"Compass" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... excursion into Maine, partly to examine the drift phenomena on the islands and coast of that State, and partly to study the so-called "horse-backs." The journey proved to be one of the most interesting he had made in this country with reference to local glacial phenomena. Compass in hand, he followed the extraordinary ridges of morainic material lying between Bangor and Katahdin, to the Ebeene Mountains, at the foot of which are the Katahdin Iron Works. Returning to Bangor, he pursued, with the same minute investigation, the glacial tracks and erratic ...
— Louis Agassiz: His Life and Correspondence • Louis Agassiz
... started again at 2 p.m. At 2.20 made one mile north-east to the plain. At 3.10 made two miles and a half north. At 7.15 made ten miles and a half north-east to lookout-tree, which we made steering by compass. At this place I gave the horses almost all that was left of the water, as I thought that Fisherman would be able easily to lead the way to Camp 16, and I being so confident of this paid no attention to the course that he was leading me. At 11.30 I found that ...
— Journal of Landsborough's Expedition from Carpentaria - In search of Burke and Wills • William Landsborough
... king, which Madame Roland did so much to compass, led not indirectly to the ruin of her own most trusted political friends and associates. The murder of the queen, for which she had longed and laboured, was brought to pass, on October 16, 1793, by men who had then made up their minds to send herself to the scaffold, ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... think themselves right in the end. We want thought on the subject of Marriage—calm, consecutive, serious thought. Nothing else will do. We have passion, zeal, impulse, imagination; but we lack thought. Thought is the helm of passion, the ballast of imagination, the compass of impulse. Let youth think on the subject as they ought, and ...
— Aims and Aids for Girls and Young Women • George Sumner Weaver
... the Taepings in almost daily encounters, during one of which the Firefly steamer was retaken, and its English captain killed. In consequence of this all the Europeans left the service of the Taepings, and as their fleet had been almost entirely destroyed, they were now hemmed in within a small compass, and Gordon himself estimated that they ought to be finally overcome within two months. In this hope he resumed the command, and his decision was officially approved of and confirmed by the British Minister ...
— The Life of Gordon, Volume I • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... walk—I should like that," Nash replied. "I shall smoke a cigar at the cafe on the corner of the Place de l'Opera—you'll find me there." He prepared to compass his own departure, but before doing so he addressed himself to the duty of a few civil words to Lady Agnes. This effort proved vain, for on one side she was defended by the wall of the room and on the other rendered inaccessible by Miriam's mother, ...
— The Tragic Muse • Henry James
... qualities both in the pulpit and in personal intercourse, has been installed as an assistant pastor. The divine blessing has constantly rested upon the noble old church, which has gone steadily on, like a powerful ocean steamer, well-manned, well-equipped, well-freighted, and well guided by the compass of God's infallible word. Last year the church rendered a signal service to the cause of Foreign Missions by erecting a "David Gregg Hospital" and a "Theodore L. Cuyler Church" in Canton, China. They ...
— Recollections of a Long Life - An Autobiography • Theodore Ledyard Cuyler
... book and the silver bangles in it, as if some one had just thrown them off. At sound of entering footsteps Steve sprang up, with an angry oath, and hastily closing the book threw it and the bangles into the chair from which he had risen, then crowded the shawl down upon them into as small a compass as possible. ...
— Between Whiles • Helen Hunt Jackson
... peace;' and must have cared as much for their wordly interests as those who march up to the cannon's mouth. Their lives in that forest were not worth twenty-four hours' purchase, and they knew it. It is an ugly thing for an unarmed man, without a compass, to traverse the bush of Australia or New Zealand, where there are no wild beasts. But it was uglier still to start out under the dark roof of that primaeval wood. Knights, when they rode it, went armed cap-a-pie, like Sintram through the dark valley, trusting ...
— The Roman and the Teuton - A Series of Lectures delivered before the University of Cambridge • Charles Kingsley
... The compass of the estate was half an acre, and perhaps a perch or two, just the size for the hugging love General Ople was happiest in giving. He wisely decided to retain the old couple at the lodge, whose members were used to restriction, and also not to purchase a cow, that ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... curious habit; as though he had eaten too much of something sickeningly sweet, he kept licking his lips, smacking them, and would spit on the floor, hissingly, through his teeth. When he spoke, he did not finish his words, so rapidly did his thoughts run that his tongue was unable to compass them. ...
— The Seven who were Hanged • Leonid Andreyev
... a casque that suits this sword is found, With perils is thy daughter compass'd round; Alfonso's blood alone can save the maid, And quiet a long restless ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VIII • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... such cases were common, since nature comprised many things which even the finest intellect could not compass. ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... nauseous, and no longer serve to satisfy or pleasure, or to buy an hour's peace of mind? And is there any end to wisdom that we may hope to reach it? Rather, the more we learn, shall we not thereby be able only to better compass out our ignorance? Did we live ten thousand years could we hope to solve the secrets of the suns, and of the space beyond the suns, and of the Hand that hung them in the heavens? Would not our wisdom be but as a gnawing ...
— She • H. Rider Haggard
... than half a mile apart. In the Civil War our block-houses were usually erected of logs, one and two stories high. The face of the upper story had an angle of forty-five degrees to the face of the first story, thus concentrating a direct fire upon an enemy approaching from any point of the compass. The first block-houses in the West that I know of were built by my command in July and August, 1862, when it rebuilt the Mobile & Ohio Railroad from Columbus to Humbolt. There were many important bridges on this line, and we built block-houses at the most important ...
