"Flat" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... holds him," panted Gwyn; and he had to begin cutting again; but this time he found that by laying the blade of the knife flat against the spell, he could force the point beneath the handkerchief. "Now, steady, Sam," he said, "I'm going to have one big ...
— Sappers and Miners - The Flood beneath the Sea • George Manville Fenn
... he took them outside, where there was an excellent racecourse along the flat plain; and he called up a young man, whose name was Hugi, and bade him run a race ...
— Told by the Northmen: - Stories from the Eddas and Sagas • E. M. [Ethel Mary] Wilmot-Buxton
... regretted his father's passing even more. Now, as dawn came up behind them, he could not help turning his head from side to side and looking at the strangely humped land, seeing for the first time a horizon which was not flat. He found himself intrigued by the thought that he had no way of knowing what lay beyond the next hill—that he would have to travel, and keep traveling, to ...
— The Barbarians • John Sentry
... the King had spent his soul On a North-bred dancing-girl: That he prayed to a flat-nosed Lucknow god, And kissed the ground where her feet had trod, And doomed to death at her drunken nod, And swore ...
— Departmental Ditties and Barrack Room Ballads • Rudyard Kipling
... varnish the same side of the glass again, and let it dry about one half hour, or until the varnish becomes stickey. Immediately after varnishing the glass the second time, take the print that you wish to get an impression of, and immerse it in the solution No. 3; put the solution in a flat pan, and lay the print in with the face side up; let the print lay in the solution about five minutes, or until the paper is completely saturated, then remove it, taking care not to stretch it, and lay it on ...
— Young's Demonstrative Translation of Scientific Secrets • Daniel Young
... He couldn't see the water now, but he could hear it. The litter he could see by twisting his head as far to the left as it would go told him they had crash-landed on the water—a river by the sound of it—and had skipped drunkenly, in something approximating flat stone fashion, into the forest lining the river's bank. There had been no explosion and no fire, there was no wide swath cut through the trees—and therefore no reason why he should assume the patrol would spot him. There might be pieces of the ship ...
— A Choice of Miracles • James A. Cox
... accompany, after a fashion, a woman who consented after much pressing to sing a ballad learned by heart in a month of hard practice. Incapable though he was of any feeling for poetry, he would boldly ask permission to retire for ten minutes to compose an impromptu, and return with a quatrain, flat as a pancake, wherein rhyme did duty for reason. M. du Chatelet had besides a very pretty talent for filling in the ground of the Princess' worsted work after the flowers had been begun; he held her skeins ...
— Two Poets - Lost Illusions Part I • Honore de Balzac
... that is not too much. If the soil be compact, or such as will hold water, it should be thoroughly drained from the lowest point or corner, and the drain always kept open; (a stone drain is the best and most durable,) and if floored with a coat of flat, or rubble stones, well set in good hydraulic cement—or cement alone, when the stone cannot be obtained—all the better. This last will make it rat proof. For the purpose of avoiding these destructive creatures, the foundation stones in the wall should ...
— Rural Architecture - Being a Complete Description of Farm Houses, Cottages, and Out Buildings • Lewis Falley Allen
... Saracinesca only nodded and laid his thin hand flat on the table, towards her. She ...
— The White Sister • F. Marion Crawford
... leaning toward a flat, so many of my friends told me of the joys of shutting it up when one goes away, which, by the way, I find they never, or very rarely, do. But Nannie didn't hold with flats. It is curious what things people don't hold with. After reading of a terrible ...
— The Professional Aunt • Mary C.E. Wemyss
... a result of trying to find an escape of gas with a light, a flat in Westminster was ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Jan. 8, 1919 • Various
... the parliamentary elections which took place June 2, 1912, had the unexpected result of entrenching the Catholic party more securely in power than in upwards of a decade. The combined assault of the Liberals and the Socialists upon "clericalism" fell flat, and against the Government's contention that the extraordinary and incontestable prosperity of the country merited a continuance of Catholic rule no arguments were forthcoming which carried conviction among the voters. The Catholic vote showed an increase of 130,610, the Liberal and ...
— The Governments of Europe • Frederic Austin Ogg
... the helmet which shaded the eyes, Umbre, shade, Unavised, thoughtlessly, Uncouth, strange, Underne, - A.M., Ungoodly, rudely, Unhappy, unlucky, Unhilled, uncovered, Unr the, scarcely, Unsicker, unstable, Unwimpled, uncovered, Unwrast, untwisted, unbound, Upright, flat on the back, Up-so-down, upside down, Ure, usage, Utas, octave of ...
— Le Morte D'Arthur, Volume II (of II) - King Arthur and of his Noble Knights of the Round Table • Thomas Malory
... that of a miserable maniac he leapt upon me, tripped and threw me flat upon the flags. I remember the stunning shock of my fall, but remember no more. I learned afterwards that he had pitched me out on to the stairs, ...
— The Fool Errant • Maurice Hewlett
... don't mean the little mouse flying in the air, The ladies so fear that may get into their hair, But the dangerous brick bat, so much worse than that, Nobody can wear it that isn't a "flat," And then don't forget it is one of Old Nick's Diabolical methods of playing his tricks On foolish young men who become "perfect bricks;" He don't give the ...
— The Universal Reciter - 81 Choice Pieces of Rare Poetical Gems • Various
... which has taken place in the last twelve years could nowhere be so well noted as in the picture he gives us of the housing of our people in 1893. His study of the evolution of the apartment-house from the old flat-house, and the still older single dwelling, is very curious, and, upon the whole, not incorrect. But neither of these last differed so much from the first as the apartment-house now differs from the apartment-house of his day. There are now no ...
