"Tapering" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... horned snakes With spines contorted: like to torrid sand Ammodytes, of hue invisible: Sole of all serpents Scytale to shed In vernal frosts his slough; and thirsty Dipsas; Dread Amphisbaena with his double head Tapering; and Natrix who in bubbling fount Fuses his venom. Greedy Prester swells His foaming jaws; Pareas, head erect Furrows with tail alone his sandy path; Swift Jaculus there, and Seps (25) whose poisonous juice Makes putrid flesh and frame: and there upreared His regal head, and frighted ...
— Pharsalia; Dramatic Episodes of the Civil Wars • Lucan
... a strip and making them fit. If the child has a very large, round abdomen, they can be made to fit over it nicely by taking two little tucks on the lower edge, about half an inch from the middle of the band, and letting the tucks run up about an inch or a little more, tapering it off gradually. When these are discarded and the Jersey made bands are put on, always put them on the baby feet first, as it is hard to ...
— Making Good On Private Duty • Harriet Camp Lounsbery
... of the age of the cave itself. About thirty feet west of the White Throne and against the wall, stands the next onyx attraction in the form of a beautiful fluted column nearly twenty feet high, tapering up from a base three feet in diameter, and known as the Spring Room Sentinel, because the Spring of Youth is just behind it although not directly connected with the Auditorium; it being the first chamber on the left ...
— Cave Regions of the Ozarks and Black Hills • Luella Agnes Owen
... Colquhoun to cut the grass upon the lawn, and enjoined him to cut it very close, adding, as a reason for the injunction, that one inch at the bottom was worth two at the top. Having finished his work much to her satisfaction, the old lady got out the whisky-bottle and a tapering wineglass, which she filled about half full; John suggested that it would be better to fill it up, slily adding, "Fill it up, mem, for it's no like the gress; an inch at the tap's worth ...
— Reminiscences of Scottish Life and Character • Edward Bannerman Ramsay
... uttering low moans. And the earth, strewn with those bodies, presented a variegated sight. And strewn with the arms of strong warriors smeared with sandal paste and decked with leathern fences and bracelets, with tapering thighs resembling the trunks of elephants, and with fallen heads, graced with gems attached to turbans and with earrings of large-eyed combatants, O Bharata, the earth assumed a beautiful sight. And the field of battle, overspread with blood, dyed coats of mail and golden ornaments ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... meditation, he did as follows. He took the rotundity of the moon, and the curves of creepers, and the clinging of tendrils, and the trembling of grass, and the slenderness of the reed, and the bloom of flowers, and the lightness of leaves, and the tapering of the elephant's trunk, and the glances of deer, and the clustering of rows of bees, and the joyous gaiety of sunbeams, and the weeping of clouds, and the fickleness of the winds, and the timidity of the hare, and the vanity of the peacock, and the softness of the ...
— Folklore as an Historical Science • George Laurence Gomme
... edges, in which the straps ride. The "eccentricity" or "throw" of an eccentric is the distance between C^2, the centre of the shaft, and C^1, the centre of the sheave. The throw must equal half of the distance which the slide-valve has to travel over the steam ports. A tapering steel wedge or key, K, sunk half in the eccentric and half in a slot in the shaft, holds the eccentric steady and prevents it slipping. Some eccentric sheaves are made in two parts, bolted together, so that they may be removed ...
— How it Works • Archibald Williams
... the series of some established work in treating of them, and I have selected that of Colonel Hamilton Smith, both for its extent and its ability. He begins with those which are placed nearest to the Arctic Circle of both hemispheres, and which form a group of large, wolfish dogs, with tapering noses, pointed ears, and, generally speaking, long, white and black hair. They are fierce, broad, and often web-footed; they swim well, hunt together or alone, and when their owners turn them out to obtain their own living, often fish with great dexterity. ...
— Anecdotes of the Habits and Instinct of Animals • R. Lee
... to examine the tree. It was an old oak. Well up its trunk a limb had broken or rotted away, and the resulting decay of the stub had made a hole in the tree itself. What instantly riveted the attention of the two boys was something black and tapering that projected from the hole and that slowly waved ...
— The Young Wireless Operator—As a Fire Patrol - The Story of a Young Wireless Amateur Who Made Good as a Fire Patrol • Lewis E. Theiss
... lively, cheerful sparkle of the large eyes, one involuntarily took her for less. Her eyes were black and very frank, her lips thin and slightly severe, her nose regular and slightly inclined to the left, and her hands ringless, large, and almost like those of a man, but with finely tapering fingers. She wore a dark-blue dress fastened to the throat and sitting closely to her firm, still youthful waist—a waist which she evidently pinched. Lastly, she held herself very upright, and was knitting a garment of some kind. As soon as I stepped ...
— Youth • Leo Tolstoy
... were those against whose front faces were carved colossal figures of Osiris, as at Luxor, Medmet Abou, and Karnak (Fig. 15). The columns, which were seldom over six diameters in height, were treated with greater variety; the shafts, slightly tapering upward, were either round or clustered in section, and usually contracted at the base. The capitals with which they were crowned were usually of one of the five chief types described below. Besides round and clustered shafts, ...
— A Text-Book of the History of Architecture - Seventh Edition, revised • Alfred D. F. Hamlin
... reached the summit, he glanced down to see the sun steeping the valley in a lake of gold. Near the canyon, enormous rocks loomed protrudent, like fantastic Negro skulls. The pitaya trees rose tenuous, tall, like the tapering, gnarled fingers of a giant; other trees of all sorts bowed their crests toward the pit of the abyss. Amid the stark rocks and dry branches, roses bloomed like a white offering to the sun as smoothly, suavely, it unraveled its golden threads, one by ...
— The Underdogs • Mariano Azuela
... the wonderful elocution he possessed never displayed itself with greater zest. His wavy, reddish-brown hair swept his forehead becomingly; his face, thin, keen and full of cultured intelligence, betrayed every emotion as he declaimed; and his long arms and tapering fingers moved in a ceaseless rhythm ...
