"Speck" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... to fire, and as I did so I saw that two of the French passengers had their telescopes fixed upon the object at which, after taking very careful aim, speck ...
— Nat the Naturalist - A Boy's Adventures in the Eastern Seas • G. Manville Fenn
... the sky busies itself with tender cares for its brood. Then, there is gentleness along with the terribleness. The strong beak and claw, the gaze that can see so far, and the mighty spread of wings that can lift it till it is an invisible speck in the blue vault, go along with the instinct of paternity: and the fledglings in the nest look up at the fierce beak and bright eyes, and know no terror. The impression of this blending of power and gentleness is greatly deepened, as it seems to me, if we notice that it is the male bird that ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... be said of even the smallest occurrence in the world that it can be fully understood only when the reflection of great cosmic events is recognized in it. Otherwise its inner nature remains just as unintelligible as Raphael's Sistine Madonna would be for one who could see only a small blue speck, while the rest of ...
— An Outline of Occult Science • Rudolf Steiner
... into his coat pocket for the silver cigarette case which, as a recent acquisition, was the pride of his soul. He had just succeeded in lighting a cigarette when, borne upon the wind, he heard once more the sound of hoofs and wheels and saw in the distance a speck of ...
— The Portygee • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... library (225 feet long by 150) the only man Mrs. Chuff saw, was Tiggs. He was lying on a crimson-velvet sofa, reading a French novel of Paul de Kock. It was a very little book. He is a very little man. In that enormous hall he looked like a mere speck. As the ladies passed breathless and trembling in the vastness of the magnificent solitude, he threw a knowing, killing glance at the fair strangers, as much as to say, 'Ain't I a fine fellow?' They thought so, ...
— The Book of Snobs • William Makepeace Thackeray
... the old Man—forty years long in this wise— His housekeeper was wont to scold, Look through the window and kill flies. 'Twas plain—an oaken floor ye scan, Two cupboards, table, soft divan, And not a speck of dirt descried. Oneguine oped the cupboards wide. In one he doth accounts behold, Here bottles stand in close array, There jars of cider block the way, An almanac but eight years old. His uncle, busy man indeed, No other ...
— Eugene Oneguine [Onegin] - A Romance of Russian Life in Verse • Aleksandr Sergeevich Pushkin
... but when they were shown into a large outer room, and were told it was the cow-stable, they had no words with which to express their astonishment. They would have said it was the show-room of the place. There was not a speck on the whitewashed walls; the pine ceiling was so clean it fairly glistened; there were crisp, white muslin curtains at the windows. The raised earthen floor was covered with pure white sand, arranged in fancy designs. There were some small round tables standing ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, Nov 1877-Nov 1878 - Scribner's Illustrated • Various
... puffed and buffeted for about forty minutes before we arrived at the little speck of an island that is Quarantine. Long before we were there we sighted the great La Montaigne near the group of buildings on the island, where she had been waiting since early morning for the tide and the customs officials. The tug steamed alongside, ...
— The Poisoned Pen • Arthur B. Reeve
... picaninny's cry; surrounded as we were by a boundless sea of sand, it made one think how small a speck our party was on the face of the earth; it somehow took one's thoughts back to civilisation and crowded cities, and one felt that it was not just very certain if one would see such things again; and how little it would take to wipe us out, like gnats squashed on a vast window-pane! ...
— Spinifex and Sand - Five Years' Pioneering and Exploration in Western Australia • David W Carnegie
... of me! I've hed too much. I ain't a speck thankful! I'm mightily t'other thing, whatever 'tis. Write to her yourself, if you're a mind tu. You can make a better fist at it, anyways. Comes as nateral to women to lie as sap to run. I'll be etarnally blessed ef I touch paper for to do it." ...
— The Wit of Women - Fourth Edition • Kate Sanborn
... would have been unworthy of notice had they not resembled the small cloudy speck, which, though scarcely visible in the distant horizon, approaches, and swells, and bursts over the head in a storm. The beginning contest between the Earl and the Mowbray family, the interest which the worthy Mr. Glibly had thought proper to take in me ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... Ripley. Jest kinder stow them bags away. I'll take two an' leave them three others. Goodbye. I must be gittin' home to Ripley. He'll want his supper on time." And off up the road the indomitable little figure trudged, head held down to the cutting blast. Little snow fly, a speck on a measureless expanse, crawling along with painful breathing and slipping, sliding steps- "Gittin' home ...
— Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland
... Aurelian bring half Europe at his back, there sits a throned spirit—whether of earth or not, I cannot tell, but as I think more than half divine—who will drive him back shattered and bleeding, the jest and ridicule of the observing world. She who, by the force of pure intellect, has out of this speck in the desert made a large empire, who has humbled Persia, and entered her capital in triumph, has defeated three Roman armies, and wrested more provinces than time will allow me to number, from the firm grasp of the self-styled ...
— Zenobia - or, The Fall of Palmyra • William Ware
... Valentina Ignatievna) I was just turned nineteen years of age; and the instant that my eyes fell upon her form I realised that in her alone lay my fate, and my heart almost stopped beating, and my vitality stretched out towards her as a speck of dust flies towards a fire. Yet all this I had to conceal as best I might; with the result that in the company's presence I felt like a sentry doing guard duty in the presence of his commanding officer. But at last, ...
— Through Russia • Maxim Gorky
... bliss! thy living form I spied, Then a mere speck upon a distant sky; Yet my keen glance discerned its noble pride, And the full answer of that sun-filled eye; I knew it was the wing that must upbear My earthlier form into the ...
— At Home And Abroad - Or, Things And Thoughts In America and Europe • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... the far slopes next the mountains, a black speck rolled into view, the nucleus of a little dust cloud. Her face brightened a little; she turned abruptly and sought easy footing down that ridge, and climbed hurriedly the longer rise beyond. Once or twice, when she was on high ground, she glanced behind her uneasily, as ...
