"Sloped" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... was the most curious room I ever saw. It was large—running clear across the house. It had four gable-windows, and the ceiling sloped down on the sides, so there was danger of bumping your head if you played pussy-wants-a-corner. Each girl had a window that she called her own, and the chintz curtains, made of chiffon (I think it was chiffon), were tied back with different-colored ribbons. This big room ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 2 of 14 - Little Journeys To the Homes of Famous Women • Elbert Hubbard
... little bed with a pole painted blue, from which hung a calico curtain; a walnut bureau without a marble top, a small table, a looking-glass, a very common night-table without a door, and three chairs completed the furniture of the room. The walls, which sloped in front, were hung with a shabby paper, blue with black flowers. The tiled floor, stained red and polished, was icy to the feet. There was no carpet except for a strip at the bedside. The mantelpiece of common marble was ...
— Pierrette • Honore de Balzac
... stately mistress of the old house died, and Professor Longfellow bought the homestead of Andrew Craigie, with eight acres of land, including the meadow, which sloped down to the pretty river. There have been very few prouder or happier moments in his life than that in which he first felt that the old house under the elms was his. Yet he must have missed the stately old lady who first had admitted ...
— Great Fortunes, and How They Were Made • James D. McCabe, Jr.
... which to carry the dirt away from the entrance, or enough so that it would not choke up the opening. A large clam shell was all he could think of at present. He would carry the dirt to the entrance and some distance away, and then throw it. Fortunately the ground sloped away rapidly, so that he needed a kind of platform before ...
— An American Robinson Crusoe - for American Boys and Girls • Samuel. B. Allison
... large brick house; before it a line of carriages kept moving like a city funeral, only people were all the time a-getting out and walking under a long tent that sloped down ...
— Phemie Frost's Experiences • Ann S. Stephens
... and it gave, from its character, a pleasing, exhilarating sensation to the heart as it lay at their feet basking in sunshine. On either hand were the smiling undulating downs, dotted here and there with flocks of sheep. Before them the country sloped away for a couple of miles till it reached the bright blue dancing ocean, over which several white sails were skimming rapidly. Inland there was a beautifully diversified country. There were several rich woods surrounding gentlemen's seats, and ...
— Ernest Bracebridge - School Days • William H. G. Kingston
... had joined him, to find themselves in a small flooded chamber at whose far end a narrow gallery sloped upward ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science January 1931 • Various
... straight in to the edge of the flat, at a point where the bank sloped sharply to deep water. I threw over my anchor, shortened the rope and made it fast. Then I stepped out into water above my shoe tops and waded toward the dingy. The water was icy cold, but I did not know it ...
— The Rise of Roscoe Paine • Joseph C. Lincoln
... to the trees behind us, or they were on too high ground to get the range. The line gradually advanced, creeping forward little by little until it reached a partial shelter afforded by the contour of the ground where it sloped sharply into a sort of ditch that was cut through the field parallel with the line of battle. Here it halted and the battle went on in this manner for a long time, possibly for hours. In the meantime, Chapman's brigade, of Wilson's division, had come into position on the left of ...
— Personal Recollections of a Cavalryman - With Custer's Michigan Cavalry Brigade in the Civil War • J. H. (James Harvey) Kidd
... was a very quiet country road, running along the course of the river; sometimes quite close to the bank, sometimes, as at the Cottage, leaving room for a house and garden. The bank itself was high and generally precipitous, but in some places it sloped more gradually and was covered with soft turf. On the opposite, or American side, the land was lower, and a little of town which lay almost opposite to Cacouna was girdled in on all sides by pine-woods, the tops of which showed like a black fringe against the brilliant ...
— A Canadian Heroine, Volume 1 - A Novel • Mrs. Harry Coghill
... Elizabeth was standing in the sitting-room of a Saskatchewan farmhouse. She looked out upon a dazzling world of snow, lying thinly under a pale greenish sky in which the sunset clouds were just beginning to gather. The land before her sloped to a broad frozen river up which a wagon and a team of horses was plodding its way—the steam rising in clouds round the bodies of the horses and men. On a track leading to the river a sledge was running—the bells jingling in the still, light air. To her left ...