— Through the Eye of the Needle - A Romance • W. D. Howells
... But he got into the car first. As he had stood on the pavement in doubt, the recollection of Jeekes's inexplicable lie about the payments made by Parrish for the French lady in the Mayfair flat came back to him and deepened the suspicion in his mind. It would in any case, he told himself, do no harm to find out who this rather unsavoury-looking Rotterdam ...
— The Yellow Streak • Williams, Valentine
... which I was mightily pleased with Dunster Castle, near Minehead. It stands upon a great eminence, and has a prospect of that town, with an extensive view of the Bristol Channel, in which are seen two small islands, called the Steep Holms and Flat Holms, and on the other side we could plainly distinguish the divisions of fields on the Welsh coast. All this journey I performed on horseback, and I am very much disappointed that at present I feel myself so little the better for it. I have indeed followed riding ...
— Life And Letters Of John Gay (1685-1732) • Lewis Melville
... experiment, when at length it was applied, confirmed the truth of what the philosopher had reprobated as an obstinate vulgar error. My father, in his Essay on the Resistance of the Air, gives the result of his experiments on a flat and curved surface of the same dimensions, and explains the cause of the error into which Dr. Hooke, M. Parent, and other mathematicians had fallen in their theoretic reasonings. . ...
— Richard Lovell Edgeworth - A Selection From His Memoir • Richard Lovell Edgeworth
... would have been a very attractive one except for its look of sulky rebellion. From the mop of black hair tendrils had escaped and brushed the wet cheeks flushed by the sting of the rain. The girl rode splendidly. Even the slicker that she wore could not disguise the flat back and the erect carriage of the ...
— The Sheriff's Son • William MacLeod Raine
... goats, through the optical illusion frequent in the Spanish air, looked large as cattle in the offing. Only in one place had we seen the tumbled boulders of Old Castile, and there had been really no greater objection to La Mancha than that it was flat, stale, and unprofitable and wholly unimaginable as the scene of even Don ...
— Familiar Spanish Travels • W. D. Howells
... which may be three times as heavy as that of a gorilla, man has various physical peculiarities. He walks erect, he plants the sole of his foot flat on the ground, he has a chin and a good heel, a big forehead and a non-protrusive face, a relatively uniform set of teeth without conspicuous canines, and a relatively ...
— The Outline of Science, Vol. 1 (of 4) - A Plain Story Simply Told • J. Arthur Thomson
... knowledge of etiquette to entertain his master's guests if his master is out. After rubbing his knees together and hissing and kowtowing (bowing low), he will invite you to take a seat on the floor, or, more correctly speaking, on your heels, with a flat cushion between your knees and the floor to make the ordeal a little less painful. He will then offer you five cups of tea (it is the number of cups that signifies, not the number of callers), and dropping on his own ...
— Peeps at Many Lands: Japan • John Finnemore
... statement, declared that purely military reasons caused him to reject the plan. In a telegram to Colonel Roosevelt he said that his action was "based entirely upon imperative considerations of public policy, and not upon personal or private choice." Roosevelt summed up the contention with this flat contradiction: "President Wilson's reasons for refusing my offer had nothing to do either with military ...
— Theodore Roosevelt; An Intimate Biography, • William Roscoe Thayer
... have become acquainted with their aspect, though it is certainly not what is usually called picturesque. The country between Norwich and Yarmouth is like the ugliest parts of Holland, swampy and barren; the fens of Lincolnshire flat and uninteresting, though admirably drained, cultivated, and fertile. Ely Cathedral, of which I only saw the outside, is magnificent, and the most perfect view of it is the one from the railroad, ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... chiefly in North America. It is about three and a half feet long, including the flat, paddle- shaped tail, which is a foot in length. 2. The long, shining hair on the back is chestnut-colored, while the fine, soft fur that lies next the skin, is grayish brown. 3. Beavers build themselves most curious huts to live in, and quite frequently a great number of these huts are ...
— McGuffey's Third Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... lied for her I could not say. But the glance she turned on me gave me a flat sort of feeling, as if Marcia might be right and she was there for reasons of her own that I had all but stumbled on by accident. I was a fool to care; but then I had been a fool all day with my silly ...
— The La Chance Mine Mystery • Susan Carleton Jones
... long legs dangling over the derrick pit, watched his father and 'Masso tease the derrick into swinging the great blocks to the flat ...
— Still Jim • Honore Willsie Morrow
... expression of one who was about to cry. Life had apparently for some time been more than she was equal to, and, incapable of battling further with it, she radiated a helplessness that was pitiable and yet irritating. Thin and flat-chested, her uncorseted figure in its rusty black dress straightened for half a minute, then ...
— People Like That • Kate Langley Bosher
... with which Jewish doctors continued to regard it, long after the "poison" had been provided with a suitable antidote. Thus the book known as the Wisdom of Solomon, which is accepted as canonical by the Roman Catholic Church, contains a flat contradiction and emphatic condemnation of certain of the propositions laid down by Koheleth, as, for instance, in ch. ii. 1-9, which is obviously a studied refutation of Koheleth's principal thesis, couched mainly in the identical words ...
— The Sceptics of the Old Testament: Job - Koheleth - Agur • Emile Joseph Dillon
... asked a young guardsman, Lieutenant Afanasyi Afanasyevitch Fet, of the footman one day as he entered the hall of Ivan Sergeyevitch Turgenieff's flat in St. Petersburg in the middle ...