— The Battle of Atlanta - and Other Campaigns, Addresses, Etc. • Grenville M. Dodge
... is especially worthy of attention, as having been written half a century before the supposed invention of the mariner's compass by Flavius Gioias at Amalfi; and, as Southey {88} remarks, "it must have been well known and in general use before it would thus be referred to ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 195, July 23, 1853 • Various
... wood? For his tempted heart and wandering feet, Were the songs of David less pure and sweet? So in light and shadow the preacher went, God's erring and human instrument; And the hearts of the people where he passed Swayed as the reeds sway in the blast, Under the spell of a voice which took In its compass the flow of Siloa's brook, And the mystical chime of the bells of gold On the ephod's hem of the priest of old,— Now the roll of thunder, and now the awe Of the trumpet heard in the ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... this subject, Huet has an extraordinary observation, (Origines de Caen, p. 186.) "that, in the early times of Christianity, it was customary for all churches to front the east or north, or some intermediate point of the compass."—So learned and careful a writer would scarcely have made such a remark without some plausible grounds; but I am at a loss where to find them. Bingham, in his Origines Eccleslasticae, I. p. 288, ...
— Account of a Tour in Normandy, Vol. II. (of 2) • Dawson Turner
... some depths of degradation that even his far-reaching imagination failed to compass. Wanda listened wearily, though she ...
— An Algonquin Maiden - A Romance of the Early Days of Upper Canada • G. Mercer Adam
... the activities and powers of the empire in Berlin, recognizes that German nationality is large enough and great enough to admit of many capitals, many individualities, and many separate State growths within the sure compass of one great organism. ...
— The Crime Against Europe - A Possible Outcome of the War of 1914 • Roger Casement
... the ceremonial priest. But if the modern spirit holds that religion cannot be organised or any intermediary thrust between God and man, that does not preclude infinite possibilities of organisation and collective action UNDER God and within the compass of religion. There is no reason why religious men should not band themselves the better to attain specific ends. To borrow a term from British politics, there is no objection to AD HOC organisations. The objection lies not against subsidiary organisations for service but against organisations ...
— God The Invisible King • Herbert George Wells
... the ridge on his return, and paused on the summit. There was something strange in the distance with which the descending slope to the road stretched so far, so bewilderingly far. He contemplated it, and wondered if he could compass it in a lifetime. The impulse to go on—for this last task was only half done—overcame the check from the illusion, and he started down. His knees developed a foolish way of suddenly flexing and seating him hard on the ground. At first ...
— The Spinner's Book of Fiction • Various
... long while to place myself geographically. But finally, by map and compass, I concluded that I was in some one of the innumerable narrow valleys on the northern side of Mount Terrible. Basle seemed to be the nearest proper objective, judging from my map.... Can you form a mental picture of that particular ...
— In Secret • Robert W. Chambers
... conceptions, so great, and so high fancies, it is necessary (as a young lady, one of the greatest princesses of the kingdom, said to me once, speaking of a certain person) that a man's own brain must be crowded and squeezed together into a less compass, to make room for the others; I should be apt to conclude, that as plants are suffocated and drowned with too much nourishment, and lamps with too much oil, so with too much study and matter is the active part of the understanding which, being embarrassed, and confounded with a great diversity ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... veils to the waist, only showing a bit of face. The veil was of all colours, chiefly gold braid, bound by a chocolate and gold circlet near the forehead. Richard slung over my back and round my neck a whistle and compass, in case of my being lost. I had brought out two first-rate horses, both stallions, one half-bred, the other three-quarters; they were called Salim and Harpash. An Arab was to ride one, and lead the second when I was riding something else. The first stallion would be good ...
— The Romance of Isabel Lady Burton Volume II • Isabel Lady Burton & W. H. Wilkins
... (Sunday). Left camp at 8 a.m. Howitt, with one of the black boys, started to run the camel track seen yesterday. I gave Sampson (the leading man of the file) a compass bearing to follow, with instructions to keep as closely to it as the windings of the creek would permit, and rode on ahead, actuated by curiosity as to the movements of our black friends of yesterday. After travelling about three miles, my attention was attracted ...
— The History of Australian Exploration from 1788 to 1888 • Ernest Favenc
... meet with as great obstacles on her side, as on her father's. Would to God you had loved any other, then I should not have had so many difficulties to surmount. However, I will employ all my wits to compass the matter; but it requires time. In the mean while take courage and trust ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous
... remain mysteries, so far as human understanding can grapple with things, till God Himself reveals them to our stronger vision in the world to come. But, blessed be God, some, things that we cannot compass with our mental powers are very ...
— Our Master • Bramwell Booth
... more than this—there is, in fact, a great deal more in the compass of two volumes,[279] containing between them less than six hundred pages—all I can say is that he is vexatious and unreasonable, and that I have no sympathy whatever with him. Of course the book is of its own kind, ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... evil compass the city, they are halted by the glory and majesty of the Redeemer's presence, enthroned as eternal victor over sin. Just here must apply ...
— Our Day - In the Light of Prophecy • W. A. Spicer
... quick and ready way practised, called Half-pulls, which is—only one round in a change, that is, one change made at the Fore-stroke, and another at the Back-stroke, which way is now altogether in use (unless it be at some great bells, which are too weighty to be managed up so high a Compass at the Back-stroke, as Half-pulls requires) it being now a common thing in London to Ring the 720 Changes, Trebles and Doubles, and Grandsire Bob, Half-pulls, (which is commonly Rang with so round and ...
