"Skimming" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... did look, nothing was visible but the dense green circle of the low-spreading juniper. When you approached, the bird would keep her place till you had begun to stir the branches, when she would start out, and, just skimming the ground, make a bright brown line to the near fence and bushes. I confidently expected that this nest would escape molestation, but it did not. Its discovery by myself and dog probably opened the door for ill luck, as one day, ...
— Bird Stories from Burroughs - Sketches of Bird Life Taken from the Works of John Burroughs • John Burroughs
... three pounds of common Sugar and one pint of water over a slow fire for half an hour without skimming. When boiled enough take it off, rub your hands over with butter; take that which is a little cooled and pull it as you would molasses candy, until it is white; then twist or braid it and ...
— One Thousand Secrets of Wise and Rich Men Revealed • C. A. Bogardus
... ripples and ploughed up a glass-like sheet of water on either side of it. So closely did she hug the wind that we were able to shave close past the red buoy which marks the edge of Church shoal, handsomely weathering Number 2 buoy, skimming across the De Horsey Patch, and shaving past the buoy on the Harbour shoal. By this time we were out from under the shelter of Port Royal Point, and were beginning to feel the first of the jump that the sea-breeze was kicking up outside; but it appeared to make practically no difference in ...
— A Middy of the King - A Romance of the Old British Navy • Harry Collingwood
... hydroplane was skimming swiftly over the water. For perhaps three hundred yards Frank kept the craft on the water; then sent it soaring ...
— The Boy Allies at Jutland • Robert L. Drake
... is played by skimming or skipping sticks over the hard surface of the snow, as stones are skipped over the water. Each player is provided with from three to five small sticks. These may be especially whittled, or they may be pieces of branches. A perfectly smooth stick is best, and ...
— Games for the Playground, Home, School and Gymnasium • Jessie H. Bancroft
... of that vast multitude I was one of the very few who had observed whence it was that this black hat, skimming so opportunely over the ropes, had come. I have already remarked that when we looked around us there had been a single gig travelling very rapidly upon the southern road. My uncle's eyes had rested upon it, but his attention had been drawn ...
— Rodney Stone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... be seen dotted here and there along the avenue of elms, and the cawing and the gossip, to say nothing of the quarrelling, was almost deafening. The Blackbird settled on a bough close to the Rook, and as he did so he noticed some swallows skimming over the lawn far below them. They were beautiful birds, their blue-black plumage glinted in the sunshine, and now and then a quick turn displayed their brown throats and white breasts. They were darting hither and thither, so rapidly that the eye could hardly follow them, catching the many-winged ...
— What the Blackbird said - A story in four chirps • Mrs. Frederick Locker
... this first," said the giant. With that he grasped the hammer in both hands, swung it three times around his head and sent it spinning thru the air. Up, up, it went, skimming the top of the tree, and came down, shaking the ground and burying ...
— Myths and Legends of the Sioux • Marie L. McLaughlin
... began skimming the bridge. If he'd been running, he'd have been shot to a sieve. As it was, they'd never see him in the mingled ...
— A Matter of Proportion • Anne Walker
... the pulses thrill as we bound over the lea, out across the wold, anon skimming the outskirts of the moor and going home with a stellated fracture of the dura mater through which the gas ...
— Nye and Riley's Wit and Humor (Poems and Yarns) • Bill Nye
... o'clock when the boys passed over the low banks of the Niger River. By seven they were in the heart of the wild, level territory of Sokoto, skimming over vast expanses of plume-like grasses and extensive marshes and swamps. Strange birds of enormous size flew up out of the morasses, startled at the sight and sound of the airplane. Some tried to follow it, evidently to give it battle, but the swiftest of ...
— Around the World in Ten Days • Chelsea Curtis Fraser
... simply by skimming over the less important parts, which is often justified. Some, however, save time by associating the form of a word directly with its meaning, leaving the sound out of consideration. Then by running the eye along rapidly they double and treble ...
— How To Study and Teaching How To Study • F. M. McMurry
... affairs were of so little consequence to her friend would have given her a wondering pang; but that time seemed to have passed. She talked lightly on about her journey; her voice and her thoughts, had suddenly been freed. She dilated upon the pleasures she anticipated as if they had been real, skimming over the long spaces of his silence, and gathering gaiety as he grew more and more sombre. When he rose to go their moods had changed: the brightness and the flush were hers, and, his face spoke only of a puzzled dejection, an ...
— A Daughter of To-Day • Sara Jeannette Duncan (aka Mrs. Everard Cotes)
... stick hits the limb close to where he is sitting does he stretch his long wings with their telltale white spots and fly rapidly away. And the other two sit unmoved. But some night we hear the whirr of the nighthawk's wings as he drops rapidly from a great height, or we see him skimming close to the surface of the stream in search of insects in some twilight hour and then he is the embodiment of strength, agility, and swiftness. And some day we perchance find the two dirt colored eggs on the ...
— Some Spring Days in Iowa • Frederick John Lazell
... The moon was skimming beneath the surface of a sea of clouds: now the black billows had silver crests: now an incandescent buoy bobbed among them. O for enough ...
— Dead Men Tell No Tales • E. W. Hornung
... getting into the boat, for already there was a distant peal of thunder. It was miles and miles away, but Bet didn't intend to take chances. Her hand worked in a steady rhythm that sent the boat ahead like a flat stone skimming the water. ...
— The Merriweather Girls and the Mystery of the Queen's Fan • Lizette M. Edholm
... "Our test subject read it carefully, scanning rather than skimming. Cameras recorded the movements of his eyes in order for us to tell just what he was reading at any given moment, in order to correlate what was going on in his mind with the reactions of the machine's ...
— Brain Twister • Gordon Randall Garrett
... and started out in fine style, beating merrily to and fro across the bay. I went up town and came back at the appointed hour of six o'clock to meet the party. The wind was still blowing freshly and steadily, straight onto the wharf, but they had not returned. They were beating up and down, now skimming near to the landing, now darting away from it. We called them to come in. I saw a look of desperation settle on Fanny's face. She slacked away the main-sheet, put the boat before the wind, held the tiller straight, and ran down upon the wharf with a crash that cracked the ...
— Days Off - And Other Digressions • Henry Van Dyke
... for his turn; but the geese, after skimming along the surface of the water until they were out of gun-shot, rose in the air, and flew rapidly ...
— Frank, the Young Naturalist • Harry Castlemon
... the cross-town street and a bit along the wide, bright, lighted driveway, its traffic long since died down to an occasional night-prowling cab, a skimming motor-car; then down a flight of curving stone steps with her slightly perceptible limp, and into the ledge of parkway where shadows took her into their velvet silence; down a second flight, across a railroad track, and to the water's edge, where a great coal-station ran a jut of ...
— Every Soul Hath Its Song • Fannie Hurst
... later he had stepped into his four-oared barge and was skimming lightly down the Great Pass ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... do with Willard's victory. To-day the long-limbed gentleman, despite his retirement on the occasion of his first meeting with Willings, was in fine fettle, and scarcely had Satterlee, 2d, concluded his remark when there was a sharp crack and the white sphere was skimming second baseman's head. It was a clean, well-placed hit, and even the wearers of the blue had to applaud a little. Carpenter's long legs twinkled around the bases and he was safe at third before the ball had returned ...
