"Speck" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of the kite, first a mere speck against the sky, then larger till plain for all to see came the missing one, slithering and sliding, with his golden coat, and the little silver wings tied to his ankles, and handfuls of flowers which he threw into his mother's face as he came. "Oh! cruel chief magistrate," ...
— The Blue Moon • Laurence Housman
... now in the roaring train as he thought of it. It was always before him, a demoniacal obsession—that morning when he coughed, and a bright speck of arterial blood stood out like a tardy danger-signal against the white of his handkerchief; it was leering at him, saying: "I have been here always, but you have chosen ...
— Garrison's Finish - A Romance of the Race-Course • W. B. M. Ferguson
... a glorious one. The sky was without a speck; and the clear, piercing air had a brilliancy I have seldom seen. The moon was in its zenith—the steamer and surrounding objects were beautiful in the extreme. The boat got under weigh at a little past twelve, and we were soon out at sea. The "Queen" is a ...
— Three Years in Europe - Places I Have Seen and People I Have Met • William Wells Brown
... Fell burning where the waves had beat With restless motion, against the shore, And music like unto that of yore, When a tiny speck in the clouds she saw, Moving and nearing the pleasant land Quietly, swiftly, as by a law. Screening her brown eyes with her hand, She saw it strike the pebbled sand, And heard a glad shout cleave the air, And saw a noble, manly form, With locks ...
— The Poets and Poetry of Cecil County, Maryland • Various
... finish it now." With that he picked a very small brush, anointed, its delicate point with paint, and touched the picture in one spot with a speck of pigment. ...
— Whistler Stories • Don C. Seitz
... and gilds the vault of day. Silent with upturn'd eyes unbreathing crowds Pursue the floating wonder to the clouds; And, flush'd with transport or benumb'd with fear, Watch, as it rises, the diminish'd sphere. 35 —Now less and less!—and now a speck is seen!— And now the fleeting rack obtrudes between!— With bended knees, raised arms, and suppliant brow To every shrine with mingled cries they vow.— "Save Him, ye Saints! who o'er the good preside; 40 "Bear Him, ye Winds! ye Stars benignant! ...
— The Botanic Garden. Part II. - Containing The Loves of the Plants. A Poem. - With Philosophical Notes. • Erasmus Darwin
... he murmured, involuntarily; "steady, steady!" these last words were to his horse, who seemed to be moving under him, not from fear, but from impatience. What had been the red and gold paper of the cracker was now the scarlet and gold lace of his own cavalry uniform. He knocked a speck from his sleeve, and scanned the distant ridge, from which a thin line of smoke floated solemnly away, with keen, impatient eyes. Were they to ...
— The Brownies and Other Tales • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... observance has been half blind through prejudice either for or against; he either sees her magnified with adulation, or else the large end of the glass is placed against his eye and she is merely a speck in the distance. But let a woman step past that mysterious wall which separates the formal from the intimate—only one step—at once she is surrounded by the eyes of a man as if by a thousand spies. So it was ...
— Trailin'! • Max Brand
... said it eons ago.... It took a speck of one-celled plant life on a world parsecs away to prove it for all ...
— The Issahar Artifacts • Jesse Franklin Bone
... filled me with sudden, great dismay: for there, her sails spread to the fitful wind, I saw the ship standing out to sea, bearing with her all my hopes of escape from this hated island. Thus stood I, watching deliverance fade on my sight, until the ship was no more than a speck upon the moon-bright waters and all other thoughts 'whelmed and lost in raging despair. And now I was roused by a question ...
— Martin Conisby's Vengeance • Jeffery Farnol
... I lie under the awning by the engine-room door, lazily reading "Faust." There is a speck on the sky-line—the mail boat, bringing a letter from my friend. I look round at the translucent opal of the bay, the glittering white of the surf on the reef, the downward swoop on an albatross, and I listen to the dull roar of the breakers, to the solemn tang-tang of the bell-buoy on the bar, ...
— An Ocean Tramp • William McFee
... crooning sweet nothings over him in her soothing voice. He was old enough to miss her, and to-day was not satisfied at being put off with only nurse. He had, besides, a new tooth coming—a tiny pearly thing, peeping like a speck of ivory from a bed of coral. Very pretty to look at, certainly, but doubtless extremely painful; at least Master Baby felt it so, for he fretted and cried in a way which set poor Perry's nerves all ...
— Two Little Travellers - A Story for Girls • Frances Browne Arthur
... thundered by the little house asleep. But the police did not glance that way—nor did the big, white-capped man glance that way. His eyes were fixed on the racer ahead—dwindling to a speck in its cloud of dust. He pushed up his visor and laughed aloud. "Give it up!" he said genially, "give it up!—you can't catch that car!—I know my own car, I guess!" He laughed again. "We shall find it somewhere along the road—when he is through ...
— Mr. Achilles • Jennette Lee
... looked again toward 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
... am—at your thinking 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
... vegetation, not even a spear of grass. Close at hand, in all directions, are frightful fissures and sheer precipices, except on the side where we have ascended. Presently the boom of a distant gun floats faintly upwards, the cautionary signal from the ship now seen floating far below us, a mere speck upon that Polar Sea. ...