— Reminiscences of Tolstoy - By His Son • Ilya Tolstoy
... mishaps that had occurred upon the aforesaid Mussel shoals; and thence branched off into the various modes of water-carriage which the enlightened inhabitants of Alabama were accustomed to employ. After amusing us for some time with long histories concerning steam-boats and keel-boats, barks and flat-boats, broad-horns, dug-outs, and canoes, he glided into some canal-making scheme, which was to connect the waters of the Tennessee with Heaven knows what others. It was a most monstrous plan—that I remember; but whether the junction was to be made with Raritan ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 347, September, 1844 • Various
... brown forehead and a glancing eye could be seen. Then where the eye had appeared was shut out by the puff of white smoke that suddenly spirted into the air; and as it lifted, grew thin, and died away, Bart could see that the barrel of the rifle had gone, and its owner was no doubt lying flat down behind the piece of rock, which looked as if no Indian had been near ...
— The Silver Canyon - A Tale of the Western Plains • George Manville Fenn
... coral and limestone plateau, flat to undulating; ringed by vertical white cliffs (9 ...
— The 2004 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... Bristol, furiously. "He's on the roof! It's flat as a floor and there's enough ivy alongside the water-spout on your house adjoining, Mr. Mostyn, to afford foothold to an ...
— The Quest of the Sacred Slipper • Sax Rohmer
... until it becomes quite thin. Remove the clothing, and before the tar becomes perfectly cool, with a broad flat brush, apply a thin, smooth coating to the entire surface of the body and limbs. While the tar remains soft, the flea becomes entangled in its tenacious folds, and is rendered perfectly harmless; but it will ...
— The Book of Anecdotes and Budget of Fun; • Various
... throughout, and for passenger traffic only, she carried no combustible cargo to threaten her destruction by fire; and the immunity from the demand for cargo space had enabled her designers to discard the flat, kettle-bottom of cargo boats and give her the sharp dead-rise—or slant from the keel—of a steam yacht, and this improved her behavior in a seaway. She was eight hundred feet long, of seventy thousand tons' displacement, seventy-five thousand ...
— The Wreck of the Titan - or, Futility • Morgan Robertson
... himself hurled back a hundred feet knocked flat by an invisible blow. The old frontiersman lay clinging to a prone trunk spitting blood and gasping for air. The animals were scrambling to their feet saddles twisted, ...
— The Freebooters of the Wilderness • Agnes C. Laut
... pints of new milk. He should almost live in the open air, and must have plenty of play. If you can so contrive it, let him live in the country. When tired, let him lie, for half an hour, two or three times daily, flat on his back on the carpet. Let him rest at night on a horse-hair mattress, and not ...
— Advice to a Mother on the Management of her Children • Pye Henry Chavasse
... exercise in the park whenever she pleased, but Lord Shrewsbury, or one of his sons, Gilbert and Francis, never was absent from her for a moment when she went beyond the door of the lesser lodge, which the Earl had erected for her, with a flat, leaded, and parapeted roof, where she could take the air, and with only one entrance, where was stationed a "gentleman porter," with two subordinates, whose business it was to keep a close watch over every person or thing that went ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge
... while the civilians, who did not, were continually falling out, and dropping to the rear, from the effects of narrow and improper shoes and boots. The same is the case with the animal. The foot must have something flat and broad to bear on. The first care of those having charge of mules, should be to see that their feet are kept in as near a natural state as possible. Then, if all the laws of nature be observed, and strictly obeyed, the animal's feet will last ...
— The Mule - A Treatise On The Breeding, Training, - And Uses To Which He May Be Put • Harvey Riley
... sectional area, a handsome ascending wood-paneled room, or cage, formed of teak and American oak, is fitted, its dimensions in plan being 20 feet by 17 feet, and its general internal height 8 feet; but in the central portion the roof rises into a flat lantern 10 feet high, the sides of which are lined with mirrors that reflect into the ascending-room the rays of a powerful gas-lamp. The foundation of this room is a very stiff structure, consisting of two wrought-iron special-form girders crossing beneath ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 530, February 27, 1886 • Various
... hurtling on, as some pine tree that the avalanche has hurled point foremost from the cliff right through the broad breast of some mountaineer. So had Leothric been transfixed; but Sacnoth smote sideways with the flat of his blade, and sent the tail whizzing over Leothric's left shoulder; and it rasped upon his armour as it went, and left a groove upon it. Sideways then at Leothric smote the foiled tail of Wong Bongerok, ...
— The Sword of Welleran and Other Stories • Lord Dunsany
... came out of their tepees, and there were the white soldiers obeying orders and going away. They watched the column slowly move across the flat land below the bluffs, where the road led down the river twelve ...
— Red Men and White • Owen Wister
... that somebody has taken the boat, and there isn't any way, that I see, of getting off this place to-night. There'll be nobody going over so late in the afternoon—except, to be sure, those men we saw at the other end of the island with a flat-boat." ...
— A Jolly Fellowship • Frank R. Stockton
... him a round three-legged table, in another a stool, in a third a chair with a back bent violently backwards; in a fourth a chair with an upright back, but the seat smashed in; while in a fifth they had been liberal and given him a semblance of a sofa with a flat back and a lattice-work seat. This semblance had been painted dark red and smelt strongly of paint. Kunin meant at first to sit down on one of the chairs, but on second thoughts he sat ...
— The Bishop and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... thresh to wind'ard, but none of us cared for that, With a straight run home to the service tee, and a finish along the flat. "Stiff?" Ah, well you may say it! Spot-barred, and at five-stone-ten! But at two and a bisque I'd ha' run the risk; for I ...
— From a Cornish Window - A New Edition • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... outside of each bend the bank was steep to the point of overhanging; on the inside there was invariably a mud flat made gay with water flowers. So crooked was the river that Jack-Knife Mountain, the only object they could see above the willows, was now on their right ...
— The Huntress • Hulbert Footner
... Terrain: flat-to-rolling sandy desert with dunes rising to mountains in the south; low mountains along border with Iran; ...