— The Spoilers of the Valley • Robert Watson
... could not see the water—schools of porpoises surrounded the ship, setting the water alive with phosphorescent splendors: "Like glorified serpents thirty to fifty feet long. Every curve of the tapering long body perfect. The whole snake dazzlingly illumined. It was a weird sight to see this sparkling ghost come suddenly flashing along out of the solid gloom and stream past ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... with a long stride and as she dropped into the chair she crossed her limbs so that her well-turned ankles showed and the hands she clasped about her knees were long and strong, white and remarkably tapering. Her features were almost too perfect; her beauty was sensuous, insolent and dazzling. Withal her presence intimated tremendous primal charm and the mystery of undiscovered potentialities. And she was royal! No mere upstart of an impostor could have assumed ...
— The City of Delight - A Love Drama of the Siege and Fall of Jerusalem • Elizabeth Miller
... far. The first place we visited was Penas Cargadas, the "loaded rocks." Riding through a thick wood of oaks and pines, we came suddenly in view of several sugar-loaf peaks, some three hundred feet high, tapering almost to a point at the top, and each one crowned with a mass of rocks which seem to have been balanced in unstable equilibrium on its point,—looking as though the first puff of wind would bring them down. The pillars were of porphyritic conglomerate, which had been disintegrated and worn away ...
— Anahuac • Edward Burnett Tylor
... numerous, thickly-set columns of smoke that shot upward and spread out into over-arching canopies above, while, with the gathering darkness of the night, that forest seemed gradually to take the form of a distant burning city in the manifold tapering pillars of fire which everywhere rose from the field, fiercely illuminating the dark and sombre wood-wall of the surrounding forest, and dimly glimmering over the sleeping waters of ...
— Gaut Gurley • D. P. Thompson
... questioners. While in the midst of this laugh, he became horrified by the thought that that of itself would be sufficient to betray him, so he cleverly remedied the evil, and gave vent to his feelings by tapering the laugh off into a hideous yell, and ...
— Jarwin and Cuffy • R.M. Ballantyne
... December, with her entire fortune—a modest L300 in gold, and life promised to be all labdanum. Disliking the houses in Damascus itself, the Burtons took one in the suburb El Salahiyyah; and here for two years they lived among white domes and tapering minarets, palms and apricot trees. Midmost the court, with its orange and lemon trees, fell all day the cool waters of a fountain. The principal apartments were the reception room, furnished with rich Eastern webs, and a large dining room, while a terrace forming ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright
... infinitely greater scope. The stamp of sex is no longer confined to the pelvis and the chest, but is impressed on every part of the body. The women's feet become smaller and more daintily shaped than the men's, the limbs more rounded and tapering and less muscular, the waist narrower, the neck longer, the skin smoother, softer, and less hairy, the hands more comely, with more slender fingers, the skeleton more delicate, the stature lower, the steps shorter, the gait more graceful, the features ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... of five pieces, which, when fitted together, form a wooden tube about 8 ft. long (93 in.) with a conical bore tapering from a diameter of 1-3/4 in., at the bell, to 3/16 in. at the reed. The tube is doubled back upon itself, the shorter joint extending to about two-thirds of the length of the longer, whereby the height of the instrument is reduced to about 4 ft. The ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 3 - "Banks" to "Bassoon" • Various
... one that spread such delicate and graceful tresses on the breeze as our White Birch; not one that fanned it with such a gentle, musical flutter of silver-lined leaves; not one that wore a bodice of such virgin white from head to foot, or that showed such long, tapering fingers against the sky. I was glad to see such justice done to a tree in the noblest parks in England, which with us has been treated with such disdain and contumely. When I saw it here in such glory and honor, and ...
— A Walk from London to John O'Groat's • Elihu Burritt
... studied, for a moment, the lethal object in his hand. It was very graceful,—the tapering, three-cornered blade, with shallow grooves in which blood was soon to run, the silver hilt where his enemy's father had set, in florid letters, the name of "H.B. St. A. Chantel," and a date. How long ago, he thought, the steel ...
— Dragon's blood • Henry Milner Rideout
... Of these four stripes the posterior one was very minute and faint; the anterior one, on the other hand, was long and broad, but interrupted in the middle, and truncated at its lower extremity, with the anterior angle produced into a long tapering point. I mention this latter fact because the shoulder-stripe of the ass occasionally presents exactly the same appearance. I have had an outline and description sent to me of a small, purely-bred, light fallow-dun Welch pony, ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication - Volume I • Charles Darwin
... globe is to be got by considering the globe alternately from one pole and from the other. In the south, a clump of ice-bound land, well within the Antarctic Circle, surrounds the pole. All else is a wide domain of ocean broken only where tapering and isolated tongues of land, South America, the Cape, Australia, lean down from the great land masses of the north. On the other hand, all the great land masses expand in the Northern Hemisphere, and shoulder one ...
— Thomas Henry Huxley; A Sketch Of His Life And Work • P. Chalmers Mitchell
... Parasara, in course of his wanderings. As she was gifted with great beauty, an object of desire even with an anchorite, and of graceful smiles, the wise sage, as soon as he beheld her, desired to have her. And that bull amongst Munis addressed the daughter of Vasu of celestial beauty and tapering thighs, saying, 'Accept my embraces, O blessed one!' Satyavati replied, 'O holy one, behold the Rishis standing on either bank of the river. Seen by them, how ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... a hard, implacable pedagogue, and for the fact his scholars suffer. He wields a rod rather than a filigree bow, as old romancers fabled,—no plaything, but a most business-like article, well-poised in the handle, and thence tapering into graceful, stinging nothingness; and not a scholar escapes at least ...
— The Cords of Vanity • James Branch Cabell et al
... live under the shade of lofty trees, and this command they always keep. They are most beautiful, many of these monasteries—great buildings of dark-brown teak, weather-stained, with two or three roofs one above the other, and at one end a spire tapering up until it ends in a gilded 'tee.' Many of the monasteries are covered with carving along the facades and up the spires, scroll upon scroll of daintiest design, quaint groups of figures here and there, and on the gateways moulded dragons. All the carvings tell a story ...
