"Serpentine" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... meeting," Pedro said. All peered around. None saw anything but the upstanding roots, the forest jumble, the misty serpentine lianas. None heard any sound but their own hoarse breathing, the solemn drip of water, the insect hum, and the occasional melancholy notes of birds. The place seemed bare of life. Yet upon McKay came again that ...
— The Pathless Trail • Arthur O. (Arthur Olney) Friel
... children to let the ants alone and not tease them, for 'thaay be God's creeturs.' Or possibly the pastor himself may be overheard discoursing to a bullet-headed woman, with one finger on the palm of his other hand, 'That's their serpentine way; that's their subtlety; that's their casuistry; which arguments you may imagine to refer, as your fancy pleases, to the village curate, or the tonsured priest of the monastery over the hill. For the tonsured priest, and the monastery, and the nunnery, and the ...
— Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies
... opened from the sea between towering cliffs, and behind a lonely rock, pierced with many caves and blow-holes through which the sea in storm time sent its thunderous voice, together with a fountain of drifting spume. Hence, it wound westwards in a serpentine course, guarded at its entrance by two little curving piers to left and right. These were roughly built of dark slates placed endways and held together with great beams bound with iron bands. Thence, it flowed up the rocky bed of ...
— Dracula's Guest • Bram Stoker
... like smoke of phosphorus. Great sharp lights burst up momentarily through it like meteors. Weirder than this strange wake are the long slow fires that keep burning at a distance, out in the dark. Nebulous incandescences mount up from the depths, change form, and pass;—serpentine flames wriggle by;—there are long billowing crests of fire. These seem to be formed of millions of tiny sparks, that light up all at the same time, glow for a while, disappear, reappear, and swirl away in ...
— Two Years in the French West Indies • Lafcadio Hearn
... would be called noble in any city. Grace Church, on Ninth and West streets, is a large Gothic temple, seating nearly eight hundred persons—warmed, frescoed and heavily carpeted inside, and walled externally with brownstone mixed with the delicate pea-green serpentine of Chadd's Ford. The architect was a native Wilmingtonian—Thomas Dixon—now of Baltimore. The windows, including a very brilliant oriel, are finely stained: the font is a delicate piece of carving, the organ is grand, and the accommodations for Sunday-schools ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Volume 11, No. 26, May, 1873 • Various
... it is evident that something unusual is going on; they pass people moving in the same direction, with eager and expectant faces, to one of whom Mr. Webster ventures these questions: Can his serpentine majesty be seen to-day? and where to the best advantage? Receiving satisfactory replies, the coachman is ordered to drive to the old wind-mill, where they arrive in a few moments,—from the shady ...
— The New England Magazine, Volume 1, No. 1, January 1886 - Bay State Monthly, Volume 4, No. 1, January, 1886 • Various
... have narrated them under a thick and almost impenetrable veil of fiction. They say that Hercules engaged in combat with the God of that river, who immediately transformed himself into a serpent, by which was probably meant merely the serpentine windings of its course. Next they say, that the God changed himself into a bull, under which allegorical form they refer to the rapid and impetuous overflowing of its banks, ever rushing onwards, bearing down everything in its course, and leaving traces of its ravages throughout the country in ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Copious Notes - and Explanations • Publius Ovidius Naso
... contents of the mind are communicated to the mouth. How full of character is the mouth! As are the lips, so is the character. Firm lips, firm character; weak lips, weak character. Well-defined, large, and proportionate lips, the middle line of which is equally serpentine on both sides, and easy to be drawn, are never seen in a bad, mean, common, false, vicious countenance. A lipless mouth, resembling a single line, denotes coldness, industry, a love of order, precision, house-wifery, ...
— The World's Greatest Books - Volume 15 - Science • Various
... to Bath, Harriet gave birth to Shelley's second child, Charles Bysshe, who died in 1826. She subsequently formed another connexion which proved unhappy; and on the 10th of November, 1816, she committed suicide by drowning herself in the Serpentine. The distance of time between June, 1814, and November, 1816, and the new ties formed by Harriet in this interval, prove that there was no immediate connexion between Shelley's abandonment of his wife and her suicide. She had always entertained ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley • John Addington Symonds
... green and red jasper, and quartz-crystal flakes, arrowheads, cores, and saw-blades. Chert and limestone rough hoe-blades (easily mistaken for palaeolithic implements; they are, however, much flatter); polished serpentine or jasper celts; lentoid (lentil-shaped), amygdaloid (almond-shaped), and discoid beads of cornelian, crystal, obsidian, &c., unpolished; nails of translucent quartz and obsidian (obviously imitations of metal types); hard grey pottery sickles, pottery ...
— How to Observe in Archaeology • Various
... not only upon the waters and the Earth, but the human family. Not only does the mighty ocean obey this wonderful influence in the ebb and flow of its tides, but the Earth, as she rotates upon her axis, obeys this mighty power and manifests in her depths and heights in her serpentine movement about ...
— Within the Temple of Isis • Belle M. Wagner
... ground, Courtenay and I determined to remain on deck to pick up any information likely to be of use to us in the future; and I went to the helm, whilst my companion busied himself with the sounding-line. An hour's run brought us to the inner end of the channel, which we found to be somewhat serpentine in its course, but trending generally in a north-north-west direction, with a minimum depth of two and a half fathoms. A run of about twenty minutes carried us clear of this channel and we found ourselves in Cardenas Bay, an almost landlocked sheet of water nearly double the area of Santa ...
— The Rover's Secret - A Tale of the Pirate Cays and Lagoons of Cuba • Harry Collingwood
... character may readily be inferred from the kind of motion given to the eye in the descriptions we have attempted. In the rapid, abrupt, contrasted, whirling movement in the one, we have an exposition of an irregular combination of curves and angles; while the simple combination of the parabola and the serpentine will account for all the imperceptible transitions ...
— Lectures on Art • Washington Allston
... sixteen. Then he and eight other gentlemen of about the same age went down in a body to Kew one Saturday, with the idea of hiring a boat there, and pulling to Richmond and back; one of their number, a shock-headed youth, named Joskins, who had once or twice taken out a boat on the Serpentine, told them ...
— Three Men in a Boa • Jerome K. Jerome
... swine, before you get sunstroke! Rise and shine! Rise and shine, you tripe-hounds!" ... Broken dreams on a smelly, straw-stuffed pillow and lumpy straw-stuffed pallet, dreams of "Circle and cha-a-a-a-a-a-a-nge" "On the Fore-hand, Right About" "Right Pass, Shoulder Out" "Serpentine" "Order Lance" "Trail Lance" "Right Front Thrust" (for the front rank of the Queen's Greys carry lances); dreams of riding wild mad horses to unfathomable precipices ...
— Snake and Sword - A Novel • Percival Christopher Wren
... Mr. Adiesen appeared at his own door laden with blocks of serpentine, fragments of lichen, moss, seaweed, and shells. Yaspard followed him into a little room which was doing duty as a study until the Den was restored to order, and as the scientist put down his treasures the lad said—in a trembling voice, be it confessed—"I want to tell ...