— The Heritage of the Sioux • B.M. Bower
... appears to be a cosmic hostility to human life which sobers indeed those who are intelligent enough to perceive it. It is only the fool or the brute or the sentimentalist who is unterrified by nature. The man of reflection and imagination sees his race crawling ant-like over its tiny speck of slowly cooling earth and surrounded by titanic and ruthless forces which threaten at any moment to engulf it. The religious man knows that he is infinitely greater than the beasts of the field or the clods ...
— Preaching and Paganism • Albert Parker Fitch
... perversities and financial embarrassments. It was a matter of comparatively slight moment that, while the old structure was falling to pieces, they were with the most painstaking gravity watching over every old ornamental scroll and every speck of rust in the constitution; after all it was simply ridiculous, when the genteel lords had scruples of conscience as to calling their deliberative assembly beyond the sacred soil of the city the senate, and cautiously gave it the title of the "three hundred";(23) or when they instituted ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... prevalence of education, morality, and religion; its solemn Sabbaths and thronged sanctuaries; and above all, its rising institutions of liberty—flourishing so vigorously,—conspire to make Antigua one of the fairest portions of the earth. Formerly it was in our eyes but a speck on the world's map, and little had we checked if an earthquake had sunk, or the ocean had overwhelmed it; but now, the minute circumstances in its condition, or little incidents in its history, are to our ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... homestead," he said, pointing to a speck far away down a gully. "The sheep will come up the creek, because it is the smoothest track. Now, we must tie our horses up here, sneak down the creek bed, and get as near the house as ...
— An Outback Marriage • Andrew Barton Paterson
... beach, was the beginning and end of the great zodiac band—the golden Hamal of Aries and the paired stars of Pisces; and behind, over the black jungle, glowed the Southern Cross. But night after night, as I watched on the beach, the sight which moved me most was the dull speck of emerald mist, a merest smudge on the slate of the heavens,—the spiral nebula in Andromeda,—a universe in the making, of a size ...
— Edge of the Jungle • William Beebe
... retold and the same assurance renewed that death eternally dies, that the waves of turmoil are on the surface, and that the sea of tranquillity is fathomless. The curtain of night is drawn aside and truth emerges without a speck of dust on its garment, without a furrow of age ...
— Sadhana - The Realisation of Life • Rabindranath Tagore
... savage denunciation, and condemned my administration of a tooth-powder with fiercer indignation than has ever been shown in condemning the administration of a poison. Of course it is a serious charge, and one that no philosopher can afford to despise, to say of a man that he will not allow a speck of dirt to be seen upon his person, that he will not allow any visible portion of his body to be offensive or unclean, least of all the mouth, the organ used most frequently, openly and conspicuously by man, whether to kiss a friend, to conduct a conversation, to speak in public, or to offer ...
— The Apologia and Florida of Apuleius of Madaura • Lucius Apuleius
... notice. It is seemingly made to be heard, not seen, reversing the old axiom addressed to children when getting voicy. Its mission is music, and it floods a thousand acres of the blue sky with it several times a day. Out of that palpitating speck of living joy there wells forth a sea of twittering ecstacy upon the morning and evening air. It does not ascend by gyrations, like the eagle or birds of prey. It mounts up like a human aspiration. It ...
— A Walk from London to John O'Groat's • Elihu Burritt
... the two bits of paper, A and B, at the ends of the horizontal stick; and when you are satisfied that the stick is properly adjusted and quite steady, take your mirror and throw the shadow of A upon B, and further endeavour to throw the white speck in the shadow of A, corresponding to its pin-hole in it, through the centre of the hole in B. Every now and then lay the mirror aside, and bend down to see that A B continues to be ...
— The Art of Travel - Shifts and Contrivances Available in Wild Countries • Francis Galton
... is but a soap-bubble hanging from a reed; it is formed, expands to its full size, clothes itself with the loveliest colors of the prism, and even escapes at moments from the law of gravitation; but soon the black speck appears in it, and the globe of emerald and gold vanishes into space, leaving behind it nothing but a simple drop of turbid water. All the poets have made this comparison, it is so striking and so true. To appear, to shine, to disappear; to be born, to suffer, and to die; is it not the ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... He had slept in the shadow of the mountains, in the white blaze of noon, in the stillness and solitude of that overgrown piece of land between the oval of the harbour and the spacious semi-circle of the gulf. He lay as if dead. A rey-zamuro, appearing like a tiny black speck in the blue, stooped, circling prudently with a stealthiness of flight startling in a bird of that great size. The shadow of his pearly-white body, of his black-tipped wings, fell on the grass no more silently than he alighted himself on a hillock of rubbish within ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... did not care a fig about that kind of talk; so they walked off to a corner, and began to play with some funny things they found. One was an old man all made of black wadding, and another was a very fat old woman made of white wadding. The old woman hadn't the least speck of a foot to stand on; her body was just a great round roll of wadding, without legs; I never saw a real, live old woman without legs, did you? But this one must have come from no one knows where. You see, she and the black wadding man were left by Santa Claus one Christmas night, who ...
— Little Mittens for The Little Darlings - Being the Second Book of the Series • Frances Elizabeth Barrow
... ate any one who came near its home, so when the people saw Catalina start to climb the mountain they begged her to come back. She paid no heed to their cries, however, but went up higher and higher, till her white dress seemed merely a speck ...
— Philippine Folklore Stories • John Maurice Miller
... was not done in a moment. At first I certainly was occasionally annoyed by Pussy's inconsistencies. She would profess to be so refined, that a speck of dirt on her white coat made her unhappy; so delicate, that she could not endure to wet her feet; so modest, that she could not bear to be looked at while she was eating; while at the same time she would scamper into the dirtiest ...