— Tintinnalogia, or, the Art of Ringing - Wherein is laid down plain and easie Rules for Ringing all - sorts of Plain Changes • Richard Duckworth and Fabian Stedman
... she set her wits to work, and was ingenious enough to invent an arrangement of small straps about the saddle, by which a great deal could be safely carried thereon, in a small compass. Here she now spread out and fastened a plain dark walking-dress and a few other trifles of apparel. Worm opened the gate for her, ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy
... slowly into the reeds, up and down the scale, testing the compass of the instrument. It was full and rich, unlike any that she had heard in the streets. Presently he struck into a popular ballad from the music-hall, holding the organ to his mouth with the left hand. ...
— Jonah • Louis Stone
... various had been their trials that they had lost all conception of distance or place; and, save the knowledge that they had travelled sometimes south, then again west, they had no idea where they were. Taking a north-easterly direction as near as they could determine the points of compass, they boldly set out and travelled until the sun was high in the heavens; then faint and weary, they sought for a place to rest, and something to satisfy their hunger. They soon found a cool shady spring, and after quenching their thirst, ...
— The American Family Robinson - or, The Adventures of a Family lost in the Great Desert of the West • D. W. Belisle
... altogether not so long as one play of Shakspeare's, they are certainly not surpassed in greatness of thought, in loftiness of conception, and in sustained vigour of execution, by any poem in the compass of literature; nor, observing their simple but compact symmetry as a whole, shall we do right to subscribe to those who deny to Aeschylus the skill of the artist, while they grant him the ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... light air mentioned, Raoul Yvard did not see fit to stir tack or sheet, as it is termed among seamen. Le Feu-Follet remained so stationary that, had she been by compass from any station on the shore, her direction would not have varied a degree the whole time. But this hour of comparative breeze sufficed to enable Winchester to get out of the harbor with la Divina Providenza, the felucca he had hired, and to round the promontory, under the ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper
... The complete compass of the human voice therefore ranges from about D 75 to f''' 1417 vibrations per second, but the quality of the same notes ...
— The Brain and the Voice in Speech and Song • F. W. Mott
... convinced her. It was probably not honesty at all. She had known girls in the Bleary Street Settlement who could persuade her that black was white, but who had proved on further knowledge to be lying all round the compass. When it wasn't lying it was bluff. It was possible that Letty was only bluffing, that in her pretense at magnanimity she was simply scheming for a bigger price. In that case she, Barbara, had called the bluff very skilfully. She had put her in a position in which she could be taken ...
— The Dust Flower • Basil King
... preceding day; and in respect to the bandages and other preparation for the dressing of wounds which Milichus alledged that he had ordered, he denied the statement altogether. He had not given any such orders. The whole story was the fabrication of a vile slave, attempting, by these infamous means, to compass his master's destruction. Scevinus said all this with so bold and intrepid a tone of voice, and with such an air of injured innocence, that Nero and his friends were half disposed to believe that he was unjustly accused, and to dismiss him from custody. This might very probably have been the ...
— Nero - Makers of History Series • Jacob Abbott
... compass the elimination of the blacks from the farms, was not at all popular with landowners, who made huge profits out of the renting of their farms to Natives. Platform speakers and newspaper writers coined an opprobrious phrase which designated this letting of farms to Natives ...
— Native Life in South Africa, Before and Since • Solomon Tshekisho Plaatje
... his, and Schwartz told us of the placers he had worked. He and Simpson had made a pretty good clean-up, just enough to make them want to get rich. The first day out Simpson showed us a belt with about an hundred ounces of dust. This he got tired of wearing, so he kept it in a compass-box, which ...
— Arizona Nights • Stewart Edward White
... of the Netherlands being now for the first time united under one sovereign, such a junction marks the limits of a second epoch in their history. It would be a presumptuous and vain attempt to trace, in a compass so confined as ours, the various changes in manners and customs which arose in these countries during a period of one thousand years. The extended and profound remarks of many celebrated writers on the state of Europe from the decline of the Roman power ...
— Holland - The History of the Netherlands • Thomas Colley Grattan
... a few compliments with the booking-office clerk on the subject of a pewter half-crown which was tendered him as a portion of his 'change,' walked back to the George and Vulture, where he was pretty busily employed until bed-time in reducing clothes and linen into the smallest possible compass, and exerting his mechanical genius in constructing a variety of ingenious devices for keeping the lids on boxes which had neither ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... headman—a bearded, solemn, Arab-like person with a phenomenally ugly face but a most pleasing smile. We told him we wanted porters. He clapped his hands. To the four young men who answered this summons he gave a command. From sleepy indolence they sprang into life. To the four cardinal points of the compass they darted away, running up and down the side streets, beating on the doors, screaming at the tops of their lungs the word ...
— African Camp Fires • Stewart Edward White
... from her port any more than the Landfall can be looked upon as the synonym of arrival. But there is this difference in the Departure: that the term does not imply so much a sea event as a definite act entailing a process—the precise observation of certain landmarks by means of the compass card. ...
— The Mirror of the Sea • Joseph Conrad
... He told Me that he had laid it down some Years since, as a little unfashionable: but that if I pleased he would give me a Lesson upon the Gridiron. He then informed me that he had added two Bars to the Gridiron, in order to give it a greater Compass of Sound; and I perceived was as well pleased with the Invention, as Sappho could have been upon adding two Strings to the Lute. To be short, I found that his whole Kitchen was furnished with musical Instruments; and could not but look upon this ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... afford to pass them by. The first, "La Franche-Comte et le pays de Montbeliard," is a succinct and admirably digested little history of the country. Its author, M. Castan, the learned librarian of Besancon, gives, in a small compass, what is not easy to get at elsewhere, enough, indeed, of history for all ordinary purposes. A second and no less admirable compendium of information for travellers in the Jura, is the, so-called, "Lectures Jurassiennes," ...
