minds are those with a wide span, that couple truths related to, but far removed from, each other. Logicians carry the surveyor's chain over the track of which these are the true explorers. I value a man mainly for his primary relations with truth, as I understand truth,—not for any secondary artifice in handling ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... that roars where the rocket soars Is the song of the stellar flame; The dreams of Man and galactic span Are equal and much ...
— The Stoker and the Stars • Algirdas Jonas Budrys (AKA John A. Sentry)
... the crowd in the big room. Outside, the depot 'bus had just stopped in front of the hotel and a company of newly arrived guests were entering the corridor, while the bell-boys were running forward to relieve them of their luggage and lead them to the spick-and-span clerk ...
— The Winning of Barbara Worth • Harold B Wright
... tranquil prosperity. Red-cheeked emissaries of butcher, baker, and grocer, order-book in hand, knocked cheerily at kitchen doors, and went smiling away; the ponies they drove were well fed and frisky, their carts spick and span. The church of the parish, an imposing edifice, dated only from a few years ago, and had cost its noble founder a sum of money which any church-going parishioner would have named to you with proper awe. The population was largely female, ...
— The House of Cobwebs and Other Stories • George Gissing
... respectable mud, Where the divers of 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
... all the stories ever told By wild romancers, young or old, Into a thread were drawn, And from its cable coil unrolled, 'Twould span those misty hills of gold ...
— Poems - Vol. IV • Hattie Howard
... where Ladon ran Radiant, by many a rushy and rippling cove More known to glance of god than wandering man, He sang the strife of strengths divine that strove, Unequal, one with other, for a span, Who should be friends for ever in heaven above And here on pastoral earth: Arcadian Pan, And the awless lord of kings and shepherds, Love: All the sweet strife and strange With fervid counterchange Till one fierce wail through many a glade and grove Rang, and its ...
— Studies in Song • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... shall be An arch of peace, a radiant promise-bow, To span the gulf, and shed its cheering glow O'er the ...
— Purgatory • Mary Anne Madden Sadlier
... 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 ...
— English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century. - How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times. • Graham Everitt
... his acceptance, 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 drove for a dozen miles through a wooded and hilly country, and arrived ...
— The Junior Classics Volume 8 - Animal and Nature Stories • Selected and arranged by William Patten
... West Indian born—in the Great Church of Port of Spain; and he had no lack of hearers, and those attentive ones. The Great Church was always a pleasant sight, with its crowded congregation of every hue, all well dressed, and with the universal West Indian look of comfort; and its noble span of roof overhead, all cut from island timber—another proof of what the wood-carver may effect in the island hereafter. Certainly distractions were frequent and troublesome, at least to a newcomer. A large centipede would come out and take a hurried ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley
... I feel that my days are numbered and that my span of life will soon be done; but while I live I feel it my duty to cling to my demented husband, and to do all I can to turn him from the error of his ways. But I do so wish that my poor children could have my mother's care, when I am ...
— Sowing and Reaping • Frances Ellen Watkins Harper
... late summer, before the nineteenth century had reached one-third of its span, a young man and woman, the latter carrying a child, were approaching the large village of Weydon-Priors, in Upper Wessex, on foot. They were plainly but not ill clad, though the thick hoar of dust which had accumulated on their shoes and garments from an obviously long journey lent a disadvantageous ...
— The Mayor of Casterbridge • Thomas Hardy
... Stadacona escorting a bride; let us listen to W. D. Howells in the WEDDING JOURNEY. "Nothing, I think, more enforces the illusion of Southern Europe in Quebec than the Sunday-night promenading on the Durham (now Dufferin) Terrace. This is the ample span on the brow of the cliff to the left of the Citadel, the noblest and most commanding position in the whole city, which was formerly occupied by the old Castle of St. Louis, where dwelt the brave Count Frontenac and his splendid successors ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... whom there is any record, we must thank "the General," for it is in his ledgers that these first five names are found, noting some work done for Mount Vernon, usually of a repair nature. Salt spoons and ladles evidently saw hard service, or were kept so spick and span they had to go to the silversmith for frequent mending. In 1773 the Washington silver chest was the richer for a punch ladle made by William Dowdney. While this was in the making, one Edward Sandford was restoring a salt and mending ...
— Seaport in Virginia - George Washington's Alexandria • Gay Montague Moore
... Atwood, a little sharply, "it's quite proper that we should have something on our backs, and if we earn the money to put it there ourselves, I don't see why you should complain; as for ribbons, Sue has as good right to 'em as Roger to a span-new buggy that ain't good for anything but taking girls ...
— Without a Home • E. P. Roe
... on boundless hopes, O race of man, How angrily thou spurn'st all simpler fare! "Christ," some one says, "was human as we are; No judge eyes us from Heaven, our sin to scan; We live no more when we have done our span."— "Well, then, for Christ," thou answerest, "who can care? From sin, which Heaven records not, why forbear? Live we like brutes our life without a plan!" So answerest thou; but why not rather say, "Hath ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... on January 27, 1815. She died the day before her ninety-sixth birthday, and this editorial, from The Baltimore Sun, gives a fine picture of the changes in the world in the years covered by the span of her life: ...