— The 2000 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... still life itself is alike there, exceptin' again class difference. That is, nobility is all alike, as far as their order goes; and country gents is alike, as far as their class goes; and the last especially, when they hante travelled none, everlastin' flat, in their own way. Take a lord, now, and visit him to his country seat, and I'll tell you what you will find—a sort of Washington State house place. It is either a rail old castle of the genuine kind, or a gingerbread crinkum crankum imitation ...
— The Attache - or, Sam Slick in England, Complete • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... broke they found beyond them a wide, flat stretch of hill-top, with a distant hill line beyond. Far down the slope there were Germans moving. And in the distant landscape they saw the German gun teams limber up and hurry away with the field guns which for a fortnight had been ...
— Letters from France • C. E. W. Bean
... good deal. The streets, paved with flat stones, shone in the light of the lanterns. On leaving the house some took the lower road, and others, amongst whom was Fernanda, went off in the direction of the plaza. They had only gone a few steps when they heard the loud trotting of some horses that had that ...
— The Grandee • Armando Palacio Valds
... the ground at the feet of the two men, and in part jumbled together in a long flat box, were the other persons of the Drama. The hero's wife and one child, the hobby-horse, the doctor, the foreign gentleman who not being familiar with the language is unable in the representation to express his ideas otherwise than by the utterance of the ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... love; and that I'd better be the queen of his home as long as I lived than to rule it a little while there on the stage and then—be forgotten. Oh, it isn't what he said that counts. All that sounds flat enough as I repeat it. It's the wonder of being with some one that loves you like that and of feeling that there are two of you ...
— The Precipice • Elia Wilkinson Peattie
... not seen enough of the water. On the morning of the aforesaid Sunday, we saw lying before us an island, and soon on the right hand another appeared: the first[285-1] was high and mountainous, on the side nearest to us; the other[285-2] flat, and very thickly wooded. As soon as it became lighter, other islands began to appear on both sides; so that on that day, there were six islands to be seen lying in different directions, and most of them of considerable ...
— The Northmen, Columbus and Cabot, 985-1503 • Various
... men! steady! Hooker hasn't had enough!" Edward, too, saw the blue wall coming through the woods on the other side of the railroad. He took a musket from a dead man near by and with all the other grey soldiers lay flat in the grass above the cut. Hooker came within range—within close range. The long grey front sprang to its feet and fired, dropped and loaded, rose and fired. A leaden storm visited the wood across the track. The August grass was long and dry. Sparks ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston
... allow their daughters to be educated in the cloisters. They proceed from the premises that an ignorant woman is more easy to lead than one who is posted. Conflicts and disappointment are inevitable. Laboulaye gives the flat-footed advice to keep woman in moderate ignorance, because "notre empire est detruit, si l'homme est reconnu" (our empire is over if man ...
— Woman under socialism • August Bebel
... The modern philosophers of Sweden seem agreed that the waters of the Baltic gradually sink in a regular proportion, which they have ventured to estimate at half an inch every year. Twenty centuries ago the flat country of Scandinavia must have been covered by the sea; while the high lands rose above the waters, as so many islands of various forms and dimensions. Such, indeed, is the notion given us by Mela, Pliny, and Tacitus, of the vast countries round the Baltic. ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon
... the top of the monster was perfectly flat and, within a very few moments, Dirk discovered that it was decidedly warm. He had brought the plane down close to the middle of the length of the strange craft in the belief that there, if anywhere, some indication of an entrance might ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, March 1930 • Various
... for her? You seek her marriage with a young man who, when I saw him, appeared to me merely commonplace. Admitting for the moment that he is innocent of this crime, you would nevertheless condemn her to an existence flat and savourless, differing in no essential from that of the beasts of ...
— The Gloved Hand • Burton E. Stevenson
... excellent, or disgusting, is to test it in every possible direction with regard to the age, habits, health, and intelligence of the taster, for all of these exercise great influence on his values. Similarly necessary are valuations like flat, sweetish, contractile, limey, pappy, sandy, which are all dictated by almost ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... warmest and best exposures were always devoted to flowers. The garden next to the house was bounded on the south by an ivy-covered wall hid by a row of old elm trees, from whence a steep mossy bank descended to a flat plot of grass with a gravel walk and flower borders on each side, and a broad gravel walk ran along the front of the house. My mother was fond of flowers, and prided herself on her moss-roses, which flourished luxuriantly on the front of the ...
— Personal Recollections, from Early Life to Old Age, of Mary Somerville • Mary Somerville
... a man, the supreme chief of the world. The flat, circular earth in fact is his home, the floor of his lodge, and the over-arching sky is its covering. The moon, K[o]-k[o]-mik'-[e]-[)i]s, night light, is the Sun's wife. The pair have had a number of children, all but one of whom ...
— Blackfoot Lodge Tales • George Bird Grinnell
... he might easily have been a sack of sand. Wilbur felt that his advent on the "Bertha Millner" was by its very nature an extraordinary event; but the absolute indifference of these brown-suited Mongols, the blankness of their flat, fat faces, the dulness of their slanting, fishlike eyes that never met his own or even wandered in his direction, was uncanny, disquieting. In what strange venture was he now to be involved, toward what unknown vortex was this new current setting, this current that had so suddenly snatched ...
— Moran of the Lady Letty • Frank Norris
... our hero's career we are struck by the absence of shadows. One would say that so unrelieved a record of success, of honour, glory, love and wealth, so much pure sunshine, so complete a lack of all trouble or defeat, must make a picture flat and characterless, insipid in its light, bright colours, insignificant in its deeper values. But it is not so. Peter Warren, the spoiled child of fortune, was something more than a child of fortune, since he won his good things of life always at the risk of that life which ...