— Lady Merton, Colonist • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... upon the Granadeers for the other watchers. Granadeers be very tall men under very tall bearskins, such as Fusilier regiments wear in cold weather. Thus, when a Granadeer bowed his head but a very little over his stock, the bearskin sloped and showed as though he grieved exceedingly. Now the Goorkhas ...
— A Diversity of Creatures • Rudyard Kipling
... could see, the walls of the fortress ended in a profound precipice, though the roof still stretched above him; and before him lay the two abysses full of stars, for they cut their way through the whole Earth and revealed the under sky; and threading its course between them went the way, and it sloped upward and its sides were sheer. And beyond the abysses, where the way led up to the farther chambers of the fortress, Leothric heard the musicians playing their magical tune. So he stepped on to the way, which was scarcely a stride ...
— The Sword of Welleran and Other Stories • Lord Dunsany
... disturbed a boar. Luckily for myself, I always keep a sharp look out, and my eye caught a glimpse of something black coming up amongst the coffee. In a single second a boar appeared in the path some twenty yards away. The path sloped downwards towards me, and at me he came, like an arrow from a bow. As there was no use in my attempting to arrest the progress of an animal of this kind, I stepped aside and let him into my manager, who, luckily for himself, was standing behind a broken off coffee tree, which stood at a ...
— Gold, Sport, And Coffee Planting In Mysore • Robert H. Elliot
... walk from the top brought me out upon a high hill of snow that sloped steeply down into the woods. The snow was soft, and I sat down in it and slid "a blue streak"—my blue overalls recording the streak—for a quarter of a mile, and then came to a sudden and confusing stop; one of my webs had ...
— Wild Life on the Rockies • Enos A. Mills
... with cane-fields, their bright young greens sharp against the dark blue of the sea. The ledge on which the house was built terminated suddenly in front, but extended on the left along a line of cliff above a chasm, until it sloped to the road. On this flat eminence was an avenue of royal palms, which, with the dense wood on the hill above it, was to mariners one of the most familiar landmarks of the Island of "St. Kitts." From her verandah Mary ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton
... on the north crept on westward, and skirted that same wood of tall oaks, chestnuts, and firs where Monsieur Joseph's Chouan friends had been hidden from the Prefect and the General. The wood, with little undergrowth, but thickly carpeted with dead leaves, sloped down to the south; on its highest edge a line of old oaks, hollow and enormous, stood like grim sentinels. It was under one of these, hidden from the house by a corner of the wood, that Monsieur Joseph met ...
— Angelot - A Story of the First Empire • Eleanor Price
... neighbouring wood. 'Twas night, and, covered in the foliage deep, Jove plunged my senses in the death of sleep. All night I slept, oblivious of my pain: Aurora dawned and Phoebus shined in vain, Nor, till oblique he sloped his evening ray, Had Somnus dried the balmy dews away. Then female voices from the shore I heard: A maid amidst them, goddess-like appear'd; To her I sued, she pitied my distress; Like thee in beauty, nor in virtue less. Who from such youth could hope considerate ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer, translated by Alexander Pope
... like five miles of woodland and late fall meadow between himself and the distractions of city life, when looking adown a path that sloped gently to a brook he saw, sitting on a tree that lay athwart the stream and paddling her white feet in the sunny water, Nannie Branscome. His surprise robbed him of his reserve and ...
— The Gentle Art of Cooking Wives • Elizabeth Strong Worthington
... I found I had stuck. The roof sloped down in all directions. I couldn't go back. I had to go on, crawling along this ledge. And then I found myself looking down the ...
— Right Ho, Jeeves • P. G. Wodehouse
... film from the dim purple of night were hiding there to see what beauty day had, better than its own. The gray fog, so dreary for three mornings, was utterly vanquished; all was vanished, save where "swimming vapors sloped athwart the glen," and "crept from pine to pine." These had dallied, like spies of a flying army, to watch for chances of its return; but they, too, carried away by the enthusiasms of a world liberated and illumined, changed their allegiance, joined the party of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... the peace that surrounded the country parsonage. The parish was small, moderately honest, prosperous, and was used to the old priest, who had ruled it for thirty years. The town ended at the parsonage, and there began meadows which sloped down to the river and were filled in summer with the perfume of flowers and all the music of the earth. Behind the great house a kitchen-garden encroached on the meadow. The first ray of the sun was for it, and so was the last. Here the cherries ripened in May, and the currants often ...
