"Bird's-eye" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... professors at work in the offices and shops, and give these canned-culture boys jobs in the glue and fertilizer factories until a little of their floss and foolishness had worn off. For it looks to an old fellow, who's taking a bird's-eye view from the top of a packing house, as if some of the colleges were still running their plants with machinery that would have been sent to the scrap-heap, in any other business, a hundred years ago. They turn out a pretty fair article ...
— Old Gorgon Graham - More Letters from a Self-Made Merchant to His Son • George Horace Lorimer
... quite the same. In either case our own life is dwelt upon first. Then there is the immediate family, after that our own especial friends,—all assuming a gigantic size which puts quite out of the question an occasional bird's-eye view of the world in general. Even objects which might be in the middle distance of a less extended view are quite screened by the exaggerated size of those which seem to concern us ...
— As a Matter of Course • Annie Payson Call
... shuffled off. Lieutenant Lapenotiere, erect and sombre, cast a look around the apartment, into which he had never before been admitted. The candles lit up a large painting—a queer bird's-eye view of Venice. Other pictures, dark and bituminous, decorated the panelled walls—portraits of dead admirals, a sea-piece or two, some charts. . . . This was all he discerned out in the dim light; and in fact he ...
— News from the Duchy • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... said Mr. Isaacs, "the good wife is the very best jewelry. Those are two dollars. But only study this pair. Hold those up to the light and take a bird's-eye view through those lovely stones, so round and large like green peas. Now look. So! Now let ...
— Five Hundred Dollars - First published in the "Century Magazine" • Heman White Chaplin
... though the former is fast crumbling to ruins, the latter, which is the place where the Khedive worships, is fairly well preserved. From the citadel, which is garrisoned by English soldiers, we obtained an excellent bird's-eye view of Cairo, the broad surface of the Nile and the Pyramids of Cairo and Sakarah, the latter of which are twenty ...
— A Ball Player's Career - Being the Personal Experiences and Reminiscensces of Adrian C. Anson • Adrian C. Anson
... the coo-dove's ceaseless calling, Calling, Of a meaningless monotony is palling All my morning's pleasure in the sun-fleck-scattered wood. May-blossom and blue bird's-eye flowers falling, Falling In a litter through the elm-tree shade are scrawling Messages of true-love down the dust of the high- road. I do not like to hear the gentle grieving, Grieving Of the she-dove in the blossom, still believing ...
— New Poems • D. H. Lawrence
... thing is to get an elevation from which you may see in every direction. If you could come up to Heaven, we should be saved any further trouble; you would then have a good bird's-eye view of everything. But it would be sacrilege for one so conversant with phantoms to set foot in the courts of Zeus. Let us lose no time, therefore, in looking out a good ...
— Works, V1 • Lucian of Samosata
... a "Primer of Political Economy" (1878), which is a simple, bird's-eye view of the subject in ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • John Stuart Mill
... course; obstinacy or self-assertion will often interfuse itself with their grandest impulses; and their very deeds of self-sacrifice are sometimes only the rebound of a passionate egoism. So it was with Mr. Tryan: and any one looking at him with the bird's-eye glance of a critic might perhaps say that he made the mistake of identifying Christianity with a too narrow doctrinal system; that he saw God's work too exclusively in antagonism to the world, the flesh, and the devil; that his intellectual culture was ...
— Scenes of Clerical Life • George Eliot
... Strype, "there were only posts, rails, and a chain, such as are now in Holborn, Smithfield, and Whitechapel bars. Afterwards there was a house of timber erected across the street, with a narrow gateway and an entry on the south side of it under the house." This structure is to be seen in the bird's-eye view of London, 1601 (Elizabeth), and in Hollar's seven-sheet map ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... embracing facts and views which seemed essential to an intelligent discussion of the main subject, we pass on to examine the Appalachian outlet by which the great Western empire of America may find its way to the sea. The bird's-eye view here presented will show the Appalachian mountain-chain, and the waters which thread their way along its gentle slopes eastward to the Atlantic basin and westward to the Ohio and Mississippi ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 11, No. 24, March, 1873 • Various
... looked round she might have seen whence the music came. Behind her came slowly a drag, or private stage-coach, with four horses. Two grooms with cockades and folded arms were behind; and driving on the box, a little gentleman, with a blue bird's-eye neckcloth, and a white coat. A bugleman was by his side, who performed the melodies which so delighted Miss Crump. He played very gently and sweetly, and "God save the King" trembled so softly out of the brazen orifice of his bugle, that the Crumps, the tailor, and Eglantine ...
— Men's Wives • William Makepeace Thackeray
... in our delightful journey, we must pause a moment, and turning square round, with our faces towards the long-ago years of the past, take a bird's-eye view of the early history of our country, that we may know exactly where we are when we come to find ourselves in the outskirts of that long and bloody struggle between the two great nations of England and France, ...
— The Farmer Boy, and How He Became Commander-In-Chief • Morrison Heady
... without as well as within the House) in any degree tolerable was, that it might be employed to give something of order and system to the proceedings of a popular assembly; that government being so situated as to have a large range of prospect, and as it were a bird's-eye view of everything, they might see distant dangers and distant advantages which were not so visible to those who stood on the common level; they might, besides, observe them, from this advantage, in their relative and combined state, which people locally instructed ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VI. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... beautiful, and they knew it well, yet the fascination of it never failed. On the walls were hung large framed historical and scriptural scenes, worked in cross-stitch with wool's of the brightest hues, varied by a coloured print of a bird's-eye view of the battle of Tel-el-Kebir, an almanac for the current year, and a large oleograph of a young lady und a dog wreathed in roses that put every flower in the garden to shame for size and brilliancy. But none of these could give a tithe of the pleasure ...
— Kitty Trenire • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... in a four-in-hand. In this way we had a kind of bird's-eye view of the whole. No lady thinks herself too fine to join in the carnival. The procession, which defiles up and down the Paseo during the fray, begins at four in the hot, broiling afternoon, and ladies, decked out as Diana, Minerva, ...
— In the Courts of Memory 1858-1875. • L. de Hegermann-Lindencrone
... leaned upon the parapet of the terrace, whence they had a bird's-eye view of the big square immediately below, and the picturesquely irregular buildings, above whose gabled red roofs grim watch-towers and quaint spires or cupolas rose here and there. Down in the square swarms of tiny figures were clustering round the ...
— In Brief Authority • F. Anstey
... adventure verging close upon originality. It had always seemed to me that the happy strangers mounted on the tiers of seats that rise from front to back on the motor-chariots for seeing New York and looking down, even from the lowest place, on the life of our streets had a peculiar, almost a bird's-eye view of it which I might well find the means of a fresh impression. But I never had the courage, for reasons which I have not the courage to give, though the reader can perhaps imagine them. In Rome I did not feel that the like reasons held; of all the unknown, I was one of the ...