— A Portrait of Old George Town • Grace Dunlop Ecker
... heat, Amid the silence of her dark retreat, Address'd her God,—"Almighty power divine! 'Tis thine to raise, and to depress, is thine; With honour to light up the name unknown, Or to put out the lustre of a throne. In my short span both fortunes I have prov'd, And though with ill frail nature will be mov'd, I'll bear it well: (O strengthen me to bear!) And if my piety may claim thy care; If I remember'd, in youth's giddy heat, And tumult of a court, ...
— The Poetical Works of Edward Young, Volume 2 • Edward Young
... offence. I only meant that you rooibaatjes did not come very well out of that war. I was there with Piet Uys, and it was a sight, I can tell you. A Zulu had only to show himself at night and one would see your regiments skreck (stampede) like a span of oxen when they wind a lion. And then they'd fire—ah, they did fire—anyhow, anywhere, but mostly at the clouds, there was no stopping them; and so, you see, I thought that you would like to turn your sword into a ploughshare, ...
— Jess • H. Rider Haggard
... to lessen their weight is by sweating themselves between blankets in a warm room; but this likewise is a practice by no means to be recommended, as it weakens the system by the excess of so general a stimulus, brings on a premature old age, and shortens the span of life; as may be further deduced from the quick maturity, and shortness of the lives, of the inhabitants of Hindostan, and other ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. II - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... mistresses it is different. If there is a hole in the cover of the old sofa down in my room, I don't care, and some time when I have time I mend it; but the company rooms upstairs must be spick and span, and that's what I ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various
... masterful life calls across the world a cry of liberty to pent-up dreams, to the ache of faith in all of us, "Here thou art my brother—this is thy heart that I have lived." A hero is immortalised because his life is every man's larger self. So through the day-span of our years—a tale that is never told—we wander on, the infinite heart of each of us prisoned in blood and flesh and the cry of us everywhere, throughout all being, "Give me room!" It cries to the composer, "Make a high wide place for me!" and on the edge of the silence between ...
— The Lost Art of Reading • Gerald Stanley Lee
... which criticises intellect, art, talent, fame, virtue, absurdity, and even truth; whoever has occupied that tribune erected by his own hands, fulfilled the functions of that magistracy to which he is self-appointed,—in short, whosoever has been, for however brief a span, that proxy of public opinion, looks upon himself when remanded to private life as an exile, and the moment a chance is offered to him puts out an eager hand to ...
— The Lesser Bourgeoisie • Honore de Balzac
... try to run away. Eight or ten small boys—for by now the troupe had grown in number and in volume of noise—trailed along, keeping step with their elderly patron and advising him shrilly regarding the management of his refractory span. ...
— From Place to Place • Irvin S. Cobb
... figures of this man carved upon rocks, one on the road by which one goes from the land of Ephesos to Phocaia, and the other on the road from Sardis to Smyrna. In each place there is a figure of a man cut in the rock, of four cubits and a span in height, holding in his right hand a spear and in his left a bow and arrows, and the other equipment which he has is similar to this, for it is both Egyptian and Ethiopian: and from the one shoulder to the other across the breast runs an inscription ...
— The History Of Herodotus - Volume 1(of 2) • Herodotus
... had never come to me in ten years, seemed now perfectly natural. I would return at once to that far off village where, for a brief hour, I had dwelt in a "Fool's Paradise," through which my way had lain but a brief span, and where I had passed, like the fabled bird, that "floats ...
— Told in a French Garden - August, 1914 • Mildred Aldrich
... the long ago the Snake, Horn, and Eagle people lived here (in Tusayan), but their corn grew only a span high, and when they sang for rain the cloud god sent only a thin mist. My people then lived in the distant Pa-lt Kw-bi in the South. There was a very bad old man there, who, when he met any one, would spit in his face, blow his nose upon him, and rub ordure upon him. He ravished ...
— A Study of Pueblo Architecture: Tusayan and Cibola • Victor Mindeleff and Cosmos Mindeleff
... mysterious, ancient world, and the great river valleys leading down to the marvelous Nile-land afar,—land of temples, ruins, pyramids,—cradle of civilization, grave of buried empires,—think, I say, of these millions condemned to live their brief, hopeless span of existence under such awful conditions! See them as they eat their mid-day meal. No delightful pause from pleasant labor; no brightly arrayed table; no laughing and loving faces around a plenteous board, with delicacies from all parts of the world; no agreeable ...
— Caesar's Column • Ignatius Donnelly
... this reprieve? Why 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 by the ...
— Lives of the Poets, Vol. 1 • Samuel Johnson
... peoples. Whatever they touch is necessarily crude at first, but constantly gaining as they gain facility in working. A precedent of some kind they must have, and they find it close at hand in the Roman basilicas. Uncertain, from the result of woful experiments, of arches of great span, they pack their columns close together and surmount them with sturdy little arches that have scarcely any thrust. This arcade of heavy columns carrying absurdly disproportionate arches is their only motive, ...
— The Brochure Series of Architectural Illustration, Volume 01, No. 04, April 1895 - Byzantine-Romanesque Windows in Southern Italy • Various
... deep and the guarda-costas; they rang on saloon-counters in the city of Tombstone, Arizona; they shone in faro-tents among the mountain diggings; the imagination flagged in following them, so wide were they diffused, so briskly they span to the turning of the wizard's crank. But here, there, or everywhere I could still tell myself it was all mine, and what was more convincing, draw substantial dividends. My fortune, I called it; and it represented, ...
