"Parapet" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... guns, and the other on the crest of the rocky eminence which juts out into the waters of the gulf at the point. The upper battery mounted modern 10 and 12-inch Krupp guns, behind a six-foot stone parapet, in front of which were twenty feet of earthwork and belting ...
— The Boys of '98 • James Otis
... flat roofs of the houses, but these were not so jealous of their privacy as such houses were once meant to be. Through the gate of one we were led into a garden of simple flowers belted with a world-old parapet, over which we could look at a stretch of the Gothic wall of King Wamba's time, before the miserable Roderick won and lost his kingdom. A pomegranate tree, red with fruit, overhung us, and from the borders ...
— Familiar Spanish Travels • W. D. Howells
... small overhanging turret with loop-holes and embrasures projecting from the parapet ...
— Short-Stories • Various
... arm he led him to a low parapet, overlooking the covered passage before described. Half an hour before it had been bright moonlight, but, as if to favour the fugitive, the heavens had become overcast, and a thick mist had ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... it back: foot by foot, and yard by yard, it came yieldingly towards them—until they saw the broad curving breast of the pseudo-bird projecting over the parapet edge of ...
— The Cliff Climbers - A Sequel to "The Plant Hunters" • Captain Mayne Reid
... door and they would soon put an end to it. However, the night began to fall before they got fairly in motion, and I went down and prepared to fire the powder should it be needful, and besides I hoisted the skull above the parapet over the gate. Thinking that the light of the phosphorus might not show up well a short distance away, I placed in addition some red fire in the skull. I then got on the wall, and sat down where I could peep out without being seen. Shouting ...
— A March on London • G. A. Henty
... deep, wide trench whose floor had been trodden into a slop of cheesy, brown mire which clung to the big hobnailed boots of the soldiers. Every foot or so along the parapet there was a rifle slit, made by the insertion of a wedge-shaped wooden box into the wall of brownish sandbags, and the sentries stood about six feet apart. The trench had the hushed ...
— A Volunteer Poilu • Henry Sheahan
... from the east, the Billy Bagshot detachment of Berkshires rallying them and firing steadily, the enemy swarming after and stampeding the mules and camels. Over the low bush fence, over the unfinished sand-bag parapet at the southwest salient, spread the shrieking enemy like ants, stabbing and cutting. The Gardner guns, as Connor had said, were "fer the inimy," but the Lushai dandies were for the men that managed them that day; for the ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... could not fathom his depth, nor determine his shallowness—she did not even guess which it might be. She was irresistibly drawn to him; yet she was on her guard, as one who, looking down from a great height, in fear of vertigo clings to the parapet over which he leans. The parapet she clung to was her own good American common sense. Yet she feared she did not know what. A little gleam in Giovanni's dark eyes, a curious, deliberate, intentionally produced expression of his smiling lips, swept over ...
— The Title Market • Emily Post
... "In the meantime, this gun will be of service." As he spoke, the Russians, who had been driven from the hill on the right, were seen climbing up the sides of the valley, threatening to take the battery in reverse. Not a moment was to be lost; by immense exertion part of the parapet was thrown down. "Lend a hand, all of you," cried the naval officer. His appeal was responded to. The gun being slued round by the sailors and a few soldiers, the midshipmen exerting themselves with hearty goodwill, it was fired directly down upon the enemy with ...
— The Three Commanders • W.H.G. Kingston
... and towers were pretty well deserted. The two young officers remained, however, Captain Roberts dreamily watching the wondrous panorama of snowy mountains spreading out to the north as far as the eye could reach, while Bracy sat with his double glass carefully focussed and resting upon the stone parapet, watching the departing chiefs, who strode away looking proud and haughty, and apparently without holding any communication with one another till they were well on their way, when Bracy noted that they suddenly began to talk with a ...
— Fix Bay'nets - The Regiment in the Hills • George Manville Fenn
... a few months in St. Pierre is certain, sooner or later, to pass an idle half-hour in that charming place of Martinique idlers,—the beautiful Savane du Fort,—and, once there, is equally certain to lean a little while over the mossy parapet of the river-wall to watch the blanchisseuses at work. It has a curious interest, this spectacle of primitive toil: the deep channel of the Roxelane winding under the palm-crowned heights of the Fort; the blinding whiteness ...
— Two Years in the French West Indies • Lafcadio Hearn
... conversation was overheard by Burns, while other auditors were aware only of the rush and rumble of the wintry stream among the arches. The ancient bridge is steep and narrow, and paved like a street, and defended by a parapet of red freestone, except at the two ends, where some mean old shops allow scanty room for the pathway to creep between. Nothing else impressed me hereabouts, unless I mention, that, during the rain, the women and girls went about ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. VI.,October, 1860.—No. XXXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... roof crunched in the darkness under my feet as I walked cautiously to the parapet and looked over its edge to the hunk of desert that stretched away toward Reno, out behind the motel. The third story, behind me, cut off the neon glare from the Strip and left the place in inky darkness. There was silence and invisibility out ...
— Vigorish • Gordon Randall Garrett
... broad, and about eighteen feet long, which was strongly fastened with iron. The entrance was lengthways, and it could be moved about the piece of timber, first described, as on a spindle, and could be hoisted within six feet of the top. Round this there was a parapet, knee high, which was defended with upright bars of iron, sharpened at the end. Towards the top there was a ring, through which a rope was fastened, by means of which they could raise and lower the engine ...
— Robert Kerr's General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 18 • William Stevenson
... three stories, and so on to the number of five stories for the main building and four for each wing. The external wall rose forty or fifty feet where the structure was five stories high and but ten feet on the court side, including a low parapet wall, where the structure was but one story high. There was no entrance to these great structures in the ground story. After getting admission within the court, they ascended to the roof of the first row of apartments by means of ladders, and in the same way, by ladders, to each successive ...
— Houses and House-Life of the American Aborigines • Lewis H. Morgan
... fro they paced, balancing sometimes with hysterical precision [Footnote: Hysterical precision. What does this mean?] on the ledge of the parapet, passing each other at whisker's length, but cutting each other dead. [Footnote: Cutting each other dead. Have you ever thought of the quaint absurdity of this figurative expression?] Not a cat had a look or a sniff for his fellow; not a cat so much as guessed at another's existence. Among those ...
— Short Stories and Selections for Use in the Secondary Schools • Emilie Kip Baker
... have taken a nigger than a basilisk. For people had found out how fearful and vast and silent was the force of the savage secret society, and by the time Flambeau and Father Brown were leaning on the parade parapet in April, the Black Man meant in England almost what he once meant ...
— The Wisdom of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... illuminated with the fire of Spanish cannonading? Hark! Methinks I hear the tramp of the black boys of the 24th and the 25th Cavalry, chanting to the strains of martial music,—"Glory Hallelujah, we are going to have a hot time in the old town to-night," as they dashed up the dangerous parapet to defend the honor of their country, and to keep "Old Glory" ...
