"Aperture" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... When the aperture closed, night reigned again, save for the small lamp, "sended" now and again aside, which shed its yellow light. A man in clogs was heard coming down ...
— An Iceland Fisherman • Pierre Loti
... three times on the street door, as she had directed me. Presently the wicket at the side of the door was opened, and a light was held up to it, that my face might be seen by a pair of eyes that peered out through the aperture. A moment later the bolts of the door were drawn, and I was let in by the possessor of the eyes. This was the elderly woman who always attended Mlle. d'Arency when the latter was abroad from the palace. She had invariably shown complete indifference to me, not appearing aware of my existence, ...
— An Enemy To The King • Robert Neilson Stephens
... to a sudden pause. He had incautiously got between Jack and the open door. Now our hero, who was close upon eighteen, and strongly built, was considerably more than a match in physical strength for Foley. He suddenly seized the old man, thrust him through the aperture, then closed the secret door, and sprang for the ...
— Jack's Ward • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... aperture, stood a man, in aviator's dress, with another dimly visible behind him. Both these men held long, blue-nosed, oxygen-bullet-shooting revolvers levelled at the ...
— The Air Trust • George Allan England
... a rifle in the house but no balls could be found. In this extremity one of the women took a musket-ball and placing it between her teeth bit it into pieces. Her eyes streaming with tears, she loaded the rifle and took her position at an aperture from which she could watch the motions of the savages. She dried her tears and thought of vengeance on her husband's murderers and of saving the innocent babes which she ...
— Woman on the American Frontier • William Worthington Fowler
... like scandal. But if you set me about anything which is extraordinary, and out of the course of nature, as it were, come I must, you know; and of this you are the best judge." So saying, Diabolus disappeared; but whether up the chimney, through the keyhole, or by any other aperture or contrivance, nobody knows. Simon Gambouge was left in a fever of delight, as, heaven forgive me! I believe many a worthy man would be, if he were allowed an opportunity to ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... next to it; should the ball hit exactly between two posts, it opens them, and meets the post of the lining, which stops it short: another ball may strike the same tree, at the other joining, then it closes the little aperture the other ...
— History of Louisisana • Le Page Du Pratz
... study Goethe found no reason for regarding the spectrum-phenomenon as complete only when both kinds of border-phenomena appear simultaneously (let alone when - as a result of the smallness of the aperture through which the light meets the prism - the two edges lie so close that a continuous band of colour arises). Hence we find Goethe - unlike Newton - treating the two ends of the spectrum ...
— Man or Matter • Ernst Lehrs
... open, (viii.) The centre house support very often consists of one post only, instead of a combination, (ix.) There is often on one side of the entrance opening a small space of the inside of the house fenced off for occupation by the pigs, and there is a little aperture by which they can get into this space from outside, (x.) The avale ceiling is usually absent; and, even if there be one, it will only extend under a small ...
— The Mafulu - Mountain People of British New Guinea • Robert W. Williamson
... few of the smallest of these in a little heap on the raised stone which served as fireplace. He then drew out his tinder-box from the leather bag which he always carried. This bag was simply the skin of a kid, the head of which had been cut off, and the body drawn out through the aperture at the neck thus made. He struck a spark with his flint, and when the tinder glowed, he shook out a little of it on to some dry grass, which soon blazed up, and which he then placed under the twigs. In a few minutes he had a cheerful fire, and then he untied ...
— Kafir Stories - Seven Short Stories • William Charles Scully
... point by contraction of the corners. Then the sticks were made secure, the trap placed at some secluded spot, and from the centre to the outside a trench was dug in the ground, and thinly covered when a depth had been obtained that would leave an aperture sufficiently large to admit the class of birds desired. Along this trench seeds and other food were scattered, which the birds soon discovered, and of course began to eat, unsuspectingly following the tempting bait through ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... us. We turned and saw a great slab of stone slowly slide to one side in the floor, leaving an aperture some three feet square. Evidently it had been closed behind us when we had ascended; we had had no time to notice it then. In this hole presently appeared the head and shoulders of our guide, who beckoned to us to follow ...
— Under the Andes • Rex Stout
... wound. If the dura mater be penetrated, and the arachnoid cavity be opened, then there will be in all probability a very considerable extravasation of blood, and by this time, doubtless, serious inflammation of all the surrounding tissues. The aperture being very small and the depression somewhat extensive, it will be necessary to remove—to saw out, in short—a portion of the skull," lifting up ...
— The Prospector - A Tale of the Crow's Nest Pass • Ralph Connor
... was moving my prick in and out of one aperture, and my fingers were working away in the other. The tightness of the sheath round my prick was delicious beyond anything I could conceive, and I think, from the way the lady conducted herself, she liked it as much as I did. ...
— The Romance of Lust - A classic Victorian erotic novel • Anonymous
... could provide me with any kind or size of revolver I wanted. Presently he brought out of his house a machine which, had he not assured me to the contrary, I should at first sight have mistaken for a one-inch aperture telescope. ...
— The House - An Episode in the Lives of Reuben Baker, Astronomer, and of His Wife, Alice • Eugene Field
... recess—in this case the prolongation of the passage. A brief scrutiny satisfied him that escape that way was impossible, and he turned, after a cursory glance at the floor and ceiling, to the dark, windy aperture which yawned at the end of the apartment. Placing the lanthorn on the table, and covering it with his cloak, he mounted the window recess, and, stepping to the unguarded ...