— Roman Holidays and Others • W. D. Howells
... gentlemanly of prize-fighters, we owe the belcher handkerchief, which had large white spots with a dark blue dot in the centre of each on a medium blue ground. It was also known to the "fancy" as a "bird's-eye wipe." ...
— The Romance of Words (4th ed.) • Ernest Weekley
... guide, a horoscope, an art critic, a political resume, a multum in parvo. It is a sermon, a song, a circus, an obituary, a picnic, a shipwreck, a symphony in solid brevier, a medley of life and death, a grand aggregation of man's glory and his shame. It is, in short, a bird's-eye-view of all the magnanimity and meanness, the joys and griefs, the births and deaths, the pride and poverty of the world, and ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye
... is that landscape, Cousin Homer? Something foreign, evidently. I always think that a government office should be representative of the government. I have a print at home, a bird's-eye view of Washington in 1859, which I will send you if you like. I suppose you have an express frank? No? How mean of Congress! What did you say this ...
— Mrs. Tree • Laura E. Richards
... hours later, and the Captain, Leo, Alf, Benjy, Chingatok, and the interpreter stood on the extreme summit of the promontory which they had named Cape Chaos, and from which they had a splendid bird's-eye view of the ...
— The Giant of the North - Pokings Round the Pole • R.M. Ballantyne
... deduce aright the thoughts about God out of which we are to construct our theology. Concerning this right critical use of the Bible, I propose now to offer some practical suggestions. Next Sunday I purpose giving you a bird's-eye view of the general course of the historic revelation which led up to the Christ, the Word of God. After which I shall pass on to consider with you the pre-eminently right use of the Bible, in which our souls humbly hearken for its words proceeding from out the mouth of God, on which man ...
— The Right and Wrong Uses of the Bible • R. Heber Newton
... a level road, but now a second turn took them up a gentle slope, from the top of which a bird's-eye view of a small stretch of country could be obtained. Behind them, to the right and the left, many companies of soldiers, afoot and on horseback, could be ...
— An Undivided Union • Oliver Optic
... Porthlooe, bright with virginal sunshine, and made tender by the breath of the Gulf Stream. Uncle Issy, passing up the road at nine o'clock, halted by the Cherokee to pass a word with its proprietor, who presented the very antipodes of a bird's-eye view, as he knocked about the crumbling clods with his visgy at ...
— I Saw Three Ships and Other Winter Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... bird's-eye view of a royal palace and domain "cut out in little stars." It is copied from one of Kipp's Views in Great Britain in the time of Queen Anne, and affords a correct idea of Hampton Court in all its ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 14, No. 385, Saturday, August 15, 1829. • Various
... sudden acuteness of vision with which sick people sometimes wake out of a heavy sleep. As she opened her eyes they rested on the picture that hung above the bed. It was a large engraving with a dazzling white margin enclosed in a wide frame of bird's-eye maple with an inner scroll of gold. The engraving represented a young man in a boat on a lake over-hung with trees. He was leaning over to gather water-lilies for the girl in a light dress who lay among the cushions ...
— Summer • Edith Wharton
... surmised that none of the high-born senoritas who demurred at appearing at the promenade when it was empty, were likely to be the first to arrive at the salon of the Casino. But as there was no side walk here, from whence they could take a bird's-eye view, and they could not keep a watch from the windows at night, these clever young ladies, as high-born as they were ingenious, hit upon a means ...
— The Grandee • Armando Palacio Valds
... alluring words, and bewildered by the rapid bird's-eye view of Paris which they brought before him, it seemed as if hitherto he had been using only half his brain and suddenly had found the other half, so swiftly his ideas widened. He saw himself stagnating in Angouleme like a frog under a stone in a marsh. Paris and ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... wound down to a forest that had formed a dark blur in our bird's-eye view of the plain. We passed into the forest and halted on the edge of a colony of queer exotic huts. On all sides they peeped through the branches, themselves so branched and sodded and leafy that they seemed like some transition form between tree and ...
— Fighting France - From Dunkerque to Belport • Edith Wharton
... in soft water, float your engraving on the surface—picture side uppermost—and let it remain about an hour. The screen, box or table on which you wish to transfer the design should be of bird's-eye maple or other light-colored hardwood, varnished with the best copal ...
— The Ladies Book of Useful Information - Compiled from many sources • Anonymous
... happy; his master he thought was worrying someone, it was his human equivalent to killing a rat; but when the professor led off at him, the case was different, and Topper, without warning, went straight at the supposed assailant's throat. Fortunately the professor had a bird's-eye handkerchief round his neck, which protected it from the dog's teeth, for Topper sprang right up and fixed him. It was frightful to look at, but Stubbs had the presence of mind to seize his animal round the throat with both hands immediately and drag him away; ...
— Dr. Jolliffe's Boys • Lewis Hough
... saw from his bird's-eye perch, was a circular clearing two hundred yards across, which was surrounded on all sides by lowering jungle. In the exact center of the circle, like a splotch of ink on gray paper, there gaped a deep hole which might have measured ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, December 1930 • Various
... of course, will greatly change in form, scope, and order; this is just a bird's-eye glance. Thank you for Burt, which came, and for your Union notes. I have read one-half (about 900 pages) of Wodrow's Correspondence, with some improvement, but great fatigue. The doctor thinks well of my recovery, which puts me in good hope for the future. I should certainly be able ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 23 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... with an expression of delight on the human sea through which the procession had lately passed. The higher they the incline, the more did the Place du Rosaire and the avenues and paths of the gardens expand below them, black with the swarming multitude. It was a bird's-eye view of a whole nation, an ant-hill which ever increased in size, spreading farther and farther away. "Look!" Berthaud at last exclaimed to Pierre. "How vast and how beautiful it is! Ah! well, the year won't have been a bad one ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... claims, they are complex to the last degree. Their complexities, indeed, are so tortuous and so multitudinous that they baffle description within the limits of the present book. Yet, since nothing can be understood without some reference to its antecedents, we must take at least a bird's-eye view of the growing entanglement which finally resulted ...
— The War With the United States - A Chronicle of 1812 - Volume 14 (of 32) in the series Chronicles of Canada • William Wood
... two chimneys, and a row of towels hung out to dry. The view was adorable. It was like being on the top of a mountain. They could see the town of Fossato, and a wide expanse of water, and Vesuvius, and the distant outline of Naples all spread in a panorama before them, besides having an excellent bird's-eye prospect of the garden below. Peachy, who was ready to do anything wild, went dancing about ...
— The Jolliest School of All • Angela Brazil
... madam, that box-seat was a queer box for me. I felt as though I was sitting on the eaves of a roof with a herd of horses cavoorting under my feet. I never had a bird's-eye view of horses before. Looking down on their squirming bodies, with the coachman almost standing on his tiptoes driving them, was so different from Jone's buggy and our tall gray horse, which in ...