— Foot-prints of Travel - or, Journeyings in Many Lands • Maturin M. Ballou
... lofty outlook in the iron cage, dizzily suspended between earth and heaven, our adventurer obtained a new and wider view. The palace and its life dwindled to a speck. Far away to the north he could discern the white summits of the mountains that cradle the blue lake of Garda, while at his feet the Mincio flowed peacefully toward the Adriatic, where a good ship (on which, but for his folly in pausing at Mantua, he might ...
— Romance of Roman Villas - (The Renaissance) • Elizabeth W. (Elizbeth Williams) Champney
... and worn, he kept his deck, And peered through darkness. Ah, that night Of all dark nights! And then a speck— A light! A light! A light! A light! It grew, a starlit flag unfurled, It grew to be Time's burst of dawn. He gained a world; he gave that world Its grandest ...
— Christopher Columbus and His Monument Columbia • Various
... across the waters, with his brave eager gaze that seemed to have absorbed some of the blue-green shimmer of the element he loved, all unnoting the haggard sailor at his elbow, a sudden flourish of the spy-glass which he, with an eager movement, swung up to bear on some distant speck, sent his watch and seals flying out of his fob upon ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... placed, Roswell, aided by the glass, had no difficulty in making her out, and in recognising her rig, form, and character. Stimson also examined her, and knew her to be the schooner. On that vast and desolate sea, she resembled a speck, but the art of man had enabled those she held to guide her safely through the tempest, and bring her up to her goal, in a time that really ...
— The Sea Lions - The Lost Sealers • James Fenimore Cooper
... 'tain' gwine be fittin' fu' de dogs te' tech. Believe half de time w'ite folks ain't got no feelin's, no how. If dey speck I'se gwine stan' up heah on my two feet all night, dey's foolin' dey sef. I ain't gwine do it. Git out dat doo' you Mandy! you want me dash dis heah coffee pot at you—blockin' up de doo's dat away? W'ar dat good fu' nuttin Betsy? Look ...
— At Fault • Kate Chopin
... There was no speck of dust on the broad blade as I drew it, and the waving lines of the dwarf-wrought steel and gold-inlaid runes were clear and bright along its middle for half its length. For the mound was very dry, and they had ...
— King Alfred's Viking - A Story of the First English Fleet • Charles W. Whistler
... 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, I ...
— The Book of Snobs • William Makepeace Thackeray
... my life saw such little hands and feet," the girl pursued. "And she's dreadfully particular about them. There's never a speck on her fingers that she doesn't run right up and scrub them, and she wears the cunningest slippers I ...
— The Governess • Julie M. Lippmann
... marvellously enhanced by the extreme transparency of the air; above, the azure of the sky; beneath, the creviced sides of the mountain sweeping down to the plain; afar, the waving savannas; beyond them, a grayish speck (the distant city); and encompassing them all, the immensity of the ocean, closing the horizon with its deep blue line. Behind me was a rock on which a torrent of melted snow dashes its white foam, and there, diverted from its course, rushes with a mad leap ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 89, March, 1865 • Various
... 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 on the mountain side. ...
— Philippine Folklore Stories • John Maurice Miller
... standing near the margin of a large lake which at that time was frozen over. At some little distance from the land a small aperture had been made for the purpose of procuring water, and at this hole a pig was drinking. While looking toward the horizon, the lieutenant saw a mere speck or ball, as it were, rapidly moving along the ice: presently this took the form of a large wolf, which was making for the pig at top speed. Lieutenant Oldenburg now seized his gun, and ran to the assistance of the pig; but before he got up to the spot the wolf had closed with the porker, which, ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 2, No. 12, May, 1851. • Various
... about upon that vast expanse of loneliness it is not strange that we should quickly become well acquainted. Constantly we scanned the horizon for signs of smoke, venturing guesses as to our chances of rescue; but darkness settled, and the black night enveloped us without ever the sight of a speck ...
— The Land That Time Forgot • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... has in use a machine so delicately adjusted that it can give the accurate weight of a speck of dust, whilst the same machine will also weigh metal up to four hundred pounds. A postage stamp placed on this scale will swing an indicator on a semi-circle a space of ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various
... word for Dad's pipe, for it was miserable indeed, and miserable the smell that came out of it, going there full steam on a hot afternoon of early autumn. Dad always carefully reamed out the first speck of carbon that formed in his pipe, and kept it reamed out with boring blade of his pocket knife. He wanted no insulation against nicotine, and the strength thereof; he was not satisfied unless the fire burned into ...
— The Flockmaster of Poison Creek • George W. Ogden
... speck presented by the reefed top-sail of the corvette had sunk beneath the horizon, in the southern board, and that ship was seen no longer. Several islands had been passed, looking tranquil and smiling amid the fury of the tempest; but it was impossible to haul up for any one among ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... mountains near unforested prairie in a temperate zone. He found a speck. He enlarged it manyfold. It was the mine on Orede. There were heaps of tailings. There was something which cast a long, lacy shadow: ...
— This World Is Taboo • Murray Leinster
... of her quick wit and self-forgetful courage, despite the grave chances she took, she never had a single fright about her own safety, but simply flew across the bay at any time of day or night at the sight of a speck on the water which to her trained eye was a human being ...