— Masterpieces of Negro Eloquence - The Best Speeches Delivered by the Negro from the days of - Slavery to the Present Time • Various
... what they thought of it. Mrs. Bott could not identify it, but she swore no less positively that it was an entirely different violin from the one which she had seen before the magistrate. Then Osborne hurled his bomb over his enemy's parapet and cried loudly that a monstrous wicked fraud had been perpetrated to thwart Justice—that the defense had "faked" another violin and were now trying to foist the bogus thing in evidence to deceive the Court. Ten witnesses ...
— True Stories of Crime From the District Attorney's Office • Arthur Train
... himself to a system which is its own punishment. And yet the last place in which he will look for the cause of his misery is in that very money-mongering to which he now clings as frantically as ever. But so it is throughout the world. Only look down over that bridge-parapet, at that huge black-mouthed sewer, vomiting its pestilential riches across the mud. There it runs, and will run, hurrying to the sea vast stores of wealth, elaborated by Nature's chemistry into the ready materials of food; which proclaim, ...
— Yeast: A Problem • Charles Kingsley
... and stood there for a moment peering about as if looking for some one. Several persons were crossing the bridge, but in one of the recesses about midway of the river a woman stood, leaning out over the parapet, with a strained agony of face and figure that told plainly of her intention. Just as she was stealthily mounting the parapet to throw herself into the river, the child caught sight of her, ran forward with a shrill cry ...
— In His Steps • Charles M. Sheldon
... run down," Beorn exclaimed, and leaning over the parapet shouted to the Saxons in the courtyard below to stand on ...
— Wulf the Saxon - A Story of the Norman Conquest • G. A. Henty
... form of emplacement is a gun pit about 1 foot 6 inches deep, according to our experience in Natal, the earth or rock taken out forming a circular parapet 3 feet 6 inches high, and as bulky or thick as ever you like on the front face, the floor of the pit being levelled and a gradual slope made out of it for guns to be moved easily in and out of the pit. The size of the ...
— With the Naval Brigade in Natal (1899-1900) - Journal of Active Service • Charles Richard Newdigate Burne
... and raw, went by; February, colder, with snow, was half over. The men had ceased to watch for Henri over the parapet, and his brave deeds had become fireside tales, to be told at home, if ever there were to be homes again ...
— The Amazing Interlude • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... himself behind a table and pelted them with the stolen tarts, which were very effective missiles, being nearly as hard as bullets. While his ammunition held out the besieged prospered, but the moment the last patty flew over the parapet, the villain was seized, dragged howling from the room, and cast upon the hall floor in an ignominious heap. The conquerors then returned flushed with victory, and while Demi consoled poor Mrs. Smith, Nat and Nan collected the ...
— Little Men - Life at Plumfield With Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott
... fountain must be described in three parts. Aitken's own interpretation is condensed in the following account. On the wall of the parapet at the foot of the pool, sixty feet from the central structure, is a colossal figure symbolizing Helios, in his arms the great globe of the setting sun after it has thrown off the nebulous mass that subsequently became the earth. ...
— The Jewel City • Ben Macomber
... curve; a low parapet at the end of the walk formed a sort of terrace. This vault of shade opened on a valley of light. The country expanded wide before us, for several leagues. The sun was rising in the heavens, where the silvery rays of morning had become transformed into a stream of gold; blinding floods of ...
— International Short Stories: French • Various
... a long one if ye don't kape that big body o'yours under cover,' said O'Brien dryly, as a bullet, striking the parapet, spattered earth ...
— On Land And Sea At The Dardanelles • Thomas Charles Bridges
... up the left-hand road. Boden pursued him, struggled with him, but in vain. Brand threw him off, reached the bridge, mounted the parapet, and from there flung himself headlong into the spate rushing ...
— The Mating of Lydia • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... Wragge stopped and looked idly over the parapet at the barges in the river. It was plainly evident that he had no particular destination to reach and nothing whatever to do. While he was still loitering, the clock of York Minster chimed the half-hour past five. Cabs rattled by him over the bridge on their way to meet ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins
... preventing God, how much. I owe To the defences thou hast round me set! Example, Custom, Fear, Occasion slow,— These scorned bondsmen were my parapet. I dare not peep over this parapet, To gauge with glance the roaring gulf below, The depths of sin to which I had descended, Had not these me against ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. II • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... the Andes and the ocean. It was constructed in a different manner, as demanded by the nature of the ground, which was for the most part low, and much of it sandy. The causeway was raised on a high embankment of earth, and defended on either side by a parapet or wall of clay; and trees and odoriferous shrubs were planted along the margin, regaling the sense of the traveller with their perfumes, and refreshing him by their shades, so grateful under the burning sky of the tropics. In ...
— History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William Hickling Prescott
... pass through low and small door-ways to other apartments. It is all haphazard, but exceedingly picturesque. You may find some of the family in every room, or they may be gathered, women and babies, on a roof which is protected by a parapet. At the time of our visit the men were all away at work in their fields. Notwithstanding the houses are only sun-dried bricks, and the village is without water or street commissioners, I was struck by the universal ...
— Our Italy • Charles Dudley Warner
... sea effervescence working in his inland-born body, he fitted a cork to his fishing line and flung the baited hook far out across the ripples. Then he seated himself on the parapet of the stone bridge and waited for monsters of the deep ...
— The Dark Star • Robert W. Chambers
... rushed a machine gun post, bayonetted the man on the gun and pursued the remainder of the team with fire, inflicting casualties. Later on he again rushed forward alone to a strongly held trench, but was killed practically on the parapet. His name was recommended for a V.C., but unfortunately nothing more was heard of it. In view of the heavy casualties, Lt. Wilson went across to Pearson and told him to close his platoon slightly towards the left, in order to keep a cohesion in the company, for it was ...
— The Seventh Manchesters - July 1916 to March 1919 • S. J. Wilson
... furlongs, had been fortified by a Spartan general nine hundred years before the reign of Justinian. [117] In an age of freedom and valor, the slightest rampart may prevent a surprise; and Procopius appears insensible of the superiority of ancient times, while he praises the solid construction and double parapet of a wall, whose long arms stretched on either side into the sea; but whose strength was deemed insufficient to guard the Chersonesus, if each city, and particularly Gallipoli and Sestus, had not been secured ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 4 • Edward Gibbon
... are locked up in a row of dungeons underneath the sea wall. The people walk and flirt and enjoy the sea breeze above them and the convicts by holding a mirror between the bars of the dungeons can see who is leaning over the parapet above them. Then they hold out their hands and you drop nickels and they fail to catch them and the sentry comes up and teases them by holding the money a few inches beyond their reach. They climb all over the crossbars in ...