— Cat and Dog - Memoirs of Puss and the Captain • Julia Charlotte Maitland
... old piano. This and her anxiety about the venison fretted Miss Deborah so much, it was a great relief to hear the first carriage, and catch a glimpse of Mrs. Dale hurrying across the hall and up the stairs, her well-known brown satin tucked up to avoid a speck of mud ...
— John Ward, Preacher • Margaret Deland
... in the butterfly's wing will be in the full-grown insect a great blemish. The speck in thy child's nature, if fondly overlooked now, will become a wide rent ...
— Autumn Leaves - Original Pieces in Prose and Verse • Various
... with its attendant speck of white, which but a little while ago shone with great brightness ...
— Pharaoh's Broker - Being the Very Remarkable Experiences in Another World of Isidor Werner • Ellsworth Douglass
... that I could see my birds like dots upon the platform. It was a bright day and smooth water, I could clearly distinguish the other islands in the distance, and I thought that I saw something like a white speck close to them—perhaps it was a vessel. This made me melancholy, and I could not help asking myself whether I was to remain all my life upon the island, alone, or if there were any chance of my ever ...
— The Little Savage • Captain Marryat
... papers get hold of it—she is of no family. None, they say; literally a common woman. Of course, we have out-islanders, who may be villeins; but we give them the benefit of the doubt, which is impossible with Helen of Vailima; our blot, our pitted speck. The pitted speck I have said is our precentor. It is always a woman who starts Samoan song; the men who sing second do not enter for a bar or two. Poor, dear Faauma, the unchaste, the extruded Eve of our Paradise, knew only two hymns; but ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... folk who came and went in the tavern. And she did not touch the food that was set before her. Nobody heard her make a clatter as she washed, but whenever the hostess held out her hand to the hatch, she passed out clean cups and dishes without a speck on them. ...
— The Treasure • Selma Lagerlof
... a tall French window to a terrace, and from the terrace to the ground. There was a dull muttering in the sky to the east, and a speck appeared, drew nearer swiftly, grew larger, and became a small army biplane. It descended steeply to earth behind a tall planting of trees. Bell lighted a cigarette and moved purposelessly down an ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, May, 1930 • Various
... clean and refreshing looking as a madrono-tree in the dust-blown forest. An odor of scented soap and freshly ironed linen was wafted from him; there was scarcely a crease in his white waistcoat, nor a speck upon his varnished shoes. He might have been an auditor of the previous conversation, so quickly and completely did he seem to take in the whole situation at a glance. Perhaps there was an extra tilt to his black-ribboned Panama hat, ...
— The Three Partners • Bret Harte
... from the porch and descend the great steps, and get into his dog-cart and drive himself away. Then, when the sound of the gig could be no longer heard, and when her eyes could no longer catch the last expiring speck of his hat, the poor fool took herself to bed again and cried herself ...
— The Claverings • Anthony Trollope
... at maximum speed, it took us two days, Earth time, to come close enough to Hydrot so that we could locate the unfortunate Kabit. She had landed on a level plain near the shore of the new continent, where she lay, just a tiny bright speck, even under the maximum ...
— The Terror from the Depths • Sewell Peaslee Wright
... cleaning) and her ancient servitors, seeing that the places for the Band (just under the choir- screen) and for the extra members of the choir were all in order, and, above all, that the Bishop's Throne up by the altar was guiltless of a speck of dust, of a shadow of a shadow of disorder. Cobbett saw, beyond any question or doubt, death in the old man's face, and suddenly, to his own amazement, was sorry. For years now he had been waiting for the day when he should succeed ...
— The Cathedral • Hugh Walpole
... some discontent had been shown as excuse; but, in this case, no cause was guessed for Holleben's disgrace except the Kaiser's wish to have a personal representative at Washington. Breaking down all precedent, he sent Speck von Sternburg ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams
... Sieberer's face, but it disappeared quickly when he happened to turn his eyes to the neighboring mountains. He looked keenly and searchingly toward the mountain-path leading to Mittewald. He saw there a small black speck which was advancing with great rapidity. Was it a bird? No, the speck had already become larger; he saw it was a human being—a woman speeding along the mountain-path. Now she was so close to them that he could distinguish her face; it was that of a young girl; ...
— Andreas Hofer • Lousia Muhlbach
... enter upon a world whose immensity, whose sublimity, whose awful beauty shall far surpass the experience of man; but not even the wildest imagination, fed by all the knowledge that astronomers have gained of world beyond world, and system beyond system, of spheres to which our world is but a speck, and of fiery meteors and whizzing comets sweeping their way with the speed of thought for thousands of years through planet-teeming space—not even such an imagination, in its farthest stretch, is able to conceive the glory of that dwelling place which shall be ours. If to-day we were permitted ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol III, Issue VI, June, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... in great alarm at my cheek—but seeing that it was not bleeding, and had no hole in it, she patted it softly with her little tender dimpled hand, and said: "Aunt Fanny, Aunt Fanny," in a little speck of a whisper to herself a ...
— The Little Nightcap Letters. • Frances Elizabeth Barrow
... answered, "I hear, see, and understand many things that escape others. Jasper, allow me to advise you to smooth the hair which your sleep has disarranged. Mrs. Snowdon, permit me. This rich velvet catches the least speck." And with his handkerchief he delicately brushed away several streaks of white dust which clung to ...
— The Abbot's Ghost, Or Maurice Treherne's Temptation • A. M. Barnard
... the cycle of vegetable life. The secret of vegetable life, then, is in the green substance of the leaf where science is powerless to unlock it. Conjure with the elements as it may, it cannot produce the least speck of living matter. It can by synthesis produce many of the organic compounds, but only from matter that has already been through the organic cycle. It has lately produced rubber, but from other products of ...
— The Breath of Life • John Burroughs
... distance a moving speck on the water caught his eye. For a few minutes he watched it in suspense, then ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... Indian canoe was missing. It had been hauled up clear of the water, so that it could not have floated away. Ready's heart misgave him; he looked through his telescope in the direction of the large island, and thought he could distinguish a speck on the water at a great distance. As he was thus occupied, ...