— International Short Stories: French • Various
... degrees our fire slackened, one by one the guns fell silent and in their place rose the more hateful sounds of anguish. Now as I stood thus, my eyes smarting with burnt powder, my ears yet ringing with the din, I grew aware how the deck sloped in strange fashion; at first I paid small heed, yet with every minute this slope became steeper, and with this certainty came the knowledge that we were sinking and, moreover (judging by the angle of the deck) sinking by ...
— Black Bartlemy's Treasure • Jeffrey Farnol
... fortunate enough to see one built. It was done very neatly. The hard snow was cut into slabs with a wooden knife. These were piled one above another in regular order, and cemented with snow— as bricks are with lime. The form of the wall was circular, and the slabs were so shaped that they sloped inwards, thus forming a dome, or large bee-hive, with a key-stone slab in the top to keep all firm. A hole was then cut in the side for a door—just large enough to admit of a man creeping through. In front of this door a porch or passage of snow was built. The only way of getting into ...
— Fast in the Ice - Adventures in the Polar Regions • R.M. Ballantyne
... was able to obtain an unobstructed view, from the manner in which the smack hung on the inclined surface of the pool. She was quite upon an even keel—that is to say, her deck lay in a plane parallel with that of the water—but this latter sloped at an angle of more than forty-five degrees, so that we seemed to be lying upon our beam-ends. I could not help observing, nevertheless, that I had scarcely more difficulty in maintaining my hold ...
— Selections From Poe • J. Montgomery Gambrill
... of the barn wide open. The fields, lately mown, sloped gently up to a fringe of pines darkly green against the sky. The cool night air stirred the elms, and the brilliant moon appeared in the very centre of the doorway. The beauty of the whole scene went to Tom Hamilton's head a little, but he kept his thoughts steadily ...
— Mother Carey's Chickens • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... a little clearing, in a little circle of pines. From it the ground sloped down towards the valley, and at some distance beneath smoke curled from a house lost amid clouds of foliage, the abounding green life of this damp and brooding hollow. A great window looking down the woodside ...
— The Worshipper of the Image • Richard Le Gallienne
... giving in. On they flew, sometimes over open ground, then through low bush, which tried the horses severely, then through strips of open forest, until at length the party began to tail off, and only a select few kept their places. We arrived at the summit of a ridge, from which the ground sloped in a gentle inclination for about a mile toward the river. At the foot of this incline was thick thorny nabbuk jungle, for which impenetrable covert the rhinoceroses ...
— In the Heart of Africa • Samuel White Baker
... in the early part of the last century, and form one of the marked features of New England home architecture during that period. They are known by their broad and ample, but low-studded rooms, their numerous windows with small panes, their single chimney in the centre of the roof that sloped down to the lower story in the back part, and in their general unpretending appearance, reminding one vividly of that simplicity of life which characterized our people before the Revolution. Their very homeliness is delightful, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, Issue 35, September, 1860 • Various
... hundred and eighty feet long was built of pitch-pine and oak, two feet thick. This was covered with iron plates, one to two inches thick and eight inches wide, bolted over each other and through and through the woodwork, giving a protective armor four inches in thickness. The shield sloped at an angle of about thirty-six degrees, and was covered with an iron grating that served as an upper deck. For fifty feet forward and aft her decks were submerged below the water, and the prow was shod with an iron beak to ...
— The Monitor and the Merrimac - Both sides of the story • J. L. Worden et al.
... to forty-five yards from the entrance, at the far end of this extensive grotto, we came upon a passage, two or three yards wide and about as high, leading further back into the bowels of the mountain. We groped into it a few steps, but it sloped sharply downward and was wet, so we retreated out of it, it being also ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White
... where we stood the ground sloped rapidly downward until the dense darkness at the foot of the steep defile shrouded everything from view. The descent appeared rocky and impracticable, and I could distinguish the sound of rapid water far below. On the opposite side stood ...