— Pomona's Travels - A Series of Letters to the Mistress of Rudder Grange from her Former - Handmaiden • Frank R. Stockton
... there was a curious view of the multitudinous wooden houses and the sinuous windings of the river, which could alone be obtained from such a bird's-eye point of inspection. An old temple at the top was in the hands of the Hindoo faction, being dedicated to the goddess Mahadewee, and in charge of it I found two of the dirtiest fukeers, or religious mendicants, I ever had the pleasure ...
— Diary of a Pedestrian in Cashmere and Thibet • by William Henry Knight
... it for the future, especially as the new volume, commencing in January, will be rendered as attractive as means, energy, industry and application can make it. We shall soon lay before our hundred thousand readers our new Prospectus, in which will be given a bird's-eye view of the plan of our prospective operations. Nothing will be promised that we will not fully and faithfully perform; and, unrivaled as this "Magazine" has heretofore been, we intend so to improve upon it, that the new volume shall bear away the palm, ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 5 November 1848 • Various
... the midst of rambling compounds, where the ferasch and banana flourished in dusty luxuriance, while orange, pomegranate, hybiscus, and poinsettia,—to say nothing of marigolds and roses,—blazed regally in the blossoming season with scarlet, and crimson gold. A bird's-eye view of the station itself might have suggested to the imaginative eye a game of noughts and crosses scratched on a Titanic slate:—a network of wide white roads, unrelieved by curve or undulation; their rigidity emphasised by equidistant ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver
... seventeenth century in the histories is one thing, and seeking to become acquainted with it by reading contemporary letters is another and a far different thing. The two procedures give rise to conflicting impressions. Historians, taking a bird's-eye view of their subject, portray its most general characteristics; they bring out only the prominent features, and sacrificing all the rest, draw pictures whose precision and simplicity captivate our minds. We finally get into the habit of seeing an epoch as they have painted it, and cannot ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various
... bird's-eye view from the state prison. I tell you, my poor Monsieur Tartarin, you have to keep your peepers jolly well skinned in this deuce of a country, or be exposed to very disagreeable things. For a sample, there's the muezzin's ...
— Tartarin of Tarascon • Alphonse Daudet
... yacht-like ships that now ply between the two hemispheres in such numbers, and which in luxury and the fitting conveniences seem to vie with each other for the mastery. The cabins were lined with satin-wood and bird's-eye maple; small marble columns separated the glittering panels of polished wood, and rich carpets covered the floors. The main cabin had the great table, as a fixture, in the centre, but that of Eve, somewhat shorter, but of equal width, was free from all encumbrance of the sort. It had its sofas, ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... reader, on the first eminence, and let us take a bird's-eye view of the city, always keeping in mind that the Kremlin is the great nucleus from which it all radiates. What a vast, wavy ocean of golden cupolas and fancy-colored domes, green-roofed houses and tortuous streets circle around this magic pile! what a combination of wild, barbaric splendors! nothing ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne
... will it ever be made? He seems to me abnormally lacking in personal ambition,—does not seem to care whether he is heard of or not,—has a sort of contempt for the little neighborhood notorieties which give most men pleasure. It is as if he were taking a bird's-eye view of himself, and every one else, and they all looked so small that the trifling variations ...
— Flint - His Faults, His Friendships and His Fortunes • Maud Wilder Goodwin
... and the two soldiers nodded. The position lay before them like a bird's-eye view; and Concepcion, in whom Spain had perhaps lost a guerilla general, had only set eyes on the spot once ...
— In Kedar's Tents • Henry Seton Merriman
... consider the doctors' feelings. Mine don't count. My baby. Get well, Lilly. Mamma's been cross at times, but never again. We'll do everything to make you happy. You can read your eyes out and mamma won't turn out the light on you. Mamma will buy you books and a box of paints and a little bird's-eye-maple room all your own. Lilly, mamma's baby. We're going housekeeping—your own piano—your own room. Aren't we, Ben? ...
— Star-Dust • Fannie Hurst
... dense bunch of scrub not twenty yards from the spot where he had tied his horses up. While I was away he had gone on top of the little stony eminence close by, and from its summit had obtained a bird's-eye view of the ground below, and thus perceived the two animals, which had never been absent at all. It seemed strange to me that I could not find their tracks, but the reason was there were no tracks to find. I took it ...
— Australia Twice Traversed, The Romance of Exploration • Ernest Giles
... snuff—had been in Dauphine—thought the Germans a set of European Chinese—considered a national guard as the model of a good soldier—kept spitting out of the window from time to time—stretched his legs most inconveniently against ours—tied his head up at dark in a dirty bird's-eye blue cotton mouchoir-de-poche, and snored throughout the night. He told us that he had not washed or shaved himself since leaving Lyons, two days before; and in the morning, just as we were opening the window, Monsieur yawned, stretched, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 57, No. 356, June, 1845 • Various
... in your welcome letter some hint of an intention to visit England. I can't. I have held it at arm's length, and taken a bird's-eye view of it, after reading it a great many times, but there is no greater encouragement in it this way than on a microscopic inspection. I should love to go with you—as I have gone, God knows how often—into Little Britain, and Eastcheap, and ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 3 (of 3), 1836-1870 • Charles Dickens
... whether my course lay in this, or in exactly the opposite direction. It has no unit of structure, but is a vast aggregation of streets and houses, or in fact of towns and cities, which have to be mastered in detail. I tried the third or fourth day to get a bird's-eye view from the top of St. Paul's, but saw through the rifts in the smoke only a waste,—literally a waste of red tiles and chimney pots. The confusion ...
— Winter Sunshine • John Burroughs
... Littlefork did it for occupation. I expostulated with him in public and in private; Mr. Pepper cut his society; Mr. Tomlinson read him an essay on Real Greatness of Soul: all was in vain. He was pumped by the mob for the theft of a bird's-eye wipe. The fault I had borne with,—the detection was unpardonable; I expelled him. Who's here so base as would be a fogle-hunter? If any, speak; for him have I offended! Who's here so rude as would not be a gentleman? If any, speak; for him ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... from Appleton hisself he'll hate ye worse'n ever, f'r he'll think ye'll be afther crimpin' his bird's-eye game. Take advice, Bill, an' kape on th' good side av um av ye can. He'll t'row ut into ye wid all manner av dhirty thricks, but howld ye're timper, an' maybe ye'll winter ut ...