— Greenwich Village • Anna Alice Chapin
... are still prominent, one new genus among them, the Productus, being very remarkable on account of the manner in which one valve rises above the other. The wood-cut below represents such a shell, looked at from the side of the flat valve, showing the straight cut of the line of juncture between the valves and the rising curve of the opposite one, which looks like a hooked ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various
... Mag? Well, it's about time you came home to look after me. Fine chaperon you make, Miss Monahan! Why, didn't I tell you the very day we took this flat what a chaperon was, and that you'd have to be mine? Imagine ...
— In the Bishop's Carriage • Miriam Michelson
... you." And, as if his words suggested the selection, Mac, still lying flat upon his back, repeated one of his favorite bits from Beaumont and Fletcher, for he had a wonderful memory and could reel off poetry by the ...
— Rose in Bloom - A Sequel to "Eight Cousins" • Louisa May Alcott
... nowadays—near Hampstead was the cause of much excitement. When the unemotional official, sent to view the place, suggested that the extremely solid structure overhead would be rather in the way supposing that one proposed to emplace a gun, or guns, on the concrete base, it was urged that there was a flat roof and that ordnance mounted on it would dominate the metropolis. There was a flat roof all right, but it turned out to be ...
— Experiences of a Dug-out, 1914-1918 • Charles Edward Callwell
... utterer of these two impatient words threw down a sheet of notepaper from which he had been reading, carefully smoothed out the folds to make it flat, and then, balancing it upon one finger as he sat back in a cane chair with his heels upon the table, gave the paper a flip with his nail and sent it skimming out of the window of his military quarters at Campong Dang, the station on the Ruah ...
— Trapped by Malays - A Tale of Bayonet and Kris • George Manville Fenn
... read to the Maestricht Athenaeum in 1823. The memoir was published in 1836 in the "Bulletin de l'Academie Royale de Belgique" volume 3 page 43.) The projecting portion of the terrace, which was cut through in making the canal, is called the hill of Caberg, which is flat-topped, 60 feet high, and has a steep slope on both sides towards the alluvial plain. M. van Binkhorst (who is the author of some valuable works on the palaeontology of the Maestricht Chalk) has recently visited Leyden, and ascertained ...
— The Antiquity of Man • Charles Lyell
... pains in the placing them so as to lie securely in a wall, and furnishing light, broad, and unflawed pieces to serve for slates upon the roof; for fences, when set edgeways into the ground; or for pavements, when laid flat. ...
— Modern Painters, Volume IV (of V) • John Ruskin
... was in turn ringed in by a round mile of flat, sandy country. They followed it south and brushing through a farther rim of tropical vegetation came out on a pearl-gray virgin beach where Ardita kicked of her brown golf shoes—she seemed to have permanently abandoned ...
— Flappers and Philosophers • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... The work of the flat-headed borers (Fig. 24) is only distinguished from that of the preceding by the broad, shallow burrows, and the much more oblong form of the exit holes. In general, the injuries are similiar, and effect the same class of products, but they are of much less importance. The adult forms ...
— Seasoning of Wood • Joseph B. Wagner
... year suddenly divided by the intrusion of a bristly moustache, or a delightfully asinine expression lost under the influence of a pair of bushy side-whiskers, recognition becomes impossible and the caricature falls flat. The fact is, my friend Pen, it is not only their features, but their characteristic attitudes which we make familiar, and their political differences cause the artistic effect. To me it is marvellous to note how differently artists draw the ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Harry Furniss
... seen the impulse roller is staked flat against the hub E of the balance staff. The unlocking roller, or, as it is also called, the discharging roller, C, is usually thinner than the impulse roller and has a jewel similar to the impulse ...
— Watch and Clock Escapements • Anonymous
... and Petrushka long to make these things, and one afternoon Petrushka drove down to the river to fix them in their place. The river was broad, the banks were wooded with willow trees, and the undergrowth was thick, for the woods reached to the river bank, which was flat, but which ended sheer above the water over a slope of mud and roots, so that a bather needed steps or a raft or a springboard, so as to dive or to enter and leave the water ...
— Orpheus in Mayfair and Other Stories and Sketches • Maurice Baring
... flat cracking sound of the gun. He liked the way it slapped back against his shoulder when he fired. Somehow it did not seem a part of the dank, steaming Venusian jungle. Probably, he realized with a smile, it was the only old-fashioned recoil ...
— Black Eyes and the Daily Grind • Milton Lesser
... you, be not so flat and melancholic. Erect your mind: you shall redeem this with the courtship I will teach you against the afternoon. Where ...
— Cynthia's Revels • Ben Jonson
... neither was there the slightest resentment. If a wafer had been stuck upon my forehead, and she had observed it, there might have been just that look and no more. I was ridiculously annoyed with myself. I was betrayed, I don't know how, into this little venture, and it was a flat failure. The position of a shy man, who has just made an unintelligible joke at a dinner-table, was not more pregnant with ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... come all the way from Chicago to tell you what's happening down the street? Well, you young beauty boosters, there's a panic on the Bourse this week that's got your fair city flat on her back. And the cause of the said panic is that France is in deep on Russian bonds, which are now worth about a cent to the dollar. Because the Russian people—already dead sick of the war with Japan—have risen in a howling mob against their ...
— The Harbor • Ernest Poole
... I shall be delighted to receive you in my diggings, and bring some of the poetry and charm of your lovely neighbourhood with you if you can, for this place is flat, and dull, and gray. But, by the by, I haven't told you I am likely to be removed very soon to a good, fat living, old boy, near Monmouth—but I will tell you all about it ...
— By Berwen Banks • Allen Raine
... at his mustache, searching his arid mind. An idea came to him. He drew a newspaper from his pocket, opened it out flat and spread it over Mr. Trimm's lap so that it covered the chained wrists. Almost instantly the train was in ...