— The Wrecker • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... parent and the child. The character of that population has greatly altered since; generations have been born on the soil, whose recollections of their progenitors across the Atlantic have dwindled to the smallest span; and the intermixture of races has since done everything but destroy all filial feeling, has in fact destroyed nearly all but the common language, whilst ultra-democracy has been steadily at work upon the young ...
— Canada and the Canadians, Vol. 2 • Richard Henry Bonnycastle
... pious mind. To change with every change of affairs betokeneth an unstable heart. But be thou steadfast, wholly established upon that which is good. Be not lifted and vainly puffed up because of temporal honour; but, with purified reason, understand the nothingness of thine own nature, and the span-length and swift flight of life here, and death the yoke-fellow of the flesh. If thou consider these things, thou shalt not be cast into the pit of arrogance, but shalt fear God, the true and heavenly King, and verily thou shalt be blessed. ...
— Barlaam and Ioasaph • St. John of Damascus
... links of human love and pity, Ye have bridged the sea of ruin, and spanned it with a span! She shall rise again from her ashes and build a fairer city, With a larger faith in God, and the Brotherhood ...
— The Coming of the Princess and Other Poems • Kate Seymour Maclean
... the religion and philosophy of the ancient world than for the earnest student to discover truth and wisdom under strange disguises. Some progress, however, has been made, even during the short span of life that we can remember. The Sacred Books of the East are no longer a mere butt for the invectives of missionaries or the sarcasms of philosophers. They have at last been recognized as historical documents, ay, as the most ancient documents in the history ...
— India: What can it teach us? - A Course of Lectures Delivered before the University Of Cambridge • F. Max Mueller
... What are they? A soul in chains, and a soul set free. Darkness and light, uncertainty and certainty! Warfare and peace! A railway journey and the great terminus! A span of time and immeasurable eternity! A bounded horizon and illimitable space! Earth and heaven! Satan and Christ! ...
— Gladys, the Reaper • Anne Beale
... gods concluded it in due time. Having completed that sacrifice of theirs on the breast of that foremost of mountains. Himavat, the deities attached to the gift of earth a sixth part of the merit arising from their sacrifice. The man who makes a gift of even a span of earth (unto a Brahmana) with reverence and faith, has never to languish under any difficulty and has never to meet with any calamity. By making a gift of a house that keeps out cold, wind, and sun, and that stand ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... myriads of trunks of all forms, upright, inclined, contorted, crossed in strange postures of menace and of conflict; some overthrown on the earth, like towers which had fallen bodily, and covered with a dense and confused mass of vegetation, which seemed like a furious throng, disputing the ground span by span; others collected in great groups, vertical and serrated, like trophies of titanic lances, whose tips touched the clouds; a superb grandeur, a prodigious disorder of colossal forms, the most majestically terrible spectacle which ...
— Cuore (Heart) - An Italian Schoolboy's Journal • Edmondo De Amicis
... in early bloom Thy son must fall, by too severe a doom; Sure to so short a race of glory born, Great Jove in justice should this span adorn: Honour and fame at least the thunderer owed; And ill he pays the promise of a god, If yon proud monarch thus thy son defies, Obscures my ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer
... tools,[ca] The broken tools, that Tyrants cast away By myriads, when they dare to pave their way With human hearts—to what?—a dream alone. Can Despots compass aught that hails their sway?[cb] Or call with truth one span of earth their own, Save that wherein at last they crumble bone ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron
... travellers see from the railway. Of the smaller racecourses few can be prettier; the long flank of a green hill, the white pavilion under dark pines, and the curving course picked out with fresh painted railings and green canvas—it is as spick and span as a lawn. Either in the summer, for the Eclipse Stakes, or in the spring for the steeplechases, most of the great English racehorses go to Sandown. Bendigo won the Eclipse Stakes of L10,000 for Mr. Hedworth Barclay in 1886—the ...
— Highways and Byways in Surrey • Eric Parker
... of a fictitious enthusiasm, and, speedily losing interest, he was brought back to the manor where he had his apartments, and put speechless and half dead to bed, actually dying the next day from this last over-exertion, scarce half a century of the span of ...
— Royal Palaces and Parks of France • Milburg Francisco Mansfield
... Budge engaged the rooms, and speedily arrived to take possession, bringing with him a spick-and-span new fishing-rod and basket. He did not know much about fishing, but he enjoyed himself just as thoroughly as if he did; and he laughed so good-humouredly at his own Cockney blunders, as he called them, that Thomas ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 448 - Volume 18, New Series, July 31, 1852 • Various
... 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 ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli
... disappointment of the hope of fortune must needs have come to Selwyn at last, they made shift to resign themselves, and were wont to talk freely of the dead with that affectionate and immediate interest which seems to prolong the span of a mortal's day on earth, like the tender suffusive radiance of the ...
— The Mystery of Witch-Face Mountain and Other Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock
... tempt you to be unfaithful to your choice. Tempt you to be of two minds, to turn aside, to turn back. For, so surely as you do, you will find the hell of disappointment, the hell of failure and regret, waiting wide-mouthed to swallow you, and whatever span of life may remain ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... reappearance was made known to the world. In his English home Logan sedulously nursed him. A more generous diet than he had ever known before did wonders for the marquis, though he peevishly remonstrated against every bottle of wine that was uncorked. He did live for the span which he deemed necessary for his patriotic purpose, and peacefully expired, his last words being ...