— The Promise - A Tale of the Great Northwest • James B. Hendryx
... proprieties which can prejudice for him his apprehension, his understanding, his judgment of the given. This freedom which permits the stranger to experience and deal with the relation of nearness as though from a bird's-eye view, contains indeed all sorts of dangerous possibilities. From the beginnings of things, in revolutions of all sorts, the attacked party has claimed that there has been incitement from without, through foreign ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... busy crowd, The vain, the wealthy, and the proud, Their meaner flights pursue, Let us cast off the foolish ties That bind us to the earth, and rise And take a bird's-eye view!— ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... strongly with the gewgaw cabin in which I received them. There is no such finery on land as in the cabin of one of these ships in the Liverpool trade, finished off with a complete panelling of rosewood, mahogany, and bird's-eye maple, polished and varnished, and gilded along the cornices and the edges of the panels. It is all a piece of elaborate cabinet-work; and one does not altogether see why it should be given to the gales, and the salt-sea atmosphere, to be tossed upon the waves, and occupied by a rude shipmaster ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... ladies' hands; now the cavaliers attentively supplied their hooks with what was supposed to be bait, and performing afterwards the same office for their own, the brook presently had the appearance, or would to a bird's-eye view, of a ...
— Wych Hazel • Susan and Anna Warner
... scarce," she commented. "Thanks very much—I won't have one just now. Where are the others? Can you find them? I'm going to take you all up the church tower to get a bird's-eye view of the town. It will look nice to-day, with the flags out, and we ought to be able to ...
— A harum-scarum schoolgirl • Angela Brazil
... be thanked that made us friends; Men prate of wealth in empty words, I Sit here content as '90 ends. And sip my grog, and smoke my bird's-eye. ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100., January 3, 1891. • Various
... and got him loaded on a parlor car. About every so often he'd clap his hands to his side and groan: "Oh, my heart! My poor heart!" It was as touchin' as the heroine's speeches to the top gallery. On the way down Leonidas gave us a bird's-eye view of the kind of Jim Crow settlement we were heading for. It was one of those places where they date things back to the time when Lem Saunders fell down cellar with a lamp and set the ...
— Shorty McCabe • Sewell Ford
... coronation ceremonies of England as presenting a bird's-eye view of our history; and particularly of the various claims and privileges—and changes—of the monarchical branch of the Constitution. Some of these ceremonies, as we have seen, had their origin in those remote periods in which every believer in Revelation must accord "a divine right" to the kings ...
— Coronation Anecdotes • Giles Gossip
... to be well stirred and boiled. Brush over while hot, and immediately rub off with soft shavings or a sponge. For the antique hues of old wainscot mix equal parts of burnt umber and brown ochre. For new oak, bird's-eye maple, birch, satin-wood, or any similar light yellowish woods, whiting or white-lead, tinted with orange chrome, or by yellow ochre and a little size. For walnut, brown umber, glue size, and water; or by burnt umber very moderately modified ...
— French Polishing and Enamelling - A Practical Work of Instruction • Richard Bitmead
... Didn't seem to have any past worth speakin' about, except that she'd been born in England,—father used to keep a little store on some side street in Dover,—and she'd come over here alone when she was quite a girl. As for the present—well, I've been tryin' to give you a bird's-eye view of that. ...
— Shorty McCabe on the Job • Sewell Ford
... the cliffs of Otter and Seal Harbor glow in the sunlight! How magically the great white flower of foam expands and closes on the sapphire water as the long waves, one by one, pass over the top of the big rock between us and Islesford! This is a bird's-eye view: not a high-flying bird, circling away up in the sky, or perched upon some lofty crag, as Tennyson describes ...
— Days Off - And Other Digressions • Henry Van Dyke
... have time now! I tell you what: We'll let this luncheon go. I'll take you to the top of our tallest building, and you can draw a panoramic bird's-eye view of the entire city. That ...
— American Adventures - A Second Trip 'Abroad at home' • Julian Street
... sight; such as an old seaman loves; but there must be an end to it," he said. "You will excuse me, Sir Wycherly, but the movements of a fleet always have interest in my eyes, and it is seldom that I get such a bird's-eye view of those of my own; no wonder it has made me a ...
— The Two Admirals • J. Fenimore Cooper
... only thought was of the great adventure of letters in which he proposed to engage, and his first glance round his "bed-sitting-room" showed him that there was no piece of furniture suitable for his purpose. The table, like the rest of the suite, was of bird's-eye maple; but the maker seemed to have penetrated the druidic secret of the rocking-stone, the thing was in a state of unstable equilibrium perpetually. For some days he wandered through the streets, inspecting the second-hand ...
— The Hill of Dreams • Arthur Machen
... masculine pride. I was detailed in charge of a watch in the forward crow's-nest—a basket-like affair on the very top of the foremast about 150 feet from the water.... From the nest you get a wonderful view—a real bird's-eye view—for the men walking on the deck appear as pigmies, and the boats following in our trail look like dories. Our duty is to watch with powerful glasses for any traces of periscopes, and we are connected ...
— Our Navy in the War • Lawrence Perry
... a body heard tell on," commented Gaffer Polglaze; "an' yet the Lard's good pleasure's allus right if you lives long enough to look back an' see how things was from His bird's-eye view of 'em. A tidy skuat [Footnote: Windfall, legacy.] o' money tu they tells me. Who Be gwaine to ...
— Lying Prophets • Eden Phillpotts
... thunder storms, and devastating earthquakes,—all alike frightful defects, not in the original plan,—is not only unlike the primeval world, not very good, or, unlike the antediluvian world, tolerably good, but not good at all. "On taking a bird's-eye view of the geographical and hydrographical features or superficies of the globe," says this bold writer, "any unprejudiced person must at once admit, that in either of these departments there is scarce a trace of that beautiful, tasteful, and economical design which we have a right ...
— The Testimony of the Rocks - or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed • Hugh Miller
... thing you ever knew. I'd have taken you up behind me if I'd known what it was going to be. There's nothing like a bird's-eye view ...
— The Opened Shutters • Clara Louise Burnham
... considering the church again, "I really must go up to the top of the tower some clear day." Then he shook his head. "What for? A bird's-eye view of Paris would have been interesting in the Middle Ages, but now! I should see, as from a hill top, other heights, a network of grey streets, the whiter arteries of the boulevards, the green plaques of gardens and squares, and, away in the distance, files of houses like lines ...
— La-bas • J. K. Huysmans
... musketry from the tops, the hand-to-hand fight raged on, with shouts and groans and shrieks of execration. Hitherto no wounded man had been borne below to the cockpit, so that M'Hearty was idle as yet. He was on the rigging with the captain, from which they had a bird's-eye ...
— As We Sweep Through The Deep • Gordon Stables
... however, the commencement of a chapter of accidents. I went down the pass, and there, sure enough, I had a fine bird's-eye view of the carriage down a precipice on the road side. One horse was so injured that it was necessary to destroy him; the other died a few days after. Perkes had been intoxicated; and, while driving at a full gallop round a corner, over ...
— Eight Years' Wandering in Ceylon • Samuel White Baker
... a mystery where they all come from. Yet they say smuggling is a thing of the past! Or do the gentle tradesmen, to discourage smuggling, manufacture their own Havannas? Good tobacco, shag and bird's-eye, may be had at eighteen ...