— My Lady of the North • Randall Parrish
... not struck, but I heard a rending and splintering in the forest where tall trees had met their doom. The noise deafened me, and confused my senses. Out of the loophole I could see the glade that sloped down to the Gap, and it was as bright as if it had been high noonday. The clumps of fern and grass stood out yellow and staring against the inky background of the trees. I remember I noted a rabbit run confusedly into the open, and then at ...
— Salute to Adventurers • John Buchan
... wandering border life had rendered me familiar. Not only was this man of fairer, clearer complexion, but his cheek-bones were not in the least prominent, his nose was wide at the base and somewhat flattened, while his forehead sloped sharply backward in such peculiar form as to warrant the opinion that the deformity arose from a compression of the frontal bone in infancy. The hair, although worn long and flowing down the back, ...
— Prisoners of Chance - The Story of What Befell Geoffrey Benteen, Borderman, - through His Love for a Lady of France • Randall Parrish
... Five thousand strong and ready, at the hill by Lundy's Lane. There as the night came on we fought them from six to nine, Whenever they broke our line we broke their line, They took our guns and we won them again, and around the levels Where the hill sloped up—with the Eighty-ninth,—we fought like devils Around the flag;—and on they came and we drove them back, Until with its very fierceness the fight ...
— Lundy's Lane and Other Poems • Duncan Campbell Scott
... and large stones; but the third reach was softer and more beautiful, as if the mountains had there made a warmer shelter, and there were a more gentle climate. The rocks by the riverside had dwindled away, the mountains were smooth and green, and towards the end, where the glen sloped upwards, it was a cradle-like hollow, and at that point where the slope became a hill, at the very bottom of the curve of the cradle, stood one cottage, with a few fields and beds of potatoes. There was ...
— Recollections of a Tour Made in Scotland A.D. 1803 • Dorothy Wordsworth
... Sloped on the hill the mounds were green, Our center held that place of graves, And some still hold it in their swoon, And over these a glory waves. The warrior-monument, crashed in fight,[8] Shall soar transfigured in loftier light, A meaning ...
— Battle-Pieces and Aspects of the War • Herman Melville
... eddy of the stream had washed away a mass of soil, and on the edge of it there grew a most beautiful old mimosa thorn. Beneath the thorn was a large smooth slab of granite fringed all round with maidenhair and other ferns, that sloped gently down to a pool of the clearest sparkling water, which lay in a bowl of granite about ten feet wide by five feet deep in the centre. Here to this slab we went every morning to bathe, and that ...
— A Tale of Three Lions • H. Rider Haggard
... seemed to create a positive clamor. Coming to the corner, I looked along to the left where the lane, alternate patches of silver and ebony, showed deserted as far as I could see. This was the direction of the gate of the Bell House, and the road, which sloped gently downwards on that side rose in a rather sharper activity on my right. It was at this point that I had mistaken the way on my first journey to ...
— The Green Eyes of Bast • Sax Rohmer
... view over many miles of the Potomac, and the opposite shore of Maryland. It had probably been purchased with the property, and was one of the primitive farm-houses of Virginia. The roof was steep, and sloped down into low projecting eaves. It had four rooms on the ground floor, and others in the attic, and an immense chimney at each end. Not a vestige of it remains. Two or three decayed fig trees, with shrubs and vines, linger about the place, and here and there a flower ...
— The Life of George Washington, Volume I • Washington Irving
... be over?" said the farmer abruptly; his hands were clenched now in his pockets. The two men stood a little way apart, facing eastward, and away from the house. The long, wintry fields before them sloped down to a wide stretch of marshes covered with ice, and dotted here and there with an abandoned haycock. Beyond was the gray sea less than a mile away; the far horizon was like an edge of steel. There was a small fishing-boat ...
— The Life of Nancy • Sarah Orne Jewett
... had been since the first shock of the torpedo, the ship was already beginning to list heavily. The floor of the bathroom now sloped upwards ...