— The New Boy at Hilltop • Ralph Henry Barbour
... awaken admiration in a less partial and enthusiastic mind than that of Grace Darling. The laughing waves were flowing with a soft and tranquil motion, and gently laving the pebbly shore. Sea-birds were skimming the waves, their graceful plumage gilded by the setting sun, and ever and anon darting beneath the waters. The sky was serene and beautiful, tinged with the rich and glorious hues of a summer's evening; and the orb of light was retiring to rest, ...
— Grace Darling - Heroine of the Farne Islands • Eva Hope
... spun past with a nod and a flourish, but a moment later wheeled about and came skimming up to where ...
— The Governess • Julie M. Lippmann
... of the Jubilee Variety Theatre. He had a sudden vision of Poppy as he was wont to meet her in delightful intimacy, instantaneously followed by her image that flaunted on the posters out there in the Strand, Poppy as she appeared behind the foot-lights, in red silk skirts and black silk stockings, skimming, whirling, swaying, and deftly shaking her foot at him. Midnight and morning merging into one. Sunday, to Richmond, probably, with Poppy and some others. Monday, up the river with Himself. Not for worlds, that is to say, not for any amount of ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair
... like a bird was skimming away while the men behind the hedge, paralyzed by his daring, fired not a shot. Only Dan Dean started through ...
— The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come • John Fox
... beyond, the long stretch of the Salem Turnpike over the Lynn marshes opens to them, with the wooded heights of Saugus on the north, the wide sands of Lynn beach on the south, and few signs of life beside the skimming flight of wild fowl and the occasional plunge of ...
— The New England Magazine, Volume 1, No. 1, January 1886 - Bay State Monthly, Volume 4, No. 1, January, 1886 • Various
... some Nain Eskimoes caught sight of the "Harmony," and posted off to the station in their sailing boat, which kept ahead the whole way. Two men came to meet us in their kayaks, and paddled alongside for some time, their light skin boats skimming over the water as easily as the flock of ducks which had just crossed our bows. Passing the island Taktuk, a salute fired by the one Eskimo visible was followed by such a concert of howls from his dogs seated in a row on a rock ...
— With the Harmony to Labrador - Notes Of A Visit To The Moravian Mission Stations On The North-East - Coast Of Labrador • Benjamin La Trobe
... catching up. His noise fetched others. You could see them coming on the lope from every direction, and pretty soon there was a couple of dozen of them under me, jumping up at the ladder and snarling and snapping at each other; and so we went skimming along over the sand, and these fellers doing what they could to help us to not forgit the occasion; and then some other beasts come, without an invite, and they started ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... wind so far favouring her that it was confidently hoped she would weather Beachy Head and so pass out clear of everything. With the rising of the sun the wind gave promise of freshening, which promise was so far fulfilled that by noon the ship was skimming along at a pace of over nine knots an hour, she being at the time just abreast of Calais. The breeze still increasing, and the tide being again in their favour, Cape Grisnez was passed little more than an ...
— The Missing Merchantman • Harry Collingwood
... physical acts. We may form the habit of thinking things out logically, or of jumping to conclusions; of thinking critically and independently, or of taking things unquestioningly on the authority of others. We may form the habit of carefully reading good, sensible books, or of skimming sentimental and trashy ones; of choosing elevating, ennobling companions, or the opposite; of being a good conversationalist and doing our part in a social group, or of being a drag on the conversation, and needing to be "entertained." We may form the habit of observing ...
— The Mind and Its Education • George Herbert Betts
... parrot, Polynesia, was already flying towards us. The Doctor clapped his hands like a child getting a new toy; while the swarm of sparrows in the roadway fluttered, gossiping, up on to the fences, highly scandalized to see a gray and scarlet parrot skimming down an English lane. ...
— The Voyages of Doctor Dolittle • Hugh Lofting
... conversion into peptones, which has been stopped by the cold, will be promptly started again when the fluid is warmed, and then a very few minutes will suffice to make it disagreeably bitter. At first the skimming should be thorough, and for the treatment of dyspepsia or albuminuria the milk must be as creamless as possible. The milk of the common cow is, for our purposes, preferable to that of the Alderney. It may be used warm or cold, ...
— Fat and Blood - An Essay on the Treatment of Certain Forms of Neurasthenia and Hysteria • S. Weir Mitchell
... results of that skimming were, and how far more philosophical his appreciation of Hindu literature had then become, may be seen from the end of the same letter, written from ...
— Chips from a German Workshop - Volume IV - Essays chiefly on the Science of Language • Max Muller
... from branch of flow'ring thorn The song of friendly cuckoo warn The tardy-moving swain; Hast bid the purple swallow hail; And seen him now through ether sail, Now sweeping downward o'er the vale. And skimming ...
— The Sylphs of the Season with Other Poems • Washington Allston
... cheers punctuated the speech. Thornton knew the voice, even at that distance, for the voice of "War Eagle" Niles. He grinned, reading his paper. The sound of that voice salted the article that he was skimming: ...
— The Ramrodders - A Novel • Holman Day
... but Audrey misunderstood, and, with a sharp slap on the hands, sent the scissors skimming across the floor. ...
— Anxious Audrey • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... agree that the Copley (44/1. The late Professor Lindley never attained the honour of the Copley medal. The Royal medal was awarded to him in 1857.) is more appropriate, and I daresay he would not have valued the Royal. From skimming through many botanical books, and from often consulting the "Vegetable Kingdom," I had (ignorant as I am) formed the highest opinion of his claims as a botanist. If Sharpey will stick up strong for him, we should have some chance; but the natural sciences are but feebly represented in the Council. ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin
... here used, differs widely from the entertaining perusal of current magazines, or the superficial skimming through short stories or novels. Reading for material is done with a more serious purpose than merely killing time, and is regulated according to certain methods which have been shown to produce the best results for ...
— Public Speaking • Clarence Stratton
... grating and bright deck fittings as she heeled over, hanging to the side of one of those ridiculous ocean rollers out of bounds; and he thought it no wonder that he—even he—had been tossed off under the circumstances. The crew, who were not sitting on a skimming dish, as it were, had their work cut out to hold on. As he looked, he measured his drift with serious disquietude, although the preposterous idea of anybody being drowned had not as yet occurred to him. ...
— Sisters • Ada Cambridge
... was nothing out of the way; such tales are told by the dozen round any camp fire where men who have knocked about in the woods are in the circle. It was the way he told it that made our flesh creep. He was near the truth all along, but he was skimming it, and the skimming took off the cream that might have saved ...
— The Empty House And Other Ghost Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... spectators, watching Larry whirl, turn turtle, and perform all the aviation agonies so fascinating to the untutored. When he shut off the engine and swung down, skimming the ground for a way and stopping gently, she was ...