— Jethou - or Crusoe Life in the Channel Isles • E. R. Suffling
... best war-eagle that could be made, and began to take lessons in military maps, bird's-eye views, and explosives. He was almost happy. He would improve on the poet's dream-ideal, "Were I a little ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes
... me," burst out Dusty Rhodes vindictively, "you ain't sech a winner as you think. I've jest give Mrs. Campbell a bird's-eye view of your career, so you're coppered on that bet ...
— Wunpost • Dane Coolidge
... This bird's-eye view and lack of information about the details do less than justice to the crucial battle, which Maud'huy under Foch's general direction waged against the Germans round Arras and both they and the French regard as one of the decisive incidents in the war. Clearly, if Von Buelow ...
— A Short History of the Great War • A.F. Pollard
... imprinted upon a favorite tea-plate, we often sallied forth in fancy to explore the Chinese world as portrayed in blue or pink upon earthen table-ware of the olden time. And what a world! How artfully adapted to childish notions, how convenient for bird's-eye views, this arrangement of lofty mountain peaks, deep gorges, and rocks of fantastic forms, tangled up with examples of nature subdued by Chinese art in landscape gardening and ornate architecture. In the near distance (far and near are the same in Chinese art), we behold a slender streak ...
— Tea Leaves • Francis Leggett & Co.
... to be desired. At the dinner hour she strides into our apartment without bidding, and takes her allotted place. The bird's two feet six inches of legs serve her instead of a chair, and her swan-like neck enables her to take a bird's-eye view of the most distant dish. But she never ventures to help herself to anything till the meal is actually placed on the plate before her; nor does she bolt her food like a beast, but disposes of it gracefully, like the best educated biped. Jerking the article for consumption neatly into ...
— The Pearl of the Antilles, or An Artist in Cuba • Walter Goodman
... We passed the spot when it was quite dark, but he persisted in going there, and, to help his vision, borrowed one of the coach-lamps from the driver. He returned, and declared that with the assistance of the lamp he had had a very excellent view, down a precipice of several hundred feet. His bird's-eye view by candle-light must have been very extensive. After all, it is but to be able to say that they had been, to such a place, or have seen such a thing, that, more than any real taste for it, induces the majority of the world to incur the trouble ...
— Diary in America, Series One • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... member of the British flora very much resembles the native Bird's-eye Primrose (P. farinosa), which is very common in some parts. It is not uniformly conceded to be a distinct species, but many botanists believe it to be such. As a matter of fact, it is different from P. farinosa in several important points, though they are not seen at a mere glance. ...
— Hardy Perennials and Old Fashioned Flowers - Describing the Most Desirable Plants, for Borders, - Rockeries, and Shrubberies. • John Wood
... Its four horns glittered in the beginning of sunset, as if they were crusted with jewels of different colours. Its dominance over all that surrounded it, all that was smaller and less powerful and impressive than itself, was astonishingly evident from this bird's-eye point of view; but brightly as the jewels gleamed, they had lost their allurement for these two. With Vanno's arms around her, Mary wondered how she could ever have felt that the Casino was a vast magnet compelling her to come to it ...
— The Guests Of Hercules • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... blessed thing that none of us had a bird's-eye view of that same water. No man of force will listen when his mind is made up, and perhaps it is just as well. For in that way things are accomplished. Clark would not listen to Monsieur Vigo, and hence the financier had, perforce, to ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... Tasmanian evergreen tree, Dacrydium franklinii, Hook, N.O. Coniferae. The timber is prized in cabinet-work, being repellent to insects, durable, and fairly easy to work; certain pieces are beautifully marked, and resemble bird's-eye maple. The Huon is a river in the south of Tasmania, called after a French officer. ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris
... final stages of the dispute, it may be well to take a bird's-eye view of the condition of the chief Powers in so far as it explains their attitude towards the ...
— The Development of the European Nations, 1870-1914 (5th ed.) • John Holland Rose
... point near to the close of the seventeenth century, when John Evelyn, in his age, is repairing the damages that Peter the Great has wrought in his pretty Deptford home, let us take a bird's-eye glance at ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 12, No. 73, November, 1863 • Various
... he, "we shall have a better opportunity of seeing the House, and its decorations, by getting nearer to the curtain; besides, Ave shall have a bird's-eye view of the company in all quarters, from the seat of the Gods to ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... after the exhaustion of my nocturnal flight, I ascended a spacious palm tree, which afforded an admirable view of the adjacent country, and a desirable shelter from the ardours of the rising sun. My first impulse was to take a bird's-eye view of the novel scene which lay before me, and I gazed around for some minutes with intense delight; but fatigue gradually obtained the mastery over curiosity, and, putting my head unconsciously beneath ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 17, No. - 488, May 7, 1831 • Various
... the paper on Machiavelli now, and ask the reader to examine this passage from it which I append. I do not mean examine it in a bird's-eye way; I mean search it, study it. And, of course, read it aloud. I may be wrong, still it is my conviction that one cannot get out of finely wrought literature all that is in it by reading ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... feel that every change upon this earth Is bought with sacrifice. My yearnings fail To reach that high apocalyptic mount Which shows in bird's-eye view a perfect world, Or enter warmly into other joys Than those of faulty, struggling human kind, That strain upon my soul's too perfect wing Ends in ignoble floundering: I fall Into short-sighted pity for the men Who, ...
— George Eliot; A Critical Study of Her Life, Writings & Philosophy • George Willis Cooke
... London of late, but your foreigner nearly always finds London foggy. Kent does not show along its main railway line the evidence of agricultural depression: it is like a garden. Yet, in a very careful and thorough French book just published by a French traveller, his bird's-eye view of the country as he went through Kent just after landing would make you think the place a desert; he seems to have thought the hedges a sign of agricultural decay. The same foreigner will discover a plebeian character in the Commons and an aristocratic ...
— First and Last • H. Belloc
... carried in a couple of pails full of boiling water; we laid out shaving tackle, an old suit of grey flannel, a pair of brown shoes, and the necessary under-linen. A blue bird's-eye tie, I remember, was the last touch. Then Ajax shrugged his shoulders and said significantly, "You know what ...
— Bunch Grass - A Chronicle of Life on a Cattle Ranch • Horace Annesley Vachell
... inaudible, there sprang a sense of such intense peacefulness that earth and life were forgotten. A milky whiteness spread more and more over the whole heavens though they were still darkened here and there by wreaths of smoke. Little by little, bright clusters of houses became plainly visible; a bird's-eye view was obtained of the whole city, intersected by streets and squares, which with their shadowy depths described the ...
— A Love Episode • Emile Zola
... descending to the harbor,—by flights of old mossy stone steps,—that looking down them to the azure water you have the sensation of gazing from a cliff. From certain openings in the main street—the Rue Victor Hugo—you can get something like a bird's-eye view of the harbor with its shipping. The roofs of the street below are under your feet, and other streets are rising behind you to meet the mountain roads. They climb at a very steep angle, occasionally breaking into stairs of lava rock, all ...