— Viking Boys • Jessie Margaret Edmondston Saxby
... a bridge at all. It was only the eastern extremity of the Serpentine; but as the boy leant over the stone balustrade, and gazed upon the artificial flood, broadening out indefinitely in the darkness, it might have been the noblest river in the world. Its banks were muffled in a feather ...
— The Camera Fiend • E.W. Hornung
... consider how much we have wound about. We have taken such a very serpentine course, and the wood itself must be half a mile long in a straight line, for we have never seen the end of it yet since we left the first ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... their lives how that life must necessarily end, and trot with a quiet, contented, and unaltered pace down their long, straight, and shaded avenue; while we, with anxious solicitude, and restless hurry, watch the quick turnings of our serpentine walk; which still presents, either to sight or expectation, some changes of variety in the ever-shifting prospect, till the unthought-of, unexpected end comes suddenly upon us, and finishes at once the fluctuating scene. Reflections ...
— Observations and Reflections Made in the Course of a Journey through France, Italy, and Germany, Vol. I • Hester Lynch Piozzi
... That is the name of the stream which flows through it. It is one of the most remarkable valleys in Switzerland. I have been studying it in the guide book and on the map. It is about fifty miles long, and it winds in a serpentine manner between two lofty ranges of mountains, so steep and high that it is not possible to make any ...
— Rollo in Switzerland • Jacob Abbott
... died in 1822, very shortly before Shelley. He and Mary had returned to London in September 1816. Very shortly afterwards, 9th of November, the ill-starred Harriet Shelley drowned herself in the Serpentine: her body was only recovered on the 10th of December, and the verdict of the Coroner's Jury was 'found drowned,' her name being given as 'Harriet Smith.' The career of Harriet since her separation from her husband is very indistinctly ...
— Adonais • Shelley
... attention, would be difficult. To draw back would necessitate a long detour, involving loss of precious time and increase of risk. A thought occurred to him. Many a time had he hunted among these mountains, and well accustomed was he to glide with serpentine caution towards his game. He would stalk him! Petroff seldom thought twice in cases of emergency. He unbuckled his sword quietly and hung it on a branch, and leant his carbine against a tree, resolving to trust to his great personal strength alone, for he did not mean ...
— In the Track of the Troops • R.M. Ballantyne
... and Kieff waited for him, quite motionless, with thin lips drawn back, showing a snarling gleam of teeth. But just as Burke reached him he moved. His right arm shot forth with a serpentine ferocity, and in a flash the muzzle of a ...
— The Top of the World • Ethel M. Dell
... them to notice it," Nina said, vindictively; and then, as she would have nothing more to say on this wretched subject, she turned to look at the gay lilacs and laburnums in the neighborhood of the Serpentine, at the shimmering blue of the wide stretch of water, and at the fleet of pleasure-boats with their wet oars gleaming ...
— Prince Fortunatus • William Black
... two hedges and rows of tall trees. The policeman told me the men could sit against the banks of the hedges, so that first rest was good. In ten minutes we were off again. The road seemed to wind in and out in serpentine curves. The land on either side was taken up ...
— The Red Watch - With the First Canadian Division in Flanders • J. A. Currie
... the sun was up they were fed by their sister battalion, the 2nd, and had begun to unwind their putties. But what a sight! Their putties were not soaked and not caked; say, rather, that there may have been a core of puttie inside, but that the men's legs were imbedded in a serpentine cast of clay. As for their boots, you could only infer them from the huge balls of stratified mud they bore round their feet. Red mud, yellow mud, black mud, brown mud—they lifted their feet toilsomely; they were land plummets ...
— Story of the War in South Africa - 1899-1900 • Alfred T. Mahan
... shrug. "Very well, let it be South America!" The country was not distasteful to him, since he knew it by certain travel publications whose illustrations represented herds of cattle at liberty, half-naked, plumed Indians, and hairy cowboys whirling over their heads serpentine lassos tipped with balls. ...
— The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... State is about eighty miles wide at its widest part, and thirty at its narrowest, and is estimated to contain between four and five thousand square miles. The great artery of the country is the Perak river, a most serpentine stream. Ships drawing thirteen feet of water can ascend it as far as Durian Sabatang, fifty miles from its mouth, and boats can navigate it for one hundred and thirty miles farther. This river, even one hundred ...
— The Golden Chersonese and the Way Thither • Isabella L. Bird (Mrs. Bishop)
... at the head and called out "Forward." Hurstwood moved with the line. Across Fifth Avenue, through Madison Square by the winding paths, east on Twenty-third Street, and down Third Avenue wound the long, serpentine company. Midnight pedestrians and loiterers stopped and stared as the company passed. Chatting policemen, at various corners, stared indifferently or nodded to the leader, whom they had seen before. On Third Avenue they marched, a seemingly ...
— Sister Carrie • Theodore Dreiser
... detachment bearing the body of the bob-tailed catamount swung over a pole, like the mighty cluster of grapes from Eshcol, and another conveying with wise precaution that monstrous snapping-turtle which those of our friends who wish to see will find among the specimens marked Chelydra, Serpentine in the great ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... of the room which was about thirty feet square, or roughly square, being irregular in shape, one side curving outward, another being indented by what might have been the corner of another building jutting into it, another alcoved by three sides of an octagon, while the fourth was serpentine in contour. Two windows let in more daylight, while two doors evidently gave ingress to other rooms. The walls were partially ceiled with thin strips of wood, nicely fitted and finished, partially plastered and the rest covered with a fine, woven cloth. Figures of reptiles ...
— Out of Time's Abyss • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... size; and, in the other, very few in number, and much smaller. The mountains of the Society Isles continually attract the vapours from the atmosphere, and many rivulets descend from the broken rocks into the plain, where they wind their serpentine course, and glide smoothly to the sea. The inhabitants of those islands take advantage of this gift of bountiful nature, and not only drink of the salutary element, but likewise bathe so frequently in it, that no impurity can long adhere to their ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 14 • Robert Kerr
... in a few words that part of the coast which is the scene of my story. Lantrig, as I have said, looks down upon Ready-Money Cove from the summit of Pedn-glas, its northern arm. The cove itself is narrow, running in between two scarred and rugged walls of serpentine, and terminating in a little beach of whitest sand beneath a frowning and precipitous cliff. It is easy to see its value in the eyes of smugglers, for not only is the cove difficult of observation from the sea, by reason of its straitness and the ...
— Dead Man's Rock • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... morning in tasting wines, and thinking that, although he had never learned to swim, some recollection he had of an essay on swimming would ensure his safety, he betted his friends a hundred guineas that he would swim to a certain point, and flinging himself into the Serpentine, would have drowned before their eyes but for the help of Mr. Percival. The breach caused by this affair induced Sir Philip Baddely, a gentleman who always supplied "each vacuity of sense" with an oath, to endeavour to cut him out ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IV. • Editors: Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... which I have seen in Torres Strait is a peculiar kind of club procured from New Guinea, consisting of a quoit-like disk of hard stone (quartz, basalt, or serpentine) with a sharp edge, and a hole in the centre to receive one end ...