— Penny of Top Hill Trail • Belle Kanaris Maniates
... have observed for yourself, and I know that it is merely skimming about your question, not answering it. But I humbly confess, though it cost me your confidence in my 'keen insight' forever, that I cannot answer it. So far, Mrs. Colquhoun has appealed to me merely as a text upon which to hang conclusions. I do not in the ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... reached their minimum length, when, coming to a clear pool of water, they drew rein to refresh themselves from the provisions in the saddle-bags. Bread and wine—sumptuous fare for poor fugitives—they ate and drank with keen relish. Dreamily she watched the green insects skimming over the surface of the shimmering water. On the bank swayed the rushes, as though making obeisance to a single gorgeous lily, set like a queen in the center ...
— Under the Rose • Frederic Stewart Isham
... began, her eyes were swimming, Her prodded ears were aching and confused. The first notes from the orchestra sent skimming Her outward consciousness. Her brain was fused Into the music, Theodore's music! Used To hear him play, she caught his single tone. For all she noticed ...
— Men, Women and Ghosts • Amy Lowell
... costs but little. Even molasses sugar mixed with it will do; but they do not relish it so well when fed without the honey. I have usually taken about equal quantities of each, adding a pint of water to ten pounds of this mixture, and making it as hot as it will bear without boiling over, and skimming it. ...
— Mysteries of Bee-keeping Explained • M. Quinby
... blowing, and it brought to them a sound as of the whispering of many voices. The shining river, too, murmured to its reeds and pebbles, and in the air was the dull whirr of wings as the vast flocks of wild fowl rose like dark smoke from the water, or, skimming along its surface, broke it into myriad diamond sprays. Around the horizon towered heaped-up masses of cloud—Ossa piled on Pelion—fantastic Jack-and-the-Beanstalk castles, built high above the world, with rampart and turret and bastion of pearl and coral. Above rose the sky ...
— Prisoners of Hope - A Tale of Colonial Virginia • Mary Johnston
... where Miss Kalski's lightning eye was skimming over the printing-house bills that he was ...
— A Collection of Stories, Reviews and Essays • Willa Cather
... search was being made for G. W. Parmalee throughout London—while detectives examined every passenger who sailed in the emigrant ships—he was safely skimming the Atlantic in ...
— The Baronet's Bride • May Agnes Fleming
... iguanodon, and teleosaurus—crawled along the slimy shores; while giant birds, with wide-spreading feet, stalked across the newly-formed plains, or flew shrieking, with wings of prodigious expanse skimming the glittering sea,—the lords paramount of this lower world. At length the earth, convulsed by mighty throes in the far-away west from north to south, began to cast up a long line of rocky heights, now to sink, now to rise once more above the surface,— ...
— The Western World - Picturesque Sketches of Nature and Natural History in North - and South America • W.H.G. Kingston
... day he was to have sailed for India—hurriedly skimming a column of the Times he came upon the news he was ...
— The Return of the Prodigal • May Sinclair
... paragraphs will give a pretty definite idea of the subject and the scope of the article; and the beginnings, and often the ends, of the paragraphs will show the course which the thought follows. Though such skimming cannot be relied on for a real knowledge of the subject, it is invaluable as a guide for this ...
— The Making of Arguments • J. H. Gardiner
... all these birds came down close, skimming over the water and the land; and the night-sky was left clear above, and the moon shone as before. Still never a call nor a cry nor a song they made—no sound but this great rustling of feathers which grew greater now than ever. ...
— The Story of Doctor Dolittle • Hugh Lofting
... like a May sabbath. The gardens sent up their fragrance into the warm, still air: the cottage windows were open, and early roses and late hyacinths appeared within the casements. The swallows were skimming and dipping about the meadows; and the swans steered their majestic course along the river, rippling its otherwise unbroken surface. The men of the village sat on the thresholds of their doors, smoking an early pipe! and their tidy children, the boys with hair combed straight, and the girls ...
— Deerbrook • Harriet Martineau
... she flew, light as a skimming leaf in the wind, the cat bounding in easy, flexible curves beside her. Now a little brown cottage in its plot of land sent them into the road for a moment; now some tiny pond, a mirror for the sprinkled ...
— While Caroline Was Growing • Josephine Daskam Bacon
... upon its privacy. Flitting along from stone to stone seeking its food, the hind part of its body "teetering" up and down, its soft gray color blending it with the pebbles and the rocks, or else skimming up or down the stream on its long, convex wings, uttering its shrill cry, the sandpiper is not a bird of the sea merely; and Mrs. Thaxter's poem is as much for the dweller inland as for the ...
— Birds and Poets • John Burroughs
... railroad. I start from home at seven or eight in the morning, after breakfasting hurriedly. What with skimming over the open landscape, what with mining in the damp bowels of the earth, what with banging, booming and shrieking the scores of miles away, I am hungry when I arrive at the 'Refreshment' station ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens
... were shining over the silent fields; here and there the dark pointed firs stood up with snow powdering their branches and the wind whistling through them. Anne thought it was truly delightful to go skimming through all this mystery and loveliness with your bosom friend who had been so ...
— Anne Of Green Gables • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... unanswerable. But as old George put on his spectacles in conclusion, I knew he meant to consider the subject with attention; and I therefore remained quietly at his side, sending flat stones skimming along the water, or throwing in a stick for Frisk to fetch out again, until, as I expected, he signified to me that he had ...
— The Story of the White-Rock Cove • Anonymous
... Taku leaped, but he knew my voice and he was not so frightened as the rest of them, who began falling on their faces. Taku leaped as the Silver Moccasin lifted to strike, and the stick as it flew out of his hand, low down like a skimming bird, came back in a circle—he must have practiced many times with it—and dropped the snake with its back broken. The people put their hands over their mouths. They had not seen the snake at all, but a stick that came back to the thrower's hand was magic. ...
— The Trail Book • Mary Austin et al
... in the far-off land whither all Australian books must go for the sanction of their existence. Here again the British reader appears to be misjudged, for has he not accepted from another direction, and enjoyed, Democracy and Through One Administration? Mrs. Praed, lightly skimming the surface of Antipodean political life in two of her stories, has shown it to be not without humour, nor lacking in the elements of more serious interest. But she cannot be said to have exhibited any particular belief in the political ...
— Australian Writers • Desmond Byrne
... skimming over a Chinese book, translated by Stanislas Julien: the travels of a Buddhist. It is full of legends of the character of that ...
— Letters and Journals of James, Eighth Earl of Elgin • James, Eighth Earl of Elgin
... Dyes; Determining the Per Cent of Skin in Beans; Extraction of Fat from Peanuts; Microscopic Examination of Milk; Formaldehyde in Cream or Milk; Gelatine in Cream or Milk; Testing for Oleomargarine; Testing for Watering or Skimming of Milk; Boric Acid in Meat; Microscopic Examination of Cereal Starch Grains; Identification of Commercial Cereals; Granulation and Color of Flour; Capacity of Flour to absorb Water; Acidity of Flour; Moist and Dry Gluten; Gliadin from Flour; Bread-making Test; Microscopic Examination of ...
— Human Foods and Their Nutritive Value • Harry Snyder
... those most recently erected, is thirty-six tons—double that of the upper one. Round each pot is placed a platform, on which the workmen—of which there are two only to each apparatus—stand when skimming, slicing, and charging the pots. The upper pot is open at the top, but the lower one has a cover, with hinged doors; and from the top of the cover a funnel is carried to a set of condensers. At a convenient distance from the two pots is placed a steam or hydraulic crane, so ...