— Count Hannibal - A Romance of the Court of France • Stanley J. Weyman
... and the entire band wheeled around the edge of a tract of timber and came out upon the village, pitched on the banks of a stream of water, the tepees grouped in a circle around the chief's wigwam, the blue smoke curling lazily through the aperture at the top, and the welcome smell of cooking meats permeating the place. Swanson was given in charge of a guard and escorted to a vacant tepee, where he was firmly bound, hand and foot, and thrown upon a pile ...
— Jim Cummings • Frank Pinkerton
... as though he heard a slight noise in the distance. It came nearer, and now there appeared in the aperture of the door a lady of wonderful loveliness and surpassing beauty. The eye could behold nothing more charming than this head with its light-brown ringlets, surrounding the face as if by a ring of glory, and contrasting ...
— LOUISA OF PRUSSIA AND HER TIMES • Louise Muhlbach
... lattice window, about five feet and a half above the ground, at the back of the house: which belonged to a scullery, or small brewing-place, at the end of the passage. The aperture was so small, that the inmates had probably not thought it worth while to defend it more securely; but it was large enough to admit a boy of Oliver's size, nevertheless. A very brief exercise of Mr. Sike's art, sufficed to overcome the fastening of ...
— Oliver Twist • Charles Dickens
... light then came from the room above—from the mechanic class-room. But there is only one possible means by which the light from an upper can diffuse a lower room. It must be by a hole in the intermediate boards. We are thus driven to the discovery of an aperture of some sort in the flooring of that upper chamber. Given this, the mystery of the round white object "driven" upward disappears. We at once ask, why not drawn upward through the newly-discovered aperture by ...
— Prince Zaleski • M.P. Shiel
... custom, dressed early and went upon deck: he went forward to the gangway to view the island. He beheld a kind of village surrounded by numerous barren hills towering to the clouds. Every platform, every aperture, the brow of every hill was planted with cannon. The Emperor viewed the prospect through his glass. His countenance underwent no change. He soon left the deck; and sending for Las Cases, proceeded to his day's work. The Admiral, who had gone ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... that its entire length was within the black aperture it sprang forward with the speed of a rifle ball. There was an instant of whizzing—a soft, though sudden, stop, and slowly the carrier emerged upon another platform, another attendant raised the lid and Vas Kor stepped out at the station beneath the centre of Greater Helium, seventy-five ...
— Thuvia, Maid of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... ever ready to rear up its brood in a hole in the wall of a house. Any kind of a hole will do, provided the aperture is too small to admit of the entrance ...
— Birds of the Indian Hills • Douglas Dewar
... an inner room and she sat herself down to wait; but his absence continuing longer than she expected, she became impatient, thinking he had forgotten her, and softly approaching the door she peeped through some aperture, and to her surprise beheld him lying on a sofa as motionless as if he were dead. She of course did not think it advisable to disturb him, but waited his return, when he told her that her husband had not been able to write to her for such and such reasons, but that he was then in a coffee-house ...
— Clairvoyance • Charles Webster Leadbeater
... in the wall of our verandah we found four young ones. This was particularly noteworthy, because from my study-window the pair had been watched for the last month, first courting, then flitting in and out of the hole with straws and feathers, ever and anon clinging to the mouth of the aperture, and laboriously dislodging some projecting point of mortar; then marching up and down on the ground, the male screeching out his harsh love-song, bowing and swelling out his throat all the while, and then rushing after and soundly thrashing any chance Crow (four times his weight at least) that ...
— The Nests and Eggs of Indian Birds, Volume 1 • Allan O. Hume
... of Mrs F—'s family resided, there happened to be a hole in the thatch of the fowl-house. A fox, finding it out, sprang down through the aperture, and slew and feasted all the night to his heart's desire. The intruder, however, had not reflected that he might be unable to secure his retreat by the way through which he had ...
— Stories of Animal Sagacity • W.H.G. Kingston
... him that through that dark aperture a current of cold, delicious air came rushing in about him. The blows sounded against the adjoining bricks and he thought of the glorious joy of seeing out again, feeling that he would welcome even the sight of Hamdi's blond mustache and the ...
— The Fortieth Door • Mary Hastings Bradley
... was still blinking at me when my Ape-man reappeared at the aperture of the nearest of these dens, and beckoned me in. As he did so a slouching monster wriggled out of one of the places, further up this strange street, and stood up in featureless silhouette against the bright green ...
— The Island of Doctor Moreau • H. G. Wells
... and efficient domestic: there are 45 main lines for every 100 persons; the fiber optic net is very extensive; all telephone applications and Internet services are available international: country code - 43; satellite earth stations - 15; in addition, there are about 600 VSAT (very small aperture ...
— The 2007 CIA World Factbook • United States
... eighths of an inch in diameter. Over this I slide a tube containing my colored glasses, one dark blue and two dark green, placed at the outer end of the sliding tube, one and a half inches from the eyeglass. The colored glasses are three quarters of an inch in diameter, and the aperture next the eye in diameter half an inch. The power which I usually employ magnifies but one hundred and fifty diameters; and I use the entire aperture of my object glass. This combination of colored glasses gives a clear dead white to the sun, ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 3, September 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... of your eye is the aperture, the stop of the lens. That is the hole through which the light passes. Around it lie the tissues of the iris. In the back of the eye is the retina, which acts as a film for ...
— The Sagebrusher - A Story of the West • Emerson Hough
... he said, in a hoarse whisper. He stepped back to make room for John and Brennan at the narrow aperture ...
— Spring Street - A Story of Los Angeles • James H. Richardson
... joyous days—they were all joyous days, this one most of all—I was up the backwater, the "Mud Lark" (Fin's name for the punt) anchored in her element by two poles, one at each end, to keep her steady, when Fin broke through a new aperture and became reminiscent. ...