— The Escape of Mr. Trimm - His Plight and other Plights • Irvin S. Cobb
... fostering of Achilles. The Bushman wall-paintings, like those of Australia, seem to prove that savage art is capable of considerable freedom, when supplied with fitting materials. Men seem to draw better when they have pigments and a flat surface of rock to work upon, than when they are scratching on hard wood with a sharp edge of a broken shell. Though the thing has little to do with art, it may be worth mentioning, as a matter of curiosity, that the labyrinthine Australian caves are decorated, ...
— Custom and Myth • Andrew Lang
... Iraq-Kuwait boundary; Iraqi officials still make public statements claiming Kuwait; ownership of Qaruh and Umm al Maradim Islands disputed by Saudi Arabia Climate: dry desert; intensely hot summers; short, cool winters Terrain: flat to slightly undulating desert plain Natural resources: petroleum, fish, shrimp, natural gas Land use: arable land: 0% permanent crops: 0% meadows and pastures: 8% forest and woodland: 0% other: 92% Irrigated land: 20 km2 (1989 est.) Environment: some of world's largest and most sophisticated ...
— The 1993 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... sweetness of my temper. But I am afraid you are giving it a turn which that gentleman did by no means intend; for he would certainly think better of me, if under such a circumstance I were to give a flat denial, and ride off as ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... conscious of the existence of any other craft than his own fast-gliding skiff. However, he steered straight for the boat, hove alongside, sprang on board with surprising agility, and, having fastened his light boat by a chain to a timber of the flat, stalked deliberately to the stern where Captain Pierce was ...
— A Dream of Empire - Or, The House of Blennerhassett • William Henry Venable
... I have said, a productive land, for upon this ashen, cactus-spotted, repellent flat men have directed the cool, sweet water of the upper world, and wherever this life-giving fluid touches the soil grass and grain ...
— Money Magic - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... the bustle and confusion of life. Then followed the presentation of the parchment rolls and the ceremonies usual at the winding up of this time-honored day. It all seemed like unmeaning mummery to me. The majestic president, with his little flat black cap, set like a tile on the top of his head, was a man of pasteboard and springs, and even the beautiful figures that lighted up the walls had lost their coloring and life. There was, indeed, a wondrous change, independent of that within my own soul. ...
— Ernest Linwood - or, The Inner Life of the Author • Caroline Lee Hentz
... friend, adieu till noon; Just now you are rather out of tune, Your visage is too sharp; Your ear perhaps a trifle flat: When I return, 'All round my hat' ...
— The True Legend of St. Dunstan and the Devil • Edward G. Flight
... side, Such virtue hath, that what man that it smite, Throughout his armour it will carve and bite, Were it as thick as is a branched oak: And what man is y-wounded with the stroke Shall ne'er be whole, till that you list, of grace, To stroke him with the flat in thilke* place *the same Where he is hurt; this is as much to sayn, Ye muste with the flatte sword again Stroke him upon the wound, and it will close. This is the very sooth, withoute glose;* *deceit It faileth not, while it is in ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer
... this species of composition by Chopin, not only in the number and variety of works in this style, but also in the more touching character of the handling, and the new and varied processes of harmony. Both in construction and spirit, Chopin's Polonaise In A, with the one in A flat major, resembles very much the one of Weber's in E Major. In others he relinquished this broad style: Shall we say always with a more decided success? In such a question, decision were a thorny thing. Who shall restrict the rights of a poet over ...
— Life of Chopin • Franz Liszt
... then the foremost section of the long, black snake detached itself, bounded into the air, and, after turning a number of somersaults, became, severally, a torn stocking, excelsior, and a lunatic cat. The ears of this cat were laid back flat upon its head and its speed was excessive upon a fairly circular track it laid out for itself in the library. Flying round this orbit, it perceived the open doorway; passed through it, thence to the kitchen, and outward and onward—Della having left the kitchen door open in her ...
— Penrod and Sam • Booth Tarkington
... she seemed, then, to fall crumblingly, like a burnt-out thing reduced to powder. A child. What would it look like, a child of hers and Franklin Kane's? How spare and poor and insignificant were his face and form. Could she love a child who had a nose like that—a neat, flat, sallow little nose? A spasm, half of laughter, half of sobbing, ...
— Franklin Kane • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... since thou hast broke the league By flat denial of the promis'd tribute, Talk not of razing down your city-walls; You shall not need trouble yourselves so far, For Selim Calymath shall come himself, And with brass bullets batter down your towers, And turn proud Malta to a wilderness, For ...
— The Jew of Malta • Christopher Marlowe
... than about anything else," remarked the girl, smiling a broad, flat smile that showed beautiful white teeth. She looked curiously unintelligent when ...
— The Guests Of Hercules • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... plans and wishes were made known to me before or after I assumed command, provided they were received by me in due time for my action? What possible motive could General Thomas have had in putting on the public records what was in substance a flat contradiction of an official statement I had made to him with full documentary evidence to support it, and that in the absence of any possible ground for his own contradictory statement, except his own recollection ...
— Forty-Six Years in the Army • John M. Schofield
... la Frieze. His fat face, which had been badly washed, was still blood-stained; he had a low forehead, square jaws, pointed ears, sticking out from his head, and flat nostrils, like the muzzle of some wild animal; but above all, I ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume II (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... Sloops and schooners, loaded with coal and timber, sailed over the spot where afterwards stood his house, at No. 81 Dartmouth Street. In a word, the "Back Bay" and "South End" were then unknown. Boston city, shaped like a pond lily laid flat, had its long stem reaching to the solid land southward on the Dorchester and ...
— Charles Carleton Coffin - War Correspondent, Traveller, Author, and Statesman • William Elliot Griffis
... allowance of 1/2500 of an inch made for the side shake. Another method, and one which is particularly applicable to Swiss watches, where the jewel is burnished into the cock or plate, is to first slip on to the broach a small flat piece of cork and as the broach enters the jewel the cork is forced farther on to the broach, and when the jewel is removed it marks the place on the broach which its inner side occupied, and the measurement can then ...