— Holidays in Eastern France • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... distinctly saw their figures passing back and forth before the blaze Robert also noticed the uniforms of Frenchmen, and he thought it likely that De Courcelles and Jumonville had with them more soldiers than he had supposed at first. The fires burned at different points of the compass, and thus the fort was encircled completely by them. Both young Lennox and Willet knew they had been lighted that way purposely, that is in order to show to the defenders that a belt of fire and steel was drawn ...
— The Shadow of the North - A Story of Old New York and a Lost Campaign • Joseph A. Altsheler
... made him so," or to receive, without qualification, his own proud assertion, "I AM AN ORATOR, I WAS BORN AN ORATOR." The laws of mind are the same for peasants, and princes in intellect; great minds as well as small, must take measures to compass their ...
— An account of Sa-Go-Ye-Wat-Ha - Red Jacket and his people, 1750-1830 • John Niles Hubbard
... him was inside the cavern, perhaps in deadly danger, and he was going to risk his own life and his daughter's to save him. And risk there undoubtedly was. A breeze had arisen and agitated the surface of the water, so that the ingress was smaller than ever and more difficult to compass. When waves lashed the tideless Mediterranean even the Capri fishermen shunned entering the grotto, for they knew its perils only too well. Telling Lorna to lie flat on her back Mr. Carson took the same position, and with infinite difficulty managed to maneuver the ...
— The Jolliest School of All • Angela Brazil
... hygiene among an idolatrous, barbarous, and ignorant population such as it had to encounter. To its professors, the formation of that monachism which has been so much misunderstood and abused was but an inevitable condition.[32] These men had not the steady compass to guide them in the path that was possessed by the Jewish people. The martyrdom of Christ and many of his apostles, and the teachings of the early church, pointed to physical denials, castigations, humiliations, and sufferings ...
— History of Circumcision from the Earliest Times to the Present - Moral and Physical Reasons for its Performance • Peter Charles Remondino
... phrases and think that they had thereby mastered his thought, he realized. Perhaps he hardly realized the danger to the coiner of apothegms himself, that of being content with a half truth when the whole truth cannot be conveniently crowded into narrow compass. Herein lies, I think, the chief source of Arnold's occasional failure to quite satisfy our sense of adequacy or of justice, as, for instance, in his celebrated handling of the four ways of regarding nature, or the passage in which ...
— Selections from the Prose Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... and enter upon bustle; but further off, it extended to old and young, hale and infirm, asthmatic and long-winded, grave and gay, taught and untaught, respectable and disreputable, industrious and idle, till it reached a compass of twenty miles at least, extending not only to the Forth and Tay, but stretching inland from their opposite shores. In short, men who had never climbed a mountain all their lives before, though living in close proximity to one, were seen on its loftiest peaks, and ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 447 - Volume 18, New Series, July 24, 1852 • Various
... Tony suddenly. Instinct suggested danger. He had been led astray. Pulling out a compass, he fixed it. The direction was wrong. This Syrian was playing his own game. He wanted another hundred pounds for this officer's body. It was worth more than that to the Turkish army. And he knew it. War ...
— The Kangaroo Marines • R. W. Campbell
... I must keep it within the best compass I can. When rocks either dry from a moist state, or cool from a heated state, they necessarily alter in bulk; and cracks, or open spaces, form in them in all directions. These cracks must be filled up with solid matter, or the rock would eventually ...
— The Ethics of the Dust • John Ruskin
... Queen Elizabeth gave to the persecuted foreigners brought down upon her the hatred of Philip II. and Charles IX. When they found that they could not prevent her furnishing them with an asylum, they proceeded to compass her death. She was excommunicated by the Pope, and Vitelli was hired to assassinate her. Philip also proceeded to prepare the Sacred Armada for the subjugation of the English nation, and he was master of the most powerful army and navy ...
— Men of Invention and Industry • Samuel Smiles
... without a college diploma is like a ship without a compass, a mere derelict on life's sea. I'm in no hurry anyhow," and she began to talk of ...
— A Master's Degree • Margaret Hill McCarter
... Australian birds no song; that the stones of Australian cherries grew on the outside of the fruit, that the bees had no sting, and that the dogs did not bark. In those days a gentleman with a military title improved upon the then popular list of contradictions by asserting that in Australia the compass points to the south, the valleys are cold, the mountain-tops warm, the eagles are white, and so on. Many accordingly took their natural science as "Tomlinson" did his God—from a printed book—and that compiled in England. ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... is not the right word; it is choler, which means God's wrath. Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob are now in this world; they did not go up in the clouds, as some believe-why should they go there? They don't want to go there to box the compass from one place to another. The Christians now-a-days are for setting up the Son's kingdom. It is not his; it is the Father's kingdom. It puts me in mind of a man in the country, who took his son in business, and had his sign made, "Hitchcock & Son;" but the son wanted it "Hitchcock & ...
— The Narrative of Sojourner Truth • Sojourner Truth
... answered the guide, and brought forth his pocket compass. "That way." And he pointed ...
— The Rover Boys In The Mountains • Arthur M. Winfield
... great distance came a hideous sound. Mugambi recognized the weird challenge of the ape-man. Immediately from different points of the compass rose a horrid semicircle of similar shrieks and screams, punctuated now and again by the blood-curdling cry ...
— The Beasts of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... more difficult just now because he was practically alone. It was too early in the season for the "old grads" to put in an appearance. By and by they would come flocking in droves from all quarters of the compass, eager to renew their youth, and to infuse into the raw recruits some of the undying enthusiasm that they felt for their old Alma Mater. Then every separate player on the team could have the benefit of the advice ...