— The Underdog • F. Hopkinson Smith
... but finding a great disadvantage from their consumption of vital air he caused, previous to his next experiment, a small window of thick glass to be made near the bow of his boat, and he again descended with her on the 24th of July, 1801. He found that he received from his window, or rather aperture covered with glass, for it was no more than an inch and a half in diameter, sufficient light for him to count the minutes on ...
— Hidden Treasures - Why Some Succeed While Others Fail • Harry A. Lewis
... an arrangement was made in the Egyptian Temple at On; at one particular moment on one day in the year, the rays admitted through a concealed aperture gilded the shrine, and the ...
— The House of Walderne - A Tale of the Cloister and the Forest in the Days of the Barons' Wars • A. D. Crake
... he returned to his former position, and applying his shoulder to the partition, easily succeeded in freeing the ends of the rotten laths from the nails which held there, and, pushing them before him, made an aperture large enough to allow of his passing through into the next apartment. He applied himself to this task with such vigour, and became so absorbed in its accomplishment, that he entirely forgot the bag of twelve hundred livres which the widow ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - LA CONSTANTIN—1660 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... clearing in this wood a thin column of pale blue smoke was rising through the still air. A hut in the shape of a cone stood a few yards from the road. It was thatched from the ground upward with heather and bracken, leaving only a low aperture as door. Near the hut a small fire of hazel sticks crackled under the pot that swung from a forked triangle of oak limbs. Fagots were stacked at one end of the clearing; a pile of loose bark lay near. ...
— A Son of Hagar - A Romance of Our Time • Sir Hall Caine
... like an arrow through a thick layer of vines and thorny brambles that tore his face and hands and landed heavily in a sitting posture on a bed of stones. Raising his eyes, he saw the sky through the hole he had made in falling through. This aperture might betray him, and he crawled along carefully on hands and knees at the bottom of this ditch beneath the covering of interlacing branches, going as fast as he could and getting away from the scene of the skirmish. Presently he stopped and sat down, crouched like a hare ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... Through this aperture could be dimly seen the upper part of a face, with a pair of coal-black eyes, which were fixed with an ominous and steady ...
— Frank Merriwell's Pursuit - How to Win • Burt L. Standish
... of the lower room, barricaded by the cautious old warrior until its aperture was not more than eight inches square, Alan thrust his rifle as the crash of gun-fire broke the gray and thickening mist of night. He could hear the thud and hiss of bullets; he heard them singing like angry bees as they passed with the swiftness of chain-lightning over the cabin roof, and their ...
— The Alaskan • James Oliver Curwood
... square room, which she at once knew must be a part of the city gaol. It was about eight feet square, it had stone walls on every side, and a grated opening high above her head, letting in all the light and air that could enter through about a square foot of aperture. It was so lonely, so dark to that poor girl, when she came slowly and painfully out of her long faint. She did so want human help in that struggle which always supervenes after a swoon; when the effort is to clutch at life, and the effort seems ...
— Curious, if True - Strange Tales • Elizabeth Gaskell
... nature the flowers open only in the early morning, as I have been informed by Mr. Wallis, who particularly attended to the time of their flowering. In the case of D. Anglica, the still folded petals on some plants in my greenhouse opened just sufficiently to leave a minute aperture; the anthers dehisced properly, but the pollen-grains adhered in a mass to them, and thence emitted their tubes, which penetrated the stigmas. These flowers, therefore, were in an intermediate condition, and could not be called either ...
— The Different Forms of Flowers on Plants of the Same Species • Charles Darwin
... in ancient ships, in the upper and broadest part, at which people entered. The adit of a military mine, is the aperture by which it is dug and charged: the name is also applied to ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... may I go to tea at Mrs. Bateson's with Christopher?" said Elisabeth one day, opening the library door a little, and endeavouring to squeeze her small person through as narrow an aperture as possible, as is the custom with children. She never called her playmate "Chris" in speaking to Miss Farringdon; for this latter regarded it as actually sinful to address people by any abbreviation of their baptismal names, just as she considered it positively immoral to partake of any ...
— The Farringdons • Ellen Thorneycroft Fowler
... Markheim in a vice. What to expect he knew not, whether the dead man walking, or the official ministers of human justice, or some chance witness blindly stumbling in to consign him to the gallows. But when a face was thrust into the aperture, glanced round the room, looked at him, nodded and smiled as if in friendly recognition, and then withdrew again, and the door closed behind it, his fear broke loose from his control in a hoarse cry. At the sound of this ...
— Short-Stories • Various
... depths of the trench. But some one was watching and listening for the faint sound of his footsteps. An invisible hand hurled a bomb. He rushed back to the door; but his pack was on his back, and he was caught in the aperture like a rat in a trap. The air was rent by the detonation, and his legs were rent, like the pure air, like the summer morning, ...
— The New Book Of Martyrs • Georges Duhamel
... the aperture there presently became disclosed to his view the strong and robust figure of one who was evidently of a seafaring habit. From the gold braid upon his hat, the seals dangling from the ribbon at his fob, and a certain particularity ...
— Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates • Howard I. Pyle
... these was used as a depository of household implements; the upper was a closet in which I deposited my books and papers. They had but one inlet, which was from the room adjoining. There was no window in the lower one, and in the upper a small aperture which communicated light and air, but would scarcely admit the body. The door which led into this was close to my bed head, and was always locked but when I myself was within. The avenues below were accustomed to be ...