— Scientific American Suppl. No. 299 • Various
... water had been nearly drained, and which, in consequence, swarmed with small fry, I saw several of these birds, generally in small flocks, flying rapidly backwards and forwards close to the surface of the lake. They kept their bills wide open, and the lower mandible half buried in the water. Thus skimming the surface, they ploughed it in their course; the water was quite smooth, and it formed a most curious spectacle to behold a flock, each bird leaving its narrow wake on the mirror-like surface. In their flight they frequently twist about with extreme quickness, and dexterously manage with ...
— A Book of Natural History - Young Folks' Library Volume XIV. • Various
... and a bowl of sugar. Grandpa Keeler having asked the blessing after the approved manner of the morning, there was a general uprising and moving, bowl in hand, towards the cauldron of hulled corn on the stove. This was lively, and there was a pleasurable excitement about skimming the swollen kernels of corn out of the boiling, seething liquid in which they were immersed. Eaten afterwards with milk and sugar and a little salt, the compound became possessed ...
— Cape Cod Folks • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... "You are to be holding the plow in that fallow, outside the paddock." The master went over about nine o'clock to see what kind of a plowman was Jack, and what did he see but the little boy driving the bastes, and the sock and coulter of the plow skimming along the sod, and Jack pulling ding-dong agin' ...
— Childhood's Favorites and Fairy Stories - The Young Folks Treasury, Volume 1 • Various
... modeled upon them in bass-relief. Here I like to take my unknown friend—my scoundrel facchino or rascal gondolier—as he comes to buy his dinner, and bargains eloquently with the cook, who stands with a huge ladle in his hand capable of skimming mysterious things from vasty depths. I am spell-bound by the drama which ensues, and in which all the chords of the human heart are touched, from those that tremble at high tragedy, to those that are shaken by broad farce. When the diner has bought his dinner, and issues ...
— Venetian Life • W. D. Howells
... sheet of type-written letter out and spread it open. There was no check. He peered into the envelope, held it to the light, but could not trust his eyes, and in trembling haste tore the envelope apart. There was no check. He read the letter, skimming it line by line, dashing through the editor's praise of his story to the meat of the letter, the statement why the check had not been sent. He found no such statement, but he did find that which made him suddenly wilt. The letter slid from his hand. His ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London
... MAN, a great spendthrift, had run through all his patrimony and had but one good cloak left. One day he happened to see a Swallow, which had appeared before its season, skimming along a pool and twittering gaily. He supposed that summer had come, and went and sold his cloak. Not many days later, winter set in again with renewed frost and cold. When he found the unfortunate Swallow lifeless on the ground, he said, "Unhappy bird! what have you done? By thus ...
— Aesop's Fables • Aesop
... skimming past her and leaping from ripple to ripple like, a living thing caught her attention. She turned sharply, and the next moment smiled ...
— The Way of an Eagle • Ethel M. Dell
... chargers proudly did the princes sweep, Like the sea-birds skimming gaily o'er the bosom of ...
— Maha-bharata - The Epic of Ancient India Condensed into English Verse • Anonymous
... of men moved to and fro before the fagots; the stars peeped timorously from the vault; the woods and steep banks were blackly shadowed in the river. Here was I, among the aborigines; and as my dusky acquaintance sent his canoe skimming across the ripples, I thought how inexplicable were the decrees of Time and the justice of God. Two races united in these people, and both of them we had wronged. From the one we had taken lands; from the other liberties. ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend
... bill and general look—only he had a clear, loud, quite musical, sort of bell-like call, which he repeated again and again, at intervals, from a lofty dead tree-top, overhanging the water. Sat there a long time, and I on the opposite bank watching him. Then he darted down, skimming pretty close to the stream—rose slowly, a magnificent sight, and sail'd with steady wide-spread wings, no flapping at all, up and down the pond two or three times, near me, in circles in clear sight, as if for my delectation. Once he came ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... flew away, a large and merry band of all sizes and colors; and the child-larks joined them, skimming the air as lightly and joyously as any of their new friends. It did not take them long to reach a sparkling brook that wound its way through the forest, and all the feathered people drank their fill standing upon the low bank or ...
— Policeman Bluejay • L. Frank Baum
... name of the greater celandine, meaning a swallow, was given it because it begins to bloom when the first returning swallows are seen skimming over the water and freshly ploughed fields in a perfect ecstasy of flight, and continues in flower among its erect seed capsules until the first cool days of autumn kill the gnats and small winged insects not driven to cover. Then the swallows, ...
— Wild Flowers, An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and - Their Insect Visitors - - Title: Nature's Garden • Neltje Blanchan
... side. To my surprise, I found myself suddenly standing on the bank of a narrow bayou, the water clear, yet apparently motionless, the opposite shore heavily timbered. Owing to a sharp curve I could see scarcely a hundred yards in either direction, yet close in beside the shore a light boat was skimming over the gray water. Even as I gazed, the fellow plying the paddle saw me, and waved his hand. In another moment the bow grounded on the bank and its occupant came ...
— Gordon Craig - Soldier of Fortune • Randall Parrish
... book, for old Madam Melcombe was already said to haunt the churchyard. Not as a being in human guise, but as a white, widewinged bird, perfectly noiseless in its movements, skimming the grass much as owls do, but having a plaintive voice like that of ...
— Fated to Be Free • Jean Ingelow
... for some time after this. Then Antony exerted himself to amuse me. We talked as lightly as the skimming of swallows, flying from one subject to another. We were as happy as laughing children. The time passed. It seemed but a few minutes when the clock ...
— The Reflections of Ambrosine - A Novel • Elinor Glyn
... ice in excellent order, and the exhilarating sensation of skimming over the glassy surface banished for the time all the unpleasant impressions of the walk. It was several years since Jeffreys had worn skates, but he found that five minutes was sufficient to render him at home on the ice. He eschewed ...
— A Dog with a Bad Name • Talbot Baines Reed
... her; when they were settled they waved their hands to the couple watching them, and then Stephen took the pair of sculls and pulled off to the tune beat by the band, she steering through the other boats skimming about, for the sea was as smooth as glass that evening, ...
— Life's Little Ironies - A set of tales with some colloquial sketches entitled A Few Crusted Characters • Thomas Hardy
... his senses. How often he had looked upon the Roaring Bess from the respectable distance of the main road. To have a sail in her had been his one great ambition. While lying in bed he had often imagined himself skimming over the water, with the sail, big and white, bending above him. Now his dream had really come true, and here he was at last sitting by Captain Josh's side, watching him as he headed the boat upstream. ...
— Rod of the Lone Patrol • H. A. Cody
... defendant's lawyer succeeded in proving, if the statement of the overseer proved it, that the brewer was quite ignorant that the milk sold in the "district" was what had been unsalable the day before to better customers, and that the skimming and doctoring of it was unknown to him. So an attempt to punish the rich man as a criminal was futile. He could afford to pay for ...
— The Honorable Peter Stirling and What People Thought of Him • Paul Leicester Ford
... second beast. It tore over the ground with yet greater swiftness than the former—in long, level, skimming leaps, the very embodiment of wasteless speed. It followed the line the other had taken, and I watched it grow smaller and smaller, until it disappeared in ...