— Bert Wilson on the Gridiron • J. W. Duffield
... lightness, which constitutes the last praise and causes the purest benefit of books, comes not of any manner of writing; no mere vivacity, though that of a French writer of memoirs, though that of Arsene Houssaye himself, can compass it; by no knack or talents is it to be attained. Perfect style has, indeed, many allurements, and is of exceeding price; but it is no chariot of Elijah, nevertheless. Was ever style more delightful, of its kind, than Dryden's? Was ever style more heavy and monotonous ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 51, January, 1862 • Various
... something else, a fear of the new religion which was yet dimly, confusedly dawning amidst the tramp of the nations on the march, and the sound of which must have reached him at one and the same time from every point of the compass. ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... hours after I awaked. It was a clear night. I ate my breakfast before the sun was up; and heaving anchor, the wind being favorable, I steered the same course that I had done the day before, wherein I was directed by my pocket- compass. My intention was to reach, if possible, one of those islands which I had reason to believe lay on the northeast of Van Diemen's Land. I discovered nothing all that day; but upon the next, about three in the ...
— The Junior Classics, V5 • Edited by William Patten
... that strange feeling of inexplicable loathing which he had experienced of late. This child's presence called up both in Vronsky and in Anna a feeling akin to the feeling of a sailor who sees by the compass that the direction in which he is swiftly moving is far from the right one, but that to arrest his motion is not in his power, that every instant is carrying him further and further away, and that to admit to himself his deviation ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy
... his side, shivering with the cold, and yet more at peace than she had been that weary, long day. The world, which had stretched to fearsome distances, shrank again to the compass of this small yard, and a man stood between her and the gate to fight off the forces which had surged in upon her. She was mindful of nothing else. It was enough that she could stand for even a moment in ...
— The Web of the Golden Spider • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... should predominate; brindle, red, or liver markings are objectionable. Otherwise this point is of little or no importance. SYMMETRY, SIZE, AND CHARACTER—The dog must present a general gay, lively, and active appearance; bone and strength in a small compass are essentials; but this must not be taken to mean that a Fox-terrier should be cloggy, or in any way coarse—speed and endurance must be looked to as well as power, and the symmetry of the Foxhound taken as a model. ...
— Dogs and All About Them • Robert Leighton
... the balance. Carlo and Chaves were for having him executed out of hand, at latest, by sunset. The latter was especially vindictive. Indeed, it seemed to the ranger that ever since he had mentioned his name this man had set himself more malevolently to compass his death. Onate maintained, on the other hand, that their prisoner was worth more to them alive than dead. There was a chance that he might weaken before morning and tell secrets. At worst they would ...
— Bucky O'Connor • William MacLeod Raine
... come near the castle to-night, I will have you taken up. I am too much your friend to see you hanged! But if you go home and leave the matter to me, I will do my best, and let you know. She shall be saved if I can compass it. What, man! you would not ...
— Donal Grant • George MacDonald
... I know how you feel about it, Mistress Blythe—just as I feel meself. But it ain't our feelings we have to steer by through life—no, no, we'd make shipwreck mighty often if we did that. There's only the one safe compass and we've got to set our course by that—what it's right to do. I agree with the doctor. If there's a chance for Dick, Leslie should be told of it. There's no two sides to that, ...
— Anne's House of Dreams • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... that it was that very moment of tremulousness which Jesus Christ seized, in order to pour an unstinted flood of praise for the firmness of his convictions, on the wavering head of the Forerunner. So, if we feel that though the needle of our compass points true to the pole, yet when the compass-frame is shaken, the needle sometimes vibrates away from its true direction, do not let us be cast down, but believe that a merciful allowance is made for human weakness. This man was great; first, because he had such dauntless courage and firmness ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... huskier, more wheezing, more pertinacious in working away at a cough till they have made it a masterpiece than any other mortals. We believe that club Asthmats (it is quite as good a word as "AEsthetes") practise in the Reading Room of the British Museum, where they acquire their extraordinary compass and mastery of various notes. Be this as it may, the cough which drives every one but its owner out of the room (though doubtless an affliction to the proprietor) gives him rank as a club-bore of the finest water. The bore who always enters into conversation, ...
— Lost Leaders • Andrew Lang
... fallen on the jungle now. Except to lessen his speed it made little difference to the elephant; but for the man it was harder to find his way. On the twisting jungle tracks his luminous compass was of little use. He was forced to ...
— The Elephant God • Gordon Casserly
... got out, with a chart and quadrant they had also overlooked. Thus we might contrast our condition very favourably with that of many poor fellows, who have been compelled to leave their sinking ships in the mid Atlantic or Pacific hundreds of miles from any known coast, without chart or compass, and with a scant supply ...
— Will Weatherhelm - The Yarn of an Old Sailor • W.H.G. Kingston
... turning into paths that would lead my soul astray. However much I may love myself and the world, however much I may seek my own, below all and above all is the conviction that time is fleeting, and life here but as a span, that if I compass the whole world, and lose my own soul, I have made a fearful exchange. There are a great many things regarded by business men as allowable. They are so common in trade, that scarcely one man in a score questions their morality; so common, that I have often found myself drifting into ...
— All's for the Best • T. S. Arthur
... any way. I know all the earth does not yield the like confluence of streams and branches, the one crossing the other so many times, and all so fair and large, and so like one another as no man can tell which to take. And if we went by the sun or compass, hoping thereby to go directly one way or the other, yet that way also we were carried in a circle among multitudes of islands. Every island was so bordered with big trees as no man could see any farther than the breadth of the river ...