— Ten American Girls From History • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... but examined the place in vain for a sign of blood. The red rarely shows up much on leaves, grass, or dust; but there are two kinds of places that the hunter can rely on as telltales—stones and logs. Rolf followed the deer track, now very dim, till at a bare place he found a speck of blood on a pebble. Here the trail joined onto a deer path, with so many tracks that it was hard to say which was the right one. But Rolf passed quickly along to a log that crossed the runway, and on that log he found ...
— Rolf In The Woods • Ernest Thompson Seton
... had an admirable command of profane language, and had killed several "parties." His shirt fronts were always immaculate; his boots daintily polished, and no man could lift a foot and fire a dead shot at a stray speck of dirt on it with a white handkerchief with a finer grace than he; his watch chain weighed a pound; the gold in his finger ring was worth forty five dollars; he wore a diamond cluster-pin and he parted his hair behind. He had always been, regarded as the most elegant gentleman in his territory, ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... highway we meet a man who reminds us of one of those high-priced pears seen in fruiterers' windows: wholesome, good to look at, without a speck or stain on their smooth, round, rosy skins—until we bite into them. Then, close to their hearts, we uncover a greedy, conscienceless worm, gnawing away in the dark—and consign ...
— Felix O'Day • F. Hopkinson Smith
... beholding a star, nor could star be beheld from which the Gods' 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 ...
— The Twilight of the Gods, and Other Tales • Richard Garnett
... pork. 1 pound codfish. 2 cups of milk (skim milk will do). 4 tablespoonfuls flour. A speck ...
— Practical Suggestions for Mother and Housewife • Marion Mills Miller
... sight. In the orchestra, among the talkative musicians, at table with his own family, at the Palace, while he is playing without a thought of what he is playing, for the entertainment of Royal folk—it is in that future, that future which a speck may bring toppling to earth—no matter, it is ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland
... leave of her relations and friends, who had eaten up all the wooden refreshments by this time (though, strange to say, the dishes seemed as full as ever), while Minnie, Maggie, and Lina eat up the sugar plums; and poor Miss Morris sucked her thumbs, I suppose, for not a speck of ...
— Funny Little Socks - Being the Fourth Book • Sarah. L. Barrow
... 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, and quickly up the high ladders swarmed ...
— The Poisoned Pen • Arthur B. Reeve
... breaking a long silence. "Either he or some one else will take us in." Margaret helped him anchor, furl the sails, and then they went ashore, pulling the tender far up on the shingle beech beside the lobster-pots. They crossed the field—it was nearly dark and the Swallow was a speck on the dark water beneath—and knocked ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)
... musk, the nut brown musk, e'er claims the highest price * Whilst for a load of whitest lime none more than dirham bids? And while white speck upon the eye deforms the loveliest youth, * Black eyes discharge the sharpest shafts ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 4 • Richard F. Burton
... man crossing the park on the further side of the river, and the maidenly instinct drove her from the window; though the man in question was perhaps a quarter of a mile away, and had he been looking for her, could not possibly have made out more than a pale speck on the old wall. ...
— Helbeck of Bannisdale, Vol. I. • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... pony, hurrah, hurrah! We see a dark speck in the distance. It grows, as up J Street it comes. Now, the pony foams before us; now, swift as the wind, it is gone. It passes reception committee, passes escort. It reaches the water front; down the gang-plank it dashes; the band plays, the whistle blows, the bell ...
— The Expedition of the Donner Party and its Tragic Fate • Eliza Poor Donner Houghton
... the horizontal branch of the great oak, was a tangled patch of undergrowth and brambles, broken and pressed down in places, as though it had been entered by a human being. As Colwyn was looking at this place, his eye was attracted by a yellow speck in the background of green. It was a tiny fragment of khaki, caught on ...
— The Hand in the Dark • Arthur J. Rees
... moving speck on the water caught his eye. For a few minutes he watched it in suspense, then gave ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... me!" Then his mood changed, his lips curled, his eyes flashed fire. "What a fool!" he sneered. "What a fool! You thrust yourself upon us—you walk into our trap—you are wholly in our power—and yet you think to frighten me with your grand air and your twitching hands! Bah! To me you are merely a speck of dust, to be blown aside—so! Now, more than ever! As an ignorant young fool, who knew no better, I might perhaps in time have let ...
— The Destroyer - A Tale of International Intrigue • Burton Egbert Stevenson
... child came up and the mother caught the little girl and began playing with her, tying her hair ribbon, smoothing out her skirts, rubbing a dirt speck from her nose, and cuddling the little one rapturously in her arms. When the two women were alone, Laura sat on the veranda steps with her head resting upon her mother's knee. The mother touched the soft hair and said: ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White
... thin line of gum was on the back of the flap, in the darkness there glowed the same sort of brightness that we had seen in a speck here and there on Blanche Blaisdell's lips and in her mouth. The truth flashed over me. Some one had placed the stuff, whatever it was, on the flap of the envelope, knowing that she must touch her lips to it to seal it She ...
— The Dream Doctor • Arthur B. Reeve
... the onlookers to see the distance increase between the giant ship and that bobbing, lonely speck far out in ...
— Baseball Joe Around the World - Pitching on a Grand Tour • Lester Chadwick
... I'd do if I were you, Joey," said Polly, kindly, and running down to sit beside him. "I'd think up all sorts of different things, and get all ready, every speck. There's really a great deal to do. And then I'd pick cheeses all the spare time I had. Oh, I'd pick lots and lots!" Polly swept out her arms as ...