— Voyage Of H.M.S. Rattlesnake, Vol. 2 (of 2) • John MacGillivray
... removed from the Idle Lake. I would fain have loitered an hour more in this enchanted bower, had not the gardener, whose patience was quite exhausted, and who had never heard of the Red-Cross Knight and his achievements, dragged me away to a sunburnt, contemptible hillock, commanding the view of a serpentine ditch, and decorated with the title of Jardin Anglois. Some object like decayed limekilns and mouldering ovens, is disposed in an amphitheatrical form, on the declivity of this tremendous eminence: and there is to be ivy, and a cascade, and what ...
— Dreams, Waking Thoughts, and Incidents • William Beckford
... warm hedge grew lush eglantine, Green cow-bind and the moonlight-coloured may, And cherry blossoms, and white cups, whose wine Was the bright dew yet drained not by the day; And wild roses, and ivy serpentine With its dark buds ...
— Father and Son • Edmund Gosse
... all the world knows that his belly is empty. It has something strangely horrible in its tone, for it speaks of that cold-blooded, dispassionate cruelty which is only to be found in perfection in the feline race. These sleek, smooth-skinned, soft-footed, lithe, almost serpentine animals, torture with a grace of movement, and a gentleness in strength which has something in it more violently repugnant to our natures than any sensation with which the thought of the blundering ...
— In Court and Kampong - Being Tales and Sketches of Native Life in the Malay Peninsula • Hugh Clifford
... briskly along towards the Serpentine, first glancing at her watch. It was nearly six o'clock. She remembered that she had had no tea, but felt too excited to be conscious of hunger. She walked as far as Kensington Gardens and then slowly retraced her steps, feeling infinitely better for the fresh air and exercise. It was not so ...
— The Secret Adversary • Agatha Christie
... king, Nahusha, quitted his serpentine form, and assuming his celestial shape he went back to Heaven. The glorious and pious Yudhishthira, too, returned to his hermitage with Dhaumya and his brother Bhima. Then the virtuous Yudhishthira narrated all that, in detail, ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa Bk. 3 Pt. 2 • Translated by Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... toward her, rearing her head in as serpentine a manner as she could command; and after a struggle the two mighty saurians went down together in a whirlpool of frothing waves. They came up quite out of breath, and sat laughing and panting on ...
— Hildegarde's Holiday - a story for girls • Laura E. Richards
... in the summer, we would walk in Kensington Gardens and see the Rank and Fashion. In those days the Rank and Fashion were not above showing themselves in the Kensington Gardens of a Sunday afternoon, crossing the Serpentine Bridge again and again between ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... religion is the Religion of Joy," a third will explain (a bald old man with a cough and tinted glasses), "the Religion of Physical Pride and Rapture, and my...." "Methuselahite!" I shall cry again, and I shall slap him boisterously on the back, and he will fall down. Then a pale young poet with serpentine hair will come and say to me (as one did only the other day): "Moods and impressions are the only realities, and these are constantly and wholly changing. I could hardly therefore define my religion...." "I can," I should ...
— All Things Considered • G. K. Chesterton
... trunks of the trees, on our right and left, extensive rice fields are seen stretching far into the distance. The young blades are shooting above the surface of the water, giving it the appearance of a frozen sheet clothed with green, and protected from the river by a serpentine embankment. How beautiful the expanse viewed from beneath ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... king, his ministry and his army. They have refined upon villany till it wants a name. To the fiercer vices of former ages they have added the dregs and scummings of the most finished rascality, and are so completely sunk in serpentine deceit, that there is not left among them ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... mountains, running in a semicircular form; the city itself covering an elevation slightly above the vast plain extending before it. Here and there we caught sight of the river Bogota, which runs through the plain in a serpentine form at about three leagues from the city. The surrounding country was generally uncultivated, except in the immediate neighbourhood of villages or quintas, though there were large enclosures for grazing cattle. On the summits of the mountains which rise immediately above the ...
— In New Granada - Heroes and Patriots • W.H.G. Kingston
... Styrian-Carinthian highway through the valley of the Drau does not know what one of the good old Austrian imperial highroads in the good old days might undertake. Hop-up-and-down is its behavior, with snake-like humps, like a jumping polecat. Serpentine windings? Don't exist there. Straight as an arrow it heedlessly goes over mountain after mountain, down to the Drau and up again to airy heights, and any motorist who is slightly in a hurry will make a miniature descent into hell of some 250 feet, say beyond Voelkermarkt, approaching ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various
... still of note Are those fraternal Four of Borrowdale, Joined in one solemn and capacious grove; Huge trunks!—and each particular trunk a growth Of intertwisted fibres serpentine Up-coiling, and inveterately convolved; Not uninformed with phantasy, and looks That threaten the profane;—a pillared shade, Upon whose grassless floor of red-brown hue, By sheddings from the pinal umbrage tinged Perennially—beneath whose sable roof ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... anything of an artistic character, that can be distinctly assigned to the primitive period, are a certain number of engraved cylinders, some of which are very curious. [PLATE XIV., Fig. 1] It is clearly established that the cylinders in question, which are generally of serpentine, meteoric stone, jasper, chalcedony, or other similar substance, were the seals or signets of their possessors, who impressed them upon the moist clay which formed the ordinary material for writing. They are round, or nearly so, and ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 1. (of 7): Chaldaea • George Rawlinson
... Beneath her open cloak her dress was of the ordinary German Reform-Kleid type, and her figure had the rather jelloid appearance of those who affect this style. Her regulation witch's hat was by now, probably, in the Serpentine, and her round head was therefore disclosed, with two stout sand-coloured plaits pursuing ...
— Living Alone • Stella Benson
... the tiger, softly, and went out awestruck, holding her hand, and paddling three steps to each of her serpentine glides. ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade
... tremulous. This state continues for ten minutes, and then clear and distinct vision returns. Next a lucid circle, zig-zagged in acute angles, appears close to the eyes, now on the right, now on the left. It moves in a somewhat serpentine course, and is broken in the centre of the lower half. It withdraws from the eye into subjective space, and the shining band of which it is composed gradually loses its sharp angles, and becomes wider and undulated, ...
— Myth and Science - An Essay • Tito Vignoli
... "I don't know many of the boys who sail boats in the Serpentine: you will have to make their acquaintance yourself. But I know one boy whom I must bring to the house. He is a German-Jew boy, who is going to be another Mendelssohn, his friends say. He is a pretty boy, with ruddy-brown hair, big black eyes and a fine forehead; and he really ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 28. July, 1873. • Various
... Hei-ma-hou led up the dry river bed, with the Great Wall on the left stretching its serpentine length across the hills, and on the right picturesque cliffs two hundred feet in height. At their bases nestle mud-roofed cottages and Chinese inns, but farther up the river the low hills are all of ...
— Across Mongolian Plains - A Naturalist's Account of China's 'Great Northwest' • Roy Chapman Andrews
... in a serpentine course. They climbed over fallen and moss-grown logs; they slushed through shallow water; they crawled on their hands and knees under embankments and rocks, and at last, at Handsome's order, they stepped into a boat of some kind which ...
— A Woman at Bay - A Fiend in Skirts • Nicholas Carter
... hit the centipede right in the middle of its head, but instead of glancing off harmlessly as before, it struck home to the creature's brain. Then with a convulsive shudder the serpentine body stopped moving, and the fiery light of its great eyes and hundred feet darkened to a dull glare like the sunset of a stormy day, and then went out in blackness. A great darkness now overspread the heavens, the thunder rolled ...