— Adventures and Letters • Richard Harding Davis
... 20 feet, and footway five feet. The chains pass over the suspension towers, and are secured to the piers on each shore. The suspension towers are of stone, and designed as archways of the Tuscan order. The approaches are provided with octagonal lodges, or toll-houses, with appropriate lamps and parapet walls, terminating with stone pillars, surmounted with ornamental caps. The whole cost of this remarkable object, displaying the great superiority acquired by British artisans in the manufacture of ironwork, is about 80,000l. The advantages to be derived from this ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 10, No. 272, Saturday, September 8, 1827 • Various
... was laid in 1815 and the monument was completed in 1829. The base is 50 ft. sq. and 24 ft. high; on this stands a Doric column, 25 ft. in diameter at the base and 130 ft. high, which is surmounted by a statue of Washington 16 ft. high. A winding stairway in the interior leads to a parapet at the top. In the square by which the monument is surrounded are also statues of George Peabody by W. W. Story (a replica of the one in London), Roger Brooke Taney by W. H. Rinehart, and John Eager Howard by Emmanuel Fremiet; and bronze pieces representing Peace, War, Force and ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 2 - "Baconthorpe" to "Bankruptcy" • Various
... to the Angel, perturbed. "Hang detectives!" It wasn't the kind of thing he had anticipated at all. Hoopdriver, with round eyes and a wondering smile, walked down to where the mill waters glittered in the moonlight, and after meditating over the parapet of the bridge for a space, with occasional murmurs of, "Private Inquiry" and the like, returned, with mystery even in his paces, ...
— The Wheels of Chance - A Bicycling Idyll • H. G. Wells
... acted as masons, and piled it up and smoothed it off, he, standing in the middle, aiding and directing. A circular tower of fully twenty feet in diameter was quickly raised, and fully fifteen feet high, and finished off at the summit in a castellated form, with a parapet; and then there was an outer wall with a deep ditch; between them and the tower was a gateway, and a bridge, constructed partly of snow and partly of planks, led to it. It really had, when finished, a very imposing appearance, and looked as capable of resisting a foe as one of ...
— Ernest Bracebridge - School Days • William H. G. Kingston
... familiarity with the obscure subject of the Oriental heresies of the Middle Ages in Europe, I would place that of the Templar, Brian de Bois Guilbert, who is generally regarded by readers as simply 'a horrid creature,' who chased 'that darling Rebecca' out of the window to the verge of the parapet; or at best as a knightly ruffian, who, like most ruffianly sinners, quieted conscience by stifling it with doubt. Very different, however, did the Templar appear to Scott himself, who, notwithstanding the poetic justice meted to ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... regarded Captain's Hill rising in its bold isolation to the north. Long he gazed, and then, slightly shaking his head, stepped down from the beam and paced about the little enclosure, half unconsciously examining the work of platform and parapet, and following with a gunner's eye the range of the pieces yet unmounted; pausing longest before the eastern front, he marked with satisfaction how well the minion there to be placed would guard the landing and sweep ...
— Standish of Standish - A story of the Pilgrims • Jane G. Austin
... which he gives an elevation, that "the upper story is narrower than the one below, so that there is a platform or landing along the whole length of the building. To enter, you ascend to the platform by means of ladders that could easily be removed; and, as there is a parapet wall extending along the platform, these houses could be converted into formidable forts." [Footnote: Ex. Doc. No. 41, 1st session 30th ...
— Houses and House-Life of the American Aborigines • Lewis H. Morgan
... there the modish fashions of another century have been followed with enthusiasm. There are clipped yews and long arched avenues, bowers and summer-houses of rustic make, and a terraced lawn fringed with a Georgian parapet. A former lord had kept peacocks innumerable, and something of the tradition still survived. Set in the heart of hilly moorlands, it was like a cameo gem in a tartan plaid, a piece of old Vauxhall or Ranelagh in an upland vale. Of an afternoon sleep reigned supreme. The shapely immobile trees, the ...
— The Half-Hearted • John Buchan
... there stood forth a heavy stone porch with a Gothic gateway, surmounted by a battlemented parapet, made gable fashion, the apex of which was garnished by a pair of dolphins, rampant and antagonistic, whose corkscrew tails seemed contorted—especially at night—by the last agonies of rage convulsed. The porch doors stood open, except in tremendous weather; the inner ones ...
— Animal Ghosts - Or, Animal Hauntings and the Hereafter • Elliott O'Donnell
... strangled him. When Agrippa returned, a few days afterwards, he found his house beset with devils. Some of them were sitting on the chimney-pots, kicking up their legs in the air; while others were playing at leapfrog on the very edge of the parapet. His study was so filled with them, that he found it difficult to make his way to his desk. When, at last, he had elbowed his way through them, he found his book open, and the student lying dead upon the floor. He saw immediately how the mischief had been done; and dismissing ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... damned pip-squeak (a light shrapnel shell) caught me on the parapet," he laughed, squeezing into a manhole. "Two of your boys have copped it bad along there. No, I don't think it was ...
— The Red Horizon • Patrick MacGill
... opened outward on to a balcony; I now beheld—and to me it was as the vision of Beatrice may have been to Dante—the white figure of a woman. The moonlight bathed her, as in her white robe she leaned upon the parapet gazing upward into the empyrean. A sweet, delicate face I saw, not endowed, perhaps, with that exquisite balance and proportion of feature wherein they tell us beauty lies, but blessed with a wondrously dainty beauty all its ...
— Bardelys the Magnificent • Rafael Sabatini
... Underneath is a parapet, as if this were indeed a window, and two beautiful boy-angels lean upon it, adoration on their faces and rest in their position, as if they were everlastingly praising, and were the very embodiments ...
— Raphael - A Collection Of Fifteen Pictures And A Portrait Of The - Painter With Introduction And Interpretation • Estelle M. Hurll
... found Von Reuss, lolling against the parapet with other blue flittermice, his peers—he himself no flittermouse, indeed, but of the true Casimir vampire breed, horrid of tooth, nocturnal, desirous of lusts ...
— Red Axe • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... and of efficacious energy, by means of which, exercising his trading, he came to possess great wealth and to have influence with the governors of Filipinas. Through his arrangements the Sangleys negotiated with Don Pedro, asking his consent to finish a parapet of the wall that he was completing, at their own cost; for they, as a portion of the commonwealth, wished to do this service for his Majesty. Each of them offered four reals for the work. This service and the thanks of the citizens, whom Encan or Baptista had bought by benefits, ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XVI, 1609 • H.E. Blair
... caught the signal and kicked the engine into life; with a grind of gears it moved forward toward the river's edge. There was an indrawn gasp from the crowd as the front wheels ground over the marble parapet—then the truck was plunging down toward the ...
— Navy Day • Harry Harrison
... allowed to go back to their trenches unmolested, but the two bottles of beer quite naturally and without any difficulty continued their journey to our lines. When I got up to the front trench, I found our boys standing on the parapet and looking over at the enemy. I climbed up, and there, to my astonishment, I saw the Germans moving about in their trenches apparently quite indifferent to the fact that we were gazing at them. One man was sawing wood. Between us ...
— The Great War As I Saw It • Frederick George Scott
... central and side aisles, all of the same height, is two bays in length and is covered by a fine strong vault resting on short clustered piers.[59] The doorway itself, which is not acutely pointed, stands under a gable which reaches up to the plain battlemented parapet of the flat narthex roof. There are four shafts on each side with a ring-moulding rather less than half-way up, which at once distinguishes them from any romanesque predecessors; the capitals are round with ...
— Portuguese Architecture • Walter Crum Watson
... the top of a tower, measuring not above fifteen feet each way. Darkness was all around him. He sat down on the stone parapet, with a sinking heart; a heavy ...