— Masterman Ready • Captain Marryat
... to perfection, put on my best frilled shirt, made Jim, our odd boy, polish my boots until he could see his face in them; discarded my straw hat and took to the chimney-pot (i.e. my best beaver), saw that there was not a speck of dirt on my clothes, viewed myself all over in the glass, nearly dislocated my neck in trying to get a glimpse of my back, but found my efforts fruitless; and finally put on my best kid gloves, after which I found I had still two hours to ...
— Leslie Ross: - or, Fond of a Lark • Charles Bruce
... indexed; D, an older blossom, with similar analyses (E and F). Both sorts are to be found upon every spike of bloom, as the inflorescence begins at the base and proceeds upward. As we look into the more open flower we observe a dark-colored speck, which, by analysis, proves to be the lid of the anther. This portion is further shown enlarged in Fig. 20, A. If we gently lift it with a pin, we disclose the pollen masses in the cavity (B) thus opened (C, profile section), the two pairs united to a common viscid ...
— My Studio Neighbors • William Hamilton Gibson
... they would be cornered, as the cutting narrowed very much, leaving not more than twenty yards, and that was a generous estimate. At last, after what seemed an eternity, I reached the summit of the slope; the tiger was a mere speck along the line. I rushed after it as fast as I could go, stumbling, half falling, pulling myself together, and tearing on, and the faster I went the quicker moved the great white figure. A feeling of despair seized me; all my fondness ...
— Animal Ghosts - Or, Animal Hauntings and the Hereafter • Elliott O'Donnell
... excitement grew in her pulse by pulse, as the excitement grows in a man waiting for a friend at a station; he sees first the faint smoke like a cloud on the skyline, and then a black speck beneath the smoke, and next the engine draws up on him with a humming of the rails which grows at length ...
— Riders of the Silences • John Frederick
... the land where all remained that he coveted upon earth. And Katerina, she too felt as if her existence was a blank; and as the vessel sailed from the port, she breathed short; and when not even her white and lofty topgallant sail could be discovered as a speck, she threw herself on her couch and wept. And M'Clise as he sailed away, remained for hours leaning his cheek on his hand, thinking of, over and over again, every lineament and ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... lies; And waits; and once in timeless sick surmise Through the dead air heaves up an unknown hand, Like a dry branch. No life is in that land, Himself not lives, but is a thing that cries; An unmeaning point upon the mud; a speck Of moveless horror; an Immortal One Cleansed of the world, sentient and dead; a fly Fast-stuck in grey sweat on ...
— The Collected Poems of Rupert Brooke • Rupert Brooke
... serene! Not a silver speck in the golden hue! But where the woods waved low and green, And seldom would let the sunlight through, Sweet shadows fell, and in their screen, The faces of children might be seen, And the flash ...
— Poems: Patriotic, Religious, Miscellaneous • Abram J. Ryan, (Father Ryan)
... the lifelessness and mystery of a dead and empty world that Philip turned his eyes from the sun into the gray desolation that reached from Pierre Thoreau's door to the end of the earth. Far off to the north he saw a black speck moving in the chaos of white. It might have been a fox coming over a snow-dune a rifle-shot away, for distances are elusive where the sky and the earth seem to meet in a cold gray rim about one; or it might have been a musk-ox or ...
— Philip Steele of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police • James Oliver Curwood
... and quite unable to decide whether it were better to laugh or storm. He was saved from all further perplexity on this point, however, by the sudden appearance of a horseman on the distant plain, who seemed to be approaching the valley in which they were encamped. At first he looked like a black speck or a crow on the horizon, and, in the uncertain light of the rapidly closing day, it would have been difficult for any unaccustomed eye to make out ...
— The Wild Man of the West - A Tale of the Rocky Mountains • R.M. Ballantyne
... The speck on the horizon was an outpost—a boundary mark of empire,—where a little party of men watched, night and day, for the least sign of danger from the illusive quiet ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver
... what he does with it. You pick up every single speck," ordered the girl; and the boy scraped the floor with his sharp finger-nails, and crammed the candy and dust into a small paper bag. The girl stood watchfully over him; not the smallest particle escaped her eyes. "There's some more over there," ...
— The Debtor - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... enemies, and chances and catastrophes which we cannot avert—Is not the question of all questions for such as us—Will this same Word of God—will any unseen being out of the infinite void which surrounds our little speck of a planet, take any notice of our praying hands? Will He hear us, teach us, when we cry? Or is God, and The Word of God, like those old heathen gods? Is He a God who hides Himself, and leaves us to despair and chance: or is He a God who hears, and ...
— Westminster Sermons - with a Preface • Charles Kingsley
... marshals of the empire, whilst he remained an untitled general of division; he and his officers, as one of them told me, then felt themselves little better circumstanced than myself—than prisoners in an almost forgotten speck of the globe, with their promotion suspended. Rumours of a premeditated attack at length reached the island, which it was said the captain-general heard with pleasure; and it was attributed to the prospect of making military ...
— A Voyage to Terra Australis Volume 2 • Matthew Flinders
... morning, after a good deal of handshaking, and Taffy looked after them wistfully as they turned to wave their caps and trudged away over the rise towards the cross-roads. Away to the left in the wintry sunshine a speck of scarlet caught his eye against the blue-grey of the towans. He watched it as it came slowly towards him, and his heart leapt—yet not quite as he ...
— The Ship of Stars • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... pose of her body; and when assured that her nuptials with the Earl could be avoided, the only question in her mind was as to the absolute preservation of her honor—not simply in fact, but in appearance, so that even hatred could not see a speck upon the shining shield of her perfect truth. In this scene she was perfect—everything was forgotten except the desire to ...