— The Disentanglers • Andrew Lang
... left 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 ...
— Letters from Port Royal - Written at the Time of the Civil War (1862-1868) • Various
... (anil. Span. indigo). First prepared from indigo by means of caustic potash, found in coal, 1834. Manufactured on a large scale after Perkin's discovery of ...
— Vegetable Dyes - Being a Book of Recipes and Other Information Useful to the Dyer • Ethel M. Mairet
... 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 ...
— The Story of the Outlaw - A Study of the Western Desperado • Emerson Hough
... rich; that, certes, I confess; But, natheless, well born and nobly bred; I'm read by both the people and noblesse, Throughout the world: 'That's Clement,' it is said. Men live their span; but I shall ne'er be dead. And thou—thou hast thy meadow, well, and spring, Wood, field, and castle—all that wealth can bring. There's just that difference 'twixt thee and me. But what I am thou couldst not ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume IV. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... 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 ...
— Anahuac • Edward Burnett Tylor
... was to bear strange and unexpected fruit. But though Elizabeth carried the reflex of the anxiety of those about her, she was scarcely sixteen, and youth and joy and life claimed her attention and the affairs of her stage in life's span crowded out the ...
— The Wind Before the Dawn • Dell H. Munger
... persons in a small way; by a gesture, an expression, a look, cloaked too very often with all the character of profound deference. The old nobility of Spain delighted to address each other only by their names, when in the presence of a spick-and-span grandee; calling each other, "Infantado," "Sidonia," "Ossuna," and then turning round with the most distinguished consideration, and appealing to the Most ...
— Sybil - or the Two Nations • Benjamin Disraeli
... 2 A span is all that we can boast, An inch or two of time; Man is but vanity and dust In all his ...
— The Psalms of David - Imitated in the Language of The New Testament - And Applied to The Christian State and Worship • Isaac Watts
... was a long-bladed one,—half knife, half sword,—in fact, a jungle knife. The hatchet was not larger than an Indian tomahawk; but with these weapons Karl Linden believed he could build a bridge of one hundred feet span! ...
— The Plant Hunters - Adventures Among the Himalaya Mountains • Mayne Reid
... in public, the more apparent is his devotion. It is a Roman-chariot-wheel idea, which degrades both the man and the woman in the eyes of the spectators. I wrote to Rachel, and said in the letter, "One horse in the span always does most of the pulling, you know, especially uphill." And Rachel wrote back, "Wouldn't I just like to drive ...
— The Love Affairs of an Old Maid • Lilian Bell
... soon crammed with an edifying collection of rattles, great and small. Delorier, with his whip, also came in for a share of the praise. A day or two after this he triumphantly produced a small snake about a span and a half long, with one infant rattle at the ...
— The Oregon Trail • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... "we'll wash the breakfast dishes, and sweep and dust the room, and make everything spic and span to surprise your Mother and Father ...
— Grasshopper Green and the Meadow Mice • John Rae
... and rafters a' did dirl. Coffins stood round, like open presses, That shawed the dead in their last dresses, And, by some devilish cantraip sleight, Each in its cauld hand held a light: By which heroic Tam was able To note, upon the haly table, A murderer's banes, in gibbet-airns; Twa span-lang, wee, unchristened bairns; A thief, new-cutted frae a rape— Wi' his last gasp his gab did gape; Five tomahawks, wi' bluid red-rusted; Five scimitars, wi' murder crusted; A garter which a babe had strangled; A knife a father's throat had mangled, Whom, his ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum
... It seemed as though he were hesitating whether he would say a word more to this Major who in India talked of twenty-one years as a long span of time. But there was no one else to whom he could confide his fears. If Dewes was not brilliant, he was at all ...
— The Broken Road • A. E. W. Mason
... theological subjects, somewhat, she felt sure, beyond Margaret's comprehension. She lived on dry crusts for many a day to sanction her extravagance in purchasing several books, one after the other, suited to the little maiden's taste. Margaret was delighted to receive them, and while Janet sat and span she read them aloud to her, and amply rewarded was the kind nurse for her self-denial. Not dreaming that Margaret could possibly educate herself, she still continued turning in her mind how that desirable object should ...
— Janet McLaren - The Faithful Nurse • W.H.G. Kingston
... receive, or take into it, the head of a man; his stomach, seven or eight inches broad. He is of a slow motion; and usually lies or lurks close in the mud; and has a moveable string on his head, about a span or near unto a quarter of a yard long; by the moving of which, which is his natural bait, when he lies close and unseen in the mud, he draws other smaller fish so close to him, that he can suck them into his mouth, and so ...
— The Complete Angler • Izaak Walton
... the Colonel and his friend returned, and the most anxious could find nothing in their appearance to justify their gloomy fears. They had never looked so spick and span and prosperous within the memory of Upham, for both of them were clad in glossiest new broadcloth, of city cut, and both wore silk bell-hats, which gave them the air of London dandies. Jennings, moreover, displayed ...
— Jerome, A Poor Man - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... distribution of happiness in the life of the individual is not one to be ignored. If we are concerned only with the quantity of happiness, may we not take as the ethical precept "a short life and a merry one"—provided the brief span of years be merry enough, and there be no objection to the choice on the score of ...