— A Voyage to Arcturus • David Lindsay
... hot night in June. We had climbed to the roof of the new building for a breath of air, forsaking Jerry's small bedroom in the temporary quarters of the club where we had both been perspiring profusely. We sat upon the parapet smoking and talking of Jerry's plans and, since Una and the plans seemed to be a part of ...
— Paradise Garden - The Satirical Narrative of a Great Experiment • George Gibbs
... punished with death, in the same sense, and for the same reason, that the murderer is punished with death for shedding the blood of a fellow-creature; and the poor slater who misses his foot, and falls, most unwillingly, from a roof or parapet, is punished with death, just as a man would be who threw himself over with the intention of committing suicide! Surely there is some grave error here,—an error opposed to the surest dictates of our moral nature, and one that cannot be glossed over by any apologue, ...
— Modern Atheism under its forms of Pantheism, Materialism, Secularism, Development, and Natural Laws • James Buchanan
... had taken station. They too were of the toy sort, plated perhaps with railway metals, perhaps with boiler-iron. They staggered under a heavy gun or two each. The bayou made an opening in the high bank of the river. The bank was a parapet, behind which the gunboats crouched, firing up the bayou as through an embrasure. The enemy was at this disadvantage: he could not get at the gunboats, and he could advance only by exposing his flank to their ponderous missiles, ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce • Ambrose Bierce
... alive: carried the same tiny handkerchief in her right hand; and the same card-case in her left. (A woman eight months dead with a card-case!) I had to pin myself down to the multiplication-table, and to set both hands on the stone parapet of the road to assure myself that that ...
— The Best Ghost Stories • Various
... 4 Posts were the closer to the enemy and, consequently, of greater importance. Each post was further divided into a certain number of Groups—each under a Non-commissioned Officer. Three machine guns were mounted in the parapet. After the first week, Lieut. Shaw took these over and also mounted additional guns in secret emplacements, which were constructed by digging through the escarp and tunnelling forward ...
— The 28th: A Record of War Service in the Australian Imperial Force, 1915-19, Vol. I • Herbert Brayley Collett
... been my favourite spot all my life," she returned. "I can remember Papa holding me up when I wasn't five years old and telling me about the Lady Grizzle that threw herself off the parapet rather than marry somebody she had ...
— Love, The Fiddler • Lloyd Osbourne
... longest and hardest path home around the eastern beach, Maurice turned once on impulse, parted a screen of birches, and stepped into an amphitheatre of the cliff, moss-clothed and cedar-walled. It sloped downward in three terraces. A balcony or high parapet of stone hung on one side, a rock low and broad stood in the centre, and an unmistakable chair of rock, cushioned with vividly green-branched moss, waited an occupant. Maurice sat down, wondering if any other human being, perplexed and tortured, had ever domiciled there for a brief time. ...
— The Indian On The Trail - From "Mackinac And Lake Stories", 1899 • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... I looked over a British parapet was in the edge of a wood. Board walks ran across the spongy earth here and there; the doors of little shanties with earth roofs opened on to those streets, which were called Piccadilly and the Strand. I was reminded of a pleasant prospector's camp in Alaska. ...
— My Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... twelve-inch caliber guns mounted in turrets on the center line of the ship. The turrets were bolted to the deck, five of them forward and five aft, and were eighteen feet in diameter, eight feet high, with a slope from deck to parapet of thirty degrees and made of armor steel twelve inches thick. One gun in each turret and the guns could swing around on four-fifths of the circle, so that every gun could be brought to bear on an enemy either to port ...
— Eurasia • Christopher Evans
... the roof garden on the Hebrew Institute across East Broadway lights are twinkling and the band is tuning up. Little groups are settling down to a quiet game of checkers or love-making. Paterfamilias leans back against the parapet where palms wave luxuriously in the summer breeze. The newspaper drops from his hand; he closes his eyes and is in dreamland, where strikes come not. Mother knits contentedly in her seat, with a smile on her face that was not born of the Ludlow Street tenement. Over yonder ...
— The Battle with the Slum • Jacob A. Riis
... it a gymnastic performance of considerable merit. The room was not over-light at the best of times, the fourth part of the space of one small window in the sloping wall was filled by its own heavy framework, and for half its height it was shielded by a parapet, which had at least its uses in hiding the occupant of the room from the too-curious observation of those who dwelt in the upper stories of the houses opposite. These houses opposite, compared with Gable Inn, are of ...
— Young Mr. Barter's Repentance - From "Schwartz" by David Christie Murray • David Christie Murray
... Major hurried off to take the Colonel's orders I climbed up on the parapet. Night had now fallen completely, but the moon was rising. Indeed, it would have been almost as light as day but for a slight mist which was spreading a diaphanous veil before our eyes. In the foreground to the right I could barely guess ...
— In the Field (1914-1915) - The Impressions of an Officer of Light Cavalry • Marcel Dupont
... the end of the struggle. The French flag swung forth on the parapet, the French shout rose to heaven. Meanwhile a strange sight was to be seen—the St. Michael in shining armour, who had led that assault, shedding tears for the ferocious Classidas, who had cursed her with his last breath. "J'ai grande pitie de ton ame." Had he but had time to clear his soul and ...
— Jeanne d'Arc - Her Life And Death • Mrs.(Margaret) Oliphant
... of the trenches, with features set, On that hot, still morning, in measured pace, Our column climbed; climbed higher yet, Past the fauss'bray, scarp, up the curtain-face, And along the parapet. ...
— Wessex Poems and Other Verses • Thomas Hardy
... glittering fairy palace. The effect was heightened by coloured fires, which, under the superintendence of Mr. C.L. Hanmer, were introduced at intervals in burning censers, wreathing their clouds of incense among the urns upon the parapet in the gallery of the tower, and shedding upon the windows of the church the rich tints of a peaceful southern sky at sunset. The several gateways were wreathed in evergreens, amongst which nestled festoons of variegated lamps. So great was the sensation produced throughout the town and surrounding ...
— Showell's Dictionary of Birmingham - A History And Guide Arranged Alphabetically • Thomas T. Harman and Walter Showell
... remarkably high one; from the balusters to the sloping lawn beneath was a drop of thirty feet. Seen from below, the high unbroken terrace wall, built like the house itself of brick, had the almost menacing aspect of a fortification—a castle bastion, from whose parapet one looked out across airy depths to distances level with the eye. Below, in the foreground, hedged in by solid masses of sculptured yew trees, lay the stone-brimmed swimming-pool. Beyond it stretched the park, with its massive elms, its green expanses of grass, and, at the bottom ...
— Crome Yellow • Aldous Huxley
... calling of the birds round about—a couple of young men on horseback dashed over the bridge. One of them, with an oath, called him a fool, and told him to keep out of the way—the other, who fancied he might have jostled the foot-passenger, and possibly might have sent him over the parapet, pushed on more quickly when he reached the other side of the water, calling likewise to Tom to come on; and the pair of young gentlemen were up the hill on their way to the house before Harry had recovered himself from ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... word that it was an inferior structure although so amazingly effective from below; they had looked studiously down upon the city and tried to distinguish its minarets and towers and ancient gates, they had viewed with proper quizzicalness the imprint in the stone parapet of the hoof of that blindfolded horse which the last of the Mamelukes, cornered and betrayed, had spurred ...