— The Adventures of Joel Pepper • Margaret Sidney
... fulling, the goods is washed to remove the soap, dyed, if desired, and often "speck dyed" with a special dye which colors the bits of burs, remaining in the cloth, but not the wool. The next process is the "gigging" which raises the nap. The cloth is run close to rapidly revolving "teazels" ...
— Textiles and Clothing • Kate Heintz Watson
... her husband returned amicably to the bosom of Saint Antoine, while a speck in a blue cap toiled through the darkness, and through the dust, and down the weary miles of avenue by the wayside, slowly tending towards that point of the compass where the chateau of Monsieur the Marquis, now in his grave, ...
— A Tale of Two Cities - A Story of the French Revolution • Charles Dickens
... this thought of 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 ...
— Philip Steele of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police • James Oliver Curwood
... 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
... thorn-apple. Sometimes there would be a glimpse of a woman's head at a carriage window, and one would stand like a statue without breathing and stare at it until the train turned into an almost invisible speck; or one would drink all one could of the loathsome vodka till one was stupefied and did not feel the passing of the long hours and days. Upon me, a native of the north, the steppe produced the effect of a deserted ...
— The Schoolmistress and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... the sight of that single boat creeping slowly across the sea towards those distant islands, and I watched it as it grew smaller and smaller, until it was little more than a mere speck upon ...
— Marjorie • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... motion; the little whirlwinds of dust that arose settled quickly down, the desultory breezes which had caused them departing as mysteriously as they had come. In the blighting heat the country lay, dead, spreading to the infinite horizons; in the sky no speck floated against the dome of blue. More desolate than a derelict on the calm surface of the trackless ocean Lazette lay, its huddled buildings dingy with the dust of a continuing dry season, squatting in their dismal lonesomeness in the shimmering, ...
— The Trail to Yesterday • Charles Alden Seltzer
... not resisted—tells A tale of love that words are poor to tell. And when she goes how lonely seems her way Through groves, through fields, through busy haunts of men; And as he climbs the hill and often stops To watch her lessening train until at length Her elephant seems but a moving speck, Proud Kantaka, pawing and neighing, asks As plain as men could ever ask in, words: "What makes my master choose ...
— The Dawn and the Day • Henry Thayer Niles
... disagreeable operation consists in having your face rubbed with paint and tar, which forms a lather for a saw which represents the razor, and then being half drowned in a sail filled with salt water. About 50 miles north of the line we touched at the rocks of St. Paul; this little speck (about 1/4 of a mile across) in the Atlantic has seldom been visited. It is totally barren, but is covered by hosts of birds; they were so unused to men that we found we could kill plenty with stones and sticks. After remaining some hours on the island, we returned on ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume I • Francis Darwin
... on us, all crinkled like a shell, With lots of fancy carvings that make a feller yell Each time his Ma digs in them to get a speck of dirt, When plain ones would be easy to wash and wouldn't hurt. And I can't see the reason why every time Ma nears, She thinks she's got to send me to wash my ...
— The Path to Home • Edgar A. Guest
... sportsmen, were stowed away in summer houses, waiting for the spring-time when they could be wound up and rival their owners in animation; and the shining tiled roofs, mosaic courtyards, and polished house trimmings flashed up a silent homage to the sky, where never a speck ...
— Hans Brinker - or The Silver Skates • Mary Mapes Dodge
... It was cold enough to freeze hard boiled eggs, an' she 'lowed some'n had gone wrong down at the cabin, so she run in whar I wus, skeerd into kinniptions. 'Mr. Slogan,' sez she, 'I believe sister's friz in 'er bed, ur dropped off sudden, fer as shore as yore a-smokin' in that cheer, thar ain't a speck o' fire in 'er chimney.' Well, I wus in my stockin' feet, like I ginerally am when I want to take it easy before a fire on a cold day, an' I slid my feet into my shoes as quick as I could an' went out an' took ...
— Westerfelt • Will N. Harben
... won't dispute it— I was one of the smartest chaps going, good at my job, with prospects as rosy as any man's in my regiment. There wasn't a cloud the size of your hand, apparently, in my particular bit of sky at the time I speak of; not a speck! Then I met this young lady, and— [pointing to the box-ottoman] well, since we're in ...
— The 'Mind the Paint' Girl - A Comedy in Four Acts • Arthur Pinero
... me? Careless of you, Mr. Shaynon. I'm the little guy that put the speck in Respectability: I'm the noisy little skeleton in the cupboard of your conscience. Don't you know ...
— The Day of Days - An Extravaganza • Louis Joseph Vance
... poverty are both temptations to man: that tends to excite pride; this, discontentment."—Id. et al cor. "Religion raises men above themselves; irreligion sinks them beneath the brutes: this binds them down to a poor pitiable speck of perishable earth; that opens for them a prospect to the skies."—Murray's Key, 8vo, p. 189. "Love not idleness: it destroys many."—Ingersoll cor. "Children, obey your parents: 'Honour thy father and mother,' is the first commandment with promise."—Bullions ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... on the scent. A sudden blast of wind had caught up the paper and whirled it high in the air. I may have uttered an ejaculation, for he came hurrying to the window. He found me pointing unwittingly to what was already a white speck sailing to the roof of the fire-station. "Is it a pigeon?" he asked. I caught at the idea. "Yes, a carrier-pigeon," I murmured in reply; "they sometimes, I believe, send messages to the fire-stations in that way." ...