— A Treatise on Staff Making and Pivoting • Eugene E. Hall
... cinnamon color, cassia being one of the professional names for that spice or drug. She was of the shade we call sorrel, or, as an Englishman would perhaps say, chestnut,—a genuine "Morgan" mare, with a low forehand, as is common in this breed, but with strong quarters and flat hocks, well ribbed up, with a good eye and a pair of lively ears,—a first-rate doctor's beast, would stand until her harness dropped off her back at the door of a tedious case, and trot over hill and dale thirty miles in three ...
— Elsie Venner • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... lying at anchor, at St. John's, at the north end of Lake Champlain, and feeling the importance of the possession of this vessel, which was the only armed vessel the English government then had in that water, he armed a little schooner, put some of the guns he had captured upon large flat-bottomed boats, embarked his men, and surprised and captured the sloop. Having begun his career with such success, Arnold projected more extensive operations. In the month of June he urged on congress the advantages of an expedition to Canada, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... which the faculty expect to prove fatal, which it calls "a physical disorder for which medical science has yet to discover a remedy; it is not at all likely that this fortunate discovery will occur soon enough to be of service to the heir-apparent." This flat denial of the curability of cancer is in the same columns in which an enlightened correspondent gave ample proof of cures with names and dates. Such denials are published in a city where a diligent inquiry would reveal about three hundred cases of successful ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, January 1888 - Volume 1, Number 12 • Various
... the decrease of the moon, so the shingles will lie flat ("go down"). Else they may warp and ...
— Current Superstitions - Collected from the Oral Tradition of English Speaking Folk • Various
... the other, grinning. "You see, I'm flat broke, Steve, and so is everyone else, or pretty near, and if you could lend me ...
— The Adventure Club Afloat • Ralph Henry Barbour
... went on. "I'm going home, and I'll see to it you don't bait Master Bold no more this side of the Bridge. And what's more, I tell you this: that if I cotch you two great chaps worriting the boy again, I'll take and leather you, both of you, and that's flat." ...
— Humphrey Bold - A Story of the Times of Benbow • Herbert Strang
... elegy. Certainly some of them were wanting in genius, some were even ludicrous. Among the number was a little fellow with a cadaverous face, about as large as two farthings' worth of butter, who declared, in a long speech with flat rhymes, that an Asiatic harem was not capable of quenching his ardent love of pleasure. A fat-faced fellow with a good, healthy, country complexion, announced, in a long story, his formal intention of dying of a decline, on account of the treason of a courtesan ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... very nearly approaching to ruddy copper, very few even of their womenkind having any pretentions to comeliness, to say nothing of beauty. The occupants of the buildings, however, who viewed the procession from their windows or the flat roofs of their houses, and who might be taken to represent a somewhat better class, were not only lighter in colour and more intelligent in expression, but some of them were distinctly good- looking. And, as a general rule, the larger and more ...
— Harry Escombe - A Tale of Adventure in Peru • Harry Collingwood
... and when it was time for them to go home, he said, "Come to the flat rock on the side of the mountain to-morrow, and I will show ...
— Story Hour Readers Book Three • Ida Coe and Alice J. Christie
... made in the South to write books controverting "Uncle Tom's Cabin," and showing a much brighter side of the slavery question, but they all fell flat and were left unread. Of one of them, a clergyman of Charleston, S.C., wrote in a ...
— The Life of Harriet Beecher Stowe • Charles Edward Stowe
... me again; I had also underestimated the amount of blankets which I should require, and it was not long before the romance of the situation wore off, and a rather chilly reality occupied its place; moreover, the flat was stony, and I was not knowing enough to have selected a spot which gave a hollow for the hip-bone. My great object, however, was to conceal my condition from my companion, for never was a freshman at Cambridge more anxious to be mistaken for a third-year man than I was anxious ...
— A First Year in Canterbury Settlement • Samuel Butler
... reached the ground, the fairy Furious, a huge and heavy creature, issued from it. Her big eyes seemed bursting from their sockets, her large flat nose covered her wrinkled, withered cheeks, her monstrous mouth extended from ear to ear and when it was open a long pointed black tongue was seen licking her ...
— Old French Fairy Tales • Comtesse de Segur
... astounding, blinding, deafening, pulverising, scarifying, secret of which Forster is the hero, imaginable, by the whole efforts of the whole British population. It is a thing of the kind that, after I knew it (from himself) this morning, I lay down flat as if an engine and tender had fallen upon me." This pleasantly boisterous humour is in no wise exaggerated. I fancy it affected all Forster's friends much in the same way, and as an exquisitely funny and expected thing. How many pictures did Boz see before him—Forster proposing to the ...
— John Forster • Percy Hethrington Fitzgerald
... deprecation. Even Claremore, that paradise of my childhood, had grown shrivelled and shabby, even tawdry, I thought, when we went out there one Sunday afternoon; all that once represented the magic word "country" had vanished. The old flat piano, made in Philadelphia ages ago, the horsehair chairs and sofa had been replaced by a nondescript furniture of the sort displayed behind plate-glass windows of the city's stores: rocking-chairs on stands, upholstered in clashing colours, their coiled springs only ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... her self-command might give way, she turned into the house; and going through the kitchen like a blind person, she went up to her now unused chamber, and threw herself, face downwards, flat on her bed, ...
— Sylvia's Lovers, Vol. II • Elizabeth Gaskell
... exercise of armes, give himselfe much to the chase, whereby to accustome his body to paines, and partly to understand the manner of situations, and to know how the mountaines arise, which way the vallyes open themselves, and how the plaines are distended flat abroad, and to conceive well the nature of the rivers, and marrish ground, and herein to bestow very much care, which knowledge is profitable in two kinds: first he learnes thereby to know his own countrey, and is the better ...
