"Prismatic" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Pyrotechnist. For the choicest piece in urban gardens, where Catharine-wheels on festival nights spurt sidereal spray, and rockets shot into gold-riddled skies fall back in prismatic showers, ...
— Chantecler - Play in Four Acts • Edmond Rostand
... The author has seen an opal in Pesth weighing fourteen carats, for which five thousand dollars were refused. They can be purchased at Queretaro at from ten dollars to ten hundred; for the latter price a really splendid gem may be had, emitting a grand display of prismatic tints, and all aglow with fire. The natives, notwithstanding the seeming abundance of the stones, hold very tenaciously to the valuation which they first place upon them. Of course, really choice specimens are always ...
— Aztec Land • Maturin M. Ballou
... way—almost another Brantome!—engrossed in his pessimistic peroration, his visage of an urbane, successful man full of complicated satisfactions and regrets. Behind him the staircase was suddenly bathed in sunshine; all the panes of stained glass became sparkling and rich; and a sheaf of prismatic rays stretched down, through the gloom of the hall, ...
— Sacrifice • Stephen French Whitman
... ascended may descry those ascending. On the second story is a corridor, with moulded juttings and fretwork overhead; these are hung with festoons of jasmines and other delicate flowers, extending its whole length, and lighted by globular lamps, the prismatic ornaments of which shed their soft glows on the fixtures beneath. They invest it with the appearance of a bower decorated with buds and blossoms. From this, on the right, a spacious arched door, surmounted by a semi-circle of stained glass containing devices of the Muses and other allegorical ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... sister spirit, Spring, Pausing above the earth, sees every hue Of her prismatic crown, reflected true In forests and in fields, and fledgling's wing, So thou dost see thy spirit glorying With faith, that man is more than Nature's spew— In human spirit that, from beauty drew First breath to know that ...
— Freedom, Truth and Beauty • Edward Doyle
... doubtless, to aid expulsion. It was six inches long and five inches broad and weighed 22 ounces. It contained a piece of gunbarrel four inches long, a mother-screw steel, a screw-driver, a saw of steel for cutting wood four inches long, another saw for cutting metal, a boring syringe, a prismatic file, a half-franc piece and four one-franc pieces tied together with thread, a piece of thread, and a piece of tallow, the latter presumably for greasing the instruments. On investigation it was found that these conic ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... original tints, and the lofty conical domes seem to be huge sparry crystalizations, hung with dropping stalactites, rather than any work of the human hand. Each of these domes is composed of five thousand separate pieces, and the pendent prismatic blocks, colored and gilded, gradually resolve themselves, as you gaze, into the most intricate and elegant designs. But you must study long ere you have won all the secret of their beauty. To comprehend them, one should spend a whole day, lying on his back, under each one. Mateo spread his ...
— The Lands of the Saracen - Pictures of Palestine, Asia Minor, Sicily, and Spain • Bayard Taylor
... prismatic spectrum (b. Fig. 3.) to fall upon any surface (as at c.) prepared with a sensitive photographic compound, we shall find that the chemical effect produced bears no relation to the intensity of the light of any particular colored ray, but that, on ...
— The History and Practice of the Art of Photography • Henry H. Snelling
... while he is trying to recollect a name; and he will find the process completely analogous. Most of my readers will have observed a small water-insect on the surface of rivulets, which throws a cinque-spotted shadow fringed with prismatic colours on the sunny bottom of the brook; and will have noticed, how the little animal wins its way up against the stream, by alternate pulses of active and passive motion, now resisting the current, and now yielding to it in order to gather strength and a momentary fulcrum for a further ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... rose mild and bright, with a promise of summer in the air. The sunlight slanted joyously down Lily's street, mellowed the blistered house-front, gilded the paintless railings of the door-step, and struck prismatic glories from the panes ...
— House of Mirth • Edith Wharton
... the proper kind of brain, the nucleus has been dropped into it, the pearl begins to grow, and to assume prismatic hues. So he is happy, and even the frozen-out angler might be happy if he could write a novel in the absence of salmon. Unluckily, my brain is not capable of this aesthetic malady, and to save my life, or to "milk a fine warm cow rain," as the Zulus say, I could ...
— Adventures among Books • Andrew Lang
... impatient imagination a building, a dome of crystal, across the translucent surface of which flushes of the most glorious and pure prismatic colours pass and fade and change. In the centre of this transparent chameleon-tinted dome is a circular white marble basin filled with some clear, mobile, amber liquid, and in this plunge and float strange beings. Are ...
— Certain Personal Matters • H. G. Wells
... the face of the plank, and to a parallel width. Also, a new method of forming the Easings of the Rail by a gauge; preceded by some necessary Problems in Practical Geometry, with the Sections of Prismatic Solids. Illustrated by 29 plates. By R.A. CUPPER, Architect, author of "The Practical Stair-Builder's ...
— Mechanical Drawing Self-Taught • Joshua Rose
... the afternoon sunlight, shimmering in its glory of prismatic colours, on one side reflecting the rocks and the pines that lined the shore and the great peaks that stood further back, and the other lapping the grasses and reeds that edged its waters and joined it to the prairie. A gentle breeze now and then breathed across the lake, breaking into myriad fragments ...
— The Prospector - A Tale of the Crow's Nest Pass • Ralph Connor
... explorations. He was a demon note-taker, and he had a passion for being equipped so that he could cope with any observation which might turn up. Thus Old Griff on a sledge journey might have notebooks protruding from every pocket, and hung about his person, a sundial, a prismatic compass, a sheath knife, a pair of binoculars, a geological hammer, chronometer, pedometer, camera, aneroid and other items of surveying gear, as well as his goggles and mitts. And in his hand might be an ice-axe which he used as he went along to the possible ...
— The Worst Journey in the World, Volumes 1 and 2 - Antarctic 1910-1913 • Apsley Cherry-Garrard
... Russian, vast and disquieting, I refuse to leave all, including the blankets and the pillow, to follow him into the gelid tranquillity of the upper air, where even the colours are prismatic spicules of ice, to brood upon the erratic orbit of the poor mud-ball below called earth. I know it is my world also; but I cannot help that. It is too late, after a busy day, and at that hour, to begin overtime ...
— Old Junk • H. M. Tomlinson
... of velvet." Easelmann followed him with a look half stealthy, half comical, as he saw the unusual vivacity of the reigning beauty when in his immediate society. Her voice took instinctively a softer and more musical tone; she showered her glances upon him, dazzling and prismatic as the rays from her diamonds; she seemed determined to captivate him without the tedious process of a siege. And, in truth, he must have been an unimpressible man that could steel himself against the influence of a woman who satisfied every critical sense, who piqued all his ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 15, January, 1859 • Various
... Sunday, I read through and made extracts from the Gospel of St. John. It confirmed me in my belief that about Jesus we must believe no one but Himself, and that what we have to do is to discover the true image of the Founder behind all the prismatic refractions through which it comes to us, and which alter it more or less. A ray of heavenly light traversing human life, the message of Christ has been broken into a thousand rainbow colors, and carried in a thousand directions. It is the historical task of Christianity to assume with every succeeding ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... curves, and returning again—again to shoot away. Our meadow at the bottom of the orchard is like a small frozen sea, now; and that is the present scene of our heroic games. Sometimes, in the splendor of the dying light, we seem sporting upon transparent gold, so prismatic becomes the ice; and the snow takes opaline hues, from the gems that float above as clouds. It is eminently the hour to see objects, just after the sun has disappeared. Oh, such oxygen as we inhale! Often other skaters appear,—young men and ...