— A Handbook of Ethical Theory • George Stuart Fullerton
... names of those who sold Godfrey's Cordial in nearby towns. Even at that, this appeal, consisting merely of a list of illnesses, lacked the cleverness of contemporary English nostrum advertising. In the whole span of the Boston News-Letter, beginning in 1704, it was not until 1763 that a bookstore pulled out the stops with half a column of lively prose in behalf of Dr. Hill's four unpatented nostrums.[41] ...
— Old English Patent Medicines in America • George B. Griffenhagen
... justice, the wretched criminal reached one of the bridges that span the Seine. Climbing to the parapet, he gazed down into the dark and turbid flood, now black as midnight, that rolled beneath the yawning arch. There was no star in the sky, and here and there only a dim light twinkled, reflected in the muddy wave. Daylight was beginning ...
— The Three Brides, Love in a Cottage, and Other Tales • Francis A. Durivage
... she told them! But twice in her life she had left the Cheniere Caminada, and then for the briefest span. All her years she had squatted and waddled there upon the island, gathering legends of the Baratarians and the sea. The night came on, with the moon to lighten it. Edna could hear the whispering voices of dead men and the click ...
— The Awakening and Selected Short Stories • Kate Chopin
... very fine white muslin, edged with delicate lace, so shaped with consummate skill that, though the snowy folds seemed to lie loosely within the girdle that confined them at the waist, no part of the effect of the round elastic slimness of the waist was lost; open at the neck, from a point about a span beneath the collar-bone, it allowed the whole of the noble white column of the grandly-formed throat to be visible from its base above the bosom to the opening out of the exquisite lines about the nape of the ...
— A Siren • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... at the left fore wheel behind Mr. Jenks' four span of mules, trailing my eighteen-foot tapering lash and occasionally well-nigh cutting off my own ear when I tried to throw it, I played the teamster—although sooth to say there was little of play in the job, on that road, at that time of ...
— Desert Dust • Edwin L. Sabin
... the captain to go to 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 ...
— Cy Whittaker's Place • Joseph C. Lincoln
... would I attempt to say why the artists chose it and why, because they did, we should, for it was then the dirtiest, noisiest, and most crowded trattoria in Venice, though the last time I was there, years afterwards, it was so spick and span, with another room and more waiters to relieve the congestion, that I could not believe it really was the Panada and, with the inconsistency natural under the circumstances, did not ...
— Nights - Rome, Venice, in the Aesthetic Eighties; London, Paris, in the Fighting Nineties • Elizabeth Robins Pennell
... well fitted out, spick and span in fresh carpets and paint, and crowded to the utmost capacity for comfort. Every stateroom was full; each seat at the tables occupied. Not a foot of space above or below decks was left unused, but provision was made for all, and ...
— A Woman who went to Alaska • May Kellogg Sullivan
... plains. The greatest whale that swims the sea Does instantly my power obey. In vain from me the sailor flies, The quickest ship I can surprise, And turn it as I have a mind, And move it against tide and wind. Nay, bring me here the tallest man, I'll squeeze him to a little span; Or bring a tender child, and pliant, You'll see me stretch him to a giant: Nor shall they in the least complain, Because my magic ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... justify an acrimony of style, which had been gently blamed by the more unbiassed German; "Paullo acrius quam velis - - -,perstrinxit." But I cannot forgive myself the contemptuous treatment of a span who, with all his faults, was entitled to my esteem; [Note: The Divine Legation of Moses is a monument, already crumbling in the dust, of the vigour and weakness of the human mind. If Warburton's new argument proved anything, it would be a demonstration ...
— Memoirs of My Life and Writings • Edward Gibbon
... pisonia, close to the lagoon. One gigantic specimen of this last species, which we stopped a moment to admire, could not have been less than twenty feet in girth. Max, Morton, Arthur, and myself, could not quite span it, taking hold of hands, and Johnny had to join the ring, to make it complete. For several hours we continued our journey pretty steadily, encountering no living thing, except tern, gannets, and other sea-birds, ...
— The Island Home • Richard Archer
... and I can never think sadly of the brave-hearted happy Irishman. He was too full of the sunny joy of existence, his heart beat with too much of good-will toward men, to be remembered otherwise than as a bright-faced, sweet-spirited boy whose span of years was short. How he ever endured the hardships and reached Springvale again is a miracle, and I wonder even now, how, waiting patiently for the inevitable, he could go peacefully through the hours, ...
— The Price of the Prairie - A Story of Kansas • Margaret Hill McCarter
... the coarseness of those stockings as I drew them on. The shoes, too, were of the clumsiest make; they were large for me, which perhaps accounted for their extreme heaviness. I was a bit of a dandy; always priding myself upon my spick and span get-up. No doubt this made me critical, but certainly the tweed of which the clothes were made was the roughest thing of its kind I had ever handled. I got into them, however, without any comment, only remarking, when my toilet was finished, that I ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 28, April 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... faces saddened, older than they should be, And wiser than a lived-out span of years; One wonders what those self same faces would be, If they had never looked on pain—if tears Had never been their portion; if the morrow, Had never held the pallid ghost of care— Child faces, graven deep with worlds of sorrow, Until the light ...