— The Soul of a People • H. Fielding
... maintenance a wire-gauze cover suffices, with a bed of sand and diet to their taste. They are very small, scarcely larger than a cherry-stone. Their shape is extremely curious. The body is dumpy, tapering to an acorn-shaped posterior; the legs are very long, resembling those of the spider when outspread; the hinder legs are disproportionately long and curved, being thus excellently adapted to enlace and press ...
— Social Life in the Insect World • J. H. Fabre
... capabilities in vain. I cannot remember having seen elsewhere so promising a "ducking-point." Imagine a low, marshy peninsula, verging landward into stunted woods, full of irregular water-courses and stagnant pools—tapering off seaward into a mere spit of sand, on which reeds and bent-grass scarcely deign to grow, towards the extreme point, just where the neck is narrowest, are the "blinds"—ten or twelve in number—a long gunshot apart, in which the "fowlers" lurk, waiting for their prey. ...
— Border and Bastille • George A. Lawrence
... waist was lost; open at the neck, from a point about a span beneath the collar-bone, it allowed the whole of the noble white column of the grandly-formed throat to be visible from its base above the bosom to the opening out of the exquisite lines about the nape of the neck into the tapering swelling of the classically-shaped head. The exact arrangement of the shape of this opening of the dress, from the throat down to about a hand's-breadth above the girdle, was very carefully attended to; the lace-edged folds of the muslin being three or four times drawn a little more forward ...
— A Siren • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... was too small, her neck was too thin. But her skin was clear and fine, she had a high-bred sensitiveness. This queer, brave, high-bred quality she shared with her father. The charity boy could see it in her tapering fingers, which were white and ringed. The same glamour that he knew in the elderly man he now saw in the woman. And he wanted to possess himself of it, he wanted to make himself master of it. As he went about through the old pottery-yard, ...
— England, My England • D.H. Lawrence
... comprises a base about thirty inches high, with well-rounded corners of molded brick work. The pedestal proper is five feet six inches in diameter, ten feet in height, and a cornice, ornamental in style, about three feet in height. From this rises a tapering shaft of about twenty-eight feet. The whole is surmounted by a capstone eighteen inches high. Three stories ...
— Christopher Columbus and His Monument Columbia • Various
... than in the translation of the poem Norway, Norway! the first strophe of which is: Norway, Norway, Rising in blue from the sea's gray and green, Islands around like fledglings tender, Fjord-tongues with slender Tapering tips in the silence seen. Rivers, valleys, Mate among mountains, wood-ridge and slope Wandering follow. Where the wastes lighten, Lake and plain brighten, Hallow a temple of peace and hope. Norway, Norway, Houses and huts, not castles grand, Gentle or ...
— Poems and Songs • Bjornstjerne Bjornson
... Niti-Ghaut, the loftiest peak in the world, the height of which he fixed at 16,814 feet, and not only did he find no snow, but even the rocks rising 300 feet above it were quite free from snow in summer. Moreover, the steep sides, where breathing was difficult, were clothed with magnificent forests of tapering pines, and firs, and wide-spreading cypress ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part III. The Great Explorers of the Nineteenth Century • Jules Verne
... hiding her countenance from recognition, nevertheless permitted sufficient of her beauties to be discerned to suggest the extreme elegance and loveliness of her lineaments. Advancing toward our hero, and extending to him a tapering hand as white as alabaster, the fingers encircled with a multitude of jeweled rings, she ...
— Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates • Howard I. Pyle
... Alma's long, supple, tapering fingers were outstretched, and taking Leo's white dimpled hands, drew them caressingly to her face, pressing a palm against ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... were now unpacked and displayed. When the girls saw these sharp-prowed, graceful ships, with their tapering masts and pretty sails, their eyes glistened, and they declared that never before had they seen anything so lovely. Their, pride in their canal-boats suffered a woful downfall. The boys proposed to try all the vessels on the canal at the back of ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, Nov 1877-Nov 1878 - Scribner's Illustrated • Various
... would seek to assure work during the coming fiscal year to the individuals now on relief, or until such time as private employment is available. In order to make adjustment to increasing private employment, work should be planned with a view to tapering it off in proportion to the speed with which the emergency workers are offered positions with ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... with her silent face terrifies rather than consoles us. Even when we firmly plant our feet upon the solid rocks, they seem to tremble like the mists of the sea from which they once slowly emerged. When the eye longs for the light, and the moon rises behind the firs, reflecting their tapering tops against the bright rock opposite, it appears to us like the dead hand of a clock which was once wound up, and will some day cease to strike. There is no retreat for the soul, which feels itself alone and forsaken even among the stars, or in the heavenly world itself. One thought brings ...
— Memories • Max Muller
... bridges that crossed it held forth their lights, and there were the gleams, like travelling stars, of the passing trams, but all these were utterly insignificant against the vast body of the contemptuous ice. On the farther shore the buildings rose in a thin, tapering line, looking as though they had been made of black tissue paper, against the solid weight of the cold, stony sky. The Peter and Paul Fortress, the towers of the Mohammedan Mosque were thin, immaterial, ...
— The Secret City • Hugh Walpole
... likely to impale themselves on very sharp stakes. The soldiers called these "cippi." Before these, which were arranged in oblique rows in the form of a quincunx, pits three feet deep were dug, which gradually diminished in depth to the bottom. In these pits tapering stakes, of the thickness of a man's thigh, sharpened at the top and hardened in the fire, were sunk in such a manner as to project from the ground not more than four inches; at the same time for the purpose ...