— On Land And Sea At The Dardanelles • Thomas Charles Bridges
... merriment took possession of him; but all the while he did not know where his foot stepped; his head swam, and his pulse beat feverishly. About midway between the forest and the mansion, where the field sloped more steeply, grew a clump of birch-trees, whose slender stems glimmered ghostly white in the moonlight. Something drove Truls to leave the beaten road, and, obeying the impulse, he steered toward the birches. A strange sound fell upon his ear, like the moan of one in distress. It did ...
— Tales From Two Hemispheres • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... your Pike right before you, fall back with your Right-leg, and as far as may be put back your Right-arm, keeping your Pike about half a Foot from your Side, your Eye fixed on the Spear directly to the Rear, your Pike sloped: Then forsake it with your Left-hand, and bring in your Right-leg, laying your Pike on your Right-Shoulder, closing your Elbow to your Body, the Butt of your Pike being about half a Foot from the Ground, in the middle ...
— The School of Recreation (1696 edition) • Robert Howlett
... thinner and thinner, and the ground began to slope up toward the mountain. The moon had already set, and the little white flames of the stars had come out everywhere. The ground sloped more and more until at last they rode far above the woods upon the wide top of the mountain. The woods lay spread out mile after mile below, and away to the south shot up the red glare of the burning town. But before and above them were the little white flames. The guide ...
— The Secret Rose • W. B. Yeats
... other, beetling over the sea. At ten o'clock, we were passing through a channel between the islands leading to Lerwick, the capital of Shetland, on the principal island bearing the name of Mainland. Fields, yellow with flowers, among which stood here and there a cottage, sloped softly down to the water, and beyond them rose the bare declivities and summits of the hills, dark with heath, with here and there still darker spots, of an almost inky hue, where peat had been cut for fuel. Not a tree, not a shrub was to be seen, and the greater part of the soil appeared ...
— Letters of a Traveller - Notes of Things Seen in Europe and America • William Cullen Bryant
... in the bottom lay a magnificent specimen of savage manhood. His height, when standing, could not have been less than six feet three. His shoulders were broad and clothed with great, powerful muscles. His body sloped away gracefully to a slim waist and straight, muscular limbs—the ideal body, striven for by all athletes. His dress was that usual to Seminoles on a hunt—a long calico shirt belted in at the waist, limbs bare, moccasins of soft tanned deer-skin, and a head-dress made of ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... country" sloped generally to the line from both sides, and the angle between the inspector's horse, the fencing party, and the culvert was well within a clear concave space; but a couple of hundred yards back from the line and parallel to it (on the side on which Dave's party worked their timber) a fringe ...
— On the Track • Henry Lawson
... understands any life story the better for knowing amid what sort of scenes it was unfolded. Moreover, such a place is one of the pleasant things in the world to look at, as I judge. This was a small house, with its gable end to the road, and a lean-to at the back, over which the long roof sloped down picturesquely. It was weather-painted; that was all; of a soft dark grey now, that harmonized well enough with the gayer colours of meadows and trees. And two superb elms, of New England's own, stood beside it and hung over it, enfolding and sheltering the ...
— Diana • Susan Warner
... The gutter sloped downwards. He observed that they were now many feet below the edge of the buildings. Rows of spectral white shapes like the ghosts of blind-drawn windows rose above them. They came to the end of a cable fastened above one of these white windows, dimly visible and dropping ...
— The Sleeper Awakes - A Revised Edition of When the Sleeper Wakes • H.G. Wells
... read "Pauline" will forget the masterful poetry descriptive of the lover's wild-wood retreat, the exquisite lines beginning "Walled in with a sloped mound of matted shrubs, tangled, old and green"? There is indeed a new, an ...
— Life of Robert Browning • William Sharp
... trek down to the coast with their stock for the three winter months. Then the range of forest-clothed sandhills forming the coastline held a succession of camps. The scenery was enchanting; every valley brimmed with evergreen forest, and between the valleys sloped ...