— Lilith • George MacDonald
... Satan. His breath was coming more and more laboured. It seemed to Dan's dim consciousness that some of the spring was gone from that glorious stride which swept on and on with the slightest undulation, like a swallow skimming before the wind; but so long as strength remained he knew that Satan would never falter in his pace. As the delirium swept once more shadow-like on his brain, he allowed himself to fall forward, and wound his fingers as closely as possible in the thick mane. His left arm jerked horribly against ...
— The Untamed • Max Brand
... fruit for jellies, for if the fruit is over ripe, any amount of time in boiling will never make it jelly—there is where so many fail in making good jelly; and another important matter is overlooked—that of carefully skimming off the juice after it begins to boil and a scum rises from the bottom to the top; the juice should not be stirred, but the scum carefully taken off; if allowed to boil under, the jelly ...
— The Whitehouse Cookbook (1887) - The Whole Comprising A Comprehensive Cyclopedia Of Information For - The Home • Mrs. F.L. Gillette
... and nightingale shall sip, And skimming swallows dip, And strange shy wanderers fold their lustrous plumes Fragrant from bowers that lent their sweet perfumes Where Paestum's rose or Persia's lilac blooms; Here from his cloud the eagle stoop to drink At the full basin's brink, And whet his beak against its rounded lip, His glossy ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... into it (the life) wonderfully quickly; completely sunk the lady and become sort of maids-of-all-work. Our day begins soon after 6 o'clock by laying the breakfast, skimming the cream, whilst our woman is frying bacon and making the porridge for the breakfast at 6.30. Mr. B—— and A—— are out by 5 o'clock, in order to water, feed, and harness their horses all ready to go out at 7 o'clock, when we get rid of ...
— A Lady's Life on a Farm in Manitoba • Mrs. Cecil Hall
... mother. Not the slightest ripple broke upon its surface, which was smooth as a field of ice frozen in a calm. Nothing marred its beauty, save now and then a sportive fish gliding over its bosom, or the swallow skimming along, catching the flies as they rose from the quenching of their thirst. The brown eagle was wheeling in spiral mazes towards his beloved sun, and I heard the chirping of the grasshopper, and the hum of the bee, each carolling away in his light-hearted labour. Afar lay the headlands, jutting ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 2 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... for a moment and was glad to catch the guerilla's belt—to seize, too, with an agitated clutch, his right gauntlet that he held backward against his side. His fingers promptly closed with a reassuring grasp on hers, and thus skimming the red sunset-tide they left behind them the staring group about the blacksmith shop, which the cavalrymen had now approached, watering their horses at the trough and lifting the saddles to rest the animals from the constriction of ...
— The Raid Of The Guerilla - 1911 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... After skimming the pot that the bacon has been boiled in, put in cabbage sprouts, and let them boil till the stalks are tender; all greens are best boiled in a net. Spinach cooks in a few minutes; some persons prefer it when boiled in salt and water; you should have drawn butter or ...
— Domestic Cookery, Useful Receipts, and Hints to Young Housekeepers • Elizabeth E. Lea
... sailed along, following its graceful windings—sometimes touching bottom, and sometimes skimming smoothly over deep water, where Kitty could no longer clutch for the tall, bright grass that here and there had reared itself above the surface. Often Big Tom would sing out, "Lie low!" as some great bough, hanging over the stream, seemed stretching out its arms to catch them; and often they were ...
— Po-No-Kah - An Indian Tale of Long Ago • Mary Mapes Dodge
... him nowhere in this. He was quite affable to the colored waiter who served his breakfasts in the bachelor apartment house, and increased his weekly tip to a dollar and a half. Then he sat down and opened the Times-Republican, skimming over it after his habit for his own space, and frowning over a row of exclamation and interrogation points unwittingly set behind ...
— The Breaking Point • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... came in dimly through the screen of clematis that covered the window; Hilda bared her round white arms, and Nurse Lucy pinned back her calico sleeves from a pair that were still shapely, though brown, and each took a skimmer and set earnestly to work. The process of skimming cream is in itself a soothing, not to say an absorbing one. To push the thick, yellow ripples, piling themselves upon the skimmer, across the pan; to see it drop, like melted ivory, into the cream-bowl; to pursue floating cream islands round and round the pale and mimic sea,—who ...
— Queen Hildegarde • Laura Elizabeth Howe Richards
... that’s what they call it in your atrocious American language—looked out and saw him coming along the platform. Just then the car began to move,—they were shunting it about to attach a sleeper that had been brought in from Louisville and my carriage, or whatever you call it, went skimming out of the sheds into a yard where everything seemed to be most noisy and complex. I dropped off in the dark just before they began to haul the carriage back. A long train of empty goods wagons was just pulling out and I threw my bag into a wagon and climbed after ...
— The House of a Thousand Candles • Meredith Nicholson
... in imminent danger of being struck by a British shell. The German launched a torpedo, and it went skimming right by the little boat in which the ...
— The Boy Allies Under Two Flags • Ensign Robert L. Drake
... snuffed it, spurned it, and was about to pass on; but the sun shone on it so brightly, and it rolled so curiously when she pawed, that she picked it up in a mechanical way and trotted back over the rise, where are found herself at the Dog-town. Just then two great Prairie-hawks came skimming like pirates over the plain. As soon as they were in sight the Prairie- dogs all barked, jerking their tails at each bark, and hid below. When all were gone Tito walked on toward the hole of the big fat fellow whose body she coveted, and dropping ...
— Johnny Bear - And Other Stories From Lives of the Hunted • E. T. Seton
... Dare-devil Harry Whalley. Departed the opportunities which he would have known how to seize; and gone with them the white-winged flock of clippers that lived in the boisterous uncertain life of the winds, skimming big fortunes out of the foam of the sea. In a world that pared down the profits to an irreducible minimum, in a world that was able to count its disengaged tonnage twice over every day, and in which lean charters were snapped up by cable three ...
— End of the Tether • Joseph Conrad
... time. To hear him, you would have thought him a great reader. Not so. He skimmed; but his memory was so singular that he never forgot things, names, or dates, cherishing remembrance of things with precision; and his apprehension was so good, that in skimming thus it was, with him, precisely as though he had read very laboriously. He excelled in unpremeditated discourse, which, whether in the shape of repartee or jest, was always appropriate and vivacious. ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... long clear day under a warm sun was alone a gift to be thankful for. To plunge unstinted hands into the hoarded wealth of ages, to be the first to hunt in a game-stocked forest and the first to cast hook in a fish-teeming river,—to have the first skimming of nature's cream-pans, as it were,—was a delight so keen that, saving war and love, they could imagine nothing to equal it. Like children upon honey, they fell upon the gift that had tumbled latest out of nature's horn of plenty, and swept through ...
— The Thrall of Leif the Lucky • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz
... by lawns and grassy plots, I slide by hazel covers, I move the sweet forget-me-nots That grow for happy lovers. I slip, I slide, I gloom, I glance, Among my skimming swallows; I make the netted sunbeams dance Against ...