— Memories of Hawthorne • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop
... intensely bright double rainbow is relieved against the departing thunder-cloud. The freshly wet grass is all radiant through and through with the new sunshine; full noon at its purest, the very donkeys bathed in the rain-dew, and prismatic with it under their rough breasts as they graze; the weeds at the girl's side as bright as a Byzantine enamel, and inlaid with blue veronica; her upturned face all aglow with the light that seeks its way through her wet eyelashes (wet only with ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... the sphere seemed all in one piece, with the central objects cast inside like a toy ship in a sealed bottle. Then a mathematically precise ring of prismatic reflections showed me that the top third of the ball was a separate piece, fitting conically down like the tapered glass stopper of a monstrous perfume bottle. The handle on the top was for the purpose of lifting this giant's teapot lid, and allowing entrance ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science September 1930 • Various
... birds shook themselves in the hedges, arose, and twittered; the lane showed all its white features, and Tess showed hers, still whiter. The huge pool of blood in front of her was already assuming the iridescence of coagulation; and when the sun rose a hundred prismatic hues were reflected from it. Prince lay alongside, still and stark; his eyes half open, the hole in his chest looking scarcely large enough to have let out ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy
... each having its own distinctive character; then, after a short interval, the search-lights were suddenly flashed on to the city of Sirapion; the beautiful buildings with their domes, towers, and minarets looking exquisitely ethereal as they were bathed in the beams of the glowing and ever-changing prismatic light. The beams were next directed downwards upon the assembly, and we gained a truer appreciation of the immense numbers that ...
— To Mars via The Moon - An Astronomical Story • Mark Wicks
... through the burning noonday, when the shadows fall black and sharp and circular, in dwarfed patches about our feet; on through the cooler hours of the afternoon, when the sun is a burning disc low down in the western sky, or, hiding behind a bank of clouds, throws wide-stretched arms of prismatic colour high up into the heavens; on through the hour of sunset, when all the world is a flaming blaze of gold and crimson; and so into the cool still night, when the moon floods us with a sea of light only one degree less dazzling than that ...
— In Court and Kampong - Being Tales and Sketches of Native Life in the Malay Peninsula • Hugh Clifford
... discipline of thought was concerned, I think I may say my education was a complete failure. For this I had only my own smattering and desultory habit of mind to blame and also a vivid troublesome sense of the beauty of it all. The charm of the prismatic fringe round the edges made juggling with the lens too tempting, and a clear persistent focus was never attained. Considered (oddly enough) by my mates as the pattern of a diligent scholar, I was in reality as idle as the idlest of them, which is ...
— Plum Pudding - Of Divers Ingredients, Discreetly Blended & Seasoned • Christopher Morley
... predetermined position both vertically and longitudinally, and the charge so fixed in its containing case that the centre of gravity cannot shift. The difficulty of ensuring this with a large torpedo charge built up from a number of discs and segments is well known. Even with plain cylindrical or prismatic charges a marked saving in the process of production is effected by this new system. The charges being in one block they are more easily handled for the usual periodical examination, and they do not break ...
— Nitro-Explosives: A Practical Treatise • P. Gerald Sanford
... into Space by Telescopes, with a comparative Determination of the Extent of that Power in Natural Vision, and in Telescopes of various Sizes and Constructions; illustrated by select Observations.—Investigation of the Powers of the Prismatic Colours to heat and illuminate Objects; with Remarks that prove the different Refrangibility of radiant Heat; to which is added an Inquiry into the Method of viewing the Sun advantageously with Telescopes of large Apertures and high magnifying Powers.—Experiments on the Refrangibility ...
— Biographies of Distinguished Scientific Men • Francois Arago
... there is little food for censure or hatred; it teaches rather self-knowledge and self-respect. Neither the eye nor the mind can see itself, unless reflected upon that which it resembles. The drama, so long as it continues to express poetry, is as a prismatic and many-sided mirror, which collects the brightest rays of human nature and divides and reproduces them from the simplicity of these elementary forms, and touches them with majesty and beauty, and multiplies all that it reflects, and ...
— A Defence of Poetry and Other Essays • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... Orestes's bubble swelled, and grew, and glittered every day with fresh prismatic radiance; while Hypatia sat at home, with a heavy heart, writing her ode to Venus Urania, and ...
— Hypatia - or, New Foes with an Old Face • Charles Kingsley
... The helical construction of the filament made it possible to confine the filament of a high-intensity tungsten lamp in a small space and for the first time a high degree of control of the light of street lamps was possible. Prismatic "refractors" were designed, somewhat on the principle of the lighthouse refractor, so that the light would be emitted largely just below the horizontal. This type of distribution builds up the illumination at distant points between successive street lamps, which is very desirable ...
— Artificial Light - Its Influence upon Civilization • M. Luckiesh
... protection; but when we are reminded by Haeckel that not only the Medusae, but many floating Mollusca, crustaceans, and even small oceanic fishes partake of this same glass-like appearance, often accompanied by prismatic colours, we can hardly doubt that they thus escape the notice of pelagic birds and other enemies. M. Giard is also convinced (1. 'Archives de Zoolog. Exper.' Oct. 1872, p. 563.) that the bright tints of certain sponges and ascidians serve as a protection. Conspicuous colours ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin
... are shorter, narrower, and more cylindrical, and the branches are terminated by two lanceolate tags, which are not present in the Australian species, in which latter the cells also are wider, longer, and prismatic, or subhexagonal, with ...
— Narrative Of The Voyage Of H.M.S. Rattlesnake, Commanded By The Late Captain Owen Stanley, R.N., F.R.S. Etc. During The Years 1846-1850. Including Discoveries And Surveys In New Guinea, The Louisiade • John MacGillivray
... two boulders, and as I lay wedged and bent on their up-bulging sides, beguiling the hard, cold time in gazing into the starry sky and across the sparkling bay, magnificent upright bars of light in bright prismatic colors suddenly appeared, marching swiftly in close succession along the northern horizon from west to east as if in diligent haste, an auroral display very different from any I had ever before beheld. Once long ago in Wisconsin I saw the ...
— Travels in Alaska • John Muir
... advance to look for water, which we found in a rough stream-bed, and brought the party to it. This afternoon went with Jemmy to the summit of Yeadie, and took a round of angles. The local attraction was so great on this hill that the prismatic compass was useless; luckily I had my pocket sextant with me, by which I obtained the included angles. From the summit of Yeadie the view was very extensive. The great lake that we had already followed ...
— Explorations in Australia • John Forrest
... feet in length with twice the ordinary speed of a locomotive. So rapid is its descent that it leaves a trail of smoke behind it, and sometimes kindles a fire among the slivers along its way. Ah! it strikes the water! In an instant there is an inverted Niagara in the air, resplendent with prismatic and transparent ...
— The Lake of the Sky • George Wharton James
... themselves are not enough to hang a man, but a prismatic compass assuredly is. In a Pathan country murder, rapine, and cattle-lifting are comparatively venial offences, little more indeed than instances of lightheartedness; but to draw a map of the country is worse than the seven deadly sins rolled into one, and short will be ...
— The Story of the Guides • G. J. Younghusband
... then recrystallized several times from petroleum-ether. In order to quickly dissolve the bitter substance, it should be carefully melted in a flask, and double its volume of ether gradually added; on its cooling, we obtain beautiful prismatic crystals, which attain a length of 1 cm., and become perfectly pure after four or five crystallizations. The mother solutions must be speedily evaporated if we still wish to obtain crystals; after a time they will only furnish a ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 447, July 26, 1884 • Various
... are, and how wicked! and what a lovely green! I will never wear them: they are prismatic: now, if ever I am to be a Christian, I had better begin: everything has a beginning. Oh vanity of women, you stick at nothing. A thousand innocent lives stolen to make one dress!" And she put one hand before her eyes, and with the ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... unctuous gesture grew menacing, brutal. Don Anastasio twitched and trembled before it. Under the towering and prismatic Fra Diavolo he cowered, an insignificant figure. The unrelieved black of his attire accorded with his meagre frame. It was secretive, miserly. A black stock covered a withered collar. A dingy silk tile was tightly packed over a rusted black wig. Boots hid ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
... hollows, while the beautiful beryl blue of the larger bergs gave a delicate colouring to the dazzling scene. Words cannot describe the intense glitter that characterized everything. Every point seemed a diamond, every edge sent forth a gleam of light, and many of the masses reflected the rich prismatic colours of the rainbow. It seemed as if the sun himself had been multiplied in order to add to the excessive brilliancy, for he was surrounded by parhelia, or sun-dogs, as the men called them. This peculiarity ...