— Two Years in the French West Indies • Lafcadio Hearn
... him very soon after breakfast by means of a clever little piece of diplomacy. John is really amused at the manner in which she manages this affair, and allows himself to be carried off to enjoy a bird's-eye view of the harbor which she has discovered at the end of the piazza, and which he must ...
— Miss Caprice • St. George Rathborne
... to treat such subjects as The Church, Her Books, Her Sacraments, in half-hour Lectures; but, in spite of obvious drawbacks, there may be two advantages. It may be useful to take a bird's-eye view of a whole subject rather than to look minutely into each part—and it may help to keep the Lecturer ...
— The Church: Her Books and Her Sacraments • E. E. Holmes
... later went to St. John's Cathedral to vespers.... After dinner we were glad to lay ourselves away. We have a pleasant room, with windows opening upon a broad court and lovely garden and fountain. Monday we drove around the city for bird's-eye views from famous points. Such wonders of ruins ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 2 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... these white sepulchres are packed here! How different this congestion of sorrow from the mossy latitude of God's Acre in the country! The dead are crammed together as closely as the living seemed in that bird's-eye view from the Archway. There is no ample shadow of trees, no tangled corners where mother earth may weave flower garlands over her returning children. The monuments positively jostle and elbow each other for frontage upon the footways. And they ...
— Certain Personal Matters • H. G. Wells
... Doyle designed for Punch, probably the most original were the series entitled "Manners and Customs of ye Englishe," which, under the title of "Bird's-eye Views of English Society," he afterwards continued in the Cornhill Magazine in a more elaborate form. The "Manners and Customs" form a curious record of the doings of the period, and remind us of "Sam Cowell" and ...
— English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century. - How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times. • Graham Everitt
... use wandering aimlessly," he decided at length, "and I'll either have to gain a bird's-eye view of the country or get Mr. Balfour to make me a map. To think that I should have discovered him, and here of all places in the world. What a sensation it will make when I tell of it. Of course I shall do so, for I'll get out of this fix all right somehow. What a state of mind poor White ...
— Under the Great Bear • Kirk Munroe
... Trenton Group.—This is an essentially calcareous group, the various limestones of which it is composed being known as the "Bird's-eye," "Black River," and "Trenton" Limestones, of which the last is the thickest and most important. The thickness of this group is variable, and the bands of limestone in it are often separated by ...
— The Ancient Life History of the Earth • Henry Alleyne Nicholson
... completely describe such experiences, but formulates their succession. To this end they are reduced to terms that correspond to no specific experience, and for this very reason may be translated again into all definable hypothetical experiences. The solar system for astronomy is not a bird's-eye view of elliptical orbits, with the planets and satellites in definite phases. Nor is it this group of objects from any such point of view, or from any number of such points of view; but a formulation of their motions that will serve as the key to an infinite number ...
— The Approach to Philosophy • Ralph Barton Perry
... at the end of the hill, where the ground falls away like a cliff and you have a bird's-eye view of two counties, we sat down on the steps of the monument erected in honour of those Hampdenshire men whose lives were thrown ...
— The Wonder • J. D. Beresford
... probably waiting our appearance. It must be eaten, though under the penalty of being thought moon-struck rhymers by the whole State. Come, Ned; if you are sufficiently satisfied with looking at the Wigwam in a bird's-eye view, we will descend and put its beauties to the severer ...
— Home as Found • James Fenimore Cooper
... Lottie had looked in on life where you and I might not. A bird's-eye view may be very, very comprehensive, but a domestic's-eye view can sometimes be ...
— The Vertical City • Fannie Hurst
... lists of tribes and kings on either side—the Jutes and Anglo-Saxons, the Danes and Normans, on one side, and the Celts of England, Scotland, Wales, and Ireland, on the other; nor yet the different dates and places; but simply take a single bird's-eye view of all the Seven Seas as one sea, of all the British Norsemen as one Anglo-Norman folk, and of all the centuries from the fifth to the twentieth as a single age; and then you can quite easily understand how the empire of the sea has been won and held by the same strong "Hardy-Norseman" ...
— Flag and Fleet - How the British Navy Won the Freedom of the Seas • William Wood
... free use of the abundant wild cherry for the furniture called for by the growing prosperity of the settlements, its close grain and warm color giving it the preference over other native woods, excepting always the curly and bird's-eye maple, which were novelties to ...
— The Development of Embroidery in America • Candace Wheeler
... second sense, because our mowing grass is a natural product of enclosed ground, when cattle are excluded. Some flowers just invade the meadows, venturing out a few yards from the hedges or woods, but never spreading broadcast over the sun-warmed central acres. Such are the blue bird's-eye, which just colours the mowing grass in shady spots and patches near the fence, and occasionally the bee-orchis and the butterfly-orchis. The latter does not grow tall in the meadows as it does in the woods, but affects a humbler ...
— The Naturalist on the Thames • C. J. Cornish
... a leary flash mot, and she was round and fat, [1] With twangs in her shoes, a wheelbarrow too, and an oilskin round her hat; A blue bird's-eye o'er dairies fine— as she mizzled through Temple Bar, [2] Of vich side of the way, I cannot say, but she boned it from ...
— Musa Pedestris - Three Centuries of Canting Songs - and Slang Rhymes [1536 - 1896] • John S. Farmer
... Parliament, brought together in November of 1642,[19] our Parliamentary eloquence has now, within four years, travelled through a period of two centuries. A most admirable subject for an essay, or a Magazine article, as it strikes me, would be a bird's-eye view—or rather a bird's-wing flight—pursuing rapidly the revolutions of that memorable oracle (for such it really was to the rest of civilised Europe), which, through so long a course of years, like the Delphic oracle to the nations of old, delivered counsels of ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey—Vol. 1 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... bird's-eye view is presented of the entire position in this vicinity. Details will be found in the larger maps. Care has been taken to give the outlines, roads, and relative distances with accuracy. The plan is a photographic reduction of Ratzer's, Randall's, ...
— The Campaign of 1776 around New York and Brooklyn • Henry P. Johnston
... had attempted to treat landscape as naturalistically as painting would permit. Their ideal was to note it down with absolute correctness from a given point of view; their subject almost invariably the Valdarno; their achievement, a bird's-eye view of this Tuscan paradise. Nor can it be denied that this gives pleasure, but the pleasure is only such as is conveyed by tactile values. Instead of having the difficulty we should have in nature to distinguish ...