— "De Bello Gallico" and Other Commentaries • Caius Julius Caesar
... They build bigger, better, and faster boats to sail on bluer seas into more prosperous and happy havens than belong to this too substantial world. Each sketches out the boat of his desire, and fits her with wondrous comfort and conveniences. He glances, approving head thrown back, up her tall, tapering, well-oiled masts, silver-topped with golden trucks. He paints her in rival colours, rigs her with silken sails, names her after a sweetheart, and sails away to lands fairer than any of the isles of the Pacific—those isles ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... croaked ominously, and a little beyond rose the various buttes, mauve and terra-cotta colored, from whose sides and at whose bases projected the petrified trees. There lay the giant trees, straight and tapering—no branching as in our trees of to-day. The trunks are often flattened, as though they had been under great pressure, often the very bark seemed to be on them (though it was petrified bark), and on ...
— Our Friend John Burroughs • Clara Barrus
... once arises new problems at every step. The pupil's hand, mind, body and soul may be in reality different from those of every other pupil the teacher has taught. The individual peculiarities of the hand should be carefully considered. If the hand has long, tapering fingers, with the fingers widely separated, it will need quite different treatment from that of the pupil with a short, compact, muscular hand. If the pupil's mind indicates mental lethargy or a lack of the proper ...
— Great Pianists on Piano Playing • James Francis Cooke
... such an one examine my hand, he would be ashamed to say what he thought. In it the line of life is short, and that named after Saturn long and well marked. My left hand, however, is seemly, with fingers long, tapering, and well-set, and shining nails. My neck is longer and thinner than the rule, my chin is divided, my lower lip thick and pendulous, my eyes are very small, and it is my wont to keep them half-closed, peradventure lest ...
— Jerome Cardan - A Biographical Study • William George Waters
... cut represents a turtle. The tail was not always added. The salamander closely resembles the turtle, but notice the difference in the body, and still different is the cut of the musk-rat (see later). Fishes are figured as a straight embankment of earth tapering ...
— The Prehistoric World - Vanished Races • E. A. Allen
... most common in winter on the north coast of the Chukch peninsula is the hare. It differs from the fell hare (Lepus borealis, Lillj.) by its larger size, and by the bones of its nose not tapering so rapidly. It is generally met with in flocks of five or six on the hills in the neighbourhood of the tents, which are covered only with a thin layer of snow, notwithstanding the large number of hungry dogs which ...
— The Voyage of the Vega round Asia and Europe, Volume I and Volume II • A.E. Nordenskieold
... variety of little hill and plain to change their verdant surface. Here, there shot up, almost perpendicularly, into the sky, a height so steep, as to be hardly accessible to any but the sheep and goats that fed upon its sides, and there, stood a mound of green, sloping and tapering off so delicately, and merging so gently into the level ground, that you could scarce define its limits. Hills swelling above each other; and undulations shapely and uncouth, smooth and rugged, graceful and grotesque, thrown negligently ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... going very well, and I was admiring the pretty back with its girlish shoulders and slim tapering waist, when suddenly a woman, riding in the opposite direction, swerved across the road on her wheel, before Miss Cunningham had been given either time to slacken her speed or to ...
— The House by the Lock • C. N. Williamson
... was made fast by a succession of selvagees, for which I will borrow the elaborate description of White Jacket, who tells us the name was applied by the seamen of his ship to one of the lieutenants: "It is a slender, tapering, unstranded piece of rope, prepared with much solicitude; peculiarly flexible; which wreathes and serpentines round the cable and messenger like an elegantly modelled garter-snake round the stalks of a vine." The messenger thus was appropriately named; it went back and forth ...
— From Sail to Steam, Recollections of Naval Life • Captain A. T. Mahan
... for a few minutes longer, sweeping his glasses slowly to right and left. He took another look down into the Basin and saw no one stirring, that being about the time when the plump sister was rolling up her fancy work and tapering off her conversation to the point of making her adieu. Starr did not watch long enough for his own peace of mind. Five more minutes would have brought the plump one into plain view with her brother and Helen May, and would have identified Holman Sommers as ...
— Starr, of the Desert • B. M Bower
... breeze caressed me to sleep. From the flowering Malati bower overhead silent kisses dropped over my body. On my hair, my breast, my feet, each flower chose a bed to die on. I slept. And, suddenly in the depth of my sleep, I felt as if some intense eager look, like tapering fingers of flame, touched my slumbering body. I started up and saw the Hermit standing before me. The moon had moved to the west, peering through the leaves to espy this wonder of divine art wrought in a fragile human frame. The air was heavy with perfume; the ...
— Chitra - A Play in One Act • Rabindranath Tagore
... heated, leaving no stain. This can only be accomplished practically by distillation. The crude article was melted and poured into upright, thick wooden boxes five feet high and ten inches square at the bottom, tapering upwards; when cold the earthy matters would be found in the lower portion by subsidence, leaving about three feet apparently pure. This was broken off and placed into two kettles of suitable form and dimensions, ...
— History of the Confederate Powder Works • Geo. W. Rains
... figures came looming, ghostly-fashion, out of chaos, to take slow shape and form, to resolve themselves into tapering lodges, into hunched and ...
— The Maid of the Whispering Hills • Vingie E. Roe
... light tapering rod fall into the hollow of his arm, swung round his creel to the front, and, raising the lid, peered down at his speckled prizes lying upon a ...
— The Ocean Cat's Paw - The Story of a Strange Cruise • George Manville Fenn
... in the care of her person, and she had by this toil saved her figure from becoming gross, retaining the upright carriage and the tapering waist of youth, though she was upon the verge of her sixtieth birthday. Her complexion, too, owing to her careful diet, her hours of repose, and her knowledge of skin foods and lotions, remained smooth, fair and unfurrowed. But the long-guarded expression in her blue eyes of childlike innocence ...
— An Ambitious Man • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... out on to the main road that bounded the landward side of the marshes. I caught sight of my future home looking very small and desolate against the long stretch of sea-wall, and far in the distance I could just discern the mast of the Betty still tapering up above the bank of the creek. It was comforting to know that so far at all events Mr. Gow had neither sunk her nor ...
— A Rogue by Compulsion • Victor Bridges
... and they survive in us still, for the arterial and nervous systems are trees, the roots of one in the heart, of the other in the brain. Has not our body its trunk, bearing aloft the head, like a flower: a cup to hold the precious juices of the brain? Has not that trunk its tapering limbs which ramify into hands and feet, and these into fingers and toes, after the manner of the twigs and branches ...