— The World of Ice • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... drive as they neared the north-west and the familiar landmarks of his childhood came into sight, flooded with the June sunshine—the ruined mine-shafts staring up so starkly, the glory of white cattle in the golden light, the first glimpse of the pale roofs of Cloom itself, prismatic as a wood-pigeon's plumage, all these things struck at his heart with a keener shock than did anything personal, and made thought of his mother sink away from him. Behind the cluster of grey buildings he saw the parti-coloured fields stretching away—green pasture, brown ...
— Secret Bread • F. Tennyson Jesse
... pronounced lamination is that parallel to the orthopinacoid; another, less distinct, is parallel to the basal plane, and a third parallel to the plane of symmetry; these planes of secondary parting are in addition to the ordinary prismatic cleavage of all pyroxenes. Frequently the material is interlaminated with a rhombic pyroxene (bronzite) or with an amphibole (smaragdite or uralite), the latter being an alteration product of ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 3 - "Destructors" to "Diameter" • Various
... of a student of nature after all, or he would not have called worms "nasty things," but have taken more notice of them as they were turned out of their damp bed, and seen that they were clothed with a skin whose surface reflected colours of prismatic hue, as bright and perfect as those seen upon some pearly shells. He would have seen how wonderfully the worms were constructed for the fulfilment of their apportioned position in the animal kingdom; how, without legs, or the peculiar twist of the snake, they crept swiftly over the ground by ...
— Hollowdell Grange - Holiday Hours in a Country Home • George Manville Fenn
... I next called on Rumanika I gave him a Vautier's binocular and prismatic compass; on which he politely remarked he was afraid he was robbing me of everything. More compliments went round, and then he asked if it was true we could open a man's skull, look at his brains, and close ...
— The Discovery of the Source of the Nile • John Hanning Speke
... Silurian group, from the Aymestry limestone to near the bottom of the Llandeilo rocks. Another coral, the Favosites Gothlandica (Figure 537), is also met with in profusion in large hemispherical masses, which break up into columnar and prismatic fragments, like that here figured (Figure 537, b). Another common form in the Wenlock limestone is the Omphyma turbinatum (Figure 538), which, like many of its modern companions, reminds us of some cup-corals; but all the Silurian genera belong to the palaeozoic type before mentioned (Chapter ...
— The Student's Elements of Geology • Sir Charles Lyell
... 78deg 23', whilst that between c and m is 90deg. The mineral has a very perfect cleavage parallel to the faces c and m, and the cleavage surfaces are perfectly smooth and bright. The crystals of prismatic habit represented in figs. 2 and 3 are bounded by the domes d and f and the basal pinacoid c; fig. 4 is a plan of a still more complex crystal. Twinning is represented only by twin-lamellae, which are parallel to the planes m and f and are of ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 3 - "Banks" to "Bassoon" • Various
... forth but an indifferent promise of a comfortable night's rest. Toward sunset, however, the storm ceased as suddenly as it began. A bright streak of clear red sky appeared above the western verge of the prairie, the horizontal rays of the sinking sun streamed through it and glittered in a thousand prismatic colors upon the dripping groves and the prostrate grass. The pools in the tent dwindled and sunk into ...
— The Oregon Trail • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... difficulty they pursued their advance. The lava was more glassy and had a look of greater transparency, as if it had been fused at an exceptionally high temperature; and the crystals of alum, sulphur, and other minerals with which it abounded, reflected the light in bright prismatic colours. In some places the transparency was complete, and beneath it might easily be seen the long streaks of that fibrous kind of lava, connected with a superstition of the natives, which is known ...
— Celebrated Women Travellers of the Nineteenth Century • W. H. Davenport Adams
... requirements of a beam are stiffness and strength. The formulae for the modulus of elasticity (E) or measure of stiffness of a rectangular prismatic simple beam loaded at the centre and resting freely on supports at either ...
— The Mechanical Properties of Wood • Samuel J. Record
... his sister's country, where everything was of crystal, shining with the splendour of the sun itself. At the end of a gleaming pathway rose a castle built entirely of crystal, its innumerable domes and turrets reflecting the light in a thousand prismatic hues. ...
— Legends & Romances of Brittany • Lewis Spence
... your wheels were winding it up. The house rushes on with it; grows nearer; details emerge. You see the great square chimney; the tiny window-panes, six to a sash, some of them turned by time, not into the purple of Beacon Hill but into a kind of prismatic sheen like oil on water; the bit of classic egg-and-dart border on the door-cap; the aged texture of the weathered clapboard; the graceful arch of the wide woodshed entrance, on the kitchen side; the giant ...
— Penguin Persons & Peppermints • Walter Prichard Eaton
... smallest party will go back into Catholicism; the other will go forward into Rationalism. And then, after a succession of eventful years, a political revolution will hurl the Catholic superstructure to the earth, and the prismatic bow of promise will span the heavens. The children of earth will then be comparatively free and happy! for the millennial epoch will have arrived; and there will be something like a realization of peace on earth, and ...
— A Brief Commentary on the Apocalypse • Sylvester Bliss
... picturesque variety, be the most attractive. The palm, perhaps, would be given to the fish-mongers, with their exuberant exhibitions, grouped with skill, startling often with strange forms, dazzling with prismatic tints, and breathing the invigorating redolence of ...
— Lothair • Benjamin Disraeli
... Aristide's arm produced prismatic chaos among a tray-full of drinks which the waiter was bringing to the family party at the next table. "It's imbecile," he cried, as soon as order was apologetically and pecuniarily restored. "You are a little mutton going to have ...
— The Joyous Adventures of Aristide Pujol • William J. Locke
... studies for a new understanding of the prismatic phenomenon. The secret of the rainbow. Intimation of new possibilities of experimental research guided by the new conception of ...
— Man or Matter • Ernst Lehrs
... in Rome. Marble and mosaic, alabaster and malachite, lapis and porphyry, incrust it from pavement to cornice and flash back their polished lights at each other with such a splendour of effect that you seem to stand at the heart of some immense prismatic crystal. One has to come to Italy to know marbles and love them. I remember the fascination of the first great show of them I met in Venice—at the Scalzi and Gesuiti. Colour has in no other form so cool and unfading a purity and lustre. Softness ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... they had, no doubt, seen something the higher and rosier-tinted clouds had missed; something of the ruin that was going on farther down the round of the sphere. These clouds the captain studied closely, especially a prismatic sun-dog that glowed like a bit of rainbow snipped off by wind-scissors, and one or two dirt spots ...
— The Tides of Barnegat • F. Hopkinson Smith
... music changes, Like a prismatic glass, It takes the light and ranges Through all the moods that pass; Dissects the common carnival Of passions and regrets, And gives the world a glimpse of all ...
— Alexander's Bridge and The Barrel Organ • Willa Cather and Alfred Noyes
... irreclaimable as that through which Childe Roland journeyed in quest of the Dark Tower; lying, too, in a temperature so fiery that it coagulated the blood in the veins, and stopped the beating of the heart. Underfoot were fine dust, and whitened bones; the air was prismatic and magical, ever conjuring up phantom pictures, whose characteristic was that they were at the farthest remove from any possible reality. The azure sky descended and became a lake; the pulsations of the atmosphere translated themselves into the rhythmic lapse of waves; spikes of sage-brush ...
— The Golden Fleece • Julian Hawthorne
... and mine, loose windrows, little corpses, Froth, snowy white, and bubbles, (See, from my dead lips the ooze exuding at last, See, the prismatic colors glistening and rolling,) Tufts of straw, sands, fragments, Buoy'd hither from many moods, one contradicting another, From the storm, the long calm, the darkness, the swell, Musing, pondering, a breath, a briny tear, a dab of liquid or soil, Up just as much out ...
— Leaves of Grass • Walt Whitman
... dragoons, that he had spent a large fortune, and now condescended to take a part in periodical literature with the culture of a gentleman and the grace of an amateur. How this vapid charlatan in a braided surtout and prismatic necktie could so long veil his real character from, and retain the regard of, such men as Procter and Talfourd and Coleridge is amazing. Lamb calls him the "kind and light-hearted Janus," and thought he liked him. The contributors often spoke ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields
... waterproof sheet, three days' rations of biscuits and preserved meat, together with an emergency ration in a sealed tin, and (for those with rifles) 200 rounds of ammunition. Officers carried revolvers, field glasses, prismatic compass, and various other extras. They were also allowed to place their valises on the train but, according to rumour, it was doubtful if they would ever reach ...