— The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Volume VIII. - Interviews • Robert Green Ingersoll
... hot, as though it came straight from the inside of an oven, the door of which had been suddenly opened; the sky had the sort of glazed dimness of the human eye in fever; but right overhead it was of a copperish dazzle where the roasting orb of the sun was. I could not see a speck of cloud anywhere, which rendered what followed the more amazing to my mind for ...
— The Honour of the Flag • W. Clark Russell
... every man and woman took ginger ale, which is a beverage that 'ud drive a man to drink. Howsomever, we showed that preacher he didn't hold over us, speck nor color, when it come to a showdown. And he savvied the play, too. He watched the line drinkin' its ...
— Mr. Scraggs • Henry Wallace Phillips
... coming by now,' she said. 'He went about your ferrets to another place, Master Justin. He's been in a fine way at not getting them for you before. Ah! yes, there he is,' and she pointed to a black speck appearing on one of the little white paths ...
— Miss Mouse and Her Boys • Mrs. Molesworth
... juncture I saw a tiny speck of a boat way out on the horizon. Captain Dan said it was Shorty's boat with Adams. I suggested that, as we had to wait for wind to fly the kite, we run in and attract Shorty's attention. I certainly wanted some one else to see those magnificent schools ...
— Tales of Fishes • Zane Grey
... of Ida[32], there was a white Bull, which was the Glory of the Farmer to whom he belonged. This Bull had a beautiful black Speck between his Horns, all the rest of his Body being as white as Milk. With him the Gnossian and Cydonian Heifers were all in love, and eagerly longed to be embraced by him in the tenderest manner in which Bulls embrace the Fair ...
— The Lovers Assistant, or, New Art of Love • Henry Fielding
... display their radiance to adorn the firmament of that magnificent world. He can wing his flight through the still more distant regions of the universe, leaving the sun and all his planets behind him, till they appear like a scarcely discernible speck in creation, and contemplate thousands and millions of stars and starry systems beyond the range of the unassisted eye, and wander among the suns and worlds dispersed throughout ...
— Popular Education - For the use of Parents and Teachers, and for Young Persons of Both Sexes • Ira Mayhew
... he was sitting on a rock by the sea-side with Elizabeth, holding her hand in his, and talking of that happy future of which lovers delight to discourse, a white speck appeared in the horizon, which they well knew to be a sail. Gradually it increased in size. Higher and higher it rose, till the white canvas of a tall ship appeared above the long, unbroken line in the distance. The hull next came in sight, and the ship glided on rapidly ...
— John Deane of Nottingham - Historic Adventures by Land and Sea • W.H.G. Kingston
... of thirty-five horse power each. Three immense Hoe presses are kept running constantly from midnight until seven in the morning, printing the daily edition. The rooms and machinery are kept in the most perfect order. Nothing is allowed to be out of place, and the slightest speck of dirt visible in any part, calls forth a sharp rebuke from Mr. Bennett, who makes frequent visits to every department of the paper. On the street floor, the main room is the public office of the journal. ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... twenty feet or so above his head, his friend stretched his arms upwards and his hands were immediately filled with the fruit. At another time this magician left his overcoat by mistake in a railway carriage, and only remembered it when the train was a mere speck upon the horizon; but, on the utterance of certain words, the coat immediately flew through the ...
— The Treasury of Ancient Egypt - Miscellaneous Chapters on Ancient Egyptian History and Archaeology • Arthur E. P. B. Weigall
... disputatious of all things disputable, metaphysics, the nearer the reasoners approach each other in points that to an uncritical bystander seem the most important, the more sure they are to start off in opposite directions upon reaching the speck of a pin-prick. ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... womanhood but by a luxury of cleanliness which became them wonderfully, and made them harmonize with the polished counters and the shining shelves, on which the old man-servant never left a speck of dust, and with the old-world simplicity of all they saw about them. As their style of living compelled them to find the elements of happiness in persistent work, Augustine and Virginie had hitherto always satisfied their mother, who ...
— At the Sign of the Cat and Racket • Honore de Balzac
... at peep of day And saw you taking your upward way, Dreaming your fond romantic dreams, An ugly speck in the sun's bright beams, Soaring too high to be seen or heard; And I said to myself: ...
— The Ontario Readers - Third Book • Ontario Ministry of Education
... talked, Godfrey, now seen, now vanishing, had become a speck in the distance. Crossing a wide field, he was now no longer to be distinguished from the grazing cattle, and so was lost to the eyes of ...
— Mary Marston • George MacDonald
... the visible world. We see great masses of something that science has called "matter." We see in operation a wonderful something called "force" or "energy" in its countless forms of manifestations. We see things that we call "forms of life," varying in manifestation from the tiny speck of slime that we call the Moneron, up to that form that we ...
— A Series of Lessons in Gnani Yoga • Yogi Ramacharaka
... persuaded her sister Mary to get leave of absence from school and go in her place. We know she has a very pretty bonnet this fall, for she says: "It is trimmed with dark green ribbon, striped with black and white, and for face trimming, lace and cherry and green flowers with the least speck of blue." She grieves because her married sisters never have time ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... linger over it. He had no special emotion for its helplessness. When he was attracted by a child it was through the evidence of something not only distinct from, but opposed to this. 'It is the soul' (I see) 'in that speck of a body,' he said, not many years ago, of a tiny boy—now too big for it to be desirable that I should mention his name, but whose mother, if she reads this, will know to whom I allude—who had delighted him by an act of intelligent grace which seemed beyond ...
— Life and Letters of Robert Browning • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... fine spray of oil which comes from the injector consists of such minute drops of the liquid and is so thoroughly mixed with oxygen that when it burns the combustion is complete, and only steam and carbonic acid gas go out of the top of the kiln. Not a speck of soot comes from the kiln or the smokestack or soils the whitewashed purity of the boiler room. Oil fuel is absolutely clean. It is labor saving, too. No fireman has to keep shoveling coal, there are no ashes to be dragged out from under the furnace grates, and there are no clinkers to clog up ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 841, February 13, 1892 • Various
... speck was seen in the horizon; now it is visible above the hollow wave, now curtained from our sight by the swelling billow: we approach nearer; the speck divides, and two spots appear; they are ...