— De La Salle Fifth Reader • Brothers of the Christian Schools
... Above them, light clouds floated in the serene heavens, sweeping so slowly athwart the firmament that they scarcely seemed to stir; while, on their right, they caught, ever and anon, glimpses of the waveless sea, with some light bark skimming its surface; and the sunlight breaking over the deep in those countless and softest hues so peculiar to ...
— The Last Days of Pompeii • Edward George Bulwer-Lytton
... till they are as green as grass; peel them and codle them again; you must take the weight of them in sugar and make a sirrup; put to your sugar a pint of water; then put them in, set them on the fire to boil slowly, till they be clear, skimming them often, and they will be very green. Put them up in glasses, and keep them ...
— American Cookery - The Art of Dressing Viands, Fish, Poultry, and Vegetables • Amelia Simmons
... just been skimming through an illustrated book called "Noa Noa," by a Frenchman, which describes, or pretends to describe, a visit to Tahiti. There is not much fault to be found with it as a narrative, but the pictures of the natives are atrocious. Many of the ...
— The Last Harvest • John Burroughs
... in his excitement the other words which his godmother had told him to use had slipped his memory, and the cloak only went faster and faster, skimming on through ...
— The Little Lame Prince - Rewritten for Young Readers by Margaret Waters • Dinah Maria Mulock
... foam in the twilight, now appearing and now disappearing between the waves in the cloud of night, with their peculiarly white sails, (the Levant sails not being of "coarse canvass," but of white cotton,) skimming along as quickly, but less safely than the sea-mews which hovered over them; their evident distress, their reduction to fluttering specks in the distance, their crowded succession, their littleness, as contending with the giant element, which made our stout forty-four's ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. 6 (of 6) - With his Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... at once—hadn't the energy to move. Everything looked so hot and not a breath of air anywhere. The moat looked glazed—so absolutely still under the bright summer sun—big flies were buzzing and skimming over the surface, and the flowers and plants were drooping in ...
— Chateau and Country Life in France • Mary King Waddington
... his forefinger down the parchment pages of an immense register (one of a long series of similar volumes) gorged with burials. Over the fireplace was a ground-plan of the vaults underneath the church; and Mr Chick, skimming the literary portion of it aloud, by way of enlivening the company, read the reference to Mrs Dombey's tomb in full, ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... she reentered the hotel, her cheeks glowing. Jock was not yet down. So she ordered and ate her wise and cautious breakfast of fruit and cereal and toast and coffee, skimming over her morning paper as she ate. At 7:30 she was back in the lobby, newspaper in hand. The Bisons were already astir. She seated herself in a deep chair in a quiet corner, her eyes glancing up over the top of her paper toward the stairway. At eight ...
— Roast Beef, Medium • Edna Ferber
... to go in-doors Charles saw a tall white figure skimming across the stretches of low sunshine and long shadow in the field beyond the garden, and making swiftly for ...
— The Danvers Jewels, and Sir Charles Danvers • Mary Cholmondeley
... thrive in troubled times, Fear'd for their force, and courted for their crimes. Chief to the prosperous side the numbers sail, Fickle and false, they veer with every gale; As birds that migrate from a freezing shore In search of warmer climes, come skimming o'er, Some bold adventurers first prepare to try The doubtful sunshine of the distant sky; But soon the growing Summer's certain sun Wins more and more, till all at last are won: So, on the early prospect of disgrace, Fly in vast troops this apprehensive race; ...
— The Village and The Newspaper • George Crabbe
... clouds of hallucination had fallen so close to Asako's brain, that her thoughts seemed to be caught up into the dizzy whirlwind and to be skimming around and round the world at the speed of an express aeroplane. Like a clock whose regulation is out of order, the hour-hand of her life seemed to be racing the minute-hand, and the minute-hand to be covering the face of the dial in sixty seconds or less, returning incessantly ...
— Kimono • John Paris
... had a very distressing experience in connection with a sailboat, which was owned by a friend of mine—or perhaps I should say he was a friend of mine until this matter came up. From the clubhouse porch I had often admired his boat skimming gracefully over the bay, with its sail making a white gore against the blue background; and one day he invited me to go out with him for a sail. Before I had time for that second thought which is so desirable under such circumstances, I found ...
— Cobb's Bill-of-Fare • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb
... in the same handwriting interested Tom particularly, because of his interest in gas engines—the result of his many tussles with the obstreperous motor of the troop's cabin launch, Good Turn. Skimming hastily over some matter about the receipt of money through some intermediary, his interest was riveted by ...
— Tom Slade on a Transport • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... before, sang in the bushes, and fowl of many kinds were pluming themselves in the warm sun on the shores of the lake. The gay woodpecker was tapping the hollow beech, the swallow and the martin were skimming along the level of the green vales. He heard no more the cracking of branches beneath the weight of icicles and snow, he saw no more the spirits of departed men dancing wild dances on the skirts of the northern clouds, ...
— Folk-Lore and Legends: North American Indian • Anonymous
... heretofore considered insoluble, of being in two places at once. Two, did we say? Absurd! Three, four, five, half a dozen! What a man! Jumping here! Leaping there! Skipping North! Vaulting South! Skimming (like a CAMILLA in pantaloons) over the plains of the West! Then, as if by magic, whirling himself to the East! A man, did we say? Bah! GEORGE FRANCIS is clearly one ...
— Punchinello, Vol.1, No. 12 , June 18,1870 • Various
... of the Proudfits' motor, with the threads of streaming light, about to go skimming from my gate. And in that kindly security was ...
— Friendship Village • Zona Gale
... the blues, it's in the air," laughed Ernestine, sitting down to the piano, and skimming the keys. "Sit down chickie, ...
— Six Girls - A Home Story • Fannie Belle Irving
... moment the door of the house opened, and a large plate came skimming out, straight at the Footman's head: it just grazed his nose, and broke to pieces against one of the trees ...
— Junior Classics, V6 • Various
... I had finished my copying, I took the thing back, meaning to slip it under Miss Denistoun's cushion. But she had returned to her chair, and so I was caught red-handed. 'So it was you?' said she. 'What have you been doing with my magazine?' 'Skimming it,' said I—which was true enough, literally, but I didn't manage it very well. 'Did you find anything to interest you specially?' she asked. 'Well, yes,' I admitted;' I picked it up and lit on something that promised well: but the story came to nothing.' She gave me a glance and I felt sure ...
— Foe-Farrell • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... and the universal wave of human sympathy which had been evoked, looting began almost as soon as relief. As soon as it was possible to land, ghouls began to rob the bodies of the victims. The monsters plied their nefarious trade in small boats. Skimming along the shore they would watch for an opening when troops and rescue parties were elsewhere, then land, grab what they could, and ...
— Complete Story of the San Francisco Horror • Richard Linthicum
... the sugar in the water, skimming it occasionally for two hours, then pour it into a tub and dissolve in it the acid; before it is cold, add some yeast and ferment. Put it into a clean cask and add the other ingredients. The cask is then ...