— The 28th: A Record of War Service in the Australian Imperial Force, 1915-19, Vol. I • Herbert Brayley Collett
... and not a fossil animal. The Haplodon rufus is a small burrowing rodent, valued by the Indians both for its flesh and its skin, of which from twenty to thirty are sewn together to form a robe; the teeth are rootless, simple, and prismatic, the surface of each being surrounded by ...
— Natural History of the Mammalia of India and Ceylon • Robert A. Sterndale
... thoughts were the seed corn of systems. His pupils were the teachers of centuries. Each bump of his brain was the nucleus of a philosophical school. Hardly had he left the world, than the strong and simple light he shed was scattered in various hues by the prismatic minds that had surrounded him or that succeeded him; and in almost every case,—as so often happens when the strands of the solar beam are brilliantly dishevelled,—the actinic ...
— Starr King in California • William Day Simonds
... mountains looked very close from the crest of La Bellissima and of a singular transparency and variety of hue. It was as if the white masses of cloud sailing low overhead flung down great splashes of color from prismatic stores stolen from the sun. There was a vivid pale green on the long sweep of a rounding slope, deep violet and pale purple in dimple and hollow, red showing through green on a tongue of land running down from the north; and on the lower ridges and little islands, pale and dark blue, ...
— Rezanov • Gertrude Atherton
... exalted conception. The rising and setting of the sun at sea is not nearly so striking a spectacle as the same phenomenon in a rocky landscape. At sea the sky is generally cloudless in the evening, and the sun gradually sinks, without refraction of rays or prismatic play of colours, into its ocean-bed, to pursue its unchanging course the next day. How infinitely more grand is this spectacle when seen from the "Rigi Kulm" in Switzerland! There it is really a spectacle, in contemplating ...
— A Visit to the Holy Land • Ida Pfeiffer
... Lifting up his ruddy face, a ray of sunshine, filtering through the tremulous leaves of the cottonwoods, fell full upon his chestnut curls, and each drop of water on his hair became of a sudden a gem of prismatic ...
— Bunch Grass - A Chronicle of Life on a Cattle Ranch • Horace Annesley Vachell
... elongation of the jaws, upon the sides of which are found the rudiments of mandibles and downy palpi; the inferior wings retained to the superior by a stiff hair; antennae in the form of an elongated club, prismatic; abdomen pointed, The Death's—headed Sphinx has occasioned much terror among the vulgar, at times, by the melancholy kind of cry which it utters, and the insignia of death which it wears upon ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 5 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... also in quartz of nearly every colour and appearance, saccharoidal, crystalline, nay, even in clear glass-like six-sided prismatic crystals, and associated with silver, copper, lead, arsenic, iron as sulphide, oxide, carbonate, and tungstate, antimony, bismuth, nickel, zinc, lead, and other metals in one form or another; in slate, quartzite, mica schist, granite, diorite, porphyry, felsite, calcite, dolomite, common carbonate ...
— Getting Gold • J. C. F. Johnson
... plumed fan and listening to the orchestra from the hamlet of Saint-Lys. The orchestra—two violins, a reed-pipe, a biniou, and a harp—were playing away with might and main. Through the bay-window she could see the crystal chandeliers glittering with prismatic light, the slender gilded chairs, the cabinets and canapes, golden, backed with tapestry; and everywhere massed banks of ferns and lilies. They were dancing in there; she saw Lady Hesketh floating in the determined grip of Cecil Page, she saw ...
— Lorraine - A romance • Robert W. Chambers
... light, And deck with lambent flames the shrine of Night. So, warm'd and kindled by meridian skies, 180 And view'd in darkness with dilated eyes, BOLOGNA'S chalks with faint ignition blaze, BECCARI'S shells emit prismatic rays. So to the sacred Sun in MEMNON's fane, Spontaneous concords quired the matin strain; 185 —Touch'd by his orient beam, responsive rings The living lyre, and vibrates all it's strings; Accordant ailes the tender tones prolong, And holy echoes swell ...
— The Botanic Garden - A Poem in Two Parts. Part 1: The Economy of Vegetation • Erasmus Darwin
... dangerous impulses of complete honesty, "before we were married, while we were engaged, we had an impracticable romantic attraction for each other. I know that I thought of you all the time, day and night; and, just because you existed, the whole world was full of prismatic colors; it was as though an orchestra were playing continually and I were floating on the finest music. You were like a figure in heaven that drew me ...
— Cytherea • Joseph Hergesheimer
... of the objects, and is thrown like a translucent veil between our eyes and matter. One can see the vibrations of the waves of the solar spectrum, drawn by the arabesque of the spots of the seven prismatic hues juxtaposed with infinite subtlety; and this vibration is that of heat, of atmospheric vitality. The silhouettes melt into the sky; the shadows are lights where certain tones, the blue, the purple, the green and the orange, predominate, and it is the proportional quantity of ...
— The French Impressionists (1860-1900) • Camille Mauclair
... art for art's sake, a girl whose wholesome, courageous temperament probably unfitted her to achieve distinction in the artistic career which she had mapped out for herself. So the super-Alpine glories surrounding that inland sea, and the prismatic hues flashing from many a glacier and rainbow of cataract mist, left her unmoved, solely because the rough-hewn Indian craft bobbing by the side of the great ship called to mind the extraordinary conditions under which she and ...
— The Captain of the Kansas • Louis Tracy
... moccasins of fawn skin, also beautifully embroidered. But the triumph of forest art, as displayed on his person, lay in the wonderful painting of his entire body, which was covered with intricate designs in the most vivid colors on a background of black, and the prismatic effect was so bewilderingly gorgeous, that, as Christie said to Donald, "it was enough to mortify ...
— At War with Pontiac - The Totem of the Bear • Kirk Munroe and J. Finnemore
... 1) a delectable episode. Over a murmurous accompanying figure given out by violas, 'cellos, harp, and horn, a clarinet sings a variant of the Melisande theme. The harmonic changes are kaleidoscopic, the orchestral color of prismatic variety. The lovely ...
— Debussy's Pelleas et Melisande - A Guide to the Opera with Musical Examples from the Score • Lawrence Gilman
... a historical and scientific point of view, the whole country lying about the basanite roots of Snaefell is most interesting. At the feet of its southern slopes are to be seen wonderful ranges of columnar basalt, prismatic caverns, ancient craters, and specimens of almost every formation that can result from the agency of subterranean fires; while each glen, and bay, and headland, in the neighbourhood, teems with traditionary lore. On the north-western side of ...
— Letters From High Latitudes • The Marquess of Dufferin (Lord Dufferin)
... weeks beside Lake Viedma, which had not before been visited by white men for a century, and which was rarely visited even by Indians. One morning, just before sunrise, he left his camp by the south shore of the lake, to make a topographical sketch of the lake. He was unarmed, but carried a prismatic compass in a leather case with a strap. It was cold, and he wrapped his poncho of guanaco- hide round his neck and head. He had walked a few hundred yards, when a puma, a female, sprang on him from behind and knocked ...
— Through the Brazilian Wilderness • Theodore Roosevelt
... stage, when nearly all the prismatic colours are blended on its surface, is often converted by the natives into a superb and striking head-dress. The principal fibre traversing its length being split open a convenient distance, and the elastic ...
— Typee - A Romance of the South Sea • Herman Melville
... half-past three, P.M., an interesting optical appearance presented itself to our view. We had turned towards the east, and the sun shone on our backs, when we saw a very bright rainbow described on the mist before us. The bow, of beautifully distinct prismatic colours, formed about two-thirds of a circle, the extremities of which appeared to rest on the lower portion of the mountain. In the centre of this incomplete circle, there was described a luminous disc, surrounded by the prismatic colours displayed in concentric rings. On ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, No. 382, October 1847 • Various
... garnet, upon the sea. It is as if an aurora had fallen from Arctic skies, living, changeful, evanescent, athwart sea, plain, and mountain. Here is sore temptation for the colorist; more, perhaps, than by the wealth and combination of tints, he is affected by their celestial quality. All is prismatic, or like those hues produced by the interference of rays of light as seen in the colors of stars. Gorgeous as are these phenomena, they are also as transitory; and although the scene is repeated, it is with such subtile and such great changes as to remove it from the grasp of the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 52, February, 1862 • Various
... green straw hat, like the new willow leaves, across the blueness of her eyes, and an innumerably ruffled and flounced waist of thinnest batiste. A square, deep emerald hung from a platinum chain about her neck; and a hand, stripped of its thick white glove, showed an oppressive, prismatic glitter of diamonds. ...