— My Lady Nicotine - A Study in Smoke • J. M. Barrie
... that I once could see very well, but that the many tears I had shed had now peradventure dimmed my eyes, he pointed to the Streckelberg, and said, "Do you then see nothing there?" Ego. "Naught save a black speck, which I cannot make out." Ille. "Know then that that is the pile whereon your daughter is to burn at ten o'clock to-morrow morning, and which the constables are now raising." When this hell-hound had thus spoken, I gave a loud ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V2 • William Mienhold
... I got 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 ...
— Trials and Triumphs of Faith • Mary Cole
... shore a heron flew, And from a speck on high, That hovered in the deepening blue, ...
— The Ontario Readers: Fourth Book • Various
... pointing to the radar-screen: "That little speck is a plane making for the landing field on shore. This other one is a plane coming down from Genoa. You'd need a good pair of binoculars to see it. It's ...
— The Invaders • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... had rented this speck of a room, and purified it. He had literally compelled Sam to help him. That compelling was almost a modern miracle, and wrought by radiant smiles, and a firm grip on Sam's shoulder when he told him ...
— Lo, Michael! • Grace Livingston Hill
... details. But if you think there is any mistake about the whole thing go to the room and look at that policeman pacing up and down before the door. And if you think the boy's not desperately ill, look inside and see those two doctors and that speck of a trained nurse watching his every breath. You can read the paper yourself, if ...
— The House of the Misty Star - A Romance of Youth and Hope and Love in Old Japan • Fannie Caldwell Macaulay
... furling the sail. Then he straightened and swept the sea with keen, puckered eyes. It was a scrutiny that was rewarded. Ahead, across the horizon sky, floated a dark smudge, like the smoke-trail of a steamer, and beneath it was a black speck. It was no ship, but land, he knew. It was the expected landfall, the volcanic island, there ahead, and he, of all of the ship's company, first perceived it from ...
— Fire Mountain - A Thrilling Sea Story • Norman Springer
... among poplars, and that ribbon is the boundary between Empire and Republic. On such a clear day as this the view from the hill is extraordinarily interesting. From its grassy top a little aeroplane cannon stares to heaven, watching the east for the danger speck; and the circumference of the hill is furrowed by a deep trench—a "bowel," rather—winding invisibly from one subterranean observation post to another. In each of these earthly warrens (ingeniously wattled, roofed and iron-sheeted) stand two or three artillery officers with keen quiet ...
— Fighting France - From Dunkerque to Belport • Edith Wharton
... himself addressing eyes that regarded him as though he were a small speck, a pin's head, in the circle of their remote contemplation. They ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... earth, but as a demon of the air shalt thou dwell in misery till the end of time.' And of a sudden from out her shoulders grew black, shadowy wings, and, with a piercing scream, she swirled upward, until the awe-stricken Dedannans saw nought save a black speck vanish among the lowering clouds. And as a demon of the air do Eva's black wings swirl her ...
— Celtic Tales - Told to the Children • Louey Chisholm
... argument as to the origin of species and the genesis of man; with the astronomers, to leave the narrow bounds of earth, and explore the illimitable spaces of the universe, in which our solar system is but a speck; with the mathematicians, to quit the uncertain realm of speculation and assumption, and plant our feet firmly on the rock of exact science:—to come back anon to lighter themes, and to revel in the grotesque ...
— A Book for All Readers • Ainsworth Rand Spofford
... clean for that story to impress me," the doctor whispered. "Not a speck of foreign matter in it. Moreover, the wound is almost on top of his head. Now, if he had been thrown from a horse and had struck on top of his head on a rock with sufficient force to lacerate his scalp ...
— The Pride of Palomar • Peter B. Kyne
... object through the holes in 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 ...
— The Art of Travel - Shifts and Contrivances Available in Wild Countries • Francis Galton
... to think in the same way of the infinite wisdom of God, and the infinite love of God, they will both teach you the same lesson; they will shew you that if you were the greatest, the wisest, the holiest man that ever lived, you would still be such a speck by the side of the Almighty and Everlasting God that it would be madness to depend upon yourselves for any thing while you lived in God's world. For, after all, what CAN we do without God? IN Him we live, and move, and have our being. He made us, He gave ...
— Twenty-Five Village Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... dot there, but it was only my fancy creating what I expected my sight to behold. Let us look again all around the horizon, where it touches the water, following it as we would a line. Ah, I think I see a dark speck, just a black mote at this distance, and I am still unable to separate fancy from fact, but it may be fact. ...
— The Masters of the Peaks - A Story of the Great North Woods • Joseph A. Altsheler
... Marseilles, played the indispensable part of the handsome Jewess, and was thin, with high cheek bones, which were covered with rouge, and her black hair, which was always covered with pomatum, curled onto her forehead. Her eyes would have been handsome, if the right one had not had a speck in it. Her Roman nose came down over a square jaw, where two false upper teeth contrasted strangely with the bad color ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume II (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... seemed a little speck, And then it seemed a mist: It moved and moved, and took at last A certain ...