— Stories by Modern American Authors • Julian Hawthorne
... tables, superseding the more general plan of hand picking. At each side of the shed floor are certain small areas, four or five feet square, such space being found by experience to be sufficient for the postures and gymnastics practised during the shearing of a sheep. Opposite to each square is an aperture, communicating with a long narrow paled yard, outside of the shed. Through this each man pops his sheep when shorn, where he remains in company with the others shorn by the same hand, until counted ...
— Shearing in the Riverina, New South Wales • Rolf Boldrewood
... aperture which opened straight on to the steep, short flight of steps connecting his chambers with the stone staircase of the big old house. This latter-like set of steps had a door top and bottom, but the lower door, which gave on to the landing, was generally left open. ...
— Defenders of Democracy • The Militia of Mercy
... narrow, bottomless tubs; and others, with a greater appearance of taste, ornamented with thick, circular ropes of straw, sewed together like bees' skeps, with a peel of a briar; and many having nothing but the open vent above. But the smoke by no means escaped by its legitimate aperture, for you might observe little clouds of it bursting out of the doors and windows; the panes of the latter being mostly stopped at other times with old hats and rags, were now left entirely open for the purpose of giving ...
— The Hedge School; The Midnight Mass; The Donagh • William Carleton
... Mindanao south coast Moro is generally pleasant, but a smile spoils his appearance; the parting lips disclose a filthy aperture with dyed teeth in a mahogany coloured foam of masticated betel-nut. Holes as large as sixpences are in the ears of the women, who, when they have no ear-rings, wear a piece of reed with a vermilion tip. The dress is artistically fantastic, with the sarong and the jabul and no trousers ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman
... diabolical art, fly away with children, and even with grown-up persons, through the air, or imprison them in caverns within the earth. They assisted men to discover the precious metals, of which they (the dwarfs) were very fond. Occasionally they were seen through an aperture of a hill, in their underground retreat, in palaces with jasper columns, surrounded with vast treasures of gold ...
— The Mysteries of All Nations • James Grant
... perpendicular," writes Doctor G.K. Gilbert, of the U.S. Geological Survey, who first described it, "but in the deeper parts they open out toward the top. As we entered and found our outlook of sky contracted—as we had never before seen it between canyon cliffs—I measured the aperture above, and found it thirty-five degrees. We had thought this a minimum, but soon discovered our error. Nearer and nearer the walls approached, and our strip of blue narrowed down to twenty degrees, then ten, and at last was even intercepted by the ...
— The Book of the National Parks • Robert Sterling Yard
... guide showed us was a trapdoor, or opening, beneath a crazy old floor. Looking down into this aperture we saw three stone steps, which we should have taken to be the beginning of a flight of stairs that descended into a dungeon, or series of dungeons, such as we had already seen. But inspecting them more closely, we saw that ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... there are closets or cupboards, which served to contain domestic utensils, food, &c. Earthen pots with maize, coca, and other things, are still often found in these closets. The ceiling of the room is overlaid with flat plates of stone, and in the centre an aperture, two feet wide, is left, forming a communication with the second floor, which is precisely like the first, but has two small windows. The roof of this apartment has also an aperture, affording access to the third floor, the ...
— Travels in Peru, on the Coast, in the Sierra, Across the Cordilleras and the Andes, into the Primeval Forests • J. J. von Tschudi
... common. [Footnote: These Like-dealers were the communists of the Middle Ages, and were for a number of years the plague of the northern seas; until at the beginning of the fifteenth century they were subdued, and many of them captured by the Dutch, who nailed them up in barrels, leaving an aperture for the head, at top, and then decapitated them. The best account of them is found in "Raumer's Historical Note-book," vol. ii. p. 19. And if any one wishes to see the result of communist teaching, they have only to study here ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V2 • William Mienhold
... this lever"—Evans pointed at the box—"a vacuum is created. Instantly the powder becomes a gas, which shoots forth through this aperture with the speed of a projectile, taking the form of a beam of absolute blackness. Or it can be discharged from cylinders in such a way as to extend over a large area ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, October, 1930 • Various
... come to the drawing-room, the grand salon, where I give my receptions." Benjamin led the way through a low aperture, on either side of which stalactites and stalagmites had met, leaving a low doorway in the centre. Beyond this, the candles' dim light struggled for supremacy in a great hall, whose walls shone like crystal. On one side the calcareous encrustations ...
— The Tale of Timber Town • Alfred Grace
... voice. This disgusting, drunken idiot was picked up out of the cart by two men, who put a ticket into his hand, carried him to the window (he was too drunk to stand), shoved him up and raised his arm into the aperture; his vote received, he was tumbled back ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... prescription case as the rest of us did, but strolled through the middle of it, and so on out through the glass door at the rear of the store. We did not see her go through the glass door, but we found pieces of fly-paper and fur on the ragged edges of a large aperture in the glass, and we kind of jumped at the conclusion that Dr. Mary Walker had taken that direction in retiring ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye
... setting, a great molten mass of flame, splashing down in the crimson clouds, which showed in the aperture between the hills. Little thin wraiths of mist or haze curled up from this molten mass into the rosy sky above, as if the gods on Olympus were mulling claret for a marriage feast. The purple hills curved down on each side in the exact shape of an amethyst punch-bowl, ...
— Abroad with the Jimmies • Lilian Bell
... to the cave, if cave it was, was an aperture of no great dimensions—about large enough to admit the body of a full-grown bear, and no bigger. It appeared to be a hole or burrow, rather than a cave, and ran under a great pine-tree, among whose roots, no doubt, was the den of the bear. The tree itself grew up out of the sloping bank; ...