— Japanese Fairy Tales • Yei Theodora Ozaki
... pocket for a pencil, produced the rump thereof, spread the letter upon his knee, and began writing on the back of it. It was like an internal surgical operation, for his tongue protruded as he wrote, marking his progress by a series of serpentine writhings that suggested ...
— St. Cuthbert's • Robert E. Knowles
... the student learned? Does he know why the twenty- sixth chapter of the 'Book of the dead' was written upon lapis-lazuli, the twenty-seventh upon green felspar, the twenty-ninth upon cornelian, and the thirtieth upon serpentine? He does not. Having studied Part Four, has he learned the secret of why Osiris was a black god, although he typified the Sun? Has he learned why modern Christianity is losing its hold upon the nations, whilst Buddhism, so called, counts ...
— Bat Wing • Sax Rohmer
... sang, the skies were clear and clean We bowled along a road that curved a spine Superbly sinuous and serpentine Thro' silent symphonies of summer green. Sudden the Forth came on us—sad of mien, No cloud to colour it, no breeze to line: A sheet of dark, dull glass, without a sign Of life or death, two spits of sand between. Water and sky merged blank in mist together, The Fort loomed spectral, ...
— Poems by William Ernest Henley • William Ernest Henley
... miles flows in a deep, narrow valley, from 700 feet to 800 feet below the level of the surrounding plateau. Then it reaches a lower level, the banks become of moderate elevation, the country is densely wooded, the large river winds in serpentine bends through an alluvial valley; the current, once so strong, becomes sluggish, until at last it pours itself through a delta of low-lying drift into the Slave River, and its long course ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume 19 - Travel and Adventure • Various
... terms of weight the mineralogical changes in the katamorphism of serpentine rocks to iron ore, ...
— The Economic Aspect of Geology • C. K. Leith
... streams—the Buona Ventura, the Calumet, and the Nu eleje sha wako, or River of the Strangers, while twenty rivers of inferior size rush with noise and impetuosity from the mountains, until they enter the prairies, where they glide smoothly in long serpentine courses between banks covered with flowers and shaded by the thick foliage of the western magnolia. The plains, as I have said, are gently undulating, and are covered with excellent natural pastures of mosquito-grass, ...
— Travels and Adventures of Monsieur Violet • Captain Marryat
... undulating plain to the little hamlet of Artanne. Here we come upon a valley, which begins at Montbazon, ends at the Loire, and seems to rise and fall,—to bound, as it were,—beneath the chateaus placed on its double hillsides,—a splendid emerald cup, in the depths of which flow the serpentine lines of the river Indre. I gazed at this scene with ineffable delight, for which the gloomy moor-land and the fatigue of the sandy walk ...
— The Lily of the Valley • Honore de Balzac
... Giudetto ornamented the delightful Church of St. Michele at Lucca. This work, or at least the best of it, is a procession of various little partly heraldic and partly grotesque animals, inlaid with white marble on a ground of green serpentine. They are full of the best expression of mediaeval art. The Lion of Florence, the Hare of Pisa, the Stork of Perugia, the Dragon of Pistoja, are all to be seen in these simple mosaics, if one chooses to consider them as such, hardly more than white silhouettes, ...
— Arts and Crafts in the Middle Ages • Julia De Wolf Addison
... statuary, and a very strange one; executed, as I first believed, in some kind of wax—but, pushing my researches (for the thing interested me) I found the material to be a white soapstone that crops out here and there in the crevices of our serpentine. Indeed, I know to a foot the spot from which the sculptor took it, close on ...
— News from the Duchy • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... Tiffles had quite uncoiled his serpentine arms from her, and while she was looking fiery indignation at him, the door was pushed open, and the three bachelors ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... and calico-printing; and its value is so great, the proprietor of a serpentine tract in Shetland, where chromate of iron was found by Professor Jameson, cleared, in a few ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 13, No. 362, Saturday, March 21, 1829 • Various
... hedge grew lush eglantine, Green cowbind and the moonlight-colour'd May, And cherry-blossoms, and white cups whose wine Was the bright dew yet drain'd not by the day; And wild roses, and ivy serpentine, With its dark buds and leaves wandering astray; And flowers, azure, black, and streak'd with gold, Fairer than ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... flies in his own way," said the stork-father. "Swans fly slantingly, cranes in triangles, and plovers in serpentine windings." ...
— The Sand-Hills of Jutland • Hans Christian Andersen
... Lee himself, who is a millionaire and landed proprietor of ideas, is equally the slave of his thronging words. They cluster about him like barnacles, nobly and picturesquely impeding his progress. He is a Laocoon wrestling with serpentine sentences. He ought to be ...
— Shandygaff • Christopher Morley
... and Hanoverian line of succession. Queen Caroline especially showed her regard for the spot by exercising her taste in beautifying it according to the notions of the period. It was she who caused the string of ponds to be united so as to form the Serpentine; and he modified the Dutch style of the gardens, abolishing the clipped monsters in yew and box, and introducing wildernesses and groves to relieve the stiffness and monotony of straight walks and hedges. ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen V.1. • Sarah Tytler
... He walked rapidly along Brook Street into Park Lane, and from thence to the park, hardly knowing whither he went in the enthusiasm of the moment. He walked back to the Marble Arch, and thence round by the drive to the Guard House and the bridge over the Serpentine, by the Knightsbridge Barracks to Hyde Park Corner. Though he should give up everything and go and live in her own country with her, he would marry her. His politics, his hunting, his address to the Queen, his horses, ...
— The Duke's Children • Anthony Trollope
... atmospheres or more by direct heating. The flanges of the tubing are provided with a cut-off of angle iron identical with that of the tube, D. By means of this arrangement the cocks and the flanges, E, permit of communication between the serpentine tubing, R, and the boiler being interrupted; while the heat developed by the fire-place, F, causes an active circulation in both the tubing ...
— Scientific American Suppl. No. 299 • Various
... rising in the distance, a downy hill, now sprinkled with some snow which had fallen the night before the frost regularly set in, and which had thus not affected the surface of the lake. At the lower end the ground fell, and a long stream-like serpentine channel could be seen winding away, in one place overhung by trees, and in others between green meadows, till lost in the distance. The lower part was, in the summer, the favourite resort of anglers, for it contained some of the finest tench to be ...
— Ernest Bracebridge - School Days • William H. G. Kingston
... through the open door at her as she glided across the hall, swift and elastic, yet serpentine, and graceful and ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade
... easily understanding her friend's motives, crept in a serpentine fashion to the hillock, where she soon found Whitewing— to the intense but unexpressed joy of that valiant ...
— The Prairie Chief • R.M. Ballantyne
... conversation with his daughter, and now gone forth on horseback. Handsome and graceful still, Leopold Travers when in London is pleased to find himself scarcely less the fashion with the young than he was when himself in youth. He is now riding along the banks of the Serpentine, no one better mounted, better dressed, better looking, or talking with greater fluency on the topics which ...