— The Rime of the Ancient Mariner • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... Rabbit,' sez Brer Fox, sezee. 'You look sorter stuck up dis mawnin',' sezee, en den he rolled on de groun', en laft en laft twel he couldn't laff no mo'. 'I speck you'll take dinner wid me dis time, Brer Rabbit. I done laid in some calamus root, en I ain't gwineter take no skuse,' ...
— Southern Literature From 1579-1895 • Louise Manly
... terms for two tens and one. In this manner they count to ten tens, which is rau. Ten raus is one mano, or thousand; ten manos one million, and so on. How exactly the Algonquin method, but not a speck of analogy in words. ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft
... and protoplasm you matter-mongers prompt to prate; Of jelly-speck development and apes that grew ...
— The Kasidah of Haji Abdu El-Yezdi • Richard F. Burton
... the old 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
... him. "I don't want none o' this kind o' talk!" he said sharply. "Slack! I'd sooner eat off Katie's kitchen floor than any other woman's parlor table that ever I see. You find me a speck o' dust or a spot o' dirt round our house and I'll find ...
— The Wooing of Calvin Parks • Laura E. Richards
... Fairy herself! but, alas, her blue eyes Still a pupil did ruefully lack; And who shall describe the terrifick surprise That seiz'd the PAINT-KING when, behold, he descries Not a speck on ...
— The Sylphs of the Season with Other Poems • Washington Allston
... breakers, resembling some well-imagined and accurately-executed toy, intended rather for a glass case than for struggles with the elements which she had so lately gone through, while the canoe lay on the narrow beach, just out of reach of the waves that came booming upon the land, a speck upon ...
— The Pathfinder - The Inland Sea • James Fenimore Cooper
... which did not last for more than twenty minutes, had abated and the horizon was in some degree cleared, I looked to sea anxiously, in the hope of descrying Shelley's boat amongst the many small craft scattered about. I watched every speck that loomed on the horizon, thinking that they would have borne up on their return to the port, as all the other boats that had gone out in ...
— Stories of Authors, British and American • Edwin Watts Chubb
... the young man stood an abstracted gazer at his solitary progress, watching the small boat as it glided towards the open ocean, nor did he remember to order the head-sheets of the Alacrity drawn, in order to put the vessel again in motion, until the dark speck was lost in the strong glare that fell obliquely across the water from the ...
— The Pilot • J. Fenimore Cooper
... began to tremble under her, and she stopped to breathe, the house was a speck behind her. She dropped on the earth, and ...
— Dream Life and Real Life • Olive Schreiner
... wave suddenly struck and lifted up the stern, so as to enable the seamen to disengage the tackle. The boat being thus dexterously cleared from the ship, was seen after a while from the poop, battling with the billows,—now raised, in its progress to the brig, like a speck on their summit, and then disappearing for several seconds, as if engulfed "in the ...
— The Loss of the Kent, East Indiaman, in the Bay of Biscay - Narrated in a Letter to a Friend • Duncan McGregor
... told the story of her heart. She described her lover as he appeared to her in the early days of courtship, young, handsome, good, noble in sentiment, and warm and tender in manner. Halcyon days—not a speck to be seen ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade
... I seated myself on a loose stone immediately beneath the first gloomy arch of the grotto, and looking down the vast and solemn perspective, terminated by a speck of grey uncertain light, venerated a work which some old chroniclers have imagined as ancient as the Trojan war. 'Twas here the mysterious race I have just mentioned performed their infernal rites, and it was this excavation perhaps which ...
— Dreams, Waking Thoughts, and Incidents • William Beckford
... Westy says he was to blame and I say I was to blame. He said he knocked the lantern out of my hand, but, gee whiz, I should have kept it out of his way. Anyway, it went tumbling down and it went so far that it looked like just a little red speck. It stayed lighted till it crashed away down in the bottom of that place. And the light turned yellow and spread a little bit, then went out. I guess the oil spilled on a rock down there. Anyway, it looked ...
— Roy Blakeley's Camp on Wheels • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... an imposing sight, as he stood at this termination of his journey, looking out upon the great waste of waters before him. Not a "speck of ice," to use his own words, could be seen. There, from a height of four hundred and eighty feet, which commanded a horizon of almost forty miles, his ears were gladdened with the novel music of dashing waves; ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... town of Clonbrony?" thought Lord Colambre. "Is this Ireland? No, it is not Ireland. Let me not, like most of those who forsake their native country, traduce it. Let me not, even to my own mind, commit the injustice of taking a speck for the whole. What I have just seen is the picture only of that to which an Irish estate and Irish tenantry may be degraded in the absence of those whose duty and interest it is to reside in Ireland, to uphold justice by example and authority; but who, neglecting this ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. 6 • Maria Edgeworth
... drove, but she's mighty easy to lead. When you return to the university, get hold of some books on the means by which all the various kinds of living creatures in the world are kept on an even balance, how they all get their food, and how every tiny speck fits into the whole world scheme. You'll find that sort of reading has more grip to it than any novel—except, perhaps, those of a few of the really great writers, of whom there are ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Fisheries • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... Zoile, "Ned isn't sorry,—be sure of that; for he wants his dear 'Whitewash' restored again to the bosom of society, lest the walls of his reputation should by chance suffer from fly-speck." ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various
... 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
... Triest Where a day or two we harbored: A sunset was in the West, When, looking over the vessel's side, One of our company espied A sudden speck to larboard. And as a sea-duck flies and swims At once, so came the light craft up, With its sole lateen sail that trims And turns (the water round its rims Dancing, as round a sinking cup) And by us like ...