— The Fortieth Door • Mary Hastings Bradley
... in the provincial cities of England. For a Plantagenet wall, that of York is in excellent repair, and it is very clean, so that the children could not spoil their Sunday best by clambering on the parapet, and trying to fall over it. There was no parapet on the other side, and they could have fallen over that without trouble; but it would not have served the same purpose; for under the parapet there were the most ...
— Seven English Cities • W. D. Howells
... flattered to find my new friend by my side. Lord Battersea chaffed me in his noisy, flamboyant manner, trying to separate us; but with tact and determination this frontal attack was resisted and my new friend and I retired to the darkest part of the Terrace, where, leaning over the parapet, we gazed into the river and talked far ...
— Margot Asquith, An Autobiography: Volumes I & II • Margot Asquith
... the nearest stretcher. He knew he would get through. It was inconceivable to Jerrold that he should not get through. Even in his fifth engagement, when his men broke and gave back in front of the German parapet, and he advanced alone, shouting to them to come on, it was inconceivable that they should not come on. And when they saw him, running forward by himself, they gathered again and ran after him and the trench was taken ...
— Anne Severn and the Fieldings • May Sinclair
... gardens. No one was within sight. Chiverni raised the hand of the queen-mother to kiss it, and as he did so he slipped a little note from his hand to hers, without being observed by the two Italians. Catherine turned to the angle of the parapet and read ...
— Catherine de' Medici • Honore de Balzac
... and a heavy volley, and the regiments of the second line surged forward, driving back the intruders, and closing the breach. Yet the Federal ranks reformed; the wood rang with cheers, and a fresh brigade advanced to the assault. Again the parapet was carried; again the Southern bayonets cleared the front. Hooker's leading brigade, abandoning the edge of the wood, had already given ground. Reno's regiments, suffering fearful slaughter, with difficulty maintained their place; and Hill, calling ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... see the party popping the parapet," grinned Vane. "It's not a thing which anyone does for pleasure. . ...
— Mufti • H. C. (Herman Cyril) McNeile
... Bane glided over the parapet of their fort at the side nearest the lake; and, creeping serpent-fashion for a considerable distance round, gained the bushes, where he waited for a repetition of the cry. He had not long to wait. With ...
— The Big Otter • R.M. Ballantyne
... just signalled to a taxi: he leaned over the parapet and called to Juve-Vagualame, who had got no farther than ...
— A Nest of Spies • Pierre Souvestre
... where he was accustomed to go sometimes for the purpose of scattering money among the populace below. Chaerea said that he could easily come up behind him on such an occasion, and hurl him suddenly over the parapet down to the pavement below. All these plans, however, seemed to the conspirators too uncertain and dangerous, and Chaerea's proposals ...
— Nero - Makers of History Series • Jacob Abbott
... of Prague. He was thrown from a bridge in 1381, and drowned by order of King Wenceslaus, because he refused to betray the secrets confided to him by the queen in the holy rite of confession. The spot whence he was cast into the Moldau is still marked by a cross with five stars on the parapet, indicative of the miraculous flames seen flickering over the dead body for three days. Nepomuk was canonized in 1729, and became the patron saint of bridges. His statue in stone usually occupies such a position on bridges as it does ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... morning a semicircular line was traced out at the top of their pathway. It was thirty feet across, for, as Tom said, the walls ought to be at least four feet thick; and six feet would be better, as they would want a parapet at least two feet thick to fire over. It was agreed that the whites should use the two shovels by turns. The Indians were unaccustomed to the work, and were to undertake that of scouting along the hillside, and of watching by turns ...
— In The Heart Of The Rockies • G. A. Henty
... instance communicated to me. A fine Newfoundland dog had been constantly annoyed by a small spaniel. The former, seizing the opportunity when they were on a terrace under which a river flowed, took up the spaniel in his mouth, and dropped it over the parapet into the river. ...
— Anecdotes of Dogs • Edward Jesse
... not part with her room-mate, little Barbara, and was to have for herself a charming bedroom and dressing-room, with a balcony and parapet overlooking the garden and park, and a tiny room besides, for Babie to ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge
... within the defenses of Washington, where they were, to their great surprise, confronted by the veteran Sixth Corps, under General Wright, and after a few volleys had been exchanged they precipitously retreated, and hurriedly recrossed the Potomac. This brief engagement was witnessed from the parapet of Fort Stevens by President Lincoln, who would not retire until an officer was shot down within a few feet of him, when he reluctantly stepped below. Sheltered from the sharp-shooters' fire, Cabinet officers and a group of society ladies ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore
... imagination spontaneously planted him on some spot where he had a far-stretching scene; his thoughts went on in wide spaces; and whenever he could, he tried to have in reality the influences of a large sky. Leaning on the parapet of Blackfriar's Bridge, and gazing meditatively, the breadth and calm of the river, with its long vista half hazy, half luminous, the grand dim masses of tall forms of buildings which were the signs ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... each of them felt in his own case so artfully that she kept them talking of their cure, and left Burnamy and Miss Triscoe to a moment on the bridge, by which they profited, while the others strolled on, to lean against the parapet and watch the lights in the skies and the water, and be alone together. The stream shone above and below, and found its way out of and into the darkness under the successive bridges; the town climbed into the night with lamp-lit windows here and there, till ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... when I besought him to come to the point, he said he'd dealt with it, and if I had any sympathy left for HINDENBURG or his line I was no better than a slave-driving, sit-at-home-and-push-others- over-the-parapet Prussian militarist myself. As for the map, it didn't matter in the least where HINDENBURG took his old line to, since wherever in Europe it endeavoured to conceal itself his own little line would scent it out and follow it. And if the HINDENBURG ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, March 28, 1917 • Various
... evening, the canal toll-collector on the Malzeville road discerned a black shadow which, despite the icy rain, remained for a long time leaning on the parapet of the turn-bridge, then all at once disappeared. He called for help and, a few minutes afterwards, they drew out of the water the body of a young girl of ...
— The Grip of Desire • Hector France
... said nought; for amidst all this flashing of fire and flame, and the crying out of folk, and the measured clash of the bells so near him, his thought was confused, and he had no words ready to hand. But the monk turned from the parapet and looked him full in the face and said ...
— The Well at the World's End • William Morris
... them is placed another piece of wood. To this is attached a dozen or more thick ropes, which are held down upon the ground by large heaps of wood. They are divided into two packets, about a foot apart; Blow hangs a ladder of rope knotted to one of these, which answers instead of a parapet. The flooring of the bridge is composed of small branches of trees, placed at intervals of two and a half, or three feet from each other. As these are generally slender, they seem as if they were on the point of breaking every moment, which naturally ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part III. The Great Explorers of the Nineteenth Century • Jules Verne
... of immense strength. It is from twelve to fifteen feet deep, very strongly revetted with timberings and stout wicker-work. At intervals it is strengthened with small forts or sentry-boxes of concrete, built into the parapet. Great and deep dug-outs lie below it, and though many of these have now been destroyed, the shafts of most of them can still be seen. At the mouths of some of these shafts one may still see giant-legged periscopes by which men sheltered in the dug-out ...