— Journal of a Visit to Constantinople and Some of the Greek Islands in the Spring and Summer of 1833 • John Auldjo
... the beginning of his fourth month of solitude, the mucker saw a smudge of smoke upon the horizon. Slowly it increased in volume and the speck beneath it resolved itself into the hull of a steamer. Closer and closer ...
— The Mucker • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... tuh George Thompson. After mah ma died ah stayed wid de Wommacks, a while. Aftuh dat mah pa taken me home. Pa's name wuz Jesse Flueur. Ah worked lak er slave. Ah cut wood, sawed logs, picked 400 pounds uv cotton evah day. Ah speck ah married de first time ah wuz about fo'teen years ole. Ah been mahrid three times. All mah husband's is daid. Ole man England and ole man Cullens run business places and ole man Wooley. His name wuz reason Wooley. De Woolies got cemetery uv dey own ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - Volume II. Arkansas Narratives. Part I • Work Projects Administration
... look at it more closely and there, in Garrick's hand, was a tiny bit of steel, scarcely three-eighths of an inch long, a mere speck. It was like nothing of which I had ever heard or read. Yet Garrick himself seemed to regard the minute thing with a sort of awe. As for me, I knew not what to make of it. I wondered whether it might not be ...
— Guy Garrick • Arthur B. Reeve
... The former view of a countless multitude of worlds annihilates as it were my importance as an animal creature, which after it has been for a short time provided with vital power, one knows not how, must again give back the matter of which it was formed to the planet it inhabits (a mere speck in the universe). The second, on the contrary, infinitely elevates my worth as an intelligence by my personality, in which the moral law reveals to me a life independent of animality and even of the whole sensible world, at least ...
— The Critique of Practical Reason • Immanuel Kant
... I loved you so little as to be biased against our marriage because of money troubles. Pooh!" she flicked away a speck of dust from his coat, "I don't care ...
— The Green Mummy • Fergus Hume
... from her. Charon crouched close to her, with a mute grief clearly written in his sober, sagacious countenance, and each clung to the other, as to a last stay and solace. He was a powerful animal, with huge limbs, and a think, shaggy covering, sable as midnight, without a speck of white about him. Around his neck was a silver chain, supporting a broad piece of plate, on which was engraved, in German letters, the single word, "Hartwell." How long she sat there Beulah knew not; but a growl roused her, and she saw Mrs. ...
— Beulah • Augusta J. Evans
... early saw that Louisiana was indeed a speck in our horizon, which was to burst in a tornado; and the public are un-apprized how near this catastrophe was. Nothing but a frank and friendly developement of causes and effects on our part, and good sense enough in Bonaparte to see that ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... that had ceased to beat. Suddenly it seemed to him that his hand had been stung, and he drew it away quickly, his eyes on the golden rose. And where she had left it just incomplete at his coming, he saw a jet-black speck. A light broke over him swiftly, and one by one he broke the strands at the rose's heart, and under it revealed a small black snake; and as the rose had been done from her own gold locks, so the snake had been done from the one black lock in the gold. Then at last ...
— Martin Pippin in the Apple Orchard • Eleanor Farjeon
... leaped over the bleeding night-mists. Darkness and all night's adherents were annihilated. Pelicans and geese and curlews were in uproar, as at a concerted signal. A buzzard yelped thrice like a dog, and rose in a long spiral from the cliff to Melicent's right hand. He hung motionless, a speck in the clear zenith, uncannily ...
— Domnei • James Branch Cabell et al
... are settled in their hive, Mark him who looks the worst, and, lest he live Idle at home in ease and luxury, The lazy monarch must be doomed to die; So let the royal insect rule alone, And reign without a rival in his throne. The kings are different; one of better note, All speck'd with gold, and many a shining spot, Looks gay, and glistens in a gilded coat; 110 But love of ease, and sloth, in one prevails, That scarce his hanging paunch behind him trails: The people's looks are different as their kings', Some sparkle bright, and glitter in their wings; ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville
... and the chill that had begun during the past days to creep about her heart tightened and grew cold, as if it were changing to an icy band, which would freeze her pulses in its tightening clasp. She looked out through the sunshine, watching the light boat till it became a mere speck in the distance, and finally disappeared among the windings of the long curve of land which ...
— A Noble Woman • Ann S. Stephens
... lustrous. Some people have said that he wore false calves, probably because his black silk stockings never exhibited a wrinkle; they might just as well have said that he waddled, because his shoes creaked; for these last, which were always without a speck, and polished as his crown, though of a different hue, did creak, as he walked rather slowly. I cannot say that I ever ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... lo! scarce a speck Was on the child from heel to neck, Though she was sorely mired; Nor gave she sign of grief's unrest, Till, hid upon her mother's breast, She ...
— A Hidden Life and Other Poems • George MacDonald
... took deliberate aim and fired. There was no echo to that sharp detonation; a distant dog barked, there was a slight whisper in the trees beside him, that was all! But the head of the man was no longer visible, and the liquid silver filmed over again, without a speck or stain. ...
— The Bell-Ringer of Angel's and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... instantly went to the top with his binocular, bringing it to bear on a small, far distant speck on ...
— Young Glory and the Spanish Cruiser - A Brave Fight Against Odds • Walter Fenton Mott
... the air, directly over their heads, they could discern a tiny speck of black against the blue of the sky. They sat with their necks craned back as far as they would go, and gazed at it like people transfixed, whilst the sky ...