— Browning's England - A Study in English Influences in Browning • Helen Archibald Clarke
... manifestation of the truth commending ourselves to every man's conscience in the sight of God' (2 Cor 4:2). All these sentences are chiefly to be applied to doctrine, and so are, as it were, an offer to any, if they can, to find a speck, or a spot, or a wrinkle, or any such thing in this river of water ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... allowed it to glide out like a swan on the tiny bay. In three strokes of the paddle it had passed between the low, enclosing headlands and was out of sight. When she summoned up strength to creep to an eminence commanding the lake, it was already little more than a speck, moving rapidly ...
— The Wild Olive • Basil King
... of the water. So intensely still was it, and so perfectly transparent was the surface of the deep, that had it not been for the long swell already alluded to, we might have believed the surrounding universe to be a huge, blue, liquid ball, and our little ship the one solitary material speck in all creation, floating in the midst ...
— The Coral Island - A Tale Of The Pacific Ocean • R. M. Ballantyne
... correct his brother's faults, to remove the mote from his neighbor's eye so that that neighbor may see things as the interested and interfering friend would have him see, was denounced as a hypocrite. What was the speck in his neighbor's vision to the obscuring beam in his own eye? Have the centuries between the days of Christ and our own time made us less eager to cure the defective vision of those who cannot or will not assume our point of view, and see things as ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage
... the sail, hereaway in the south-eastern board," said the pilot, as he went over the side, pointing towards a white speck on the ocean; "take care of that fellow, and give him as wide a berth as possible, or he may give you a look at ...
— Miles Wallingford - Sequel to "Afloat and Ashore" • James Fenimore Cooper
... in some new country far away a place where to hide their shame and misery, they had just as little thought of taking that miserable step as you, my reader, have of taking one like it. And perhaps there are human beings in this world, held in the highest esteem, and with not a speck on their snow-white reputation, who know within themselves that they have barely escaped the gulf, that the moment has been in which all their future lot was trembling in the balance, and that a grain's ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 48, October, 1861 • Various
... his shoulder, and peered across the valley in the clear afternoon light. His chin cuddled the stock, and there was a twitching of the muscles of the right cheek as he sighted; Private Stanley Ortheris was engaged on his business. A speck of white crawled ...
— Rudyard Kipling • John Palmer
... a motor neurone magnified 300 diameters. Whereas the nerve cell and its branching processes (the dendrons) form but a minute speck of protoplasm, the nerve fibre which arises from it, although microscopic in diameter, extends a very long distance; in some cases it is a yard long; consequently only a minute fraction of the nerve fibre is represented ...
— The Brain and the Voice in Speech and Song • F. W. Mott
... thickets of mesquit, together with the huddled adobe buildings of the ranch, made up the details of a scene possible only in the sunburnt territory. The palpitating heat quivered above the hot brown sand. No life stirred in the valley except a circling buzzard high in the sky, and the tiny moving speck with its wake of dust each knew to be the stage that had left the station an ...
— Brand Blotters • William MacLeod Raine
... he's fighting for his life. They wanted something more restful, with a little more colour. I could have said a good deal, but you might as well talk to a sheep as an art-manager. I took my 'Last Shot' back. Behold the result! I put him into a lovely red coat without a speck on it. That is Art. I polished his boots,—observe the high light on the toe. That is Art. I cleaned his rifle,—rifles are always clean on service,—because that is Art. I pipeclayed his helmet,—pipeclay is ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... on the ocean, we are astonished at its immensity, bounded only by the horizon, with not a speck of land, a solitary rock, or landmark of any description, to guide the adventurers cast adrift on its broad surface, with "water, water, every where;" and when we see its face agitated by storms, and listen to the thunder of its billows, and ...
— Jack in the Forecastle • John Sherburne Sleeper
... of living beings, animal and vegetable, to be progressive modifications of one great fundamental unity, an unity of so-called mental faculties as well as of bodily structure. And this is the jelly-speck. He scoffs at the popular idea that man is the great central figure round which all things gyrate like marionettes; in fact, the anthropocentric era of Draper, which, strange to say, lives by the side ...
— The Kasidah of Haji Abdu El-Yezdi • Richard F. Burton
... her every motion exhibiting trained skill. She glanced back at him, and smiled at his precaution; then faced resolutely toward the distant shore, swimming easily. He followed closely, timing his strokes to her own, confident, yet watchful still, while behind them, now but a dim speck in the grey ...
— The Case and The Girl • Randall Parrish
... must illustrate the strained and peculiar condition of affairs in Atchison county. Archimedes Speck lived on the Stranger Creek, several miles below the residence of the writer. He was a man of magnificent physical development, and was a pronounced Free State man. His wife's people originally came from North Carolina, and she ...