— Machiavelli, Volume I - The Art of War; and The Prince • Niccolo Machiavelli
... edges somewhat worn off, and the marks shorter, wider, and fainter. The next pair will be up, but they will be small, with the mark deep and extending quite across. Their corner nippers will be larger than the inside ones, yet smaller than they were, and flat, and nearly worn out. The sixth grinder will have risen to a level with the others; and the tushes will begin to appear in the male animal. The female seldom has them, although the germ is always present in the jaw. At four years and a half, ...
— The Mule - A Treatise On The Breeding, Training, - And Uses To Which He May Be Put • Harvey Riley
... been presented by Thomas Graham, Esq. There are three tablets on the north side or oldest part of the church, to the memories of Edward Hawkins, the first teacher in the school, the Rev. P. M. Procter, and the Rev. T. R. Garnsey, and a flat paved stone records the grave of Thomas Morgan. About ten marriages, forty-three baptisms, and thirty-five funerals take place yearly. The church is well attended on Sunday, especially in the afternoon, when 300 or ...
— The Forest of Dean - An Historical and Descriptive Account • H. G. Nicholls
... of it began less than ten yards beyond the sentry, where a couple of squatting thralls were skinning a slain deer; and as far as eye could swim in the flood of sunset light, the green aisles were dotted with scattered groups. Every flat rock had a ring of dice-throwers bending over it; every fallen trunk its row of idlers. Wherever a cluster of boulders made a passable smithy, crowds of sweating giants plied hammer and sharpening-stone. ...
— The Ward of King Canute • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz
... in unconcealed wonder. To what flat commonplace Winterfield's lively enthusiasm had sunk in Stella's presence! She perceived that some unfavorable impression had been produced on her husband, and interposed with a timely suggestion. Her motive was not only to divert Romayne's ...
— The Black Robe • Wilkie Collins
... while your sister looks up to the officers. Ay," continued the old woman, leaving off her knitting and looking at her daughter, "and is likely to get one, too, if she plays her cards well—that Lieutenant Flat can't keep out of the shop." (My granny having at this moment given me an opportunity to replace her snuff-box, I did not fail to profit by it; and as I perceived her knitting-pin had dropped on the floor, I stuck it into the skirt of her gown ...
— Percival Keene • Frederick Marryat
... finished flat and lived upon as in Mediterranean countries, particularly in the case of one-story structures built against two-story buildings, the roof of the low building making the porch or roof-garden for the second-story room lying immediately ...
— The Unwritten Literature of the Hopi • Hattie Greene Lockett
... took the high Soprano Singer, and they consulted the Wise Woman again. She was taking a nap this time, and the Singer had to sing up to B-flat before she could wake her. Then she was very cross and the Black Cat put up his back and spit at ...
— The Children's Book of Christmas Stories • Various
... door. My God, the sight that met my gaze! It haunts me even now when years have dulled its vividness. The beautiful, quiet, gray figure that had grown to be such a familiar picture to Bob and me of late, sat at the flat desk in the centre of the room. She faced the door. Her elbows rested on the desk; in her hand was an afternoon paper that she had evidently been reading when Bob entered. God knows how long she had been reading it before he came. Bob was kneeling at the side ...
— Friday, the Thirteenth • Thomas W. Lawson
... bank-notes-one after the other, laying them down flat again, while Fred leaned back in his chair, scorning to look eager. He held himself to be a gentleman at heart, and did not like courting an old fellow for his money. At last, Mr. Featherstone eyed him again over his spectacles and presented him with a little ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... is the hill, there are larks yonder singing higher still, suspended in the brown light. Turning away at last and tracing the fosse, there is at the point where it is deepest and where there is some trifling shelter, a flat hawthorn bush. It has grown as flat as a hurdle, as if trained espalierwise or against a wall—the effect, no doubt, of the winds. Into and between its gnarled branches, dry and leafless, furze ...
— Nature Near London • Richard Jefferies
... the fair beginning of Gotham Court reminds me of the Big Flat in Mott Street, a mighty tenement with room for a hundred families that was another instance of reform still-born; by which I mean that it came before we were ready for it, and willing to back it up; also before ...
— The Battle with the Slum • Jacob A. Riis
... commenced replacing the burnt-out candles, and just then we heard the warning roar of a coming shell, but before it burst I heard a splash; it was Dory taking a header into a shell hole full of water; I threw myself flat. In adjusting our lamps we had to remove our gas helmets, and after waiting some time for the expected explosion and hearing none, I looked up; white fumes were rising from the ground at about the spot the shell had entered; there had been ...
— S.O.S. Stand to! • Reginald Grant
... crowded by a fleet of eleven hundred ships, destined to attend the motions, and to satisfy the wants, of the Roman army. The military strength of the fleet was composed of fifty armed galleys; and these were accompanied by an equal number of flat-bottomed boats, which might occasionally be connected into the form of temporary bridges. The rest of the ships, partly constructed of timber, and partly covered with raw hides, were laden with an almost inexhaustible supply of arms and engines, ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... might, And falling, with a thrill again Of pleasure shot from feet to brain; And both paced deck, ere any knew Our peril. Round us press'd the crew, With wonder in the eyes of most. As if the man who had loved and lost Honoria dared no more than that! My days have else been stale and flat. This life's at best, if justly scann'd, A tedious walk by the other's strand, With, here and there cast up, a piece Of coral or of ambergris, Which, boasted of abroad, we ignore The burden of the barren shore. I ...
— The Victories of Love - and Other Poems • Coventry Patmore |