— The Lady Paramount • Henry Harland
... thoughts when the last of the boats had become a mere speck in the distance, but Inga did not dare leave his perch of safety until all of the craft of the invaders had disappeared beyond the horizon. Then he came down, very slowly and carefully, for he was weak from hunger and the long and weary watch, as he ...
— Rinkitink in Oz • L. Frank Baum
... human-shaped speck, appearing black against the bluish gray of the waters, was still her husband, even though already it became vague and indefinable, lost in the distance, where persistent sight becomes baffled, and can see ...
— An Iceland Fisherman • Pierre Loti
... her, to remember that we are still at the commencement of our story, standing at the end of the pier, and watching the departure of the Pole Star whale-ship, which is now a scarcely distinguishable speck on the horizon. ...
— The World of Ice • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... hall, with all its vastness, would not have been utterly invisible. Elenko leaned over the battlements, and watched the racing meteors. Prometheus stood by her, and pointed out in the immeasurable distance the little speck of shining dust from ...
— The Twilight of the Gods, and Other Tales • Richard Garnett
... at last, and in the speck of blue peeped out a star. Yet the swells were terrific, and carried them onward with fearful velocity—where, only the All-seeing knew—and when the dawn appeared in the east, exhausted, chilled to the heart, bruised and nearly naked, Phil and his insensible ...
— Golden Days for Boys and Girls, Vol. XIII, Nov. 28, 1891 • Various
... shaggy hair, at once fixed his choice on him as 'likest his work.' That work was to defend the sheep from the wolves, and one mode of defence was by laying a strange trap for the enemy. The dog was remarkably like a sheep, his hair white without a dark speck, and he carried a great load of it, long and fleecy like wool. In the Hungarian steppes four or five of those dogs would lay themselves down on the grass in the evening, sleeping there like so many harmless lambs, with their faces inward for ...
— Heads and Tales • Various
... of the lonely traveller, it was still a time of excessive enjoyment. The noble rocks towered up high on the left, and the endless water opened out wide on the right with only some dot of a sail, hull down, far far off on the horizon, a little lonely speck fixed in hard exile; but very probably the crew in that vessel too were happy in the breezy morn, and felt themselves and their craft to be the very ...
— The Voyage Alone in the Yawl "Rob Roy" • John MacGregor
... beautiful girl who had now been snatched away so amazingly, and there was plenty to talk about and wonder about for months to come on the Carder farm. Rufus Carder, when the swift scout plane had become a speck, tore at his collar. The veins stood out in his neck and his forehead. He felt the curious gaze of his helpers and in impotent fury he turned and walked up to the house. His mother, still in the kitchen, saw him come in and started back with a cry. His collar and shirt flying open, his ...
— In Apple-Blossom Time - A Fairy-Tale to Date • Clara Louise Burnham
... home from the woods that same afternoon by way of the bridge, in order to buy some provisions at the brick store. When he was still a long distance from the bars that divided the lane from the highroad, he espied a dark-clad little speck he knew to be Rodman leaning over the fence, waiting and longing as usual for his home-coming, and his heart warmed at the thought of the boyish ...
— The Story Of Waitstill Baxter • By Kate Douglas Wiggin
... white Without a speck or stain; His curls had a ring of light, That rose and fell again. "Now come with me, my own mother, And you shall have great ease, For you shall see the lost ...
— The Haunted Hour - An Anthology • Various
... light on the one body, I was helping Brothers Kilpatrick and Speck in a camp-meeting near Essex, Ill. For three days I was under a severe trial or burden, which became heavier and heavier until it was unbearable. The worst of my difficulty was that I did not know ...
— Trials and Triumphs of Faith • Mary Cole
... would be some chance, but out here in the vast spaces, between the outer planets, ships were fewer and farther between. The big, cigar-shaped freighter drifted helplessly on in a broad curve toward the dreaded area, the green light-speck of ...
— The Sargasso of Space • Edmond Hamilton
... the beginnings of life, both in animals and plants, we seem to approach nearer and nearer to an identity of substance which baffles the microscope with all its powers of discernment. Every animal and every plant begins existence as a mere speck of this living jelly. The germ of each is a protoplasm particle, which, whatever traces of structure it may exhibit, is practically unrecognizable as being definitely animal or plant in respect of its nature. ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 787, January 31, 1891 • Various
... knoweth if he be living now,— He sailed in the good ship "Commodore,"— Nobody ever crossed her track To bring us news, and she never came back. Ah, 'tis twenty long years and more Since that old ship went out of the bay With my great-hearted brother on her deck: I watched him till he shrank to a speck, And his face was ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 56, June, 1862 • Various
... were then blacked and polished, the mouths washed, and their teeth picked. It is related that after this grooming the master of the stables was accustomed to flick over their coats a clean muslin handkerchief, and if this revealed a speck of dust the stable ...
— Woman's Life in Colonial Days • Carl Holliday
... which the same activity may assume. From the outside, an astronomer gazing through a telescope is like a small boy looking through the same tube. In each case, there is an arrangement of glass and metal, an eye, and a little speck of light in the distance. Yet at a critical moment, the activity of an astronomer might be concerned with the birth of a world, and have whatever is known about the starry heavens as its significant content. Physically speaking, what man has ...
— Democracy and Education • John Dewey
... and I clean this mirror. A damp cloth and a little Bon Ami are all one needs. When the Bon Ami film has dried—a few brisk rubs with a dry cloth and presto! every speck of dust and dirt ...
— American Cookery - November, 1921 • Various
... July commenced in the north-east quarter and gradually went round to the north-west; but more clouds rose from the former point than from any other. The sky generally speaking was without a speck, and the dazzling brightness of the moon was one of the most distressing things we had to endure when out in the bush. It was impossible indeed to shut out its light which ever way one turned, and its irritating ...
— Expedition into Central Australia • Charles Sturt
... woman and the young man stood looking off over the rolling meadows of blue grass. Cutting the lush green pasture lands was the white limestone turnpike. Far off in the distance a blue speck appeared on the white road. In a twinkling it grew into a car and then went whizzing by, leaving a cloud of white dust in its wake. Jeff smiled and, glancing down at his old cousin, caught an answering smile ...