— Personal Recollections of Pardee Butler • Pardee Butler
... of the great ocean itself, for we were out of sight of land. All round us, on both sides of the ship, ahead and astern, nothing was to be seen but water-water—water; not a single glimpse of green shore, not the smallest island, or speck of moss any where. Never did I realize till now what the ocean was: how grand and majestic, how solitary, and boundless, and beautiful and blue; for that day it gave no tokens of squalls or hurricanes, such as I had heard my father tell of; nor could I imagine, how any thing that seemed so ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville
... chestnuts, or autumn leaves, or persimmons, or exploring some run or branch. It is, say, the last of October or the first of November. The air is not balmy, but tart and pungent, like the flavor of the red-cheeked apples by the roadside. In the sky not a cloud, not a speck; a vast dome of blue ether lightly suspended above the world. The woods are heaped with color like a painter's palette,—great splashes of red and orange and gold. The ponds and streams bear upon their bosoms leaves of all tints, from the ...
— Winter Sunshine • John Burroughs
... ever with our faith. Its ideal perfection would be that it should be unbroken, undashed by any speck of doubt. But the reality is far different. It is no full-orbed completeness, but, at the best, a growing segment of reflected light, with many a rough place in its jagged outline, prophetic of increase; with many a deep ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Mark • Alexander Maclaren
... as a man looks at a flickering fireplace and thinks of other things. He thought of the sun, 52 trillion miles away, a pinpoint of light lost in the dazzle of the Milky Way—the Earth a speck of dust in orbit just as this planet was to its ...
— The Quantum Jump • Robert Wicks
... Spanish, Turkish, Arabian, Polish, Russian, Swedish, German, French—and English) at distances varying from seventy feet to a few inches, for twenty minutes I was ferociously bombarded. Nor was my perplexity purely aural. About five minutes after lying down, I saw (by a hitherto unnoticed speck of light which burned near the doors which I had entered) two extraordinary looking figures—one a well-set man with a big, black beard, the other a consumptive with a bald head and sickly moustache, both clad only in their knee-length chemises, ...
— The Enormous Room • Edward Estlin Cummings
... don' 'speck to eat whut's good fuh me! All I says is, 'Grub, keep me alive. Ef you do dat, you done a ...
— Birthright - A Novel • T.S. Stribling
... bollard staring straight at the steamer 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 ...
— Married • August Strindberg
... red handkerchief containing his worldly goods. As the good ship moved away we lifted a wild wail of woe that drowned the sobbing of the waves. Everybody cried—I wept, too—and as the great, black ship became but a speck on the Western horizon we embraced each other ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 1 of 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Good Men and Great • Elbert Hubbard
... injury to her beloved work and her desire to get off the island. But the little boat pulled swiftly down the channel, its owner evidently not desirous of being caught himself on the mud-flats, and was soon a speck ...
— Cricket at the Seashore • Elizabeth Westyn Timlow
... the town a tiny bird, A shining speck at sleepy dawn, Forgets the ant-hill so absurd, This self-important Buffalo. Descending twenty miles away He bathes his wings at break ...
— The Advance of English Poetry in the Twentieth Century • William Lyon Phelps
... and succeeded, for the kite was carried upward on the breeze as lightly as a feather; and when the string was all out, John stood in great delight, holding fast the stick and gazing on the kite, which now seemed like a little white speck in the blue sky. "Look, look, aunt, how high it flies! and it pulls like a team of horses, so that I can hardly hold it. I wish I had a mile of string: I am sure it would go to the ...
— McGuffey's Fourth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... lugubrious canvases. The gentlemen sat in the benches, having hitched their trousers slightly above their knees and laid their hats in security. They sat well back and gazed formally at the distant speck of red light which was suspended ...
— Dubliners • James Joyce
... now considering relativity. If we cut off the very end of the point of the finest needle, we get so minute a particle of steel that it is hardly visible to the naked eye, and yet we know that that small speck contains not only millions but millions of millions of what are called atoms, all in intense motion and never touching each other. Try and conceive how small each of these atoms must be, and then try and grasp the fact, only lately proved by the discovery of ...
— Science and the Infinite - or Through a Window in the Blank Wall • Sydney T. Klein
... The little speck of life he placed on a wisp of hay before the small stove, where a can of milk was simmering. Oak extinguished the lantern by blowing into it and then pinching the snuff, the cot being lighted by a candle suspended by a twisted wire. A rather hard couch, ...
— Far from the Madding Crowd • Thomas Hardy
... later on, although he disapproved of "gaping," as he called it, he taught Miriam so much of geometry as was sufficient to make her understand what he meant when he told her that a fixed star yielded no parallax, and that the earth was consequently the merest speck of dust in the universe. She found his simple trigonometry very, very hard, but to her husband it was easy, and with his ...
— Miriam's Schooling and Other Papers - Gideon; Samuel; Saul; Miriam's Schooling; and Michael Trevanion • Mark Rutherford
... ship,' Mrs. Allen had said; and she had represented that nothing was simpler than to put the girl in her charge. When Mrs. Mavis had replied that that was all very well but that she didn't know the lady, Mrs. Allen had declared that that didn't make a speck of difference, for Mrs. Nettlepoint was kind enough for anything. It was easy enough to know her, if that was all the trouble. All Mrs. Mavis would have to do would be to go up to her the next morning when she took her daughter to the ship (she would see her ...
— A London Life; The Patagonia; The Liar; Mrs. Temperly • Henry James
... down by the seashore just at dawn that morning, and as she gazed out over the sea, she saw a blue speck in the distance. At first she thought it was a flock of birds, and then as it drew nearer it looked like a great tree floating on the water, but at last she saw that it was a vessel with but one man in it, and when it came still ...
— Finnish Legends for English Children • R. Eivind |