— Reminiscences of a South African Pioneer • W. C. Scully
... these lovers sit on the hillside, and the artist has been talking in pictures as the clouds do, the sun has sloped far toward setting. The west is aflame, like a burning palace; the crows are flapping tired wings toward their nests; the swallows are sporting in the air, as children do in surf of the blue seas; smoke from the farm chimneys visible begins to lie level across the sky, and stays like ...
— A Hero and Some Other Folks • William A. Quayle
... blanket-covered canoes lined the crescent beach that sloped gently upward to a strip of gravel before the row of Indian houses. The totems of the Thunder-bird and the Bear stood out high against the sky. Before the Potlatch-house an Indian dog, small, coyote-like, yelped shrilly as he tugged at the rope which fastened him ...
— Where the Sun Swings North • Barrett Willoughby
... friends. Mr. Rush knew a farm of 20 acres with buildings, which could be had for $8,000. It was four miles south of Lancaster, and at a point where two main highways leading into the city came together. It sloped eastward enough so that it did not get the full force of west winds. It was two miles from Mr. Rush's home, with the ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Incorporated 39th Annual Report - at Norris, Tenn. September 13-15 1948 • Various
... beach the dull report of a cannon-shot was heard. It came from the light-ship, and immediately after a rocket flew up, indicating by the direction in which it sloped that another vessel was in distress on ...
— The Lifeboat • R.M. Ballantyne
... and panting our two travelers gained the divide. Below them sloped a great amphitheatre of sand, falling in irregular gradations; and at the foot of all lay the lake, calmly azure, with its horizon, whether near or far for it was almost impossible to say— mystically vague. On either hand rose other hills ...
— Bertram Cope's Year • Henry Blake Fuller
... connoisseur's eye he explored the beauty of the rugged coast, where a great pierced rock rose from a glassy sea, and the ordered loveliness of the vast tilted levels of pasture and tillage and woodland that sloped gently up from the cliffs toward the distant moor. ...
— The Woman in Black • Edmund Clerihew Bentley
... was singularly wild and impressive. A wooded amphitheatre, surrounded on three sides by precipitous cliffs of naked granite, sloped gently toward the crest of another precipice that overlooked the valley. It was undoubtedly the most suitable spot for a camp, had camping been advisable. But Mr. Oakhurst knew that scarcely half the journey to Sandy Bar ...
— Short Stories for English Courses • Various (Rosa M. R. Mikels ed.)
... was soon manifest. The passage sloped downwards, and when they had gone some fifty feet their progress was arrested by water which appeared ...
— The Treasure of the Incas • G. A. Henty
... When they had, as they calculated, come upon the ground the Boers must have passed over, they turned south, and kept on until they saw the dark mass of Talana on their right, and made towards it. On this side the hill sloped gradually, while on that facing Dundee it was extremely steep and strewn with boulders. They were now going at a walk, and they soon came upon an immense gathering of waggons, carts, oxen and ponies, crowded without any order, just as they had arrived two hours before. "There is no fear of ...
— With Buller in Natal - A Born Leader • G. A. Henty
... themselves a little and then went on. After a time, they found themselves on a rising ground that sloped rather steeply on the other side. The moment they reached the top, a gust of wind seized them and blew them down hill as fast as they could run. Nor could Diamond stop before he went bang! against one of the doors in a wall. ...
— At the Back of the North Wind • Elizabeth Lewis and George MacDonald
... and Ralph, instead of returning to the Squire's, set out for the village of Clifty, a few miles away. No one knew what he went for, and some suggested that he had "sloped." ...
— The Hoosier Schoolmaster - A Story of Backwoods Life in Indiana • Edward Eggleston
... the clerk, "there's a rather singular resemblance; the two hands are in many points identical: only differently sloped." ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 5 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... The ground sloped gently up from the river; so that it seemed as if the landward ends of the Surgham and Kerreri ridges curved in towards each other, enclosing what lay between. Beyond the long swell of sand which formed the western wall of this spacious amphitheatre the black shapes of the ...
— The River War • Winston S. Churchill
... drawing-pin to the roof over the wash-hand stand, which—the room being an attic—sloped almost dangerously, dangled a Time-Table. Mr. Lewisham was to rise at five, and that this was no vain boasting, a cheap American alarum clock by the books on the box witnessed. The lumps of mellow chocolate on the papered ledge by the bed-head indorsed that evidence. "French until eight," ...