— The Florentine Painters of the Renaissance - With An Index To Their Works • Bernhard Berenson
... the usual perfunctory fasces of facts,—cording information into stiff, labeled bunches, marshaling details into cramped and characterless order, scrutinizing the ground with a microscope, never surveying it in bird's-eye view. Two recent novels we eagerly buy, hearing that their scenes are laid in that vicinity; but each merely speaks, in easy omniscience, of the "distant chain of blue mountains," or of the "far-off snow-peaks outlined ...
— A Midsummer Drive Through The Pyrenees • Edwin Asa Dix
... woodwork. The "parlor" was papered with poisonous-looking green paper, with imitation mahogany woodwork; the dining-room had walls covered with red burlap and near-oak woodwork; the bedroom was done in pink satin finished paper and bird's-eye maple woodwork, and the kitchen was bilious as to woodwork, with bleak gray walls. ...
— The House in Good Taste • Elsie de Wolfe
... tobacco-shop at the corner of the street, where Montgomery got his bird's-eye and also his local information, for the shopman was a garrulous soul, who knew everything about the affairs of the district. The assistant strolled down there after tea and asked, in a casual way, whether the tobacconist had ever heard ...
— The Green Flag • Arthur Conan Doyle
... merits ye were sure to feel For one, true virtue's favorite employ, Her happiest exercise! her highest joy. One glorious motive sway'd each active mind Whether the bard, to rhymes no more confin'd, Rapidly sketch'd with glance intensely keen, His bird's-eye prospect of our human scene, Or the fair moralist, in polish'd prose, Describ'd the living manners as they rose. One glorious motive clear in each we prize. Bright as the vestal flame, which never dies. The philanthropic ...
— Poems on Serious and Sacred Subjects - Printed only as Private Tokens of Regard, for the Particular - Friends of the Author • William Hayley
... on away there in the north month after month and year after year. The ice is split and piled up into mounds, which extend in every direction. If one could get a bird's-eye view of the ice-fields, they would seem to be cut up into squares or meshes by a network of these packed ridges, or pressure-dikes, as we called them, because they reminded us so much of snow-covered stone dikes at home, such as, in many parts of the country, are ...
— Farthest North - Being the Record of a Voyage of Exploration of the Ship 'Fram' 1893-1896 • Fridtjof Nansen
... them enough.[1] It was, naturally, the aim of the little book which won it sympathy; the fact that it was an attempt to carry to its natural end, in brief compass, the story which, at Mr. Roosevelt's suggestion, I first tried to tell in England's Effort, published in 1916. England's Effort was a bird's-eye view of the first two years of the war, of the gathering of the new Armies, of the passing into law, and the results—up to the Battle of the Somme—of the Munitions Act of 1915. In this book, which I have again ...
— Fields of Victory • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... in getting one of my larger parties into a tolerably serious scrape. We passed every day, on our way to the cave, a fine large orchard, attached to the manor-house of the Cromarty estate; and in ascending an adjacent hill over which our path lay, and which commands a bird's-eye view of the trim-kept walks and well-laden trees, there used not unfrequently to arise wild speculations among us regarding the possibility and propriety of getting a supply of the fruit, to serve as desserts to our meals of shell-fish and potatoes. Weeks elapsed, ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... old Squire said, taking up a chip in his fingers. "Bird's-eye maple. Was there more than ...
— A Busy Year at the Old Squire's • Charles Asbury Stephens
... colours); while the veneer merchants sometimes supply also planetree, sycamore, chestnut, Brazilwood, yellow fustic, barwood, tulipwood, kingwood, East and West India satinwood, rosewood, ebony, ash, harewood, Indian purplewood, hornbeam, and snakewood. Bird's-eye maple and ...
— Intarsia and Marquetry • F. Hamilton Jackson
... says intelligible, never seems to get at the beginning or come to the end of any question: Paine in a few short sentences seems by his peremptory manner 'to clear it from all controversy, past, present, and to come.' Paine takes a bird's-eye view of things. Cobbett sticks close to them, inspects the component parts, and keeps fast hold of the smallest advantages they afford him. Or, if I might here be indulged in a pastoral allusion, Paine tries to enclose his ideas in a fold for security and repose; Cobbett lets his pour out ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... down for a moment or two at the deck which lay beneath, giving me a bird's-eye view through the rigging of the white decks dotted with officers and men, and the guns glistening in the sunshine. There were several faces staring up at me, and I made out Barkins and Smith, and waved my hand. But ...
— Blue Jackets - The Log of the Teaser • George Manville Fenn
... appearance suggestive of a huge and dried-up lake. This idea was borne out by an odd blotchiness, for sometimes there would be half a mile or more of seeming moorland, then a sharply defined change (or it seemed sharply defined from that bird's-eye point of view). A vivid greenness marked these changes, which merged into a dun coloured smudge and again into the brilliant green; then the moor ...
— The Devil Doctor • Sax Rohmer
... even been made in one of the monoplanes, but even a bird's-eye view of the surrounding country failed to discover their whereabouts. Then came the sandstorm, and hope that the missing ones could have weathered it was almost given up. Nevertheless, James Bell, in whom hope died hard, had set Jimsy as sentinel on the lofty butte in the wild hope that ...
— The Girl Aviators on Golden Wings • Margaret Burnham
... said that thought—that is, profound or consecutive thought—was a trouble to old Liz. Her mind leaped in an interjectional, flashing manner. Her actions were impulsive. A tall tree, a squirrel, and a bird's-eye view flashed into her brain at the same moment. She desired the last, and proceeded to act like the second, by seizing a limb of the first, which hung conveniently at her elbow. But her emulation of the squirrel was not very successful, for, ...
— The Red Man's Revenge - A Tale of The Red River Flood • R.M. Ballantyne
... the visitor for a couple of days, and its art gallery for a day longer. We were taking only a bird's-eye view, or review, and stayed only over one night, not making even the classic excursion to those artists' haunts of Volendam, Monnikendam, and Marken, of which no book on Holland ...
— The Automobilist Abroad • M. F. (Milburg Francisco) Mansfield
... necessary both as a slight fortification and as an ornament.[168] These were finished at the top with open crenellations in brick, along the base of which ran apparently a frieze of painted rosettes. A reference to our Fig. 47 will explain all these arrangements better than words. It is a bird's-eye view in perspective of the south-western part of the palace. The vertical sections on the right of the engraving show how the stones were bonded to the crude brick. The crenellations are omitted here, but they may be seen in ...
— A History of Art in Chaldaea & Assyria, v. 1 • Georges Perrot
... "facts" is, in some ways, crucial. I have spoken with Jesuits and Plymouth Brethren, mathematicians and poets, dogmatic republicans and dear old gentlemen in bird's-eye neckcloths; and each understood the word "facts" in an occult sense of his own. Try as I might, I could get no nearer the principle of their division. What was essential to them seemed to me trivial or untrue. We could come to no compromise as to ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Alhambra, and may be desirous of a general idea of its vicinity. The morning is serene and lovely; the sun has not gained sufficient power to destroy the freshness of the night; we will mount to the summit of the tower of Comares, and take a bird's-eye view ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 8 • Charles H. Sylvester
... about the other fellow," he said; "not here. It's each man for himself in a city office and God help the hindermost. Don't forget that, Evan, or you'll be imposed on right and left. Now, come here and get a bird's-eye view of your new friend. You'll find him a nasty brute to handle; he rears, bites, bucks and balks. The time you think he is going to take you over the river he turns tail, and you hit a balance about 1 a.m. You not only have to balance your friend the cash book, you've got four tellers to balance, ...