— Bruin - The Grand Bear Hunt • Mayne Reid
... cannot obtain silence: on the contrary, the barking of several dogs is soon added to the roaring of the wild beasts. Morok seizes a pike, and approaches the ladder; he is about to descend, when he sees some one issuing from the aperture. ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... played him false. There was a rough pathway constructed up its face upon this side, and at the top were three tiers of holes bored in the rock face. These were evidently intended for windows, as a larger aperture was just as evidently meant for a door. The path, which zig-zagged up the face of the mesa was about eight inches in width, not more, at its base, and varied—so far as they could see from below—from that breadth to a foot, as it ...
— The Border Boys Across the Frontier • Fremont B. Deering
... the muscles themselves. Thus when a particle of dust stimulates the ball of the eye, the eye-lids are instantly closed, and when too much light pains the retina, the muscles of the iris contract its aperture, and this not by any connection or consent of the nerves of those parts, but as an effort to prevent or to remove a disagreeable sensation, which evinces that vegetables are endued with sensation, or that each bud has a common sensorium, ...
— The Botanic Garden - A Poem in Two Parts. Part 1: The Economy of Vegetation • Erasmus Darwin
... could hear the cry through the thick log walls of his prison. The answer came to him the moment he opened his eyes, hours later. A bit of pale sunlight was falling into the room and he saw that it entered through a narrow aperture close up to the ceiling. After he had prepared his breakfast he dragged the table under this aperture and by standing on it was enabled to peer through. A hundred yards away was the black edge of the spruce ...
— The Danger Trail • James Oliver Curwood
... Abrahm Kantor came down with a large hollow resonance of palm against that aperture, lifting his small son and depositing him plop upon the ...
— Humoresque - A Laugh On Life With A Tear Behind It • Fannie Hurst
... they surrendered. The criminals were lodged in seven close dungeons 6.5 feet by 5 feet 9 inches. These cells were ranged in a passage 11 feet wide, under ground, and were approached by ten steps. Over each cell door was an aperture which admitted such light and air as could be found in such a place. Some improvement took place in this respect after Mr. Howard's visit. There was also a large dungeon or cell which looked upon the street, in which twelve prisoners were confined. This ...
— Recollections of Old Liverpool • A Nonagenarian
... this his attention was claimed by a sound without. The latch of the back door was lifted with a click, and, almost before he could face about, steps were heard in the passage. The door of the best kitchen opened a foot or so, and through the aperture was thrust the head of Tryphena—of Tryphena, who by rights should be lying upstairs, victim of ...
— Corporal Sam and Other Stories • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... time to subside, than we heard the outer door opened by the servant—then it closed—then heavy footsteps, one, two, and three, were audible in the lobby—then the dining-room door was opened; and a form which filled the whole of its ample aperture, from top to bottom, from right to left, made its appearance. It was the figure of a man, but language would sink under his immensity. Never in heaven, or earth, or air, or ocean, was such a man seen. He was hugeness itself—bulk personified—the beau ideal of amplitude. When the dining-room ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume 13, No. 359, Saturday, March 7, 1829. • Various
... requiring caution; so I felt my pistols before I undid the latch. It was a bright, star-light night; and, as I opened the door sufficiently to obtain a glance beyond,—still maintaining my control of the aperture,—I perceived the figure of a female, wrapped in cotton cloth from head to foot, except the face, which I recollected as that of the beautiful quarteroon I was whirling in the waltz, when surprised by the Mongo. ...
— Captain Canot - or, Twenty Years of an African Slaver • Brantz Mayer
... with a suggestion of stealth that he ascended the second flight—with an enforced deliberateness and caution that were wasted. For as he reached the top, the door of the back hall-bedroom opened gently for the space of three inches. Through this aperture were visible a pair of bright eyes, with the curve of a plump and pretty cheek, and an ...
— The Day of Days - An Extravaganza • Louis Joseph Vance
... cares of the future come the cares of the present. The larva, which has just opened the aperture of escape, retreats some distance down its gallery and, in the side of the exit-way, digs itself a transformation-chamber more sumptuously furnished and barricaded than any that I have ever seen. It is a roomy niche, shaped like a flattened ellipsoid, ...
— The Wonders of Instinct • J. H. Fabre
... held holy water. Near the altar in old churches, or where the altar has been, is sometimes found another niche, distinguished from the stoup, by having in it at the bottom, a small aperture for carrying off the water; it is often double with a ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 14, - Issue 404, December 12, 1829 • Various
... a hand appeared on the topmost rung of the nearer ladder, and a bulky sailor, a very human sailor in very human dungarees, poked his head out of the aperture, surveyed the inhospitable ...
— World's War Events, Volume III • Various
... spot at which he could make his escape by jumping over a fence. On the right hand there was the lake rippling up on to the edge of the road, and on the left was a high stone wall, without any vestige of an aperture through it as far as the eye could reach. He was already making the pace as fast as he could, and was aware that no escape could be effected in that manner. He shook his head, and bit the handle of his whip, and looked straight away before him through his horse's ears. "You ...
— Marion Fay • Anthony Trollope
... within the room, the girl between them, and all three stood silently facing the opening in the opposite wall. On the floor beside the aperture lay a headless male body of almost heroic proportions, and on either side of this stood a heavily armed warrior, with drawn sword. For perhaps five minutes the three waited and then something appeared in the opening. It was a pair of large chelae and immediately thereafter there ...