— The Three Black Pennys - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... a happy improvement upon Rochon's prismatic or double-refraction micrometer. See M. Mathieu's note in Delambre's 'Histoire de l'Astronomie au dix-huitieme ...
— COSMOS: A Sketch of the Physical Description of the Universe, Vol. 1 • Alexander von Humboldt
... from behind fell upon them. A maid was lighting the gas in the drawing-room. Mostyn saw the cut-glass pendants of the crystal chandelier blaze in prismatic splendor. His mind was far from the lined countenance before him. He was heavy with indecision. His sister's confident derision clung to him like a menace from some ...
— The Desired Woman • Will N. Harben
... solid and liquid bodies when raised to a white heat give a continuous spectrum, one like the prismatic band already described, and one not interrupted by any dark lines or bands. The rays emitted from the white-hot substance of the sun have to pass, before reaching our earth, through the sun's atmosphere, and since the light emitted from any ...
— The Chemistry of Hat Manufacturing - Lectures Delivered Before the Hat Manufacturers' Association • Watson Smith
... reflects the intense blue of the ocean sky above, with a brisk breeze topping its many-furrowed waves— that are racing by and leaping over each other like a parcel of schoolboys at play—and cutting off sheets and sparkling showers of the prismatic foam that exhibits every tint of the rainbow—azure and orange, violet, light-green, and pale luminous white,—scatters it broadcast into the air around; whence it falls into yeasty hollows, a sort of feathery snow of a fairy texture, just suited for the bridal veils of the Nereides—only to be churned ...
— She and I, Volume 2 - A Love Story. A Life History. • John Conroy Hutcheson
... "La Dame Blanche," a triptych of rhythmical flow, spreads a dainty, silky, sheen of white, whispering, glistening, softly falling water over a slightly shelving width of rock, touched here and there with prismatic color and ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 601, July 9, 1887 • Various
... withdrew upon its point a large lump of glowing substance, which he shook off upon a smooth iron table standing near, called a marver, (that is, marbre,) in size and shape not unlike the largest of a nest of teapoys. Here the lump of sandiver lay, while through its mass shot rays of vivid prismatic color, glowing and dying along its surface so vivaciously that one needs must fancy the salamander no fable, and that this death of gorgeous agony was something more than the mere cooling of an ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 83, September, 1864 • Various
... in. high, solitary, erect, growing from the forks of branches. Calyx tubular, nearly half as long as the corolla, 5-toothed, prismatic; corolla funnel-form, deep-throated, the spreading limb 2 in. across or less, plaited, 5-pointed; stamens 5; 1 pistil. Stem: Stout, branching, smooth, 1 to 5 ft. high. Leaves: Alternate, large, rather thin, petioled, egg-shaped in outline, the edges irregularly wavy-toothed or angled; rank-scented. ...
— Wild Flowers Worth Knowing • Neltje Blanchan et al
... her hands. "Think of it! You standing under a great shaft of sun, nude, exalted, your hands and eyes lifted. About you gold, pouring down in cataracts, indistinguishable from the sunlight—a background of prismatic fire—and your hair lifting into it like wings!" ...
— The Nest Builder • Beatrice Forbes-Robertson Hale
... prismatic tints, flush after flush suffusing our horizon, does the Era of Hope dawn on towards fulfilment. Questionable! As indeed, with an Era of Hope that rests on mere universal Benevolence, victorious Analysis, Vice cured of ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... were between him and the life of the rest of the world. He could see through it clearly, but the barrier was there, and must always be there. Upon the edge of this glass, the light of life should break and resolve itself into prismatic colours, of which he should see one at a time, now and then more, and often a clear, pitiless view of the world should give ...
— At the Sign of the Jack O'Lantern • Myrtle Reed
... web the winds laid violent hands, And tugged at it, but lacked the sinewed strength To tear it or divorce it from its place. The rain left on it when the sun came up, Dyed the vast cloth with all prismatic hues, And made it glitter like the silken ...
— Stories in Verse • Henry Abbey
... as old Spanish leather, while on the gravel-path a long watering-pipe, painted green, coiling across the ground, poured, where its holes were, over the flowers whose perfume those holes inhaled, a vertical and prismatic fan of infinitesimal, rainbow-coloured drops. Suddenly I stood still, unable to move, as happens when something appears that requires not only our eyes to take it in, but involves a deeper kind of perception ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... situation of the spectator, a distinct and bright iris is soon amid the revolving columns of mist that soar from the foaming chasm, and shroud the broad front of the gigantic flood. Both arches of the bow are seldom entirely elicited, but the interior segment is perfect, and its prismatic hues are extremely glowing and vivid. The fragments of a plurality of rainbows are sometimes to be seen in various ...
— The Conquest of Canada (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Warburton
... self-revealing poet, it is only fair to quote some of his unquestionably sincere utterances on the other side of the question. "You speak out, you," he wrote to Elizabeth Barrett; [Footnote: January 13, 1845.] "I only make men and women speak—give you truth broken into prismatic hues, and fear the pure white light." Again he wrote, "I never have begun, even, what I hope I was born to begin and end,—'R.B.', a poem." [Footnote: Letter to Elizabeth Barrett, February 3, 1845.] And Mrs. Browning, usually a better spokesman for the typical English poet than ...
— The Poet's Poet • Elizabeth Atkins
... Graces' almost equally historic costume ball. The Kenworthy diamonds were taken in broad daylight, during the excitement of a charitable meeting on the ground floor, and the gifts of her belted bridegroom to Lady May Paulton while the outer air was thick with a prismatic shower of confetti. It was obvious that all this was the work of no ordinary thief, and perhaps inevitable that the name of Raffles should have been dragged from oblivion by callous disrespecters of the departed and unreasoning apologists for the police. ...
— Raffles - Further Adventures of the Amateur Cracksman • E. W. Hornung
... passed, a minute of wonder, admiration, allurement, but at last he ventured to lift the diamond from the box. It was perfect, so far as he could see; perfect in cutting and color and depth, prismatic, radiant, bewilderingly gorgeous. Its value? Even he could not offer an opinion—only the appraisement of his expert would be worth listening to on that point. But one thing he knew instantly—in the million-dollar ...
— The Diamond Master • Jacques Futrelle
... exquisitely is it arranged that no metal, either of joint or pipe, can be seen. It is "one entire and perfect chrysolite." From its lofty summit issues forth a dome of water, which separates, and falls in prismatic showers into a spacious basin beneath. There are three other fountains, but this is the monarch of all. On either side of this beautiful production of a Birmingham manufacturer are two equestrian statues of the queen and Prince Albert, about ...
— Young Americans Abroad - Vacation in Europe: Travels in England, France, Holland, - Belgium, Prussia and Switzerland • Various
... reminiscences of a past generation. The walls were hung with figured paper. The ceiling was whitewashed, and decorated in the middle with a plaster centre-piece, from which hung a massive chandelier sparkling with prismatic rays from a hundred crystal pendants. There was a handsome mantel, set with terra-cotta tiles, on which fauns and satyrs, nymphs and dryads, disported themselves in idyllic abandon. The furniture was old, and in keeping with ...
— The Marrow of Tradition • Charles W. Chesnutt
... and reminding how beauty lingers amid the most unpromising things of earth! And just as the bow that spans the mantling cloud reminds us of all beautiful things that glow around its antitype that spans the emerald throne on high, so, as we gaze upon the prismatic tints that are reflected from the oily surface, we dream of all that is beautiful in color and gorgeous in tinted radiance, as being hidden amid the elements ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, Issue 2, February, 1864 • Various
... field which Newton explored with characteristic success was the study of optics. Philosophers were busy with inquiries into the nature of light. It had been long believed that every colored ray is equally refracted when passing through a lens. Newton determined to analyze the prismatic hues. He made a hole in a window-shutter, and darkening the room, let in a portion of light, which he passed through a prism. The white sunbeam formed a circular image on the opposite wall, but the prismatic colors formed an image five times as long as it was broad. He was curious to know ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 4 of 8 • Various
... Queen of Spain. A brief survey of this first island was all he could afford time for; and after the first exquisite impression of the white beach, and the blue curve of the bay sparkling in the sunshine, and the soft prismatic colours of the acanthus beneath the green wall of the woods had been savoured and enjoyed, he was anxious to push on to the rich lands of the Orient of which he believed this island ...