— Kenelm Chillingly, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... park, which has four gates, each superb in style, you feel that our mythological Arcadias are flat and stale. Arcadia is in Burgundy, not in Greece; Arcadia is at Les Aigues and nowhere else. A river, made by scores of brooklets, crosses the park at its lower level with a serpentine movement; giving a dewy freshness and tranquillity to the scene,—an air of solitude, which reminds one of a convent of Carthusians, and all the more because, on an artificial island in the river, is a hermitage in ruins, the interior elegance of which is worthy of the luxurious ...
— Sons of the Soil • Honore de Balzac
... the timid, yellow flame of gas lamps struggled to assert itself against the all-embracing silver brightness. Here and there windows glowed warm, set in the pale, glistering facades of the adjacent houses. A cool, light wind, hailing from the direction of the unseen Serpentine, stirred the hanging clusters of the pink geraniums that fell over the curved lip of the stone vases, standing along the broad coping of the balcony, and gently caressed the ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... the short round of the village homes where there were daughters young and still unwed. Everywhere white cloth, serpentine braid, and crocheted lace! Truly it was a marrying year. Ellen said very little, and the girls, talking among themselves, forgot to notice her any more than a flower in ...
— Country Neighbors • Alice Brown
... the sea, Until she slept, and saw the sea in dreams. Except in stormy nights, when all was dark, And the wild tempest swept with slanting wing Against her refuge; and the heavy spray Shot through the doorway serpentine cold arms To seize the fore-doomed morsel of the sea: Then she slept never; and she would have died, But that she evermore was stung to life By new sea-terrors. Sometimes the sea-gull With clanging pinions darted through the arch, ...
— A Hidden Life and Other Poems • George MacDonald
... has been raised, and planted with curious trees and shrubs.[1] The whole area now assumes all the appearances of natural hill and dale, is finely wooded, diversified with flowering and evergreen shrubs, with fine lawns broken into parterres, and possessing a noble serpentine piece of water, so disposed as to give the idea of great extent.[2] This water winds round clumps of forest trees, which have been preserved for that purpose, and all that could be retained of the previously existing ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, - Issue 278, Supplementary Number (1828) • Various
... Crime, a crime which the revengeful, or the purchased judge distils out of an honest or a doubtful deed, in the alembic he has made out of the law broken up and recast by him for that purpose, twisted, drawn out, and coiled up in serpentine and labyrinthine folds. For as the sweet juices of the grape, the peach, the apple, pear, or plumb may be fermented, and then distilled into the most deadly intoxicating draught to madden man and infuriate woman, so by the sophistry of a State's Attorney and a Court Judge, ...
— The Trial of Theodore Parker • Theodore Parker
... time he reached the Marble Arch the idea of such a course had become incongruous to him. He passed beneath that architectural effort and walked into the Park till he got upon the spreading grass. Here he continued to walk; he took his way across the elastic turf and came out by the Serpentine. He watched with a friendly eye the diversions of the London people, he bent a glance almost encouraging on the young ladies paddling their sweethearts about the lake and the guardsmen tickling tenderly with their bearskins the artificial ...
— The Lesson of the Master • Henry James
... here and there, and patches of creamy—fur? Or was it hair which hung in strips, as if the creatures had been partially plucked in a careless fashion? The necks were long and moved about in a serpentine motion, as though their spines were as limber as reptiles'. On the end of those long and twisting necks were heads which also appeared more suitable to another species—broad, rather flat, with a singular toadlike look—but furnished with horns set halfway down the nose, horns which began in a ...
— The Defiant Agents • Andre Alice Norton
... promontory above the sea of foliage below. They might judge of the long curvature of the conformation of the range just here, for on the opposite height was visible at intervals the road they had traveled, winding in and out among the trees, ascending the mountain in serpentine coils; they beheld the Cove beneath from a new angle, and further yet the barren cherty slope on which, despite the distance, the witch-face could still be discerned by eyes practiced in marking its lineaments, trained to trace the popular ...
— The Mystery of Witch-Face Mountain and Other Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock
... of the grey stones at the bottom of the sea for twenty yards out and more. The sea had no power, it splashed in weak and hopeless waves, sucked itself away inward, came back again with a little run, and feebly toppled over. The high-water line was shown by a serpentine strip of jetsam winding along the whole of the shore. There was no yellow in the sands; clouds and sunshine struggled overhead, but beneath them all was grey. The wind rustled in the giant grasses like the sound of men on horseback, so that I was continually looking behind ...
— A Tramp's Sketches • Stephen Graham
... which shows the fourth part of the square 4 times larger than full size, it is easy to see how the framework is darned. When the latter is entirely darned, work the patterns in the different squares in button-hole stitch. The circular and serpentine patterns consist of 3 rows of button-hole stitch; the patterns which imitate whole rosettes and half rosettes are worked in rows of button-hole stitch. For each row the thread must be first drawn from one place to the other, as can be seen in illustration, and fastened on the framework. The knots ...
— Beeton's Book of Needlework • Isabella Beeton
... house is narrow, the place is bleak Where, outside, rain and wind combine With a furtive ear, if I strive to speak, With a hostile eye at my flushing cheek, 10 With a malice that marks each word, each sign! O enemy sly and serpentine, Uncoil thee from the waking man! Do I hold the Past Thus firm and fast 15 Yet doubt if the Future hold I can? This path so soft to pace shall lead Through the magic of May to herself indeed! Or narrow if needs the house must be, Outside are the storms and ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning
... (Soils derived from serpentine rock contain almost toxic levels of magnesium and should not receive dolomite. Alkaline soils may still benefit from additional calcium and should get gypsum instead of ...
— Organic Gardener's Composting • Steve Solomon
... doted on him. He was "a man of desperate fortunes," and he did not shrink from violent methods. In studying his life we are amused, we are almost scandalised, at his snake-like quality. He moves with serpentine undulations, and the beautiful hard head is lifted from ambush to strike the unsuspecting enemy at sight. With his protestations, his volubility, his torrent of excuses, his evasive pertinacity, Sir Walter Raleigh is the very opposite of the "strong silent" ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse
... them—the quaint wooden roofs— The little white houses. The clatter of hoofs, And the music of wandering bands, up the walls Of the steep hanging hill, at remote intervals Reached them, cross'd by the sound of the clacking of whips, And here and there, faintly, through serpentine slips Of verdant rose-gardens deep-sheltered with screens Of airy acacias and dark evergreens, They could mark the white dresses and catch the light songs Of the lovely Parisians that wander'd in throngs, Led by Laughter and Love through the old eventide Down the dream-haunted ...
— Lucile • Owen Meredith
... slowly up, for a whole day, first along the highroad, sometimes above and sometimes below the twisting, serpentine railway, then afterwards along a path on the side of the hill—a path that went through the crew-yards of isolated farms and even through the garden of a village priest. The priest was decorating an archway. He stood on a chair in the sunshine, reaching ...
— Twilight in Italy • D.H. Lawrence
... peak of Frank Mountain. Bethlehem is not visible; but there is the tiny village of Bethphage, and the first roof of Bethany peeping over the ridge, and the Inn of the Good Samaritan in a red cut of the long serpentine road to Jericho. The dark range of Gilead and Moab seems like a huge wall of lapis-lazuli beyond the furrowed, wrinkled, yellowish clay-hills and the wide gray trench of the Jordan Valley, wherein the river marks its crooked path with a line of deep green. The ...