— Architecture and Democracy • Claude Fayette Bragdon
... struck us, as we entered the great court, was the peculiar South Russian taste for filling in the line of roof between the numerous domes with curving pediments and tapering turned-wood spirelets surmounted by golden stars and winged seraphs' heads surrounded by rays. The effect of so many points of gold against the white of the walls, combined with the gold of the crosses, ...
— Russian Rambles • Isabel F. Hapgood
... veteran's claim preferred, Though his the prowess that the rest surpassed, His shaft the one that struck the soaring bird. The second, he who cut the cord, the last, He who with feathered reed transfixed the tapering mast. ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil - Translated into English Verse by E. Fairfax Taylor • Virgil
... denudation extends from three to six inches upwards, why has it not also extended two inches downwards so as to narrow the broadened end? The narrowness seems to be a mainly relative or negative effect produced by the broadening out of a long tapering feather at its end under the influence of sexual selection. Several other birds have similarly narrowed or spoon-shaped feathers and do not bite them. Is it not more feasible to suppose that this attractive peculiarity first suggested its artificial intensification, ...
— Are the Effects of Use and Disuse Inherited? - An Examination of the View Held by Spencer and Darwin • William Platt Ball
... two kinds—given by lines pointing in a direction which the eye of the spectator tends to follow, and by movement represented as about to take place and therefore interpreted as the product of internal energy. Thus, the tapering of a pyramid would give the first kind of suggestion, the picture of a runner the second kind. Translated into terms of experiment, this distinction would give two classes dealing with (A) the direction of a straight line as a whole, and (B) the expression ...
— Harvard Psychological Studies, Volume 1 • Various
... tall young man, fair and slender, tightly encased in his uniform like a woman in her corset, his flat shiny cap, tilted to one side of his head, making him look like an English hotel runner. His exaggerated mustache, long and straight and tapering to a point at either end in a single blond hair that could hardly be seen, seemed to weigh down the corners of his mouth and give a ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... of litters, which are either plain balls of metal or tapering cones based on crescents or on balls and crescents. See in Lane (M. E. chapt. xxiv.) the sketch ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton
... the capillary tube into this barrel with the filiform extremity uppermost, and the square cut end projecting about 0.5 cm. beyond the tapering end of ...
— The Elements of Bacteriological Technique • John William Henry Eyre
... inexhaustible supply of firewood. Besides the trees I have mentioned, there is the xanthorea, or grass-tree, a plant which cannot be intelligibly described to those who have never seen it. The stem consists of a tough pithy substance, round which the leaves are formed. These, long and tapering like the rush, are four-sided, and extremely brittle; the base from which they shoot is broad and flat, about the size of a thumb-nail, and very resinous in substance. As the leaves decay annually, others are put forth above the bases of ...
— The Bushman - Life in a New Country • Edward Wilson Landor
... is produced by an exaggeration of the infantile type of larynx. The epiglottis will be found long and tapering, its lateral margins rolled backward so as to meet and form a cylinder above. The upper edges of the aryepiglottic folds are approximated, leaving a narrow chink. The lack of firmness in these folds and the loose ...
— Bronchoscopy and Esophagoscopy - A Manual of Peroral Endoscopy and Laryngeal Surgery • Chevalier Jackson
... India Company's ship. His singular character and story had excited our interest ever since the ship came into the port. He was a delicate, slender little fellow, with a beautiful pearly complexion, regular features; forehead as white as marble, black hair curling beautifully round it; tapering, delicate fingers; small feet, soft voice, gentle manners, and, in fact, every sign of having been well born and bred. At the same time there was something in his expression which showed a slight deficiency of intellect. ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... region near the north pole, which, being turned from the sun, was towards them and in darkness, they waited. "In this blaze of sunlight," said Cortlandt, "I am afraid we can see nothing." Fortunately, at this moment the Callisto entered the moon's tapering shadow. "This," said Ayrault, "is good luck. We could of course have gone into the shadow; but to change our course would have delayed us, and we might have lost part of the chance of increasing our speed." "There will be no danger from, meteors or sub-satellites here," said Bearwarden, "for anything ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds • J. J. Astor
... horns resemble those seen in the lower animals, differing, if at all, but slightly. They are hard, solid, dry and somewhat brittle; usually tapering, and may be either straight, curved or crooked. Their surface is rough, irregular, laminated or fissured, the ends pointed, blunt or clubbed. The color varies; it is usually grayish-yellow, but may be even blackish. As commonly seen they are small in size, a fraction of an inch or an inch ...
— Essentials of Diseases of the Skin • Henry Weightman Stelwagon
... the mast, rising thirty feet or more, and the long yard, suspended by ropes, large at the lower part, but tapering toward the extreme point, where floats the pennant which you have secured ...
— Harper's Young People, January 20, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... evoked by the song Rosamund had just been singing, faded; the peculiar almost intellectually delicate atmosphere of Greece was gone; and he saw for a moment the umber mystery of Stamboul, lifted under tinted clouds of the evening beyond the waters of the Golden Horn; the great rounded domes and tapering speary minarets of the mosques, couchant amid the shadows and the trailing and gauzy smoke-wreaths, a suggestion of dense masses of cypresses, those trees of the night which only in the night can be truly themselves, guarding the innumerable graves of the ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens
... Indian maid, though the proportions of her person were as light and buoyant as at all comported with the fullness that properly belonged to her years. The limbs, seen below the folds of a short kirtle of bright scarlet cloth, were just and tapering, even to the nicest proportions of classic beauty; and never did foot of higher instep, and softer roundness, grace a feathered moccason. Though the person, from the neck to the knees, was hid by a tightly-fitting ...
— The Wept of Wish-Ton-Wish • James Fenimore Cooper
... brown Holland, and make a bag in the form of a cone, about five inches over at the top. Cut a small hole at the bottom, and tie in a small pipe of a tapering form, about two inches long; and the bore must be large or small, according to the size of the biscuits or cakes to be made. When the various mixtures are put in, lay the pipe close to the paper, and press ...