— A Treatise on Adulterations of Food, and Culinary Poisons • Fredrick Accum
... giraffes went through that same process,—a mouthful of water greedily seized, and a fling of the head upward to stare about for danger. Group by group the animals of each species took their turns. The baboons drifted down over the steep rocky slope like a flock of skimming birds, and watched and drank by turn. Having finished, they paused not for idle gossip or play, but as swiftly as they came drifted up the slope and sought ...
— The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals • William T. Hornaday
... altitudes, but with every thousand feet of ascent the gale grew stronger. My machine groaned and trembled in every joint and rivet as she faced it, and swept away like a sheet of paper when I banked her on the turn, skimming down wind at a greater pace, perhaps, than ever mortal man has moved. Yet I had always to turn again and tack up in the wind's eye, for it was not merely a height record that I was after. By all my calculations ...
— Danger! and Other Stories • Arthur Conan Doyle
... across the glades which at intervals opened through the woodlands, or a pair of sand-hill cranes would rise, slowly flapping their wings, and seek a place of more undisturbed repose. The flocks of teal now skimming the surface of the water, now rising higher towards the shelter of the forests, tempted our sportsman sorely; but, as there was little prospect of finding his game when it was brought down, he did not give way to the ...
— Wau-bun - The Early Day in the Northwest • Juliette Augusta Magill Kinzie
... sort, deciding as to the size and structure of the crane, forge, and work-shop, and the necessarily-limited weights of their component parts, making a list of over 2,400 objects, and finally, up to the third week after my departure from Vauclaire, skimming through the topography of nearly the whole earth, before fixing upon the island of Imbros for ...
— The Purple Cloud • M.P. Shiel
... and I slipped into a world which belongs to the birds and the mice and the moles, and the fish in the clear stream below; I watched the chaffinches and thrushes, and a little grey ash-tree near me which was full of linnets, delicious, sleek, grey, sweet-piping, busy little birds, sliding and skimming in and out of the tree, a little home of song and love-making, of intimate and familiar life. I heard a cuckoo calling from the thick woods of the valley below, like the note of a bell, very far away. ...
— Lynton and Lynmouth - A Pageant of Cliff & Moorland • John Presland
... and at last my dear we come to Sens, a pretty little town with a great two-towered cathedral and the rooks flying in and out of the loopholes and another tower atop of one of the towers like a sort of a stone pulpit. In which pulpit with the birds skimming below him if you'll believe me, I saw a speck while I was resting at the inn before dinner which they made signs to me was Jemmy and which really was. I had been a fancying as I sat in the balcony of the hotel that an Angel might light there and call down to the people to be good, ...
— Mrs. Lirriper's Legacy • Charles Dickens
... consult with Miela. She directed our flight. I turned the current into our projector and tried to bring its beam to bear on the boat. We approached within some eight hundred feet of it, darting back and forth, sometimes rising a hundred feet or more, sometimes skimming the surface, but always keeping behind the boat as it turned in an endeavor to ...
— The Fire People • Ray Cummings
... information, not leaving the reader to hunt up every thing for himself, but referring him to the best sources for the facts, reasonings, and hints which he may wish; and by persevering patience of toil, not hastily skimming here and there and hurrying the task off, but searching and researching in every available direction, examining and re examining each mooted point, by the devotion of twelve years of anxious labor. How far my efforts in these particulars ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... the Exhibition. Truly it is very fine; truly, also, every great show is a kind of humbug. I doubt whether there were half a dozen people there who got the kind of enjoyment that it was intended to create,—very respectable people they seemed to be, and very well behaved, but all skimming the surface, as I did, and none of them so feeding on what was beautiful as to digest it, and make it a part of themselves. Such a quantity of objects must be utterly rejected before you can get any real profit from one! It seemed like throwing away time to look twice even at whatever was ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... Lancelot, smiling. And, indeed, the image of Mary Ann skimming the meads on a pony in the sunshine was more pleasant to contemplate than that of Mary Ann whitening the wintry steps. "What a complexion you must have had to start with!" he cried aloud, surveying the not unenviable remains of it. "Well, and what ...
— Merely Mary Ann • Israel Zangwill
... been told, them there Arabs wear,—and, indeed, I've seen them in them myself at West Brompton, when they was in the exhibition there. It was quite fine, and broad day, and I see him as plainly as I see you, —he comes skimming along at a tear of a pace, pulls up at the house over the way, opens the front ...
— The Beetle - A Mystery • Richard Marsh
... had not gone to the funeral The latter was busy skimming cream from a dozen large milk pans, while Mandy sat before the kitchen stove, with Swiss by her side. She was thinking of Hiram, and wondering if he really intended to ask ...
— Quincy Adams Sawyer and Mason's Corner Folks - A Picture of New England Home Life • Charles Felton Pidgin
... Forthwith the fifty heroes set heartily to work, banging with might and main, and raised such a terrible clatter that the birds made what haste they could to get away; and though they had shot half the feathers out of their wings, they were soon seen skimming among the clouds, a long distance off and looking like a flock of wild geese. Orpheus celebrated this victory by playing a triumphant anthem on his harp, and sang so melodiously that Jason begged him to desist, lest, as the steel-feathered birds had been driven away by an ugly ...
— Famous Tales of Fact and Fancy - Myths and Legends of the Nations of the World Retold for Boys and Girls • Various
... you'd be all right, your uncle being a doctor. A doctor at a farm—queer, isn't it, now?" So Dick went skimming from subject to subject, very like a swallow skimming over the surface of water ...
— The Heiress of Wyvern Court • Emilie Searchfield
... you have caught him at it), he moves toward the window, and pretends to be interested in what is going on outside; but, a draught of air coming briskly in, he hastens away as fast as ever he can, as if in fear of taking cold. Skimming along close to the floor, he reaches the opposite side of the room, and, slowly rising again, peers into the canary's cage. The occupant resents the liberty with erect feathers, and our balloon quickly descends, ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, May, 1878, No. 7. - Scribner's Illustrated • Various
... the top of a can, it should be opened, and the fruit boiled and used at once, after carefully skimming out all the moldy portions. If there is evidence of fermentation, the fruit should be thrown away, as it ...
— Science in the Kitchen. • Mrs. E. E. Kellogg
... there clinging to the flagstaff, and became absorbed in the rush of the foaming, boiling waters unrolling a gradually narrowing streak of dazzling white through the blue-green waste of billows, all sparkling in the slanting sunshine. Wheeling in flapping circles overhead, skimming the crested waves, settling down and lazily floating on the heaving flood, so many dots of snow upon the sapphire, the flock of gulls sailed onward with the ship, white scavengers of the sea, and sometimes dropped so close to the rail on wide extended wing ...
— A Wounded Name • Charles King
... straightway swallow the written prescription as a substitute, inwardly digest it, and recover? No,—I think you have tested the actual materia medica recommended. I hear of you from all directions, walking up hills in the mornings and down hills in the afternoons, skimming round in wherries like a rather unsteady water-spider, blistering your hands upon gymnastic bars, receiving severe contusions on your nose from cricket-balls, shaking up and down on hard-trotting horses, and making the most startling innovations in respect to eating, sleeping, and bathing. Like ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 23, September, 1859 • Various
... often spoken of as if it were the fat in milk. It is really the part of the milk which contains most of the fat and is obtained by skimming, after the milk has stood usually for twenty-four hours; this is known as "gravity cream." It is also obtained by an apparatus called a separator; this is known as "centrifugal cream," most of the cream now sold in cities being of this kind. The richness of any cream is indicated ...