— Christopher Columbus, Complete • Filson Young
... drowsily by in sparkling tangles of gold and green; here and there from great open squares and branch-shadowed gardens gleamed the stone face of an obelisk, or the white column of a fountain; while over all things streamed the long prismatic rays flung forth from the revolving lights in the Twelve Towers of the Sacred Temple, like flaming spears ranged lengthwise against the limitless depth of the midnight horizon. With straining necks, tossed manes, and foam flying from their nostrils, Sah-luma's fiery coursers dashed onward at almost ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... mantle. Nearer by, the picturesque rocky shores of the island of Capri seem to pulsate through the dreamy, shifting mists that veil its sides; and the sea shimmers and glitters like the neck of a peacock with an iridescent mingling of colors: the whole air is a glorifying medium, rich in prismatic hues of enchantment. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 43, May, 1861 • Various
... these interior cell crystals are those composed of calcium oxalate and calcium carbonate. Others composed of calcium phosphate, calcium sulphate and silica are sometimes found. These crystals may occur singly or in clusters of greater or less size. In shape they are prismatic or needle-like. ...
— Popular Science Monthly Volume 86
... the intense brilliancy of the tropical and semi- tropical sky comes as a revelation. Sometimes at noon it is painfully dazzling; but the evening is a vision of prismatic light holding carnival in the air, wherein Milton's "twilight gray" has no part. Unless the sky is held in the relentless grip of a winter storm, the Orient holds no gray in its evening tones; these are translucent and glowing from the setting of the sun until the stars ...
— Public Speaking • Irvah Lester Winter
... description, abused me for putting Newton's head into my picture,—"a fellow," said he, "who believed nothing unless it was as clear as the three sides of a triangle." And then he and Keats agreed he had destroyed all the poetry of the rainbow by reducing it to the prismatic colours. It was impossible to resist him, and we all drank "Newton's health, and confusion to mathematics." It was delightful to see the good-humour of Wordsworth in giving in to all our frolics without affectation ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas
... measuring our neighbours by our own tape-measure, summing them up according to our own private arithmetic. We see subjectively, not objectively; what we are capable of seeing, not what there is to be seen. It is not wonderful that we make so many bad guesses at that prismatic thing, the truth. ...
— Pebbles on the Shore • Alpha of the Plough (Alfred George Gardiner)
... that in some of the Italian pictures I have seen in England, I have often been struck by what appeared to me a violence in the colouring, and a sharp decision in the outline, o'erstepping the modesty of nature—that is, of English nature: but there is in this climate a prismatic splendour of tint, a glorious all-embracing light, a vivid distinctness of outline, something in the reality more gorgeous, glowing, and luxuriant, than poetry could dare to express, or ...
— The Diary of an Ennuyee • Anna Brownell Jameson
... scoria on the gravel being visible in several places, showing that the former is of more recent origin. On the opposite side of the crater, overlooking the Rhine, we find the cliff of Rolandsec composed of hard vesicular lava, rudely prismatic, and extending from the summit of the hill to its base, about 250 feet below. This is the most northerly of the group of the ...
— Volcanoes: Past and Present • Edward Hull
... with prismatic colors like a huge curtain, gorgeously illuminated in its ample folds by the ...
— The Boy Aviators' Polar Dash - Or - Facing Death in the Antarctic • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... figure, and through the veil sparkled a pair of eyes which were bottomless and yet held the colors of the rainbow in their depths. Above this figure, which beckoned him on, and after which the raft drifted faster and faster, was a halo of sparkling hair, which caught and broke up the light into prismatic colors. ...
— Louisiana Lou • William West Winter
... saw him I knew him to be dead. He was the only figure visible. The whole body of the vessel was frosted by the snow into the glassy aspect of the spars and rigging, and the sunshine striking down made a beautiful prismatic ...
— The Frozen Pirate • W. Clark Russell
... uniform, which bestows upon them another kind of beauty. The kitchen dish or utensil has its charm as well as the sprigged china of the closet; the jug going to the well is as grateful to the eye as the prismatic beaker upon the table, and, in like manner, the banded or braided hair, the perfect cleanliness of fresh print or linen and the straight serviceable lines of skirt and waist often contribute to make a plain woman fully as attractive as her prettier sisters. Thus Mme. Poussette, about whom there ...
— Ringfield - A Novel • Susie Frances Harrison
... and a nearer view shows it to be a jelly-like globe, clearer than the crystal of Merlin. Dropped softly into a vessel of water, at first it lies quiescent and almost invisible upon the bottom. A moment after, it rises in quick undulations, flashing prismatic tints with every motion. Again it rests, and we see that it is banded by eight meridians, composed of square, overlapping plates. It swims, and the plates become paddles, propelling the frail craft,— prisms, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 11, September, 1858 • Various
... violet, or lilac, rarely whitish; about 1 in. long, solitary, borne on slender footstems from axils of upper leaves. Calyx prismatic, 5-angled, 5-toothed; corolla irregular, tubular, narrow in throat, 2-lipped; upper lip 2-lobed, erect; under lip 3-lobed, spreading; 4 stamens, a long and a short pair, inserted on corolla tube; pistil with 2-lobed, plate-like stigma. Stem: Square, erect, ...
— Wild Flowers, An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and - Their Insect Visitors - - Title: Nature's Garden • Neltje Blanchan
... ruby lips of the radiant beauty parted for an instant in the faintest possible smile which lit up her countenance like a burst of sunshine. Ashman noticed not the diamond bracelet and necklace, which flashed in all their prismatic beauty, but knew only that she had returned the smile of recognition. For that boon he would have risked life ...
— The Land of Mystery • Edward S. Ellis
... ball-room from the form of one lady visitor. Not one, but twenty-five thousand Robert Bruces inspired the Scottish spider to that homely instance of perseverance, which served for an example for a king. As he hangs his drapery from one cornice to another, the prismatic scenes that come before him serve to lengthen that life which might seem to be cut off before its time. It is not one, but twenty-five thousand brooms which advance to destroy his airy home; to invade his household gods, and bring to the ground that row of bluebottles ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 3 • Various
... this, when gradually something crept into my mind and drove the fear out. I did not grasp what this was at first, it was like the first staining of wine on the eastern sky to one who sees a sunrise. And then the thought grew even as the light grows, tinged by prismatic colors, until at length a memory struck into my soul like a shaft of light. I ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... supernatural influence pervading the air to-day," he said, in a low-tone, "for I sometimes imagine that flitting spirits become partially visible. On the pendent icicles and jewelled twigs, me thinks I sometimes behold for an instant the prismatic rays of elfins' eyes—" ...
— Wild Western Scenes • John Beauchamp Jones
... calcite are extremely varied in form, but, as a rule, they may be referred to four distinct habits, namely: rhombohedral, prismatic, scalenohedral and tabular. The primitive rhombohedron, r {100} (fig. 1), is comparatively rare except in combination with other forms. A flatter rhombohedron, e {110}, is shown in fig. 2, and a more acute one, f {11-1}, in fig. 3. These three rhombohedra are related in such a manner that, ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... was deliciously familiar to him; crimson-curtained, green carpeted, shining with heavy gilt picture frames and prismatic chandeliers. Often with posies and candies and theater-tickets he had strutted across that erstwhile magic threshold and fairly lolled in the big deep-upholstered chairs while waiting for the silk-rustling advent of the ladies. But now, with his suitcase clutched in his hand, no Armenian ...