— Cross Roads • Margaret E. Sangster
... that buys a new horse, in a general way, is in a great hurry to try him. There is sumthin' very takin' in a new thing. A new watch, a new coat, no, I reckon it's best to except a new spic and span coat (for it's too glossy, and it don't set easy, till it's worn awhile, and perhaps I might say a new saddle, for it looks as if you warn't used to ridin', except when you went to Meetin' of a Sabbaday, and kept it covered all the week, as a gall does her bonnet, to save it from the flies); ...
— Nature and Human Nature • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... an architect of Shrewsbury, was first employed to prepare a design of the intended structure, which is still preserved. Although Mr. Pritchard proposed to introduce cast-iron in the arch of the bridge, which was to be of 120 feet span, it was only as a sort of key, occupying but a few feet at the crown of the arch. This sparing use of cast iron indicates the timidity of the architect in dealing with the new material—his plan exhibiting a desire to effect a compromise between ...
— Industrial Biography - Iron Workers and Tool Makers • Samuel Smiles
... have been realizing, will have to be refurbished for its coming guest. We have grown a bit shoddy about the edges here. It's hard to keep a house spick and span, with two active-bodied children running about it. And my heart, I suppose, has not been in that work of late. But I've been on a tour of inspection, and I realize it's time to reform. So Struthers and I are ...
— The Prairie Child • Arthur Stringer
... dolce far niente kind of existence that was most captivating, although ruffled at times by troubles with the many Indians on all sides. The days sped by, each one making but the slightest notch in the span of life. Juana continued her teaching, riding to the mission every day, where she spent the morning. During the rest of the day, after returning home, she busied herself about the house in all domestic ...
— Old Mission Stories of California • Charles Franklin Carter
... provinces, factories growing larger than cities; they meant the empire of the slum. They meant a degree of detailed repetition and dehumanised division of labour, to which no man born would surrender his brief span in the sunshine, if he could hope to beat his ploughshare into a sword. The nations of the earth were not to surrender to the Kaiser; they were to surrender to Krupp, his master and theirs; the French, the British, the ...
— The Crimes of England • G.K. Chesterton
... afraid," he heard him say to her; "but stay and watch with me. Thou mayst live twice the span of my life, and see nothing of human interest equal to this; and there may be revelations more. Let us stay to ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace
... very near the duck rock without displacing the duck may also prove disastrous to the thrower. Should a stone fall within a hand span (stretching from finger tip to thumb) of the duck rock without knocking off the duck, the guard challenges the thrower by shouting "Span!" whereupon he proceeds to measure with his hand the distance between the duck rock and the stone. Should the distance be ...
— Games for the Playground, Home, School and Gymnasium • Jessie H. Bancroft
... from the end of the thumb to the end of the forefinger (both extended)—about equivalent to the English span. ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XX, 1621-1624 • Various
... us to span the narrow stretch of water that separated us from our late antagonist; and upon climbing the side we were received at the gangway by an officer of some twenty-five years of age, whose head was swathed ...
— A Middy of the King - A Romance of the Old British Navy • Harry Collingwood
... dysentery, typhoid, small pox, and many dietary and metabolic diseases. Since 1880, the medical sciences have accomplished a total net saving of human life from all diseases which, if equally distributed among the population, would add sixteen years to the life span of each person. In 1880, the average duration of human life, that is, the average age at which death occurred, was 41.78 years. In 1925, the average duration of life was 58.29 years. In other words, those born ...
— The Necessity of Atheism • Dr. D.M. Brooks
... 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 time and seems ...
— Lola - The Thought and Speech of Animals • Henny Kindermann
... The dozen peers are nothing short of that, With one accord join battle all the Franks. Pagans are slain by hundred, by thousand, Who flies not then, from death has no warrant, Will he or nill, foregoes the allotted span. The Franks have lost the foremost of their band, They'll see no more their fathers nor their clans, Nor Charlemagne, where in the pass he stands. Torment arose, right marvellous, in France, Tempest ...
— The Song of Roland • Anonymous
... a day or an hour will bring forth. For many years one may be permitted to move on "the even tenor of his way," without anything of momentous import occurring to mark the passage of his little span of time as it sweeps him onward to eternity. At another period of life, events, it may be of the most startling and abidingly impressive nature, are crowded into a few months or weeks, or even days. So it was now with our travellers on the African river. ...
— The Red Eric • R.M. Ballantyne
... desire will grow more stormy, the tree itself will be as a prison to thee, thou wilt quit thy cell and give up thy nature to fly out and mingle among men. Then the years that would have belonged to thee will be contracted to half the span of the ephemeral fly, that lives but a day: one night, and thy life-taper shall be blown out—the leaves of the tree will wither and be blown away, ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... in years, but not enough of them," she said, irritated that I had asked her about her own span. I knew I shouldn't have said it. She had read her own future and found it wanting. "But death hovers close in it," she went on. "You know I don't get clear pictures, Lefty, just a feeling. Death is very, very close. And ...
— The Right Time • Walter Bupp
... annihilated. Seeing even the hoariest ash-flake that the pyre Drops, and forgets the thing was once afire And gave its heart to feed the pile's full flame Till its own heart its own heat overcame, Outlives its own life, though by scarce a span, As such men dying outlive themselves in man, Outlive themselves for ever; if the heat Outburn the heart that kindled it, the sweet Outlast the flower whose soul it was, and flit Forth of the body of it Into some new shape of a strange perfume More potent than its light live ...