— The Chessmen of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... the passage through Behring's Strait had been the least used to reach the northern latitudes. Cook's observation is valuable, as it proves that beyond this aperture a vast extent of sea without land must exist. It may possibly be (this was the view held by the lamented Gustave Lambert) that this sea is open. No greater distance north has ever been attained since Cook's ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part 2. The Great Navigators of the Eighteenth Century • Jules Verne
... in the wards—the door shook. "Soft! the bar preserves us both—this way." And the coiner crept to the door of the private stairs. He unlocked and opened it cautiously. A man sprang through the aperture: ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 3 • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... forms of the Caucasian and African crania in the human species. The orbits vary in width and height, the cranial ridge is either single or double, either much or little developed, and the zygomatic aperture varies considerably in size. This variation in the proportions of the crania enables us satisfactorily to explain the marked difference presented by the single-crested and double-crested skulls, which have been ...
— Lectures and Essays • T.H. Huxley
... two sandbags placed, so that when everything was ready, and my camera fixed, a slight push from the back with a stick would shift them clear of the opening. Fixing up the camera, I very carefully pinned an empty sandbag over the back of the aperture, with the object of keeping any daylight from streaming through. I placed a long stick ready to push the sandbags down. I intended doing that after the first ...
— How I Filmed the War - A Record of the Extraordinary Experiences of the Man Who - Filmed the Great Somme Battles, etc. • Lieut. Geoffrey H. Malins
... are provided for by the elevation on a prop of one corner of a square section of the roof, marked out by a right-angled cut, of which one limb runs parallel to the outer wall, the other upwards from one extremity of the former. This aperture can be easily closed, E.G. during heavy rain, by removing the prop and allowing the flap to ...
— The Pagan Tribes of Borneo • Charles Hose and William McDougall
... possibly recollect the parish sexton. Bob Martin was held much in awe by truant boys who sauntered into the churchyard on Sundays, to read the tombstones, or play leap frog over them, or climb the ivy in search of bats or sparrows' nests, or peep into the mysterious aperture under the eastern window, which opened a dim perspective of descending steps losing themselves among profounder darkness, where lidless coffins gaped horribly among tattered velvet, bones, and dust, which time and mortality had strewn there. Of such horribly curious, and otherwise ...
— J. S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 4 • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... something tickle the top of my head. The idea that it might be a large spider caused me to start, when stretching up my hand, it came in contact with what seemed to be a rag, which I had not observed. Getting carefully up, I perceived a faint light gleaming through the aperture, and then saw that a hand was protruded through it, apparently waving the rag. As I felt instinctively that the hand was Valeria's, I seized the finger-tips, which was all I could get hold of, and pressed them to my lips. They were quickly drawn away, and then the whisper reached ...
— Fashionable Philosophy - and Other Sketches • Laurence Oliphant
... down the harbour, apparently perfectly water-tight, when suddenly the sea broke through the foremost hatch and she went to the bottom immediately. He said he did not know how he escaped. He imagined that after the vessel had filled he had managed to escape through the aperture by which the water got in; all the rest of the poor fellows were drowned. Not that my friend seemed to think anything of that, for human life was very little thought of in those times. This vessel was afterwards got up, when the ...
— Sketches From My Life - By The Late Admiral Hobart Pasha • Hobart Pasha
... oval garment without sleeves, open at the sides, and having an aperture at the neck through which the priest passes his head. It is embroidered with a Y-Cross behind, and is considered the principal vestment of the priest. It varies in colour with ...
— The Church Handy Dictionary • Anonymous
... within, she could look down upon a narrow causeway, into which the water came tumbling through an aperture in the rocks much like a roughly shaped gothic window, and, having tumbled in, tumbled out again, with much curling and confusion, leaving its angry foam in sudsy heaps along the rocky edges ...
— Sara, a Princess • Fannie E. Newberry
... stay before seeing what they half expected to see—a party of Indians. Just as they have got well fixed in place, with some leafy branches in front forming a screen over their faces, at the same time giving them an aperture to peep through, the dusky cavalcade shows its foremost files issuing out from the bushes on the opposite side of the stream. Though still distant—at least, a quarter of a mile—both father and daughter can perceive that they are Indians; mounted, as a matter of course, for they could ...
— Gaspar the Gaucho - A Story of the Gran Chaco • Mayne Reid
... Eastern queen; and the aerial dome, higher than its breadth, rests upon its base as if possessing no weight, yet is of solid marble. Heroic in treatment are the quotations from the Koran framing every doorway and aperture, wrought in inlay or sculptured in relief—and these modify the pearly monotony ...
— East of Suez - Ceylon, India, China and Japan • Frederic Courtland Penfield
... a small aperture for the admission and escape of air, and the apparatus is adjusted by pouring lead into ...
— Scientific American, Volume 40, No. 13, March 29, 1879 • Various
... the vast waters of the Rhone, in approaching a ridge of rocks, with inconceivable rapidity, sink into the earth. The cavern is covered with foam, from the agitation of so great a body of water being forced into so small an aperture; and the sight is at once magnificent and solemn. The emersion of the Rhone is not far distant from the place of its ingulphation, but presents a very different spectacle, as the river ascends so ...
— A tour through some parts of France, Switzerland, Savoy, Germany and Belgium • Richard Boyle Bernard
... difficulty, at the close of the year 1575. Already, in 1572; Augustus had proposed to the Landgrave that she should be kept in solitary confinement, and that a minister should preach to her daily through the grated aperture by which her, food was to be admitted. The Landgrave remonstrated at so inhuman a proposition, which was, however, carried into effect. The wretched Princess, now completely a lunatic, was imprisoned in the electoral palace, in a chamber where the windows were walled up and ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... himself down by the side of an uprooted shrub of small size and about his own length. He covered himself as usual with his long, dark-blue robe, and pretended to go to sleep. He kept his eyes, however, on the alert through an aperture beneath his cloth, and observed particularly the direction in which the camel upon which he had set his mind wandered into the bushes. The darkness came on a very few minutes after they had halted, and when the Arabs had once settled round their fire Cuthbert very quietly ...