— Out-of-Doors in the Holy Land - Impressions of Travel in Body and Spirit • Henry Van Dyke
... of the world was small, her enthusiasm great—and evidently she believed in Harriet's faithlessness—so that love added to the impatience of youth, which could not foresee the dreadful future. Without doubt, could they both have imagined the scene by the Serpentine three years later, they would have shrunk from the action which was a strong link in the ...
— Mrs. Shelley • Lucy M. Rossetti
... grass and, leaving the Serpentine on their left, found two chairs in a quiet spot under the trees. Here, at least, they were quite unwatched, but still Rachel found it impossible to regain the relations that had existed between her and Adrian when they had ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Edward J. O'Brien and John Cournos, editors
... unbroken chain of inter-communication, like to a prodigious sarpent, with his head resting upon the shores of Europe, and his lengthened form stretching over the ocean and curling along this great winding stream in serpentine grandeur, proudly flaps his tail at Paducah! . . . SIR, the ball is in motion; it is rolling down in noise of thunder from the mountain heights, and comes booming in its majesty over the wide-spread plain. Yes, Sir, and it will continue to roll on, and on, gathering strength and bulk in its ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, April 1844 - Volume 23, Number 4 • Various
... whatever. To meet her black stare was like looking into a deep well, and I was totally unprepared for her change of tactics. Instead of trying to tear my hands apart, she flung herself upon my breast and with a downward, undulating, serpentine motion, a quick sliding dive, she got away from me smoothly. It was all very swift; I saw her pick up the tail of her wrapper and run for the door at the end of the verandah not very gracefully. She appeared ...
— 'Twixt Land & Sea • Joseph Conrad
... theatre, and I remember with what contempt, in his sweet forgivable way, the old man spoke of much that passes nowadays for criticism. He said Hazlitt was exactly the opposite of Lord Chesterfield, who advised his son, if he could not get at a thing in a straight line, to try the serpentine one. There were no crooked pathways in Hazlitt's intellect. His style is brilliant, but never cloyed with ornamentation. Hazlitt's paper on Gifford was thought by Procter to be as pungent a bit of writing as had appeared in his day, and he quoted ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields
... grandeur; it gives firmness to the forms; a serpentine line in comparison appears feeble ...
— Six Centuries of Painting • Randall Davies
... Hyde Park, by a bridge over the Serpentine, an artificial river, are Kensington Gardens, beautiful pleasure-grounds attached to Kensington Palace, a building belonging to the ...
— Stories and Legends of Travel and History, for Children • Grace Greenwood
... years from the turning of the first sod four wide pools, covering in all one hundred acres of ground, were ready to be filled, and at the end of 1898 the ground was metamorphosed into the largest area of water in the London district, with the exception of the Serpentine. ...
— The Naturalist on the Thames • C. J. Cornish
... disappeared beneath the surface, but be always recovered himself, and went on with his work with the greatest deliberation and composure. After crossing and recrossing the river in this manner three or four times, he succeeded in fixing on a serpentine line, where the water, except for a few yards near the opposite bank, was only up to his shoulders, and which he ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 6, No. 33, July, 1860 • Various
... much excited to answer. His eyes were blazing with joy and with emotion. And Valentine seemed still to be informed with a curious, serpentine lassitude. The life seemed to be only very gently running again over his body, creeping from the centre, from the heart, to the extremities, gradually growing in the eyes, stronger and stronger, a dawn of life in a full-grown man. Dr. Levillier had ...
— Flames • Robert Smythe Hichens
... the cushion. He then gave me, as the first present from him to his Majesty, the Eu-shee, or symbol of peace and prosperity, and expressed his hopes that my Sovereign and he should always live in good correspondence and amity. It is a whitish agate-looking stone, perhaps serpentine, about a foot and a half long, curiously carved, and highly prized by the Chinese; but to me it does not appear in itself to be ...
— Travels in China, Containing Descriptions, Observations, and Comparisons, Made and Collected in the Course of a Short Residence at the Imperial Palace of Yuen-Min-Yuen, and on a Subsequent Journey thr • John Barrow
... is like to nothing so much as that of a winding river, which therefore we often call serpentine. So did the Indians. Kennebec, a stream in Maine, in the Algonkin means snake, and Antietam, the creek in Maryland of tragic celebrity, in an Iroquois dialect has the same significance. How easily would savages, construing the figure literally, make the serpent a ...
— The Myths of the New World - A Treatise on the Symbolism and Mythology of the Red Race of America • Daniel G. Brinton
... deep, which defies arithmetical computation, and can be expressed only by their sacred numerals. The people have a more certain faith in them than in most of their divinities, because they see them so often; every cloud with a curious configuration or serpentine tail is a dragon. "We see him," they say. The scattering of the cloud is his disappearance. He rules the hills, is connected with feng-shui (geomancy), dwells round the graves, is associated with the Confucian ...
— Myths and Legends of China • E. T. C. Werner
... is set down in its principles, and he that doth any way confute that spirit, presently it falls a raging, and cries out, serpent, liar, wolf, dragon, devil, be silent with thy serpentine wisdom, and smoke of the bottomless pit. Now in this the devil is wonderfully cunning; for least he should indeed be discovered, he doth set the face hard against the truth, and counteth it such a deadly enemy, that he will not, cannot bear it; but ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... curve being turned towards the thoracic side. But when the arm is abducted from the side, and elevated, the vessels which are destined to supply the limb follow it, and in this position they take, in reality, a serpentine course; the first curve of which is described, in reference to the thorax, from the point K to the head of the humerus; and the next is that bend which the head of the humerus, projecting into the axilla in the elevated position of the ...
— Surgical Anatomy • Joseph Maclise
... the beat of the Indian drum, the eerie penetrations of the turtle rattle that set the time of the dancers' feet. Dance? It is not a dance, that marvellously slow, serpentine-like figure with the soft swish, swish of moccasined feet, and the faint jingling of elks'-teeth bracelets, keeping rhythm with every footfall. It is not a dance, but an invocation of motion. Why may we not worship with the graceful movement of our feet? The paleface worships by moving his lips and ...
— The Moccasin Maker • E. Pauline Johnson
... before him the surgeon also walking. Melbury would have overtaken him, but at that moment Fitzpiers turned in through a gate to one of the rambling drives among the trees at this side of the wood, which led to nowhere in particular, and the beauty of whose serpentine curves was the only justification of their existence. Felice almost simultaneously trotted down the lane towards the timber-dealer, in a little basket-carriage which she sometimes drove about the estate, unaccompanied by a servant. She turned ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... town. By the time the sun was up they were fed by their sister battalion, the 2nd, and had begun to unwind their putties. But what a sight! Their putties were not soaked and not caked; say, rather, that there may have been a core of puttie inside, but that the men's legs were embedded in a serpentine cast of clay. As for their boots, you could only infer them from the huge balls of stratified mud men bore round their feet. Red mud, yellow mud, black mud, brown mud—they lifted their feet toilsomely; they ...