— Songs of the Springtides and Birthday Ode - Taken from The Collected Poetical Works of Algernon Charles - Swinburne—Vol. III • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... to turn upon the subtile malignity of Fanny Matilda's smiles, Fanny Matilda being there present, in less time than it takes to tell it twenty crayon smiles writhed and wriggled upon the spick-span cloth. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December, 1885 • Various
... marshes, how candid and simple and nothing-withholding and free Ye publish yourselves to the sky and offer yourselves to the sea! Tolerant plains, that suffer the sea and the rains and the sun, Ye spread and span like the catholic man who hath mightily won God out of knowledge and good out of infinite pain And sight out of blindness and purity out of ...
— Southern Literature From 1579-1895 • Louise Manly
... time to fill your morning bath; for the most part, besides, it soaks unseen through the moss; and yet for the sake of auld lang syne, and the figure of a certain GENIUS LOCI, I am condemned to linger awhile in fancy by its shores; and if the nymph (who cannot be above a span in stature) will but inspire my pen, I would gladly carry ...
— Memories and Portraits • Robert Louis Stevenson
... he became a solace for many men. And in after times the God of creation, Redeemer of men, changed his name, and he was called Saint Paul, and of the teachers of 505 the law no one of all those, or man or woman born into the world, was ever better than he beneath the span of the heavens, even though upon the hill he bade crush Stephen, thy brother, ...
— The Elene of Cynewulf • Cynewulf
... oxen, which are, I do believe, the most foolish animals under the sun, a sheep being a very Solomon compared to them; and it is by no means uncommon for a lion to get in such a position that a herd or span of oxen may wind him, skrek, break their reims, and rush off into the bush. Of course, once there, they are helpless in the dark; and then the lion chooses the one that he loves best and ...
— A Tale of Three Lions • H. Rider Haggard
... there were councils which gave their decisions in accordance with the highest ideal of human justice before there were any cities on this continent; before there were bridges to span the Mississippi; before this network of railroads was dreamed of! There were primitive communities upon the very spot where Chicago or New York City now stands, where men were as children, innocent of all the crimes ...
— Indian Heroes and Great Chieftains • [AKA Ohiyesa], Charles A. Eastman
... conception was over. I swear to you that death alone—and I believe that nothing is further aloof—shall prevent my giving this country to Russia before five years have passed, and within another brief span the trade of China and Japan. It is a glorious destiny for a man—one man!—to pass into history as the Russian of his century who has done most to add to the extent and the wealth and the power of his empire! Does that sound vainglorious, ...
— Rezanov • Gertrude Atherton
... brow, and removed the tray and the plate of broken victuals. What had passed between them neither he nor Zora would afterwards relate; but Wiggleswick spent the whole of that night and the following days in unremitting industry, so that the house became spick and span as his own well-remembered prison cells. There also was a light of triumph in Zora's eyes when she entered a few moments afterwards with the tea-tray, which caused Sypher to smile and a wicked feeling of content to ...
— Septimus • William J. Locke
... immediately joined the party, and through his intervention, before night, four excellent wagons with their tilts and canvas coverings, and four span of oxen of fourteen each, were bought and promised to be brought down and delivered up in good order, as soon as they had carried up the freights with which they ...
— The Mission • Frederick Marryat
... by the span-new silken affair with the golden head, which, as I have narrated supra, I was so lucky to obtain promiscuously after witnessing the Adelphi of the Westminster college boys, I naturally protested vehemently against such arbitrary and tyrannical regulations, urging the risk of my ...
— Baboo Jabberjee, B.A. • F. Anstey
... Falk, Harvey, Kolping, Hesse, Paulinus, Strauss, and Wolff give descriptions of tails. Blanchard says he saw a tail fully a span in length: and there is a description in 1690 of a man by the name of Emanuel Konig, a son of a doctor of laws who had a tail half a span long, which grew directly downward from the coccyx and was coiled ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... stop to question the probability of a span thus afflicted being driven on so long a journey; but asked ...
— The Young Surveyor; - or Jack on the Prairies • J. T. Trowbridge
... Mr. Reginald B. Span, in a most interesting article called "Some Glimpses of the Unseen," that appeared in the Occult Review for ...
— Animal Ghosts - Or, Animal Hauntings and the Hereafter • Elliott O'Donnell
... ran upstairs to dress. He wondered if the Wolf patrol would get another perfect score. He paused in the act of brushing his hair. A thought that he could not push aside popped into his brain. Would Tim come spick and span? ...
— Don Strong, Patrol Leader • William Heyliger
... why do I see that all knowledge is vain; That Science finds Error still keep in her train; That Imposture or Darkness, with Doubt and Surmise, Will mislead, will perplex, and then baffle the wise, Who often, when labours have shorten'd their span, Declare—not to know—is ...
— Poems • Matilda Betham
... desk 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 do ...
— Youth Challenges • Clarence B Kelland
... much leisure and famous spirits. "In the animal world," he exclaims,[15] "what happiness reigns! What ease, grace, beauty, leisure, and content! Watch these living specks as they glide through their forests of algae, all 'without hurry and care,' as if their 'span-long lives' really could endure for the thousand years that the old catch pines for. Here is no greedy jostling at the banquet that nature has spread for them; no dread of each other; but a leisurely inspection of the field, that shows neither the pressure of hunger nor the dread ...