— The Comings of Cousin Ann • Emma Speed Sampson
... see Mlle. Fanny in the Rue Montmartre, climbed a very steep, narrow staircase, and reached a two-roomed dwelling on the fifth floor. Everything was as neat as a new ducat. I did not see a speck of dust on the furniture in the first room, where Mlle. Fanny was sitting. Mlle. Fanny herself was a young Parisian girl, quietly dressed, with a delicate fresh face, and a winning look. The arrangement of her neatly brushed chestnut hair in a double curve on her ...
— Gobseck • Honore de Balzac
... here—'s long as the wind's blowin' as 'tis now, an' I guess it allers does blow that way, round this speck of an island. It must be all o' five mile to that land either side, an' in their rickety canoes the Feweegins never venture fur out in anythin' o' a rough sea. I calculate, Captain, we needn't trouble ourselves much ...
— The Land of Fire - A Tale of Adventure • Mayne Reid
... breakfast my eye was attracted to a snow speck on the mountainside some two thousand feet above us and slightly westward that somehow looked to me different from other snow specks. For nearly a minute I stared at it through my glasses. At last the speck moved. The ...
— The Killer • Stewart Edward White
... where Zachariah dwelt on the first floor. He was too weak to go upstairs by himself, and he and his friend therefore walked into the front room together. It was in complete order, although it was so early in the morning. Everything was dusted; even the lower fire-bar had not a speck of ashes on it, and on the hob already was a saucepan in which Mrs. Coleman proposed to cook the one o'clock dinner. On the walls were portraits of Sir Francis Burdett, Major Cartwright, and the mezzotint ...
— The Revolution in Tanner's Lane • Mark Rutherford
... down on my head, scantily protected by my thin cap. A filmy white feather from some passing bird dropped before my face. I followed it past the hideous furry swelling on my feet, straight down through the breezeless air, till it dwindled to a white speck above the ledges two hundred feet below. That was where I should strike if I fell; but what torments I should suffer before ...
— The Junior Classics Volume 8 - Animal and Nature Stories • Selected and arranged by William Patten
... speck of privacy in the house!" flared Rosemary. "I think I might buy something once in a while that the whole family didn't have to see. And no one has to come straight home from school, except me. If I'm an hour late, Aunt Trudy always wants to know ...
— Rosemary • Josephine Lawrence
... shouts and peals of laughter, as their owners, like still smaller specks, romped about. One of those specks Rooney recognised, from its intense blackness, to be his friend Tumbler, and a smaller and lighter speck he guessed to be Pussi, from the circumstance of its persistently following and keeping ...
— Red Rooney - The Last of the Crew • R.M. Ballantyne
... that was; but it was not so with others. The one speck in the perfect balm was that, to have this man here at all, she had had to manage it secretly, as ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... his eyes never turned from the little boat that went and left him there—the little boat that fast became merely a flash and speck of white against the azure air, no bigger than the breadth of a ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... which increased in size as she approached, followed in her wake by a river of molten gold that spread over the blue, faintly rippled expanse. Now he could distinguish people on the upper deck, a moving crowd, and sailors busy with the ropes, now a fluttering speck of white near the wheel-house. There was no one besides him on the landing-stage, the moving white speck could only be meant for him, and no one would wave to him but her. He pulled out his handkerchief and answered her greeting, and in doing so he noticed that his handkerchief was not ...
— Married • August Strindberg
... battle in the sense which we do not appreciate. There have been some who have held that the earthly conflict is but a reflection of the war in heaven. What if it be reflected infinitely, if it penetrate to the uttermost depths of creation? And if a speck of dust be a cosmos—the universe—of revolving worlds? There may be battles between creatures that no ...
— The Haunters & The Haunted - Ghost Stories And Tales Of The Supernatural • Various
... undistinguish'd quite, Save when she wheels direct from shade to light: The flutt'ring songstress a mere speck became, Like fancy's floating bubbles in a dream; He sees her yet, but yielding to repose, Unwittingly his jaded eyelids close. Delicious sleep! From sleep who could forbear, With no more guilt than Giles, and no more care? Peace o'er his slumbers waves her guardian wing, Nor conscience once disturbs ...
— The Farmer's Boy - A Rural Poem • Robert Bloomfield
... green lawns became again the colour of a Nine-Elms cement wharf. Thin freestone slabs were affixed to the whole series of fronts by copper cramps and dowels, each one of substance sufficient to have furnished a poor boy's pocket with pennies for a month, till not a speck of the original surface remained, and the edifice shone in all the grandeur of massive masonry that was not massive at all. But who remembered this save the builder and his crew? and as long as nobody knew the truth, pretence looked ...
— The Hand of Ethelberta • Thomas Hardy
... fed from his table; He kisses his child and wife; Then he haunts a wood, till he orphans a brood, Or robs a deer of its life. He aims at a speck in the azure; Winged love, that has flown at a call; It reels down to die, and he lets it lie; His ...
— Poems of Experience • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... eyes had failed to note that which would have first attracted the attention of one schooled in the land that lay about him. He had not seen a tiny moving speck on the road over which he had passed. A horseman ...
— When A Man's A Man • Harold Bell Wright
... quiet courage of her eyes. Her calm, steadfast face showed that she was not given to depression, but nevertheless this evening, as she stood watching for her husband's return, for the first distant speck of him where the cart-rut vanished into the plain, a sense of impending misfortune enfolded her with the dusk. Was it because the first snow had fallen? Ah me! how much it meant. It was as significant for her as the grey pallor that falls on a sick man's face. It ...
— The Lowest Rung - Together with The Hand on the Latch, St. Luke's Summer and The Understudy • Mary Cholmondeley |