— The Boy Knight • G.A. Henty
... aperture with thankfulness, we found ourselves upon the slope of a kind of huge ditch of lava which ran first downwards for about eighty paces, then up again to the base of the great cone of the inner mountain which was covered with ...
— The Ivory Child • H. Rider Haggard
... B. coronata, Bodd. The natives assert that B. pica builds in holes in the trees, and that when incubation has fairly commenced, the female takes her seat on the eggs, and the male closes up the orifice by which she entered, leaving only a small aperture through which he feeds his partner, whilst she successfully guards their treasures from the monkey tribes; her formidable bill nearly filling the entire entrance. See a paper by Edgar L. Layard, Esq. Mag. Nat. Hist. March, 1853. Dr. Horsfield had previously observed ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent
... as if he had been turned to stone, Travers Gladwin peered with one eye through the narrow aperture he had slashed in the heavy brocade portiere. Still gazing into inky darkness he could hear the cautious tread of two persons. His senses told him that one of the visitors was a heavy, sure-footed man and that the other was of lighter build and nervously wary. His deductions ceased instantly ...
— Officer 666 • Barton W. Currie
... a story and a half house, with a lean-to attached to one end. Just as Farmer Ashley finished speaking the whole front of the lean-to swung open in a great door, disclosing an aperture large enough to admit both horses and sleigh. Mrs. Ashley emerged from the dark interior as the door swung back, and came ...
— Peggy Owen and Liberty • Lucy Foster Madison
... and of such a shape that they may cool as quickly as possible. Both the speaking-funnel and the battery can be made to approach, at will, to the stream of warm air rising up from the flame. The entire apparatus is inclosed in a tin case in such a manner that only the aperture of the voice-funnel and the polar clamps for securing the conducting wires appear on the outside. The inside of the case is suitably stayed to prevent vibration. On speaking into the mouth-piece of the funnel, the sound-waves occasion undulations in the column of hot air which are communicated to ...
— Scientific American Supplement No. 275 • Various
... boats: as a great mark of respect, they were then presented with a fat dog, already cooked, of which they partook heartily, and found it well flavoured. The camps of the Sioux are of a conical form, covered with buffaloe robes, painted with various figures and colours, with an aperture in the top for the smoke to pass through. The lodges contain from ten to fifteen persons, and the interior arrangement is compact and handsome, each lodge having a place for cooking ...
— History of the Expedition under the Command of Captains Lewis and Clark, Vol. I. • Meriwether Lewis and William Clark
... the braves, sweltering and stifling all night, by smothered fires, at early dawn plunged, perspiring, into the ice-cold river. The heat and smoke were further utilized to dry and cure the long strips of fish hanging from the roof, and it was through the narrow aperture that served as a chimney that the odor escaped which Martin had detected. He knew that as the bathers only occupied the house from midnight to early morn, it was now probably empty. He advanced confidently ...
— A Drift from Redwood Camp • Bret Harte
... Firstly, the narrow aperture—scarcely a window—filled in with tiny squares of coarse, unwashed glass, through which the rays of the morning sun were making kindly efforts to penetrate, then the cloud of dust illumined by those same rays, and made up—so it seemed to the poor tired brain that strove ...
— The Elusive Pimpernel • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... balcony, placed it on its side, and leaned it against the railing; on the other side of the balcony he placed the bench in the same manner, and, protected behind this three-cornered barricade from the bullets of the Tyrolese, he pushed his gun into the aperture between the bench and the table, and ...
— Andreas Hofer • Lousia Muhlbach
... spirit was abstracted; but the interests of the world too strongly divided her feelings to be altogether suppressed; and when they involuntarily opened again, she perceived that the streak of flame was no longer flaring in the room, though the wood around the little aperture had kindled, and the blaze was slowly mounting under the impulsion of a current of air that sucked inward. A barrel of water stood in a corner; and Mabel, acting more by instinct than by reason, caught up a vessel, filled it, and, pouring it on the wood with a trembling hand, succeeded in extinguishing ...
— The Pathfinder - The Inland Sea • James Fenimore Cooper
... had been carried up into a loft over a stable, where the doctor attended him. In the loft was an open trap-door, through which trusses of hay and straw were raised and lowered. No one warned Dr. Letsom about it. The aperture was covered with straw, and he, walking quickly across, fell through. There was but one comfort—he did not suffer long. His death was instantaneous; and on the bright June afternoon when he was to have taken little Madaline for a drive, he was carried home, through the sunlit ...
— Wife in Name Only • Charlotte M. Braeme (Bertha M. Clay)
... glance that way, Noble could see but one person; a boy of fourteen who looked through a crack in a board fence, steadfastly keeping an eye to this aperture and as continuously calling through it, holding his head to a level for this purpose, but at the same time dancing—and dancing tauntingly, it was conveyed—with the other parts of his body. His voice was now sweet, now piercing, and again far too dulcet with the overkindness of burlesque; ...
— Gentle Julia • Booth Tarkington
... the broad aperture which served as a passageway in the wall for drinks leaving the hands of a fat bartender beyond to fall into the clutches of thirsty customers in the tap-room. There was no outstanding bar. A time-polished ...
— Green Fancy • George Barr McCutcheon
... also used, the body placed partly in one, partly in the other, and the two were then joined with bitumen. In the Persian period, a slipper-shaped coffin was used, into which the body was inserted through an aperture at one end; but there is no evidence that the Babylonians employed this method. With the bodies, various objects were interred, many of which had a special significance. Except, perhaps, at a very early period[1262] the dead were not buried naked, ...