— From Capetown to Ladysmith - An Unfinished Record of the South African War • G. W. Steevens
... of the bridge at about two miles' distance, and a fine landscape of the country both ways. From thence, an excellent road, judiciously conducted, through very romantic scenes. In one part, descending the face of a hill, it is laid out in serpentine, and not zigzag, to ease the descent. In others, it passes through a winding meadow, from fifty to one hundred yards wide, walled, as it were, on both sides, by hills of rock; and at length issues into plain country. The waste hills are covered ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... in a sudden rush of wind. It struck and slowly separated, then with a majestic motion flowed like water over the edge of the precipice on either side, and fell with a thudding sound into the unmeasured depths beneath. And this was but a little thing, a mere forerunner, for after it, with a slow, serpentine movement, rolled the body of ...
— Ayesha - The Further History of She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed • H. Rider Haggard
... was now exactly above their heads. The last ascent boldly skirted the shoulder of the mountain, and then doubled upward in a series of serpentine coils. Below them the whole of Lake Garda was spread like a map. Mr. Wilder and the Englishman, having paused at the edge of the declivity, were endeavouring to trace the boundary line of Austria, and they called ...
— Jerry • Jean Webster
... the slope is the same, and the method of making roads in the serpentine style to reach a gate leading to the important part of town, is not only the common method employed for hill towns, but the natural and necessary one, not only in ancient times, but ...
— A Study Of The Topography And Municipal History Of Praeneste • Ralph Van Deman Magoffin
... ignored and left out of the conversation, had apparently determined to amuse himself in his own way. He had meandered back and forth across the road, as was shown by the serpentine character of his tracks; now, catching sight of a tempting stalk of mullein by the fence, he had walked across the gutter and was just stretching his head forward to seize the coveted morsel, when Mrs. Adams interrupted him. Her first impulse was to draw him back, but kinder feelings prevailed, ...
— Half a Dozen Girls • Anna Chapin Ray
... a dark serpentine line that lay like a dead snake upon the lighted surface of the road. Jules grunted in token of comprehension. Liane Delorme ...
— Alias The Lone Wolf • Louis Joseph Vance
... the whole length of our walk along the edge of the cliffs or the plains, but we saw two snakes of very distinct kinds, each exceeding five feet in length; the one black with a yellow belly, the other green and black, but they quickly escaped into holes, leaving a serpentine impression of their bodies upon the sand. These marks were seen and remarked near the edge of all the holes, which were very numerous upon the surface of the island, before I discovered that they were the tracks of reptiles, ...
— Narrative of a Survey of the Intertropical and Western Coasts of Australia] [Volume 2 of 2] • Phillip Parker King
... backing Makn,[EN33] and the jagged black peaks of their eastern parallel, the Kalb el-Nakhlah, look like plutonic reefs or island-chains emerging from the Secondary sea. The latter, whose bleached and skeleton white is stained, here and there, by greenish-yellow sands, chlorite and serpentine, stands boldly out from the chaos of purpling mountains composing Sinai, and ending southwards in the azure knobs of three-headed Tirn Island. The country, in fact, altogether changed: quartz had disappeared, and chlorite had ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 1 • Richard Burton
... she walked in the flock, sometimes with this one, sometimes with that, that the fresh night air was producing staggerings and serpentine courses among the men who had partaken too freely; some of the more careless women also were wandering in their gait—to wit, a dark virago, Car Darch, dubbed Queen of Spades, till lately a favourite ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy
... aware of certain suspicious-looking movements of the long grass, about a hundred yards distant, suggestive of the presence of an animal of some kind approaching the antelope cautiously along a sort of wavering, serpentine course. When I first discovered this movement the creature that caused it was at such a distance that it was completely concealed among the long grass, even from the elevation which I occupied; ...
— Through Veld and Forest - An African Story • Harry Collingwood
... the sea, and the entire circumference is under three-quarters of a mile. This small point rises abruptly out of the depths of the ocean. Its mineralogical constitution is not simple; in some parts the rock is of a cherty, in others of a felspathic nature, including thin veins of serpentine. It is a remarkable fact, that all the many small islands, lying far from any continent, in the Pacific, Indian, and Atlantic Oceans, with the exception of the Seychelles and this little point of rock, are, I believe, composed either of coral or of erupted ...
— The Voyage of the Beagle • Charles Darwin
... Thrapston tottering along on his stick. Lord Thrapston hated a parson, and scowled at poor Mr. Taylor as he went by. Mr. Taylor shrank from meeting his eye, and hurried along till he reached the Serpentine, where he stood still for a few minutes, drinking in the fresh breeze. But the breeze could not blow his puzzle out of his brain. Was it a crime, or merely an escapade? What had she said to the young man? What had her feelings been or become towards ...
— Comedies of Courtship • Anthony Hope
... sweet and unctuous duty! No wonder that in old times this sperm was such a favourite cosmetic. Such a clearer! such a sweetener! such a softener! such a delicious molifier! After having my hands in it for only a few minutes, my fingers felt like eels, and began, as it were, to serpentine and spiralise. ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... the sunset, flings her sweetest charms upon them. Each tuft of upland grass is musked like a bouquet with perfume. The balmy breeze swings to and fro like a censer. On one side the eye follows for the space of an eagle's flight, the serpentine mountain chains, southwards from the great purple dome of Taconic—the St. Peter's of these hills—northwards to the twin summits of Saddleback, which is the two-steepled natural cathedral of Berkshire; ...
— Israel Potter • Herman Melville
... Vanderlyn was not subjected to so dread an ordeal; at last there floated to where he was standing the welcome cry of "En voiture! En voiture, s'il vous plait!" The dark serpentine mass on which the lonely man's eyes were fixed shivered as though it were a sentient being waking to life, and slowly the train ...
— The Uttermost Farthing • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... In one place clusters of rare and deeply crimsoned snapdragons, in another patches of aromatic thyme and wild strawberries keep up the charm of the place. As we draw nearer to the Tower the ground is laid out in a wilder and more picturesque manner, the walks are more serpentine. We turned a corner, and Mr. Beckford stood before us, attended by an aged servant, whose hairs have whitened in his employment, and whose skill has laid out these grounds in this beautiful manner. Mr. Beckford welcomed me in the kindest way, ...
— Recollections of the late William Beckford - of Fonthill, Wilts and Lansdown, Bath • Henry Venn Lansdown
... is always open, though in a moderate and calm degree, to the duties and ties of life. He will always do something to serve his friend, his brother, or the man whose father pulled his father out of the Serpentine. Affect with him no varnish; exert no artifice in attempting to obtain his assistance. Candidly state your wish for such or such a service, sensibly state your pretensions, modestly hint at your gratitude. So may you deceive him once, then ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... got a new motor! Isn't it fearfully exciting! We are going for a serpentine run with him, and our next-of-kin are going to divide Peter's and my insurance between them if we never come back again. Be sure you claim all you can get if I ...