— The Cook's Oracle; and Housekeeper's Manual • William Kitchiner
... and belly about two inches from the sandy bottom, gently fanning the water with his party-coloured fins, and opening and closing his rosy gill-fringes as he breathed. In length he was something over twenty inches, with a thick, deep body tapering finely to the powerful tail. Like all the trout of the Clearwater, he was silver-bellied with a light pink flush, the yellow and brown markings on his sides light in tone, and his spots of the most high, intense vermilion. His great lower jaw ...
— The Watchers of the Trails - A Book of Animal Life • Charles G. D. Roberts
... hopes, they fade away from the houses. The full-risen moon, that dapples the ground beneath the trees, touches the tall church-spires with silver, and slants their loftiness—as memory slants grief—in long, dark, tapering lines upon ...
— Dream Life - A Fable Of The Seasons • Donald G. Mitchell
... fish was exhausted. Suddenly into the idler's lotus-eating Paradise came a rushing sound. A sharp swerve of the horse was followed by an exasperating crackle, and, lo! the beloved fishing-rod was broken,—yes, broken, and that delicate, quivering, responsive, tapering end lay trailing in the dust which whirled in eddies around a ...
— Flint - His Faults, His Friendships and His Fortunes • Maud Wilder Goodwin
... merely by a crest, with every strap that could be needed, in its place, and not one buckle or one thong superfluous; the bright steel curbs, with the chains jingling as the horses tossed and pawed impatient for a start; the tapering holly whip; the bear-skins covering the seats; the top-coats spread above them— every thing, in a word, without bordering on the slang, was perfectly ...
— Warwick Woodlands - Things as they Were There Twenty Years Ago • Henry William Herbert (AKA Frank Forester)
... noted that the slender, tapering hand had almost a man's strength of grip. "You needn't tell me anything about yourself," she added, "for I already know a lot—all I need to know: about you—and about Maggie Carlisle. You see an hour ago a ...
— Children of the Whirlwind • Leroy Scott
... University she had visited court rooms, jails and reformatories. Criminals were not new to her. But these men lacked utterly the markings of the average city criminal. Their eyes lacked the keen alertness, their fingers the slim tapering points of the professional crook. Suddenly, as she pondered, there came to her mind a paragraph from one of ...
— Triple Spies • Roy J. Snell
... field artillery evolutions, to be watched by maidenly and matronly eyes. Quite as good was it, too, for their occasional heavy-gun practice with two or three huge, new-cast, big-breeched "hell-hounds," as Charlie and others called them, whose tapering black snouts lay out on the parapet's superior slope, fondled by the soft Gulf winds that came up the river, and snuffing them for the taint of ...
— Kincaid's Battery • George W. Cable
... grass; the clouds were riven; His feet were mountains lost in heaven; Through strange new skies he rose alone, The earth fell from him like a stone, And his own limbs beneath him far Seemed tapering down ...
— The Wild Knight and Other Poems • Gilbert Chesterton
... endlessly-tossing waves like a sea-gull, carrying her head with a care-free air and dipping to the waves in jaunty fashion. Her lines were very fine, tapering and beautiful, even to the eye of ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien
... twice upon one of the piano-notes, and sat expectant. With a sharp click at the end of ten seconds a sliding shutter flew open, and a small tray protruded bearing two long tapering Venetian glasses ...
— The Doings Of Raffles Haw • Arthur Conan Doyle
... cat with a pink nose and pink lips and pink pads under her paws. Her tabby hood came down in a peak between her green eyes. Her tabby cape went on along the back of her tail, tapering to the tip. Sarah crouched against the fireguard, her haunches raised, her head sunk back on her shoulders, and her paws tucked in under her ...
— Mary Olivier: A Life • May Sinclair
... of order that spoke of long tranquil days in the trades, and that no mere harbor riggers could hope to accomplish. The deck was burdened with the ugly confusion of unloading. Jeremy studied the jibs stowed in harbor covers, the raking masts and tapering royal poles over the stolid roofs. Ordinarily seeing no more he could not only name a vessel trading out of Salem, but from her rig recognize anyone of a score of masters who, otherwise unheralded, ...
— Java Head • Joseph Hergesheimer
... of men, is the steel arrow, or "flechette" as it is called. It is a fiendish projectile consisting in reality of a pencil of solid polished steel, 4 3/4 inches in length. The lower end has a sharp tapering point, 5/8ths of an inch in length. For a distance of 1 1/8th of an inch above this point the cylindrical form of the pencil is preserved, but for the succeeding three inches to the upper end, the pencil is provided with four equally spaced angle flanges or vanes. This flanging of the upper ...
— Aeroplanes and Dirigibles of War • Frederick A. Talbot
... farther from the stem of the tree and out upon the tapering branch, where his footing became ever more precarious. The cat, infuriated by the pain of spear wounds, was overstepping the bounds of caution. Already he had reached a point where he could do little more than maintain a secure ...
— Tarzan the Untamed • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... greatly the appearance of a corn field, yet was probably nothing more than some dead flags, which are not uncommon in swampy places:[52] At some distance we saw groves of trees, which appeared high and tapering, and being not above two leagues from the south-west cod of the great bay, in which we had been coasting for the two last days, I hoisted out the pinnace and long-boat to search for fresh water; but just ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 13 • Robert Kerr
... 'Huge cloudy symbols of a high romance' there. But would I ever live to trace them by 'the magic hand of chance,' as Keats called the grace of God? I began again to mumble the lines of my guide-book, and found them rather bare and dry. I looked up at the vast tapering walls. Why was there no script there? After all, that trenchant argument outweighed a many arguments; it scaled up like Brennus's sword, and made for a clear issue. I looked at the sleeping carriers. Did they hold the secret, not in tradition, not in history, but in the fleshy tables of ...