— The Mother and Her Child • William S. Sadler
... under my window; Richmond Hill and Ham Walks bound my prospects; but, thank God! the Thames is between me and the Duchess of Queensberry. (32) Dowagers, as plenty as flounders, inhabit all around; and Pope's ghost is just now skimming under my window by a ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole
... focused on the approaching vehicle. It was Judith's little blue car, skimming down the avenue with the usual speed exacted of it by its stern young mistress, who seemed bent on getting at least thirty-six hours out of the twenty-four. No one could have said she did not have style in her manner of turning a curve and ...
— The Comings of Cousin Ann • Emma Speed Sampson
... sail went slowly over; the iceboat swooped around like a great bird skimming the ice. Then, in a minute, it was headed back up the lake toward the scene of ...
— Ruth Fielding on Cliff Island - The Old Hunter's Treasure Box • Alice Emerson
... behind, and the pony got down to her work on the ice, with the two white banks of snow on either side of the smooth track, John gave himself up to thinking about the subject which now so often engrossed his mind. Wrapped closely in his furs, with the cutter skimming along the ice, these thoughts found a pleasant accompaniment in the silvery tinkle of the bells which jingled around his horse's neck. As a general thing, he met no one on the icy road from the mine to the village. ...
— A Woman Intervenes • Robert Barr
... from any conclusion. Of one thing alone I was satisfied—that I was unutterably miserable; that my destiny was written in sable; that I was a man foredoomed to wo! Were my speculations strange or unnatural! Unnatural indeed! There is a class of surface-skimming persons, who pronounce all things unnatural which, to a cool, unprovoked, and perhaps unprovokable mind, appear unreasonable: as if a vexed nature and exacting passions were not the most unreasonable yet most natural of all moral agents. My woes may ...
— Confession • W. Gilmore Simms
... and during the week, fell from the shed roof, was chased by an angry hen who tried to pick his out because he examined her chickens, got run away with, and had his ears boxed violent by Asia, who caught him luxuriously skimming a pan of cream with half a stolen pie. Undaunted, however, by any failures or rebuffs, this indomitable youth went on amusing himself with all sorts of tricks till no one felt safe. If he did not ...
— Little Men - Life at Plumfield With Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott
... beautiful flat one skimming along with nearly a dozen hops in the brilliant track of the moon on the water. She did not pay any attention to me at first, and I kept skipping away, just as if I did not see her mopping her eyes. By-and-by a stroke worthy of myself ...
— The Making of Mary • Jean Forsyth
... why did that thought always come up! It made her shudder. They two would really have to begin with the A B C of understanding. To understand was a passion, it was breathing and life to her. She would never, could never, be satisfied with skimming the surface of life as the gulls out there skimmed the water. . . . Ah, how beautiful the morning was, and how the bracing air soothed her feverishness! All this sky, and light, and uplifting sea were hers, ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... cheerfully to join the river, between grassy banks, kissing the willows which bent down towards it, or whispering softly to the blue Forget-me-nots; and so clear was it, you could see the smooth pebbles lying at the bottom, and the fish skimming along gaily, as if there were no such things in the whole ...
— Parables from Flowers • Gertrude P. Dyer
... to see that merry bark Skimming the silver ocean, like a shark At play amid the beautiful sea-green, And all so ...
— The Death-Wake - or Lunacy; a Necromaunt in Three Chimeras • Thomas T Stoddart
... and bent my shoulders, and passed down the carriage-drive, by the dining-room windows, into the stable-yard. The rays of sunset struck the lantern-panes in the light-house, and gave the atmosphere a yellow stain. The pigeons were skimming up and down the roof of the wood-house, and cooing round the horses that were in the yard. A boy was driving cows into the shed, whistling a lively air; he suspended it when he saw me, but I shook my finger at him, and ran in. Slipping into the side hall, I dropped ...
— The Morgesons • Elizabeth Stoddard
... exclaimed the lieutenant sternly; and, biting his lips as he felt how awkwardly he was situated, Hilary went forward, and soon after the cutter was skimming over the waves ...
— In the King's Name - The Cruise of the "Kestrel" • George Manville Fenn
... hung up the kettle, put into it an ox cut into pieces, fifty cabbages, and a wagon-load of carrots, skimming the broth with a frying pan, tasting it every now and then until it was done. When everything was ...
— The Magic Soap Bubble • David Cory
... the account of an escape any knowledge she might obtain. On the rocky ledges which stretched out into the sea lay basking several seals; and all about them, and on every higher ledge, were myriads of puffins. Hundreds of puffins and fulmars were in the air, and skimming the waters. The fulmars poised themselves on their long wings; the fat little puffins poffled about in the water, and made a great commotion where everything else was quiet. From these lower ridges of rock vast masses arose, black and solemn, some perpendicular, some with a slope too steep and ...
— The Billow and the Rock • Harriet Martineau
... moment that Bellah, who was skimming the milk in the farm dairy, heard the fairy ...
— The Lilac Fairy Book • Andrew Lang
... skimming the ground, it is supposed to be a sign of rain. During the frequent intervals of heavy, overcast weather which have marked this summer, they might have been observed flying low for a week together without a spot of ...
— Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies
... window looking in at them. Then the memory of the Bertaux came back to her. She saw the farm again, the muddy pond, her father in a blouse under the apple trees, and she saw herself again as formerly, skimming with her finger the cream off the milk-pans in the dairy. But in the refulgence of the present hour her past life, so distinct until then, faded away completely, and she almost doubted having lived it. ...
— Madame Bovary • Gustave Flaubert
... said Diane disapprovingly, "that you were cutting giddy circles over the water and dipping and skimming, weren't you?" ...
— Diane of the Green Van • Leona Dalrymple
... bushes, and pounding the huckleberries into it with a stick; the result was a heterogeneous conglomeration of worms, leaves, bugs, and crushed berries; but I succeeded in eliminating the refuse by throwing the whole mass into a tub of water, and skimming off the risings. I would then descant to buyers upon the freshness of the berries wet with the dews of heaven, but my ruse was soon discovered, and people refused to purchase ...
— The Gentleman from Everywhere • James Henry Foss
... finished breakfast one Saturday morning, and Mark was leisurely cutting the weekly reviews, when he suddenly sheltered himself behind the paper he had been skimming—'Sweet Bells' was honoured with a long notice. His head swam as he took in the effect with some effort. The critic was not one of those fallen angels of literature who rejoice over an unexpected recruit; he wrote with ...
— The Giant's Robe • F. Anstey
... where I have my books, a barrel of beer, which I tap myself (can you tap a barrel of beer?), and an old woman to do for me. I have also just concocted two gallons of tar-water under the directions of Bishop Berkeley: it is to be bottled off this very day after a careful skimming, and then drunk by those who can and will. It is to be tried first on my old woman; if she survives, I am to begin; and it will then gradually spread into the parish, through England, Europe, etc., "as the small pebble stirs the ...
— The Bed-Book of Happiness • Harold Begbie |