— Historical Tales - The Romance of Reality - Volume III • Charles Morris
... nearest to hand—to wit, four syphons—formed themselves two deep and marched into the coffee-room. Aware at once from Mr. Lavender's white hair and words that he was not the Objector in question, they advanced upon the young man, who was still seated, and taking up the four points of the compass, began squirting him unmercifully with soda-water. Blinded and dripping, the unfortunate young fellow tried desperately to elude the cordon of his persecutors, only to receive a fresh stream in his ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... development, of the directive power, and of the knowledge of human nature which will enable her well and wisely to direct her children, successfully to grapple with the "servant problem," and to sweep a large circle of details within the compass of generalized rules. She has learned what industry means, not, as was said by a Christian writer of the thirteenth century, only "to pray to God, to love man, to knit and to sew." She has not "everlastingly something in her hand, though no one profits ...
— The Education of American Girls • Anna Callender Brackett
... sake of those to whom the whole subject may be new, to give in the smallest possible compass the substance of the Homoeopathic Doctrine. Samuel Hahnemann, its founder, is a German physician, now living in Paris, [Hahnemann died in 1843.] at the age of eighty-seven years. In 1796 he published the first paper containing his peculiar notions; ...
— Medical Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... tend to engender similar and simultaneous modification, however small, in the vast majority of individuals composing any species. The existence of such a principle and its permanence is the only thing that can be supposed capable of acting as rudder and compass to the accumulation of variations, and of making it hold steadily on one course for each species, till eventually many havens, far remote from one ...
— Essays on Life, Art and Science • Samuel Butler
... the Gospel is not so slight a fabric. Christianity throughout the whole extent exhibits proofs of its Divine original, and its practical precepts are no less pure than its doctrines are sublime. Can the compass of language furnish injunctions stricter in their measure or larger in their comprehension, than those with which the word of God abounds; "Whatsoever ye do in word or deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus;"—"Be ...
— A Practical View of the Prevailing Religious System of Professed Christians, in the Middle and Higher Classes in this Country, Contrasted with Real Christianity. • William Wilberforce
... loves a woman to such distraction that he counts himself crowned with love's best crown while sacrificing his soul, his body, his peace, and his fame in brooding on his love, while she could calmly decree that he should roast at a slow fire if it would compass her frivolously ambitious designs. Thus his indifference to his friend is avenged by the indifference the lady shows ...
— Dramatic Romances • Robert Browning
... a bold, fearless set, the Norse Vikings of old. They voyaged far and wide in open boats round the coasts of Europe, and across the stormy sea, long before the mariner's compass was invented, and they discovered Iceland and America long before Christopher Columbus was born. They had free spirits, these fierce Norwegians of old, and there was much good as well as evil in them. They had ...
— Chasing the Sun • R.M. Ballantyne
... at one end of the rope a cradle in which I could sit. while being lowered, and so long as the rope held, of which there appeared to be no reason to doubt, for my weight was well within its compass, ...
— Adventures in Southern Seas - A Tale of the Sixteenth Century • George Forbes
... directed, may be of greater benefit to mankind than the monuments of exemplary charity that have at so great charge been raised by the founders of hospitals and almshouses. He that first invented printing, discovered the use of the compass, or made public the virtue and right use of KIN KINA, did more for the propagation of knowledge, for the supply and increase of useful commodities, and saved more from the grave than those who built ...
— An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding, Volume II. - MDCXC, Based on the 2nd Edition, Books III. and IV. (of 4) • John Locke
... of the principle on which this argument is founded, but deny that it is applicable to the case in hand. We admit that it is not only an enormity, but an impossibility, that a man should be made a thing, as distinguished from a rational and moral being. It is not within the compass of human law to alter the nature of God's creatures. A man must be regarded and treated as a rational being, even in his greatest degradation. That he is, in some countries and under some institutions, deprived of many of the rights and privileges of such a being, ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... the Scottish crown appeared in the person of Bruce. Before Edward took the field against the new foe, he conferred knighthood upon his son and nearly three hundred others, including John le Blound the mayor. The number of knights within the small compass of the city was reckoned at that time to be not less than a thousand.(339) Knighthood, as we have seen, was one of the means Edward resorted to for raising money, and on this occasion the citizens of London are said to have made him a free gift of L2,000, in recognition ...
— London and the Kingdom - Volume I • Reginald R. Sharpe
... occur gives plausibility to the theory which Sir Arthur Mitchell and other scientific men hold, that our dream-thinking is uncontrolled and undirected by the will. The will—the inhibiting and guiding power—finds rest and refreshment in sleep, while the mind, like a barque without rudder or compass, drifts aimlessly upon an uncharted sea. But curiously enough, these fantasies and inter-twistings of thought are to be found in great imaginative poems like Spenser's "Faerie Queene." Lamb was impressed by the analogy between our dream-thinking and the work of the imagination. Speaking ...
— The World I Live In • Helen Keller
... skeleton that caused him the most anxious thought of all. In order to compass it, he almost feared that he would be compelled to sacrifice one of the preceding scenes. The babe, the girl, the matron, the crone, for all these his mechanism provided; but the skeleton, the "last effect," baffled his ingenuity. Laure began ...
— A Chair on The Boulevard • Leonard Merrick
... just as defective, destitute of the instruments requisite for observing their course, and of any fixed notion concerning the conformation or extent of the earth, often even without a compass, ignorant Russian adventurers have embarked from Ochotsk, and rounding Kamtschatka, have discovered the Aleutian Islands, and attained to the north-west coast of America. Year after year, in more numerous parties, they ...