— Cinderella in the South - Twenty-Five South African Tales • Arthur Shearly Cripps
... displaying her snowy neck and magnificent shoulders; her arms were encompassed but not hidden by flowing sleeves of filmy gauze as fine as the tissue of a spider's web; about her neck flashed a collar of brilliant diamonds of enormous value, and on her tapering fingers were rings of emerald, ruby and sapphire; on her head was a red fez, precisely similar to her husband's; her countenance, a perfect revelation of angelic beauty, was wreathed in sunny smiles that betokened ...
— Edmond Dantes • Edmund Flagg
... gazing at the pallid blue sky across which great masses of cloud were rapidly sweeping—to be outpaced by the low-flying shreds and tatters of steamy scud—the opaque, muddy green waste of foaming, leaping waters, and the flying ship swaying her broad spaces of damp-darkened canvas, her tapering and buckling spars, and her tautly-strained rigging in long arcs athwart the scurrying clouds as she leapt and plunged and sheared her irresistible way onward in the midst of a wild chaos and dizzying swirl and hurry of foaming spume: ...
— The Castaways • Harry Collingwood
... fore wheel behind Mr. Jenks' four span of mules, trailing my eighteen-foot tapering lash and occasionally well-nigh cutting off my own ear when I tried to throw it, I played the teamster—although sooth to say there was little of play in the job, on that road, at that time of ...
— Desert Dust • Edwin L. Sabin
... cars darting to and fro in the air about us, and they said that many of these were starting or finishing journeys of hundreds of leagues in the air. Then I cried out as I saw a great shape coming nearer us in the air. It was many rods in length, tapering to a point at both ends, a vast ship sailing in the air! There were great cabins on its lower part and in them we glimpsed people gazing out, coming and going inside, dancing even! They told me that vast ships of the air like this sailed to and fro ...
— The Man Who Saw the Future • Edmond Hamilton
... to the empty air, her chin propped on her hand, that hand never extended to any man, that no one had ever grasped—for I had only grasped her shoulder once—that generous, fine, somewhat masculine hand. I knew well the peculiarly efficient shape—broad at the base, tapering at the fingers—of that hand, for which there was nothing in the world to lay hold of. I ...
— 'Twixt Land & Sea • Joseph Conrad
... that isle, thereafter presently I saw smoke and a great wave, and heard the sea roaring. Then for very fear the oars flew from their hands, and down the stream they all splashed, and the ship was holden there, for my company no longer plied with their hands the tapering oars. But I paced the ship and cheered on my men, as I stood by each one and spake ...
— DONE INTO ENGLISH PROSE • S. H. BUTCHER, M.A.
... spot heated until a spot the diameter of the tube to be sealed on has become red hot and begun to shrink. This is now gently blown out into a small bulb, as in a, Fig. 7, and it will be noted that this bulb will have walls tapering from the thick walls of the tube to a very thin wall at the top. The sides of this bulb, below the dotted line, are to form the small side tube to which the main side tube is to be sealed. The top ...
— Laboratory Manual of Glass-Blowing • Francis C. Frary
... the Lias, cones of a peculiar form, which, like the leaves themselves, are still unfigured and undescribed, and some of which could scarce have belonged to any coniferous tree. In one of these (Fig. 138), the ligneous bracts or scales, narrow and long, and gradually tapering till they assume nearly the awl-shaped form, cluster out thick from the base and middle portions of the cone, and, like the involucral appendages of the hazel-nut, or the sepals of the yet unfolded rose-bud, sweep gracefully upwards to the top, where they present at their margins minute denticulations. ...
— The Testimony of the Rocks - or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed • Hugh Miller
... knife being the sort of model or common parent from which all the others are derived. It is triangular in shape, with a straight back, about 12-10ths of an inch in length, and 4-10ths broad at the base of the blade, tapering at a straight edge from its base to its point, and also diminishing in thickness ...
— A Manual of the Operations of Surgery - For the Use of Senior Students, House Surgeons, and Junior Practitioners • Joseph Bell
... resorted to Grignon's. Every thing looked well and auspiciously. Our room was in the shade; and a few lingering breezes seemed to play beneath the branches of an acacia. The dark green bottles, of various tapering shapes, were embedded in pails of ice, upon the table: and napkins and other goodly garniture graced the curiously woven cloth. I hung up, in the simplicity of my heart—over the seat which I was to occupy,— the portrait of ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Two • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... the blast had ended the echoes continued, retreating further and further from the point of observation, and finally dying away at great distances. The echoes were perfectly continuous as long as the sea was clear of ships, 'tapering' by imperceptible gradations into absolute silence. But when a ship happened to throw itself athwart the course of the sound, the echo from the broadside of the vessel was returned as a shock which rudely interrupted the continuity of ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... sugar, woollen and cotton goods, pottery, sieves, padlocks, and nails being to all appearance the goods most sought after by the country Moor. Quite a brisk demand for candles prevailed; they were highly-coloured things, thick at the base and tapering to the wick. There was a good sale too for native butter, that needed careful straining before it could be eaten with comfort, and there were eggs in plenty, fetching from twopence to threepence the ...
— Morocco • S.L. Bensusan
... down the avenue to his club; that the plump, ruddy, high-bred woman, surveying the West disapprovingly through a lorgnon, would be her mother. Shepler he knew by sight, with his big head, massive shoulders, and curiously short, tapering body. Some other men and a woman were scanning the ...
— The Spenders - A Tale of the Third Generation • Harry Leon Wilson
... not yet drawn upon the evening. The golden-brown carpet, newly cleaned, was speckless again. Marie moved about, improving on the table arrangements, and the hands which touched this or that into better design were little, slim and white. The finger nails had regained their tapering prettiness. And as she smiled with pleasure, between her lips an unblemished row of teeth showed. She wore black, to her mother's memory, but her gown was the last word in cut and contour; it opened in a long V to show her plump white neck; underneath the filmy bodice a hint ...
— Married Life - The True Romance • May Edginton
... oyster," is a typical example of a most unaccountably slighted vegetable with us, and yet it is highly appreciated on the continent and in the United States. The root is long and tapering, becoming fleshy and tender by cultivation, and with a whitish, milky-like juice. It has a rich flavour, not at all unlike that of cooked oysters, whence it derives its value. In preparing salsify for table the darkish outside skin requires to be lightly scraped off, and then it should ...