— The Beauties of Nature - and the Wonders of the World We Live In • Sir John Lubbock
... old wooden Howe truss bridge, which had become inadequate to the increasing traffic. The new bridge opens like a fan towards the freight yard at Pittsburg being at the narrowest part, next to the main span 55 feet wide. The river is crossed with spans averaging 1531/2 feet in the clear, with a bearing of five feet on each pier. The principle of the construction is known as the lattice girder plan, with vertical stiffening. The work was executed under the superintendence ...
— Scientific American, Vol. 17, No. 26 December 28, 1867 • Various
... the toll-bridge to the town proper he passed two brown-shirted militiamen, lounging on the rail of the middle span. They grinned at him, and, recognizing the outsider from his clothes, one of ...
— The Call of the Cumberlands • Charles Neville Buck
... 'bathe their countenance'; and when to this notice it be added that another hymn praises them as the 'shining chiefs' of the ancient city of Eridu, it will be apparent that the conceptions attached to this group span the ...
— The Religion of Babylonia and Assyria • Morris Jastrow
... the three met again at "Breezy Inn." Each was freshly attired in a spick-and-span clean gingham, and ...
— Marjorie's Vacation • Carolyn Wells
... floated out to the front line. The pier was drawn quickly into position, and as many men as could work with freedom soon had the flooring spiked down. The actual bridging commenced at eight o'clock; the span was complete at ten minutes after twelve. The extra ten minutes were accounted for by the fact that on one or two occasions passing bodies of other troops necessitated a temporary cessation ...
— A History of The Nations and Empires Involved and a Study - of the Events Culminating in The Great Conflict • Logan Marshall
... as she had behaved for the last fifty nights, like a lunatic humming top. Now it had steadied itself in the intensity of its speed; the little humming-top was sleeping. Poppy, as she span, seemed to be standing, her feet rooted, her body swaying delicately from the hips, like a flower rocked by the wind, the light of her flickering flamewise. There was a stir, a wave, as if the heart of the house had heaved. Pit and gallery breathed hard. Rickman leaned forward with clouded eyes ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair
... newer and stronger far, still remained standing. But even from that distance Stern could quite plainly see, without the telescope, that the Williamsburg Bridge had "buckled" downward and that the farther span of the Blackwell's Island ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... traveller in this fashion. In his modern cities he has seen greater things; but here in Africa, where men build so squat and punily, cowering under the heat upon the parched ground, so noble and so considerable a span, carved as men can carve under sober and temperate skies, catches the mind and clothes it with a sense of the strange. And of these emotions the strongest, perhaps, is that which most of those who travel to-day go seeking; the enchantment of mountains; the air by which we know them for ...
— Hills and the Sea • H. Belloc
... the Eight Scholars spans the canal narrowly. On the gray stone of its arch are carvings in low relief, and the curve of its span is pleasing to the eye. No one knows how old is the Bridge of ...
— Profiles from China • Eunice Tietjens
... to think that over," muttered Jack, as he drew on a spick-and-span uniform blouse. "I don't know whether there'll be any use in trying to find that mulatto. I haven't the least idea where his place is. Even if I found it, it's ten to one I wouldn't find the ...
— The Submarine Boys and the Middies - The Prize Detail at Annapolis • Victor G. Durham
... second to the third epoch of civilisation. In the future the centres of civilisation will have to be sought in proximity to the equator; while those countries which, during the last centuries—a short span of time—have held up the banner of human progress will gradually ...
— Freeland - A Social Anticipation • Theodor Hertzka
... call him a man," said Buck Denham. "Got nothing to do but a bit of driving now and then and to give a shout at his span, and naturally I trusted him as I was keeping my eye on the oxen to keep his on the two forelopers. I let him do it because he understands their lingo better than ...
— Dead Man's Land - Being the Voyage to Zimbambangwe of certain and uncertain • George Manville Fenn
... could neither balance nor run. She stood for a moment on the oscillating span, then threw up her hands, and with a scream she plunged into the waters of ...
— Dorian • Nephi Anderson
... spandrils throughout are relieved with 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
... with so many other brief creatures that brightened for a moment in the gloom and then sank away into the stormy heart of nature. And Love contended with Death, and the little labors of man helped Death to crush Love; and so that moment of existence, that brief span, became a mere brute struggle, a clash, a fight, a thing ...
— The Nine-Tenths • James Oppenheim
... Starting from the hills of Maine when a lad, he had kept moving, each time farther west, farther from his native valley. His life, measured by the inventions he had witnessed, the progress he had shared, covered an enormous span. ...
— A Daughter of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... hummings chime and knell About her silent cell, Until at last, full with the vital ray, She winged away, And, proud with life and sense, Heaven's rich expense, Esteemed (vain things!) of two whole elements As mean, and span-extents. Shall I then think such providence will be Less friend to me, Or that he can endure to be unjust Who keeps his covenant ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... box down on the ground: it burst open with the shock, and out stepped a little old man. He was only one span high, but his beard was a span and a quarter long, ...
— Tales Of The Punjab • Flora Annie Steel |