— Attack - An Infantry Subaltern's Impression of July 1st, 1916 • Edward G. D. Liveing
... partly gravelled, partly bordered with flowers and choice shrubs. This elevation descended by three several flights of steps, placed in its centre and at the extremities, into what might be called the garden proper, and was fenced along the top by a stone parapet with a heavy balustrade, ornamented from space to space with huge grotesque figures of animals seated upon their haunches, among which the favourite bear was repeatedly introduced. Placed in the middle of the terrace, between a sashed door opening from the house and the central flight of steps, ...
— Waverley • Sir Walter Scott
... had constructed thirty-two great barges, each sixty-two feet in length, and twelve in breadth. These were moored in pairs with massive chains and anchors, the distance between each pair being twenty-two feet. All were bound together with chains and timbers and a roadway protected by a parapet of massive beams was formed across it. Each boat was turned into a fortress by the erection of solid wooden redoubts at each end, mounting heavy guns, and was manned by thirty-two soldiers and four sailors. The forts at the end of ...
— By Pike and Dyke: A Tale of the Rise of the Dutch Republic • G.A. Henty
... castle opens into one of these intermediate apartments. On the left-hand side of the entrance has been a spiral staircase, leading to the rooms above and to the top of the castle, which has had a flat roof, surrounded by a parapet and several turrets. The walls of this tower are very strong and firm; a deep buttress is placed at each corner, and one against the middle of each side wall. A small square tower has stood at the southern corner, but the greater ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... night! that lonely walk to Littlechester, the rain beating in my face all the way, dead midnight when I came upon the bridge; the river, black, slimy, swirling under me in the lamplight, by the rotten wharfs—but I was so mad, that I mounted upon the parapet— ...
— Becket and other plays • Alfred Lord Tennyson
... parapet and stood leaning over, looking down at the dancers. Save for two or three remote whispering couples, who had stolen apart, he and his guide had the gallery to themselves. A warm breath of scent and vitality came up to him. Both men and women below were lightly clad, bare-armed, ...
— The Sleeper Awakes - A Revised Edition of When the Sleeper Wakes • H.G. Wells
... and became aware for the first time that we were standing near the middle of a ruined bridge which spanned a rapid stream that flowed at a considerable depth below. The parapet of the bridge on one side was broken down, and I must have been, in fact, in imminent danger of stepping over into empty air. I made my way cautiously across the decaying structure; but, when I turned to assist Elsie, she was nowhere ...
— David Poindexter's Disappearance and Other Tales • Julian Hawthorne
... or four superannuated objects seemed to slumber in the sunshine—the open door of an empty church, with a faded fresco exposed to the air in the arch above it, and an ancient beggar-woman sitting beside it on a three-legged stool. The little terrace had an old polished parapet, about as high as a man's breast, above which was a view of strange, sad-colored hills. Outside, to the left, the wall of the town made an outward bend, and exposed its rugged and rusty complexion. There was a smooth stone bench set into the wall of the church, on which Longueville had rested for ...
— Confidence • Henry James
... in the first instance, of little more than a rude circular tower of that architecture called Cyclopean, additions had been made to it by the Romans of a strong brick wall with a parapet, enclosing a space of about a hundred feet in diameter, accessible only by a single gateway, with a steep and narrow path leading to it, and thoroughly ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 2 of 2) • Henry William Herbert
... He leant over the parapet, forgetting his companion, his eyes fixed on the great cathedral, on the slender shaft of the Sainte Chapelle, on the sky ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... the violoncellos). The forked lightning quivers through the clouds in a zig-zag scream of violins — and look, look, look! as the frothing, roaring waves come rushing up the battlements, and over the reeling parapet, each hissing wave becomes a ghost, sends the gun- carriages rolling over the platform, and plunges into ...
— Some Roundabout Papers • W. M. Thackeray
... tour. And so during these halts, as I say, you will feel almost free. ... If the evening be fine and warm, there is nothing better in life than to lounge before the inn door in the sunset, or lean over the parapet of the bridge, to watch the weeds and the quick fishes. It is then, if ever, that you taste joviality to the full significance of that audacious word. Your muscles are so agreeably slack, you feel so clean and ...
— The Pocket R.L.S. - Being Favourite Passages from the Works of Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson
... structural decorations seem to have been the panelling of exterior walls in a manner resembling the Chaldan terrace-walls, and a form of parapet like a stepped cresting. There were no characteristic mouldings, architraves, capitals, or cornices. Nearly all the ornament was of the sort called applied, i.e., added after the completion of the structure itself. Pictures ...
— A Text-Book of the History of Architecture - Seventh Edition, revised • Alfred D. F. Hamlin
... would not express the situation of the manor-house; it stood in a hole, notwithstanding that the hole was full of beauty. From the spot which Grace had reached a stone could easily have been thrown over or into, the birds'-nested chimneys of the mansion. Its walls were surmounted by a battlemented parapet; but the gray lead roofs were quite visible behind it, with their gutters, laps, rolls, and skylights, together with incised letterings and ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... with loaded muskets paced the floor without a moment's pause day or night. Two other sentinels and a commissioned officer occupied the gunner's room, the door and window of which were securely fastened. Sentinels were stationed on the parapet overhead whose steady tramp day and night ...
— The Victim - A romance of the Real Jefferson Davis • Thomas Dixon
... the lake. Amber went out upon this to discover, separated from him by little more than half a mile of black water, the ghostly white walls of the Raj Mahal climbing in dim majesty to the stars. A single line of white lights outlined the topmost parapet; at the water's edge a single marble entrance was aglow; between the two, towers and terraces, hanging gardens and white scarp-like walls rose in darkened confusion unimaginable—or, rather, fell like a cascade of architecture, down the hillside ...
— The Bronze Bell • Louis Joseph Vance
... esplanade on the summit. Must he forever flee this pursuing Nemesis? Or should he hurl himself from the wall, once he gained the top? At the upper end of the incline he heard the low sound of voices. A priest and a young girl who sat there on the parapet rose as he approached. He stopped abruptly in front of them. "Wenceslas!" he exclaimed. ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... narrowed to the ravine-like street of the Cowgate, the market was spanned by the lofty, crowded arches of George IV Bridge. This high-hung, viaduct thoroughfare, that carried a double line of buildings within its parapet, leaped the gorge, from the tall, old, Gothic rookeries on High Street ridge, just below the Castle esplanade. It cleared the roofs of the tallest, oldest houses that swarmed up the steep banks from the Cowgate, and ran on, by easy descent, ...
— Greyfriars Bobby • Eleanor Atkinson
... the biscuit the Emperor was holding in his hand broke off, fell on the balcony parapet, and then to the ground. A coachman in a jerkin, who stood nearest, sprang forward and snatched it up. Several people in the crowd rushed at the coachman. Seeing this the Emperor had a plateful of biscuits brought him and began throwing them down from the balcony. Petya's ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... wall judiciously divided by string courses, and in the upper part on either side of the great window is a row of three small windows. At the east end is a small door leading into a pretty little Venetian balcony with stone parapet. The whole makes a very beautiful building, and the details and proportions are ...