— The Art of Living in Australia • Philip E. Muskett (?-1909)
... completed, this was practically obsolete. The No. 31 class followed the 23X; it was built on Schutte-Lanz lines, 615 feet in length, 66 feet diameter, and a million and a half cubic feet capacity. The hull was similar to the later types of Zeppelin in shape, with a tapering stern and a bluff, rounded bow. Five cars each carrying a 250 horse-power Rolls-Royce engine, driving a single fixed propeller, were fitted, and on her trials R.31 performed well, especially in the matter of speed. But the experiment of constructing in wood in the Schutte-Lanz ...
— A History of Aeronautics • E. Charles Vivian
... whilst she was speaking. He was a dignified gentleman, with delicately chiselled features and portly figure. His silky light brown hair curled naturally about his brow and set it off imposingly. His hands were white and small, with tapering fingers, and small thumbs. ...
— The Irrational Knot - Being the Second Novel of His Nonage • George Bernard Shaw
... this we came to a cypress swamp, and for several miles waded through water ankle-deep although on a bottom of firm sand. Hardly any undergrowth was here, but in all directions stood gray, dismal cypress trees, coarsely buttressed at the water's edge and tapering to slender tips. Draped in long streamers of Spanish moss which were delicately swayed by an almost imperceptible current of air, this was a ghoulish place—suggesting a rookery for shrouded spirits which perched along ...
— Wings of the Wind • Credo Harris
... mingled curiosity and disapproval that the Arab appeared to be vain of his hands, on which he wore two or three rings that might have been bought in Paris, or even given him by European women—for they looked like a woman's rings. The brown fingers were slender, tapering to the ends, and their reddened nails glittered. They played, as the man talked, with a piece of bread, and often he glanced down at them, with the long eyes which had a blue shadow underneath, like a ...
— The Golden Silence • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... singular character and story had excited our interest ever since the ship came into the port. He was a delicate, slender little fellow, with a beautiful pearly complexion, regular features, forehead as white as marble, black haired, curling beautifully, rounded, tapering, delicate fingers, small feet, soft voice, gentle manners, and, in fact, every sign of having been well born and bred. At the same time there was something in his expression which showed a slight deficiency of intellect. How great the deficiency was, or what it resulted from; ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... over the gunnel to witness what had occasioned such exclamations. Philip, Schriften, and the captain, were side by side. On the beam of the ship, not more than two cables' length distant, they beheld slowly rising out of the water the tapering masthead and spars of another vessel. She rose, and rose, gradually; her topmasts and topsail yards, with the sails set, next made their appearance; higher and higher she rose up from the element. Her lower masts and rigging, and, ...
— The Phantom Ship • Frederick Marryat
... along, her attention was surprised by a thin tapering flame, that appeared, by fits, at the point of the pike, which Bertrand carried, resembling what she had observed on the lance of the sentinel, the night Madame Montoni died, and which he had said was an omen. The event immediately following it appeared ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe
... excessively elongated secondaries; and its tail is not formed of normal rectrices, from the middle of which spring two very long feathers, a little curved and arranged like a roof; but it consists of twelve wide plane feathers, regularly tapering, and ornamented with ocellated spots, arranged along the shaft. Its head is not bare, but is adorned behind with a tuft of thread-like feathers; and, finally, its system of coloration and the proportions of the different ...
— Scientific American Supplement No. 360, November 25, 1882 • Various
... with the tapering rods and rattling reels of modern days, fishers never become fully aware of the strength of salmon, unless, indeed, a hitch in their line occurs, and everything snaps! It was otherwise about the beginning of the sixteenth ...
— The Crew of the Water Wagtail • R.M. Ballantyne
... off to permit the lantern to be set in position. The result was that externally the tower resembled the trunk of an oak tree, and appeared to be just about as strong. It offered the minimum of resistance to the waves, which, tumbling upon the ledge, rose and curled around the tapering form without ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors - Vol. II Great Britain And Ireland, Part Two • Francis W. Halsey
... Set-on low; short, 10 TAIL: Set-on low, short, fine and tapering; fine and tapering, straight or screw; devoid of fringe or devoid of fringe or coarse hair, and not coarse hair, and not carried above the carried ...
— The Boston Terrier and All About It - A Practical, Scientific, and Up to Date Guide to the Breeding of the American Dog • Edward Axtell
... the proud, patrician face was pure as some bending lily frozen on its graceful, rounded stem: and the tapering fingers with daintily curved, polished nails would have suited better the lace and velvet of royal robes than the rough home-spun sleeves folded back ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... Rising, the figures ascend, but now leaf thin, tapering to a dusky wraith, which, fiery tipped, draws its twofold passion from my heart. For me it sings, unseals my sorrow, thaws compassion, floods with love the sunless world, nor, ceasing, abates its tenderness but deftly, subtly, weaves in and out until ...
— Monday or Tuesday • Virginia Woolf
... the orchard pass; Bow low, as in lords' halls; and springtime grass Tangles a snare to catch the tapering toe. ...
— Silverpoints • John Gray
... had Rachel beheld anything so enchanting as the scene in the shipyard,—the ship with its tall and tapering masts, its spars and yard-arms; the multitudes of ropes like the threads of a spider's web; flags, streamers, red, white, green, blue, yellow, with devices of lions, unicorns, dragons, eagles, fluttering from bowsprit to fore-royal mast, from taffrail to mizzen. Beneath the bowsprit was the ...
— Daughters of the Revolution and Their Times - 1769 - 1776 A Historical Romance • Charles Carleton Coffin
... cure essentially lies in substituting one conditioned reflex for another. This is comparatively easy with hypnosis because, unlike narcotics, barbiturates or alcohol, smoking is purely a psychological addiction. There is no need for tapering off. ...
— A Practical Guide to Self-Hypnosis • Melvin Powers |