— Molly Make-Believe • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... They [his compositions] are interesting, and more than that: they are extremely characteristic in harmonic colouring. Their size has nothing to do with their merits. A few lines by Gautier stuffed with prismatic words and yet as vague as mist-wreaths may in artistic worth surpass whole cantos of more famous poets; and Mr. MacDowell has Gautier's sense of colour and knowledge of the power of suggestion." His performance ...
— Edward MacDowell • Lawrence Gilman
... map," I said, "and I'll point out the spot where I'm working. It's about eighty yards away from Bosche. If we work out the exact degree by the map of the 'blow,' I can obtain the right direction by prismatic compass, and a few minutes before 'time' lift the camera up and cover the spot direct. It'll save exposing myself unnecessarily above the parapet to obtain the right point of view." The point of view was accordingly settled. It was 124 deg. from ...
— How I Filmed the War - A Record of the Extraordinary Experiences of the Man Who - Filmed the Great Somme Battles, etc. • Lieut. Geoffrey H. Malins
... moved to a new point, and Captain Heath was again talking. Other guns were fired, after the discharge of this one; the last shot being sent from a twelve-inch rifle with a charge of four hundred and seventy-five pounds of Dupont brown prismatic powder and a projectile weighing one ...
— Frank Merriwell's Reward • Burt L. Standish
... felt chilly amidst the trees, the sun not having attained sufficient altitude to penetrate its depths, while overhead all was warmth and light. Quivering on the tops of the timber, the horizontal sunbeams created, in their refraction, brilliant prismatic colorings, and filled the air with motes like golden dust. Our horsemen heeded not the sunshine or the shade. Occupied each with his own train of ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth
... in a twinkling. Life was too full and rich now to waste it in sleep. Yesterday morning it had seemed drab and commonplace. To-day it sparkled with prismatic hues. He was a new man in ...
— Doubloons—and the Girl • John Maxwell Forbes
... prismatic space or solid raised out on the weather side by the inclination of the ship. In astronomy it signifies the re-appearance of a celestial object ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... which was divided into several compartments, presenting numerous fantastic forms. In some the glittering icicles hung like curtains from the roof, in others the whole compartment was as smooth as glass. The prismatic colours which presented themselves as the torches flashed on the surface of the ...
— The Mines and its Wonders • W.H.G. Kingston
... stopped; no more South Seas in my belly. Well, Henry had cleared a great deal of our bush on a contract, and it ought to be measured. I set myself to the task with a tape-line; it seemed a dreary business; then I borrowed a prismatic compass, and tackled the task afresh. I have no books; I had not touched an instrument nor given a thought to the business since the year of grace 1871; you can imagine with what interest I sat down ...
— Vailima Letters • Robert Louis Stevenson
... most extraordinary mixture of vertical strata, composed of coloured sands and ocherous earths blending into every variety of tint, and so vivid and beautiful in colour, that they have been not unfrequently compared to the prismatic hues of the rainbow. It was on this spot the Fomone, a frigate of fifty guns, returning home, after an absence of three years, with some Persian princes on board, in June, 1811, struck upon the rocks and went to pieces: the appearance of a wreck, in such an extraordinary ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... be set apart, and used for no other purpose. The five "sacred colors" are the prismatic hues arranged in a certain way, as these colors are very magnetic. By "malignant influences" are meant any disturbances through strifes, quarrels, bad feelings, etc., as these are said to impress themselves ...
— Studies in Occultism; A Series of Reprints from the Writings of H. P. Blavatsky • H. P. Blavatsky
... starch contracts on drying to prismatic forms, so lava often contracts on cooling to a mass of close-set, prismatic, and commonly six-sided columns, which stand at right angles to the cooling surface. The upper portion of a flow, on rapid cooling from the surface exposed to the air, may contract to a confused mass of small and irregular ...
— The Elements of Geology • William Harmon Norton
... monks appear round the angle of the church—for there is a funeral at that hour; and their torches flaring with the breeze that is now springing up, cast an awful and almost magical light on the dark gray walls of the edifice, the strange effect being enhanced by the prismatic reflection of the lurid blaze from the stained glass of the ...
— Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf • George W. M. Reynolds
... sketches of birds and flowers, which seemed to amuse them greatly. They at once proceeded to teach him how to prepare the red and yellow colors with which they decorated their ornaments. To these Mrs. West added blue, by contributing a piece of indigo. Thus the boy had three prismatic colors for his use. What could be more picturesque than the scene where the untutored Indian gave the future artist his first lesson in mixing paints! These wild men also taught him archery, that he might shoot birds for ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 8 (of 8) • Various
... first filtered and then boiled before use. And while the digging was proceeding, Earle and Dick took up a position on the summit of a low knoll a few yards away, and examined their surroundings through their prismatic glasses. ...
— In Search of El Dorado • Harry Collingwood
... the end of all things than her aged husband. The Young Doctor knew all too well what the curious, throbbing light in her eyes meant. He knew that the gay and splendid Orlando Guise had made the sun for this prismatic radiance, and that the story of her life, which Louise had wished to tell him yesterday, would never now be told—for she would have no desire to tell it. The old vague misery, the ancient veiled torture, was behind her, and she was presently to suffer a new torture—but also a ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... Babylon, then, prismatic and learned, was the most respectable place on earth. For ten thousand years man had there consulted the stars. But though respectable, it was also equivocal. During a period equally long—or brief—the girls of the city had loosed their girdles for Ishtar and yielded themselves to anyone, stranger ...
— The Lords of the Ghostland - A History of the Ideal • Edgar Saltus
... splendid lunar rainbow, and I suspect it forebodes a good deal more wind than we have lately had. It was perfect in shape, and the brilliant prismatic colours were most distinctly marked. I never saw such a rainbow, except as the precursor of a circular storm. I only hope that, should we encounter such a gale now, we may get into the right corner of it, and that it will be travelling in the right direction. I wish it ...
— The Last Voyage - to India and Australia, in the 'Sunbeam' • Lady (Annie Allnutt) Brassey
... down to the ground, a little figure in black—in black of all things in the world! a sight that curdled the blood of the village people, and of Mrs. Hudson, who had walked across from the Rectory in a gown of pigeon's-breast silk which scattered prismatic reflections as she walked. In black! Mrs. Hudson bethought herself that she had a white China crape shawl in her cupboard, and wondered if she could offer it to conceal this ill omened gown. But if Lady Mariamne's dress was dark, she herself was fair enough, ...
— The Marriage of Elinor • Margaret Oliphant
... and excluding objects of inferior moment, darken and concentrate the view. The waters between pour over the right-hand and left-hand summit, rushing down and uniting among the craggiest and abruptest of rocks. Oh for a whole mountain- side of that living foam! The sun impresses a faint prismatic hue. These falls, compared with those of the Missouri, are nothing,—nothing but the merest miniature; and yet they assist me in forming some conception of that ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... This room was fitted up in the Gothic style, the door and large sash windows of that form—the latter of painted glass, shedding a dim religious light. Candles were seldom admitted into this apartment. The ingenious friends had invented a kind of prismatic lantern, which occupied the whole elliptic arch of the Gothic door. This lantern was of cut glass, variously colored, inclosing two lamps with their reflectors. The light it imparted resembled that of a volcano—sanguine and solemn. It was assisted by two glowworm ...
— The Friendships of Women • William Rounseville Alger
... the stream, saw the individual trees, the leaves and the veining of each leaf—saw the very insects upon them: the locusts, the brilliant-bodied flies, the gray spiders stretching their webs from twig to twig. He noted the prismatic colors in all the dewdrops upon a million blades of grass. The humming of the gnats that danced above the eddies of the stream, the beating of the dragon-flies' wings, the strokes of the water-spiders' legs, like oars which had ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Vol. II: In the Midst of Life: Tales of Soldiers and Civilians • Ambrose Bierce
... squeezes, and for dry squeezes. Brush for wet squeezes (spoke brush). One or two so-metre tapes. A few bamboo gardening canes for markers in planning. Divide one in inches or centimetres for measuring buildings. A steel rod, 3 ft. x 1 inch for probing. Field- glass, or low-power telescope. Prismatic compass with card partly black, to see at night. Large and small celluloid protractors for plotting angles on plans. Plotting-scale, tenths of inches and millimetres. Maps of the district, the best available. Aneroid barometer, if collecting flints; small size; ...