— Frederic Lord Leighton - An Illustrated Record of His Life and Work • Ernest Rhys
... cloud-bank, greenish-brown below and yellow above, where it reflected the rays of the sinking sun. This ominous bank of vapor, impelled by a northern breeze, drifted swiftly across the space which separated the two lines. The French troops, staring over the top of their parapet at this curious screen which ensured them a temporary relief from fire, were observed suddenly to throw up their hands, to clutch at their throats, and to fall to the ground in the agonies of asphyxiation. ...
— Creative Chemistry - Descriptive of Recent Achievements in the Chemical Industries • Edwin E. Slosson
... guests; but they look as if they do. Those whom we saw bore every sign of easy conscience and good living; there were a pair of strong, rosy, greasy, lazy lay- brothers, dawdling in the sun on the convent terrace, or peering over the parapet into the street below, whose looks gave one a notion of ...
— Notes on a Journey from Cornhill to Grand Cairo • William Makepeace Thackeray
... side, leaning against the parapet, looking down at the water.... And from the water rose up Love, and Love fluttered down from the trees, and Love was borne along upon the night air. Ferdinand did not know what was happening to him; he felt Valentia by his side, and he drew closer to her, till ...
— Orientations • William Somerset Maugham
... Kathlyn stepped upon the parapet. A great volume of smoke obscured her for a moment. Out of the windows the vivid tongues of flame darted, flashing upward. She summoned all her courage and waited for the call of the man she loved. Inside a floor gave way with a crash and the collateral walls of the building swayed ominously. ...
— The Adventures of Kathlyn • Harold MacGrath
... as by magic. Every man took to shelter, and the place was desolate. The firing was rapid, regular, and apparently aimed to strike the Confederate lines, but ceased as suddenly as it had begun. General Custis Lee, whose tent was near by, observing the panic, stepped quietly up to the parapet of the works, folded his arms, and walked back and forth without uttering a word or looking to the right or to the left. His cool behavior, coupled with the silence of the guns, soon reassured the trembling clerks, and one ...
— Detailed Minutiae of Soldier life in the Army of Northern Virginia, 1861-1865 • Carlton McCarthy
... throughout Northamptonshire, which have any pretensions to size or beauty, have their tracery of this form, as, for instance, the east window of Higham Ferrers church, and many others. Above this window is an elegant pierced cross, probably of the same date as the window itself. The parapet of this chancel has nothing worthy of notice about it; it is like the rest of the building, of plain ...
— The New Guide to Peterborough Cathedral • George S. Phillips
... many important edifices, among which is the bell-tower of S. Maria del Fiore. The thickness of the walls is about ten feet; the height is two hundred and eighty feet. The cornice which supports the parapet is very bold and striking; the whole exterior is of Gothic design, inlaid with marble and mosaic, and the work may be considered one of the finest specimens ...
— Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects, and Curiosities of Art, (Vol. 2 of 3) • Shearjashub Spooner
... a shorter gun would not burn all the powder efficiently, "which," said Collado, "is a most grievous fault." However, small cannon of 18-caliber length were too short; the muzzle blast tended to destroy the embrasure of the parapet. For this reason, Spanish demicannon were as long as 24 calibers and the quarter-cannon ran up to 28. The 12-pounder quarter-cannon, incidentally, was "culverined" or reinforced so that it actually served in the ...
— Artillery Through the Ages - A Short Illustrated History of Cannon, Emphasizing Types Used in America • Albert Manucy
... not Time—but gunpowder," said Paul, leaning over a parapet of the wall and gazing at the abyss, ...
— A Ward of the Golden Gate • Bret Harte
... were sent into the trenches for twenty-four hours' instruction in trench warfare, with a battalion of regulars. This one-day course in trench fighting is preliminary to fitting new troops into their own particular sectors along the front. The facetious subalterns called it "The Parapet-etic School." Months later, we ourselves became members of the faculty, but on this first occasion we were marching up as the ...
— Kitchener's Mob - Adventures of an American in the British Army • James Norman Hall
... apartment. The windows opened on to the full extent of the lovely trim garden; immediately before the windows were plots of flowers in stiff, stately, stubborn little beds, each bed surrounded by a stone coping of its own; beyond, there was a low parapet wall on which stood urns and images, fawns, nymphs, satyrs, and a whole tribe of Pan's followers; and then again, beyond that, a beautiful lawn sloped away to a sunk fence which divided the garden from ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... him, but continued: "I at last decided that it was best to put an end to this misery, and rising with difficulty, I was approaching the parapet, when a gruff voice beside us exclaimed: 'What are you doing there?' I turned, thinking some police officer had spoken, but I was mistaken. By the light of the street lamp, I perceived a man who looked some thirty years of age, and had a frank and rather genial ...
— Baron Trigault's Vengeance - Volume 2 (of 2) • Emile Gaboriau
... crowds will gather on the viaduct, just above the principal railroad station, where they will stand for hours looking down over the parapet into the yards below. There will be smaller crowds on the heights of Ronheide, on the edge of the town, where the tracks enter the long tunnel under one of the hills that etch the ...
— Paths of Glory - Impressions of War Written At and Near the Front • Irvin S. Cobb
... next day passed, and next day yet, With still fresh cause to wait one day more Ere each leaped over the parapet. ...
— Robert Browning: How To Know Him • William Lyon Phelps
... without looking at those little oblong boxes, wide as the stones of the parapet, that all along the quays stimulate book lovers with posters saying, "Four Sous—Six Sous—Ten Sous—Twelve Sous—Thirty Sous?" These catacombs of glory have devoured many hours that belonged to the poets, to the philosophers and to ...
— A Street Of Paris And Its Inhabitant • Honore De Balzac
... Her lover is dead! She bewails him in the wildest grief, when suddenly she hears the voice of Sciarrone, and knows that Scarpia's murder has been discovered. A crowd rushes up the stairs with Spoletta at their head; the latter is about to precipitate himself upon Tosca, but she runs to the parapet and throws herself into space, with the cry: "Scarpia, may ...
— The Standard Operaglass - Detailed Plots of One Hundred and Fifty-one Celebrated Operas • Charles Annesley
... Florence touches another side of his theory. In itself, it is one of Browning's half-humorous poems; a pleasantly-composed piece, glancing here and glancing there, as a man's mind does when leaning over a hill-villa's parapet on a sunny morning in Florence. I have elsewhere quoted its beginning. It is a fine example of his nature-poetry: it creates the scenery and atmosphere of the poem; and the four lines with which the fourth verse closes sketch ...