— A New Voyage Round the World, in the years 1823, 24, 25, and 26, Vol. 2 • Otto von Kotzebue
... predecessors in the task of answering the question, What do we owe to the Greeks? Any answer which I have to offer, must, in the compass at my disposal, be imperfect; it must also be abstract; and lastly it cannot but be in form dogmatic. But I think it is not too much to say that it is to the Greeks that we owe the very conception of civilization and through that in large measure its very existence. ...
— The Unity of Civilization • Various
... conversation with him, had been that which he had been last occupied in studying and exhausting; such was the copiousness, the precision, and the admirable clearness of the information which he poured out upon it without effort or hesitation. Nor was this promptitude and compass of knowledge confined in any degree to the studies connected with his ordinary pursuits. That he should have been minutely and extensively skilled in chemistry and the arts, and in most of the branches of physical science, might perhaps have been conjectured; but it could not have been inferred ...
— James Watt • Andrew Carnegie
... states. And yet he had to seek the "daylight" of the German opera, from which he had fled with his Nibelungen, if he would remain familiar with the active life of his art. He proposed therefore to arrange the much simpler Tristan material within the compass of ordinary stage representation. Curiously enough he received just then an offer to compose an opera for the excellent Italian troupe in Rio Janeiro. He thought, however, of Strasbourg, and it was only ...
— Life of Wagner - Biographies of Musicians • Louis Nohl
... weather-cocks. It had been raining slightly for a day or two, with the wind from the southeast; but though the vanes still pointed to the southeast, and the light lower clouds were moving from the same point of the compass, he caught glimpses through the scud of higher clouds that were moving in an ...
— Dulcibel - A Tale of Old Salem • Henry Peterson
... with which she treats his not meeting that train, after the girl has traversed half the globe to compass her share of ...
— A Touch Of Sun And Other Stories • Mary Hallock Foote
... leave this place, flee far away, And seek a new and better fatherland. Here is the spirit's lofty pride repressed; Here baseness smothers each auspicious spark Ere it can break into a burning flame. Come, let us fly;—lo, to the free-born mind The world's wide compass is ...
— Early Plays - Catiline, The Warrior's Barrow, Olaf Liljekrans • Henrik Ibsen
... said, I have been somewhat fortunate at play," replied Law, "but I must say that this sum is beyond me, and that both the diamond and the bank I can not compass. Yet, your Grace has at disposal the crown jewels of France. Now, beauty is the sovereign of all sovereigns, as Philippe of Orleans must own. To beauty belongs the use of these crown jewels. Place them as security, and borrow the two millions. For myself, ...
— The Mississippi Bubble • Emerson Hough
... impossible to give, in the compass of a brief address, a list of all the domains in which this eclecticism—this tendency to select, combine and blend—has cropped out among us Americans of today. I have reserved for the last that in ...
— A Librarian's Open Shelf • Arthur E. Bostwick
... had proposed to myself in the course of half an hour, I determined on at the end of ten days. However, I have many difficulties in fulfilling my design. How am I to say all that has to be said in a reasonable compass? And then as to the materials of my narrative; I have no autobiographical notes to consult, no written explanations of particular treatises or of tracts which at the time gave offence, hardly any minutes of definite transactions or conversations, and ...
— Apologia pro Vita Sua • John Henry Newman
... master Coleridge depicts the onrush of the night over boundless spaces of sky and sea. Within the compass of a few lines, Tennyson registers the interminable, empty monotony of ...
— The Enjoyment of Art • Carleton Noyes
... even in the so-called modern inventions, was already old while ours lay still in the cradle, it was to no scientific spirit that its discoveries were due. Notwithstanding the fact that Cathay was the happy possessor of gunpowder, movable type, and the compass before such things were dreamt of in Europe, she owed them to no knowledge of physics, chemistry, or mechanics. It was as arts, not as sciences, they were invented. And it speaks volumes for her civilization that she burnt her powder for fireworks, not for firearms. To the West alone belongs ...
— The Soul of the Far East • Percival Lowell
... one of the ten stories is not only thoroughly readable, but is instinct with sentiment; for Mr Scott still retains a wonderful enthusiasm, usually the attribute of youth. 'Drifting' is a very fresh and convincing narrative, founded, we understand, upon truth, and containing within a small compass the materials for a very stirring drama. 'A Cross of Heather,' too, is a charming romance, told with ...
— Ringan Gilhaize - or The Covenanters • John Galt
... and to B——. I was in a hurry to tell them the good news. I have the very weak middle notes which accompany the abnormal compass of my voice. I have found a method of singing that strengthens them wonderfully, so that they are almost as strong as the rest. This delights me, and I am eager to write about it to B——, who is so much interested in my voice. ...
— Marie Bashkirtseff (From Childhood to Girlhood) • Marie Bashkirtseff
... pains, and in his earlier works, I am told, sometimes altered the proofs sent from the printer so largely that they might be said to be written over Yet he attained no special felicity, variety, or compass of expression. His style, however, answered his purpose; it has defects, but it is manly and clear, and stamps on the mind of the reader the impression he desired to convey. I am not sure that some of the ...
— Precaution • James Fenimore Cooper
... profound silence reigned on board. The compass indicated that the Nautilus hadn't changed direction. I could hear the beat of its propeller, churning the waves with steady speed. Staying on the surface of the water, it rolled gently, sometimes to one side, sometimes ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne
... on the Zone and can't help getting on if he takes the trouble to climb to headquarters. Or there are the special cases, like Marley for instance. Marley blew in one summer day from some uncharted point of the compass with nothing but his hat and a winning smile on his brassy features, and naturally soon drifted up the "Thousand Stairs." But Marley wasn't exactly of that manly build that takes "the Chief" and "the Captain" ...