— Peter and Jane - or The Missing Heir • S. (Sarah) Macnaughtan
... is writing, or reading, or sauntering. This view of the castle(397) is what I have just finished, and is the only side that will be at all regular. Directly before it is an open grove, through which you see a field, which is bounded by a serpentine wood of all kind of trees, and flowering shrubs, and flowers! The lawn before the house is situated on the top of a small hill, from whence to the left you see the town and church of Twickenham encircling a turn of ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole
... pour down the southern scarp of the Mediterranean Alps along the Riviera di Ponente, near Genoa, have short courses, and a brisk walk of a couple of hours or even less takes you from the sea-beach to the headspring of many of them. In their heaviest floods, they bring rounded masses of serpentine quite down to the sea, but at ordinary high water their lower course is charged only with finely divided particles of that rock. Hence, while, near their sources, their channels are filled with pebbles and angular fragments, intermixed with a little gravel, the proportions are reversed near their ...
— The Earth as Modified by Human Action • George P. Marsh
... always lighting on a sure foothold, and guiding the others to do the same. At last, at a sharp turn of one of these rocky eminences, they perceived an enormous cloud of white vapor rising up like smoke from the earth, and twisting itself as it rose, in swaying, serpentine folds, as though some giant spirit-hand were shaking it to and fro like a long flowing veil in the air. Sigurd paused and ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli
... first near Marimelena, we find syenite consisting of a great quantity of hornblende, partly decomposed, a little quartz, and a reddish-white feldspar seldom crystallized. This fine syenite, the strata of which incline to the north-west, alternates twice with serpentine. The layers of intercalated serpentine are three toises thick. Farther south, towards Regla and Guanabacoa, the syenite disappears, and the whole soil is covered with serpentine, rising in hills from thirty to forty toises high, and running ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America V3 • Alexander von Humboldt
... deposit of the faith" until Watson, the most prolific writer of the evangelical reform in the eighteenth century and the standard theologian of the evangelical party, declared: "We have no reason at all to believe that the animal had a serpentine form in any mode or degree until its transformation; that he was then degraded to a reptile to go upon his belly imports, on the contrary, an entire loss and alteration of the original form." Here, again, was a ripe result of ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... informing me that I have come into 1,000,000 through the will of an Australian gold-digger named Tomkins. On referring to my diary I find that I saved his life two years ago by plunging into the Serpentine. This is very gratifying. Was late at the office as I had to look in at the Palace on the way, in order to get knighted, but managed to get a good deal of work done before I was interrupted by a madman with a razor, who ...
— Not that it Matters • A. A. Milne
... by the earth's convulsive throes; it is certain, at least, that the shore was considerably enlarged, and that several marine animals were left upon it. On the other side, a black and terrible cloud, bursting with an igneous serpentine vapor, darted out a long train of fire, resembling, but much larger ...
— Complete Story of the San Francisco Horror • Richard Linthicum
... wonder! Oh what happy spectators! And what a happy performer! They admiring, he admired, with an ardour and sincerity never excited by all the quadrilles and the spread-eagles of the Seine and the Serpentine. He really skates well though, and I am glad I came this way; for, with all the father's feelings sitting gaily at his heart, it must still gratify the pride of skill to have one spectator at that solitary pond who ...
— Our Village • Mary Russell Mitford
... Elbe, if serpentine, is like a serpent rushing at full speed. Just past the Konigstein, the Elbe, from westward, as its general course is, turns suddenly to northward; runs so for a mile and a half; then, just before getting to the BASTEI at Raden, turns suddenly to westward again, and so continues. ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVII. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Seven-Years War: First Campaign—1756-1757. • Thomas Carlyle
... ourselves we sate down on the hillside, and looked with delight into the deep vale below, which was exceedingly green, not regularly fenced or cultivated, but the level area scattered over with bushes and trees, and through that level ground glided a glassy river, not in serpentine windings, but in direct turnings backwards and forwards, and then flowed into the head of the Lake of Tummel; but I will copy a rough sketch which I made while we sate upon the hill, which, imperfect as it ...
— Recollections of a Tour Made in Scotland A.D. 1803 • Dorothy Wordsworth
... did. But I have not told you half yet. This afternoon I went up, and she went out for a walk with me; and we went down through Kensington Gardens, and all round by the Serpentine—" ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 31. October, 1873. • Various
... of it runs the historic high road from Marseilles to the Italian frontier, passing through Cannes and Nice. Behind it, too, runs the railway with its many tunnels, following the same, though a somewhat less serpentine, course ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... and fanciful shapes, with trees growing only where they would afford a grateful shade either to the wayfarer or to the gardens arranged upon the flat-topped roofs of the houses. The roads were so cunningly planned that, by means of their serpentine windings, an easy gradient was everywhere maintained; and, lastly, the entire island was encompassed by a lofty and immensely solid wall, or quay, built of enormous blocks of granite the face of which had been worked to so smooth a surface ...
— The Adventures of Dick Maitland - A Tale of Unknown Africa • Harry Collingwood
... which is indicated by the upper form, is not uncommon, and indicates the determination to solve some problem—the intention to know and to understand. Sometimes a theosophical lecturer sees many of these yellow serpentine forms projecting towards him from his audience, and welcomes them as a token that his hearers are following his arguments intelligently, and have an earnest desire to understand and to know more. A form of this kind frequently accompanies a question, and if, as is sometimes unfortunately ...
— Thought-Forms • Annie Besant
... called attractive. It lay forlorn and dismal at the foot of the slope, its forty or more buildings dingy, unpainted, ugly, scattered along the one street as though waiting for the encompassing desolation to engulf them. Two serpentine lines of steel, glistening in the sunlight, came from some mysterious distance across the dead level of alkali, touched the edge of town where rose a little red wooden station and a water tank of the ...
— The Boss of the Lazy Y • Charles Alden Seltzer
... keep to himself. The extent of Kensington Gardens, when reckoned together with Hyde Park, from which it is separated only by a fence of iron rods, is very great, comprising miles of greensward and woodland. The large artificial sheet of water, called the Serpentine River, lies chiefly in Hyde Park, but comes partly within the precincts of the gardens. It is entitled to honorable mention among the English lakes, being larger than some that are world-celebrated,—several miles long, and perhaps a stone's-throw ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... Street, Russell Square, was Master George's great friend and admirer. They both had a taste for painting theatrical characters; for hardbake and raspberry tarts; for sliding and skating in the Regent's Park and the Serpentine, when the weather permitted; for going to the play, whither they were often conducted, by Mr. Osborne's orders, by Rowson, Master George's appointed body-servant, with whom they sate in great ...
— Boys and girls from Thackeray • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... orchard, belonging, probably, to the establishment they were seeking. And, now falling into a beaten path, they soon perceived, by the glimpses of an opening which they occasionally caught through the trees, that they were drawing near to the object of their search. The serpentine course of the path, however, and the undergrowth, so thick as to be nearly impervious to the sight, prevented any direct view of the opening; and they passed on without any very exact notions of propinquity till a sudden turn of the path brought them unexpectedly to the edge ...
— The Rangers - [Subtitle: The Tory's Daughter] • D. P. Thompson
... place where high trees were growing, and where he again found a safe, but uncomfortable, sleeping-place. He wandered about for many days on the wooded mountains, and again reached a high ridge, over which he passed, until he arrived at a valley through which a brook ran, in a serpentine direction, among verdant meadows. He traced the brook through the valley, and reached a spot where it flowed into a river. He now followed the course of the river, and as night came on before he perceived any human habitations, he lay ...
— Eastern Tales by Many Story Tellers • Various |