— The Religion of Babylonia and Assyria • Morris Jastrow
... annoy : cxagreni, gxeni. annual : cxiujara. annul : nuligi. anoint : sanktolei, sxmiri. anonymous : anonima, sennoma ant : formiko. anthem : antemo. anvil : amboso. anxious : maltrankvila. apathetic : apatia. aperture : malfermajxo, aperturo. apologise : peti pardonon. apparatus : aparato. appeal : alvoki; (law) apelacio. appear : aperi; sxajni. appearance : vidigxo; sxajno, mieno. appetite : apetito. applaud : aplauxdi. apply : almeti; sin turni al. appoint : nomi, difini. ...
— The Esperanto Teacher - A Simple Course for Non-Grammarians • Helen Fryer
... example, a very remarkable one, which has been cited by both writers—Wolff's experiment on the lens of the eye. The lens is just behind the pupil or central aperture in the iris or coloured ring at the front of the eye, and behind the cornea which is to the eye what a watch-glass is to a watch. If the lens of the eye be removed from a newt, as it is from human beings in the operation for cataract, the animal will grow another one. How does it do it? In ...
— Science and Morals and Other Essays • Bertram Coghill Alan Windle
... chicken ladder, kicked his chubby legs through the aperture, hung suspended on his fat little middle for an instant, and finally, with much panting and tugging, wriggled his plump, round body into the hen-house. He walked over where a lonesome looking hen was sitting patiently on a nest. He put out a cautious hand and the hen promptly ...
— Miss Minerva and William Green Hill • Frances Boyd Calhoun
... Christmas dinner-party at Old Place—six feet in length by three in breadth, and about four feet deep. Against the wall, close by, stood a sheet of cast iron, which evidently served to cover and conceal the aperture; by it was thrown down, in careless disorder, a strip of the same dull red baize as covered the rest of the floor of the Tower. By the side of the sheet and the piece of carpet there was an old brown ...
— The Secret of the Tower • Hope, Anthony
... before the execution, to make an opening in the man's windpipe, low down in the neck, and where he could conceal it by a loose cravat. As the noose would be above this point, I explained that he would be able to breathe through the aperture, and that, even if stupefied, he could easily be revived if we should be able to prevent his being hanged too long. My friend had some absurd misgivings lest his neck should be broken by the fall; but as to this I was able to reassure him, upon the best ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 121, November, 1867 • Various
... happening to me. When I finally awoke, I found myself in an apartment that was far different in its aspect from the luxurious chamber I had just quitted. The floor, walls and ceiling of the apartment were of stone; there were no windows, but a narrow aperture, high up in the wall, admitted the feeble glimmer of daylight. There was an iron door, and a water-pipe, and platform on which I lay, and on which reposed several gentlemen of seedy raiment and unwholesome ...
— My Life: or the Adventures of Geo. Thompson - Being the Auto-Biography of an Author. Written by Himself. • George Thompson
... not be surprised if it had been used for another purpose," murmured Lucian, glancing upward at the square aperture of the skylight. ...
— The Silent House • Fergus Hume
... the rowels of the spurs and part of the horse were without, and Owain with the other part of the horse remained between the two gates, and the inner gate was closed, so that Owain could not go thence; and Owain was in a perplexing situation. And while he was in this state, he could see through an aperture in the gate a street facing him, with a row of houses on each side. And he beheld a maiden, with yellow, curling hair, and a frontlet of gold upon her head; and she was clad in a dress of yellow satin, and on her feet were shoes of variegated leather. And she approached the ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch
... considerably; but he arose noiselessly, crossed to the window at the end of the roof, and which was but a small aperture, closed by a wooden shutter, which he cautiously opened. The noise he made was drowned by the pelting rain and furious wind, and the robbers went on chatting together, while Davie slipped out and ...
— Beadle's Boy's Library of Sport, Story and Adventure, Vol. I, No. 1. - Adventures of Buffalo Bill from Boyhood to Manhood • Prentiss Ingraham
... days he worked like a Trojan, cutting away and piling up the soft, limy stone, and on the fifth was rewarded by a glimmer of sunlight shining through the aperture he had made in the landward part ...
— Golden Days for Boys and Girls - Volume XIII, No. 51: November 12, 1892 • Various
... closing arrived we saw the head of the village policeman appear at the shutter through which outside customers were served with beer. The landlord asked him, "Will you have a pint?" Looking significantly at ourselves, he replied, "No, thank you," but we noticed the "pint" was placed in the aperture, and soon ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor
... joined by five chiefs and seventy men of the Yanktons, a tribe belonging to the Sioux Indians. The camps or huts of this people are of a conical form: they are covered with buffalo robes, painted with various figures and colours, and have an aperture at the top for the smoke to pass through. Each hut is calculated to contain from ten to fifteen persons, and the interior arrangement is compact and handsome: the kitchen or place for cooking is always detached. Captain Lewis delivered to these ...
— Travels in North America, From Modern Writers • William Bingley
... while the interior of the carcase still retains a little warmth, a hole is out through one side of the body sufficiently large to admit the patient, the lower part of whose body from the feet to the waist should sink in the whale's intestines, leaving the head, of course, outside the aperture. The latter is closed up as closely as possible, otherwise the patient would not be able to breathe through the volume of ammoniacal gases which would escape from every opening left uncovered. It is these gases, which are of an overpowering ...
— A Memory Of The Southern Seas - 1904 • Louis Becke |