— Zone Policeman 88 - A Close Range Study of the Panama Canal and its Workers • Harry A. Franck
... because it is what we perceive every moment of our lives. But, that they should have a like gravitation towards the centre of the moon may seem odd and unaccountable to most men, because it is discerned only in the tides. But a philosopher, whose thoughts take in a larger compass of nature, having observed a certain similitude of appearances, as well in the heavens as the earth, that argue innumerable bodies to have a mutual tendency towards each other, which he denotes by the general name "attraction," whatever can be reduced to that he thinks justly accounted ...
— A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge • George Berkeley
... clothes thus manifold, Lo! this hot summer's day? After great heate cometh cold; No man cast his pilche* away. *pelisse, furred cloak Of all this world the large compass Will not in mine arms twain; Who so muche will embrace, Little ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer
... greatness and goodness, the poem of Dante," says Mariotti, "is the most curious of books. The register of the past, noting down every incident within the compass of man's nature.... Dante is the annalist, the interpreter, the representative of the Middle Ages.... The ideas of mankind were in those 'dark' ages perpetually revolving upon that 'life beyond life,' which the omnipresent religion of that ...
— Purgatory • Mary Anne Madden Sadlier
... were contracted into a smaller compass than usual, and were very firm to the touch. Their colour anteriorly was whitish, with small distinct purple spots; posteriorly, of a deep red, with similar spots. The right lobe adhered closely to the pericardium; it ...
— Cases of Organic Diseases of the Heart • John Collins Warren
... Troneg: "If ye could compass it to make your sister friendly, then might come to these lands the gold of Nibelung. Of this might ye win great store, an' the queen ...
— The Nibelungenlied • Unknown
... He hath broken me asunder; He hath also taken me by my neck and shaken me to pieces, and set me up for His mark. His archers compass me round about. He cleaveth my reins ...
— Treasure Valley • Marian Keith
... "nothing remains but to ascertain whether it contains a dead body or not;" but on raising the end of it, I perceived by its lightness, that it was empty. To investigate the cause of its being left in this solitary spot was, however, not within the compass of my philosophy, so I gave that up. On looking at it more closely, I noticed a plate, marked with the name and age of the person for whom it was intended, and on bringing my eyes near the letters, I was able, between fingering and reading, to ...
— The Station; The Party Fight And Funeral; The Lough Derg Pilgrim • William Carleton
... of standing convicted of error in that inner court of consciousness where all disguises are stripped away and all excuses vain. To see that even the most passionate conviction may have been mistaken is to feel profound and disquieting doubt of all that human faith may compass; it is to seem to be helpless in the midst of baffling and sphinx-like perplexities. Maurice was already at the point where he could hardly be regarded as holding his old opinions, but he had not reached ...
— The Puritans • Arlo Bates
... passed safely through. These islands were examined by Commodore Baudin, and an elaborate survey made of them by his officers; but this danger is not noticed on their plan of the group. The rocks bear North 30 degrees West (by compass) from the northernmost point of the island, and North 8 degrees East (by compass) from the northernmost hummock. I do not think they extend ...
— Narrative of a Survey of the Intertropical and Western Coasts of Australia - Performed between the years 1818 and 1822 • Phillip Parker King
... to be a day of great things. Overnight nothing had been done, and no man had gone ashore. The decks were cleaned, prayers said, breakfast eaten, and the rough plan of Oxenham's hiding-place nailed down on the compass-box, where all could see it. Then Captain Drake and the gentlemen of the company went ashore with Nick and Ned Johnson. Hearts beat excitedly in the ship's boat, and hearts throbbed in unison amongst those who waited on the deck. The ...
— Sea-Dogs All! - A Tale of Forest and Sea • Tom Bevan
... gently over the fire. Take a quantity of wheat ears, with a foot of the straw attached to thorn, and, having warmed the lime, that it may spread the thinner, lime about six inches of the straw from the bottom of the ears. Scatter a little chaff and thrashed ears over a compass of twenty yards; stick the limed straws into the ground, with the ears inclining downwards, or even touching the surface; traverse the adjoining places in order to disturb the birds, and make them fly towards the snare, and, by pecking at the ears ...
— Practical Taxidermy • Montagu Browne
... country it was. I believe I mentioned my party in a letter to Ogilvie (his step-father) before I left St. Anne's or Fredericton: it was an officer of the regiment, Tonny, and two woodsmen. The officer and I used to draw part of our baggage day about, and the other day steer (by compass), which we did so well, that we made the point we intended within ten miles. We were only wrong in computing our distances and making them a little too great, which obliged us to follow a new course, and ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... possess great interest. French described a man of thirty, by occupation a singer and contortionist, who became possessed of an extra voice when he was sixteen. In high and falsetto tones he could run the scale from A to F in an upper and lower range. The compass of the low voice was so small that he could not reach the high notes of any song with it, and in singing he only used it to break in on the falsetto and produce a sensation. He was supposed to ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... ye now, that's a grand paper. If ye papered a room with that and put a hen in it she'd lay four eggs!" But not even the consideration of its value as an aesthetic stimulant can compass the sale ...
— All on the Irish Shore - Irish Sketches • E. Somerville and Martin Ross
... be undertaken by contractors in the employ of the Hungarian government, as the official invitation for tenders brought no offers from any quarter. The construction of the dams, however, and the cutting of several channels to compass the most difficult rocks and rapids, will be carried out by an association of Pesth and other firms. The cost, estimated altogether at nine million florins, will be borne by the Hungarian exchequer, to which will fall the tolls to be levied ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 810, July 11, 1891 • Various |