— A Canadian Bankclerk • J. P. Buschlen
... by bowing grandly in return, after which he dropped into a seat next to Fred's— his back to a tin box filled with plates, placed over the hot-air register—drew out a damp napkin from a bone ring, and took a bird's-eye view of the table ...
— The Fortunes of Oliver Horn • F. Hopkinson Smith
... among them now. She was resolved to get a full and delicately complete first impression of Beni-Mora, and to do that she knew that she must detach herself from close human contact. She desired the mind's bird's-eye view—a height, a watchtower and a little solitude. So, when the eager Mozabite merchants called to her she did not heed them, and even the busy patter of the informing Batouch fell upon ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens
... its associations, its motley company of memories and spectres both good and bad, its imperishably adventurous savour of the past, imprisoned in the dry prose of registries and records. Let us just take a glance, a bird's-eye view as it were, of that region which we now know as Washington Square, as it was when the city of New York bought ...
— Greenwich Village • Anna Alice Chapin
... of a heather-clad knoll that projected from a precipitous part of the mountain-side, Barret paused to recover breath and look back at the calm sea. It lay stretched out far below him, looking, with its numerous islets in bird's-eye view, somewhat like a map. The mists had completely cleared away, and the sun was glittering on the white expanse like a line of light from the shore to the horizon. Never before had our Englishman felt so like a bird, both as to the point ...
— The Eagle Cliff • R.M. Ballantyne
... would add, "The poor creatures have been out upon the plains all day: Heaven knows what we shall do when the berries are gone." But Mrs. Graffam said nothing more. She set out the pine table, and going to an old chest brought a white cloth; it was of bird's-eye diaper. Graffam remembered well who wove it; and a pleasant vision came along with that white table-cloth. He saw his mother, as in olden times, weaving; while he stood by her side, wondering at the skill with which she sent the shuttle through its wiry arch, ...
— Be Courteous • Mrs. M. H. Maxwell
... immense plain, through which his path led straight forward for some time, till he came to the foot of a ladder. He was told to ascend this, but it reached up as he went, till, looking back, he had a wide bird's-eye view of towns, cities, and villages. He continued to go up until he reached the skies. Here stood another white man, who told him to look round a new earth. There were four splendid houses. His guide told him to enter one of these. As he got near it, a door opened, and ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft
... be a rule that the foreground should be placed sharply in profile and often so deep in shadow that it contrasted like a silhouette with the more distant grounds. On the other hand, it is a favorite whim of the genuine pigtail age to draw bird's-eye landscapes and views of cities, in which every elevation of the earth seems flattened out as much as possible, every distinct division of the separate grounds as much as ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VIII • Various
... with my wife to church, it being Whitsunday; my wife very fine in a new yellow bird's-eye hood, as the fashion is now. We had a most sorry sermon; so home to dinner, my mother having her new suit brought home, which makes her very fine. After dinner my wife and she and Mercer to Thomas Pepys's wife's christening ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... impossible to form a clear or indeed any correct idea in regard to a nation unless we know something of the manners and customs, the daily life, the amusements, the vices of its people. Unless we can, as it were, take a bird's-eye view of the people at work and at play, at their daily avocations in their homes, see them as they come into the world, as they go through life's pilgrimage, and, finally, as they pay the debt of nature and are carried to their last resting-place ...
— The Empire of the East • H. B. Montgomery
... trees, is a spacious bowling-green. Again changing our position, we discover, on the south of the gardens, and connected with the state apartments, a long ambulatory, called the Stone Gallery. Then returning to our first post of observation, and taking a bird's-eye view of the whole, after examining it in detail, as before mentioned, we come to the conclusion, that, though irregular in the extreme, and with no pretension whatever to plan in its arrangement, the Palace of Whitehall ...
— The Star-Chamber, Volume 2 - An Historical Romance • W. Harrison Ainsworth
... one place where you can get a complete bird's-eye view of it," said Jeff, "and two-thirds of it would be hid in smoke, anyway. You've got to think of a place that would take in the whole population of New England, outside of Massachusetts, and not feel as if it had more than ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... contemplating it, first from one point of view, and then from another,—now would he be paddled by it on the canal—now would he peep at it through a telescope from the other side of the Meuse, and now would he take a bird's-eye glance at it from the top of one of those gigantic windmills which protect the ...
— Tobacco; Its History, Varieties, Culture, Manufacture and Commerce • E. R. Billings
... Course, I don't let on I can spot anybody I've ever known just by a sectional glimpse like that. But this was no common case of freckles. This was a splotchy, spattery system of rust marks, like a bird's-eye view of the enemy's trenches after a week of drum fire. Besides, there was the pale ...
— The House of Torchy • Sewell Ford
... two hours they were at Portsmouth; went to the agent, viewed the vessel, which proved to be a very fine fast-sailing craft, well found, with six brass carronades on each side. The cabins were handsome, fitted up with bird's-eye maple and gilt mouldings. ...
— Mr. Midshipman Easy • Captain Frederick Marryat
... which he had had specially taken and framed by a local man in bird's-eye maple, as a present for Arabella, and had duly given her on their wedding-day. On the back was still to be read, "Jude to Arabella," with the date. She must have thrown it in with the rest of her ...
— Jude the Obscure • Thomas Hardy
... Two or three miles below them nestled one of the most famous pleasure resorts of the entire region. Three or four times as distant lay the nearest town of any importance. Over the plain and through the clear atmosphere it looked like a bird's-eye-view map rather than an actual town. Far away to the left, gorgeous in coloring and grotesque in outline, could be seen the odd figures of many strangely ...
— The Master-Knot of Human Fate • Ellis Meredith
... name was unknown. Birmingham was as ignorant as Tamfield as to his origin or the sources of his wealth. Robert McIntyre brooded languidly over the problem as he leaned against the gate, puffing his blue clouds of bird's-eye into the ...
— The Doings Of Raffles Haw • Arthur Conan Doyle
... gentle Dilettanti crew Now delegate the task to digging Gell? That mighty limner of a bird's-eye view, How like to Nature let his volumes tell; Who can with him the folio's limits swell With all the Author saw, or said he saw? Who can topographise or delve so well? No boaster he, nor impudent and raw, His pencil, pen, and ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Letters and Journals, Vol. 1 • Lord Byron, Edited by Rowland E. Prothero |