— The Poetry Of Robert Browning • Stopford A. Brooke
... were not too Mohammedan, and he was not much shocked at seeing our pretty Parisians without veils over their faces. One day, which he had spent almost entirely at Saint-Cloud, I saw him go through his prayers. It was in the court of honor, on a broad parapet bordered with a stone balustrade. The ambassador had carpets spread on the side of the apartments, which were afterwards those of the King of Rome; and there he made his genuflexions, under the eyes of many people of ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... a life thus hedged up, limited by these high boundaries on either side, must be uninteresting, monotonous, or unfree. It is not so. The walls are blessings, like the parapet on a mountain road, that keeps the travellers from toppling over the face of the cliff. They are training-walls, as our hydro-graphical engineers talk about, which, built in the bed of a river, wholesomely confine its waters and ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... breathless before the sentinel who guarded the last gates and amiably shook his head at my attempt to enter. The gates were open, and I saw, across the wide parade-ground, or place d'armes, where groups of soldiers were standing and loitering about, the parapet wall of the fortress, whence I had hoped to see the day go down over the Rhine, the Moselle, and all the glorious region round their confluence. "Oh, do let me in," cried I in very emphatic English to the sentry, who gravely shook ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... on the roof, and when my inner and outer man was fully in order, I used to walk till a late hour of the day upon the paved house-top, now leaning against the parapet and looking up to the snow-covered mountains, whose shadowy forms could be made out even by moonlight, and upon the shadowy towers and domes of the city. Thus pleasant days and weeks flew on. Sometimes I rode ...
— Mexico and its Religion • Robert A. Wilson
... little sailors, in their childish hearts, bear such brave thoughts. Stooping over the parapet of the stockade they look off over the sea. They see more than the thin blue line of boundary between the sky and sea. The ocean does not interest them for its fine changing colors, nor the sky for the huge grotesque shapes of its clouds. What they see off there in space is something ...
— Our Children - Scenes from the Country and the Town • Anatole France
... parties. The English had a short but rugged height to scale, the French a longer but smoother path to traverse. The frigate's boats however, by a well-directed fire, assisted to impede their progress, and to thin their numbers as they went. On sprang the daring seamen. True Blue was the first over the parapet and into the fort. Sir Henry followed close to him. The French were almost at the ...
— True Blue • W.H.G. Kingston
... set to music by Mr Peter M'Leod, was published in a separate form, and the profits, which amounted to a considerable sum, given for the purpose of placing a parapet and railing around the monument of Burns on ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... walls. Owing to the kindness of Mr. Black, I have had that sensation. The gateways, without gates now of course, look like the arches of a bridge, and the walls like streets hung up out of the way. When one looks through a loop hole or over a parapet, there does a faint remembrance come up, like a ghost, of the stirring times that have wrapped themselves in the mist of years, and slid back into the past. I stood over the gates—this one and that one—trying to look down the Foyle toward the point where the ships lay beyond the boom, and to ...
— The Letters of "Norah" on her Tour Through Ireland • Margaret Dixon McDougall
... heroes tall Dislodging pinnacle and parapet Upon the tortoise creeping to the wall; [4] Lances ...
— The Early Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson • Tennyson
... the lane. The grounds stretch out a long way eastward, and one or two old cedars are still growing here. The eastern portion of the house has a fine front with fluted pilasters, with Ionic capitals running up to a stone parapet surmounted by urns. The windows are circular-headed, and those over the central doorway belong to a great room, 30 feet by 20, and 20 in height. The house, though much altered, is in its origin part of a very old building named Butterwick House, built by Edmund, third Baron ...
— Hammersmith, Fulham and Putney - The Fascination of London • Geraldine Edith Mitton
... was two stories high on the side fronting the slope that led to the river, and another section—in what appeared to be the rear, facing the bunkhouse, also had a second story—a narrow, boxlike, frowning section which had the appearance of a blockhouse on the parapet wall of a fort. ...
— 'Drag' Harlan • Charles Alden Seltzer
... again By castle Gurnion, where the glorious King Had on his cuirass worn our Lady's Head, Carved of one emerald centered in a sun Of silver rays, that lightened as he breathed; And at Caerleon had he helped his lord, When the strong neighings of the wild white Horse Set every gilded parapet shuddering; And up in Agned-Cathregonion too, And down the waste sand-shores of Trath Treroit, Where many a heathen fell; 'and on the mount Of Badon I myself beheld the King Charge at the head of all his Table Round, And all his legions crying Christ and him, And break them; and I saw him, ...
— Idylls of the King • Alfred, Lord Tennyson
... beside Samoval. "A duelling sword!" Then he looked searchingly about him until his eyes caught the gleam of the other blade near the wall, where himself he had dropped it. "Ah!" he said, and went to pick it up. "Very odd!" He looked up at the balcony, over the parapet of which his wife was leaning. "Did you see anything, my dear?" he asked, and neither Tremayne nor she detected the faint note of wicked mockery in ...
— The Snare • Rafael Sabatini
... she sat musing by a forest fountain, dressed in a robe of yellow silk, wantonly plucking the flowers which grew on the mossy parapet of the spring and binding them into a bouquet ...
— Legends & Romances of Brittany • Lewis Spence
... crossed. All the engineers and all the trench pumps in the world will not keep a trench decently dry when it rains for nine hours in ten and when the trench is the lowest bit of country for miles around. The men can do nothing but "carry on"—the parapet must be kept in repair whatever the weather; the sandbags must be filled however wet and sticky the earth. The mud may nearly drag a man's boot off at his every step—indeed, it often does; but the man must go on digging, shovelling, lining the trench with tins, logs, bricks, and planks in the hope ...
— Mud and Khaki - Sketches from Flanders and France • Vernon Bartlett
... the causeway, and some even to the very middle of the street. Slops of all sorts, and from all parts of the houses, were emptied into the street before the front doors! The ashes were disposed of in a very peculiar manner. Each house had, on the edge of the parapet opposite, an old flour-barrel, or something of the sort, into which were thrown ashes, sweepings, fish-bones, dead rats, and all kinds of refuse. A dead rat very frequently garnished the top of the barrel. This was the order of things, not in small by-streets only, but ...
— American Scenes, and Christian Slavery - A Recent Tour of Four Thousand Miles in the United States • Ebenezer Davies
... Parapet blown in. And when they got him out he was—hurt some." (The Sergeant remembered that one must not ...
— The Window-Gazer • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay
... him there. He was unharmed as yet, and he had the great repeating rifle which should be a competent answer to arrows. Some loose stones were lying in the hollow, and he cautiously built them into a low parapet, which increased his protection. Then, peeping over the stones, he tried to discover the location of his enemy or enemies, if they should be plural, but he saw only the valley below with its touch of sheltered green, ...
— The Great Sioux Trail - A Story of Mountain and Plain • Joseph Altsheler
... stone wound upward, guarded by an iron handrail. Jenny led the way and Mark followed her until two hundred steps were climbed and they stood on the terrace above. It was fifty yards long and covered with sea gravel. Two little brass cannon thrust their muzzles over the parapet to seaward and the central space of grass about the flagpole was neatly surrounded with ...
— The Red Redmaynes • Eden Phillpotts
... School Close, sunny and green, The runner beside him, the stand by the parapet wall, The distant tape, and the crowd roaring between, ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... slope about half a mile to the east, where the high explosives are dealt with. The foundry lies hidden in the depths between, the tops of its chimneys sprouting like huge skittles into the middle distance. Across the crest runs a platform of concrete, with a parapet which suggests a fortification, because there is a huge cannon of the obsolete Woolwich Infant pattern peering across it at the town. The cannon is mounted on an experimental gun carriage: possibly the original model of the Undershaft disappearing rampart gun ...
— Major Barbara • George Bernard Shaw |