— How to Observe in Archaeology • Various
... Prismatic colours are so radiantly glorious, that when we see the rainbow in the sky it is each time a joyful surprise. The most stolid natures are moved by it; we have even seen our dog staring ...
— Needlework As Art • Marian Alford
... stopping, apparently with the view of ascertaining if he were quite correctly put together, while Gluck stood contemplating him in speechless amazement. He was dressed in a slashed doublet of spun gold, so fine in its texture, that the prismatic colours gleamed over it as if on a surface of mother of pearl; and, over this brilliant doublet, his hair and beard fell full half way to the ground in waving curls, so exquisitely delicate, that ...
— Junior Classics, V6 • Various
... they occasionally tempt the larger cetacea into the Gulf of Manaar. In the calmer months of the year, when the sea is glassy, and for hours together undisturbed by a ripple, the minute descriptions are rendered perceptible by their beautiful prismatic tinting. So great is their transparency that they are only to be distinguished from the water by the return to the eye of the reflected light that glances from their delicate and polished surfaces. Less frequently they are traced ...
— Sketches of the Natural History of Ceylon • J. Emerson Tennent
... single ray, separated from the rest,—red, yellow, blue, or any intermediate shade,—upon an object; never white light; that is the province of wisdom. We get beautiful effects from wit,—all the prismatic colors,—but never the object as it is in fair daylight. A pun, which is a kind of wit, is a different and much shallower trick in mental optics; throwing the shadows of two objects so that one overlies the other. Poetry uses the rainbow tints ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... the rain-wet sky there indeed now was flung the bow of promise. But this titanic land did all things gigantically. This was no mere prismatic arch bridging the clouds. The colors all were there, yes, and of an unspeakable brilliance and individual distinctness in the scale; but they lay like a vast painted mist, a mural of some celestial artist flung ...
— The Covered Wagon • Emerson Hough
... than a minute, ere, looking around him, he beheld a grotto, or natural cavern, composed of the most splendid spars and crystals, which returned in a thousand prismatic hues the light of a brilliant flame that glowed on an altar of alabaster. This altar, with its fire, formed the central point of the grotto, which was of a round form, and very high in the roof, resembling in some respects the dome ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott
... surprising because, from the first, Paulina had never made the least attempt to change her tone or subdue her colours. In the gray Trant atmosphere she flashed with prismatic fires. She smoked, she talked subversively, she did as she liked and went where she chose, and danced over the Trant prejudices and the Trant principles as if they'd been a ball-room floor; and all without apparent offence to her solemn ...
— The Long Run - 1916 • Edith Wharton
... with saffron, violet, and rose, with the tints of beryl and topaz, sapphire and almandine and amethyst, each in due order and at proper distances. The fabled dolphin in its death could not have showed a more brilliant succession of splendours waning into splendours through the whole chord of prismatic colours. This sensitiveness of the Attic limestone to every modification of the sky's light gives a peculiar spirituality to the landscape. The hills remain in form and outline unchanged; but the beauty breathed ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... light-heartedness are legitimate feelings. They spring up, like wild-flowers, from the very nature of man. God intends that prismatic hues and auroral lights shall flood our morning sky. He must be filled with a sour and rancid misanthropy, who cannot bless the Creator that there is one part of man's sinful and cursed life which reminds of the time, and ...
— Sermons to the Natural Man • William G.T. Shedd
... of the six systems enumerated above, the tetragonal—or the quadratic, square prismatic, dimetric, or pyramidal—system has three axes like the cubic, but, in this case, though they are all at right angles, two only of them are equal, the third, consequently, unequal. The vertical or principal axis is often much longer or shorter in this group, but the other two are always equal and ...
— The Chemistry, Properties and Tests of Precious Stones • John Mastin
... becoming lighter in body. A rush of power that I have no way of describing to you filled me. I seemed to be a tremendous dynamo in the air several inches above the ground and still ascending. When I noticed everything around me becoming prismatic and more or less translucent, I could have walked on water without sinking, and I had distinct understanding that matters seemed to be disintegrating and dissolving around me. I was frightened but self-conscious ...
— Psychotherapy • Hugo Muensterberg
... a solid mass. Pillars and blocks of the shining and hardened element were seen modelled into a thousand quaint and grotesque patterns. Here a fountain, perfectly formed with Ionic and Doric columns, was reflecting a thousand prismatic hues from the diamond-like stalactites which had attached themselves to its crest. There a huge obelisk, which, if of stone, might have come from ancient Thebes, lay half buried beneath a pile of fleecy snow. Farther ...
— Russia - As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Various
... was Captain Henry Bessemer's process for manufacturing steel. He took out a patent for his invention of forcing air through liquid molten iron. Other inventions of interest were Brewster's prismatic stereoscope, Garcia's laryngoscope (a mirror for examining the throat), and Drummond's light, patented by Captain Thomas Drummond. Captain Robert Le Mesurier M'Clure of the "Investigator" received the L5,000 prize for the discovery of the Northwest Passage and was knighted. Famous English books ...
— A History of the Nineteenth Century, Year by Year - Volume Two (of Three) • Edwin Emerson
... busiest metropolis in Europe eddying around its walls, was a sacred island in the tumultuous main. Through the perpetual twilight, tall columnar trunks in thick profusion grew from a floor chequered with prismatic lights and sepulchral shadows. Each shaft of the petrified forest rose to a preternatural height, their many branches intermingling in the space above, to form an impenetrable canopy. Foliage, flowers and fruit of colossal luxuriance, ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... Sunday, I read through and made extracts from the gospel of St. John. It confirmed me in my belief that about Jesus we must believe no one but Himself, and that what we have to do is to discover the true image of the founder behind all the prismatic reactions through which it comes to us, and which alter it more or less. A ray of heavenly light traversing human life, the message of Christ has been broken into a thousand rainbow colors and carried in a thousand ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... morning sunlight. To the guides the boat was something astonishing; they could not refrain from laughter to find that they were really afloat in it, and pointed with surprise at the waves, which could be seen through the boat, rippling against its sides. With the aid of the boat, with prismatic compass and sextant, I was able to secure an excellent map of the lake; and we almost succeeded in catching a deer, which was driven into the lake by a strange hound. The dog lost the trail at the water, and desiring to put him on the track, we paddled to him. He scrambled ...
— Voyage of The Paper Canoe • N. H. Bishop
... represents a broad and partly shaded expanse, full, also, of light and sweet sunshine, through which the eye travels till it rests on the distant mountain, rising majestically in grand volcanic forms from the horizon plains. The sky is filled with cloudy veils, floating, prismatic; some quiet water, crossed by a bridge which rests on round arches, is in the middle distance; and a few trees near the foreground form the group from which rises the stone-pine, which is the principal ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 88, February, 1865 • Various
... attention of all men until 1865 A.D. The answer came from the diagonal joints themselves, on discovering that the stone between them was opposite to the butt end of the portcullis of the first ascending passage, or to the hole whence the prismatic stone of concealment through 3000 years had dropped out almost before Al Mamoun's eyes. Here, therefore, was a secret sign in the pavement of the entrance-passage, appreciable only to a careful eye and a measurement by angle, but made in such hard material that it was evidently intended ...
— The Contemporary Review, Volume 36, September 1879 • Various
... thing to watch the spray fly up from our prow as it cuts through the waves. The sun shines through it and breaks it up into a number of miniature rainbows—"sun-dogs," the sailors call them. I stood on the fo'csle-head for several hours to-day watching the effect, and surrounded by a halo of prismatic colours. ...
— The Captain of the Pole-Star and Other Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... walls of the sharp, irregular declivity reflected many cold, prismatic lights, and down, far down where the eye could no longer distinguish shapes and outlines, there lay a shadow like steam from some vast, subterranean cauldron, blue, dense, impenetrable. It fascinated Pearl and she stood there trying ...
— The Black Pearl • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow
... colour; Su-dhumra-varna, Deep-purple colour; Ugra or Sphulingini, Hot, Passionate, or Sparkling; Pradipta, Shining, Clear. These are the literal meanings; the mystic meanings are very different, and among other things denote the septenary prismatic colours and other ...
— Simon Magus • George Robert Stow Mead |