— Love and Mr. Lewisham • H. G. Wells
... common, for there were bearded men, and smooth-shaven faces, and lean and fat men; there were round, cherubic countenances, and lean, hungry heads; there were squared, protruding chins, and there were chins which sloped away awkwardly toward the neck; in fact it seemed that the sheriff had collected twenty specimens to represent every phase of weakness and strength in the human physiognomy. But beneath the pictures, almost without exception, there hung weapons: rifles, ...
— The Seventh Man • Max Brand
... and more open, till it became definitely a meadow, sloped down to the river, which was overgrown with green weeds and osiers. Near the milldam was the millpond, deep and full of fish; a little mill with a thatched roof was working away with a wrathful sound, ...
— The Chorus Girl and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... stream in front of him were perhaps fen feet high and sloped sharply to the water's edge, fairly free from tangle. Presently, McTavish localized the sound of bells as coming from the opposite bank, and expected to watch the equipage, preceded or accompanied by trapper or hunter, speed past, following ...
— The Wilderness Trail • Frank Williams
... Native gentry could obtain the aid of tasteful gardeners, I would recommend that the level land should be varied with an occasional artificial elevation, nicely sloped or graduated; but Native malees would be sure to aim rather at the production of abrupt round knobs resembling warts or excrescences than easy and ...
— Flowers and Flower-Gardens • David Lester Richardson
... was to wade over as large an area of lake bottom as possible and establish a certainty that it was free from deep step-offs, "bottomless" pockets and treacherous undertow. Soon it became evident that she had a bigger undertaking before her than she had reckoned on, for the bed of the lake sloped very gradually at this point, and Katherine Crane and Estelle Adler ...
— Campfire Girls at Twin Lakes - The Quest of a Summer Vacation • Stella M. Francis
... fair and green beyond the village of Charing, and behind the isle of Thorney, (amidst the brakes and briars of which were then rising fast and fair the Hall and Abbey of Westminster;) many a wood lay dark in the starlight, along the higher ground that sloped from the dank Strand, with its numerous canals or dykes;—and on either side of the great road into Kent:—flutes and horns sounded far and near through the green places, and laughter and song, and the crash of ...
— Harold, Complete - The Last Of The Saxon Kings • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... was now extended from northwest to southeast with Hancock's Second corps on the right, Warren's Fifth corps on the right center, Sedgwick's Sixth corps on the left center, and Burnside's Ninth corps on the extreme left. Our Second division was formed in a clearing on the side of a hill which sloped gradually until it reached a swamp, which, however, turned and passed through our line at our left. About three hundred yards in front of us was a strip of woods one-fourth of a mile wide, and beyond the woods an open field where the rebel ...
— Three Years in the Sixth Corps • George T. Stevens
... indented at the top, and we have seen several in which part of the brim is sloped off without any particular ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, December 18, 1841 • Various
... and began stumbling up the spiral stairs, which had mouldered away till some of them sloped, while others were deep hollows; but he toiled on, with a half giddy, shrinking sensation ...
— Three Boys - or the Chiefs of the Clan Mackhai • George Manville Fenn
... how, but making pretty slow progress in spite of all their efforts. It was done at last, however, and they felt easier in their minds when they knew that it was ready for use in case of necessity. From its mouth in the depths of the pond it sloped gradually upward to a dry chamber under the roots of a large birch; and here, where a few tiny holes were not likely to be noticed from the outside, two or three small openings, almost hidden by the ...
— Forest Neighbors - Life Stories of Wild Animals • William Davenport Hulbert
... nobody, knows what's become of him. He was here peelin' 'taters for supper, cookie says, jest b'fore we landed. Now he's sloped." ...
— Ruth Fielding on Cliff Island - The Old Hunter's Treasure Box • Alice Emerson
... were split by many such valleys and many such bare, grassy ridges sloped up toward the mountains. Upon the side of one ridge, the highest, there stood a solitary mustang, haltered with a lasso. He was a ragged, shaggy, wild beast, and there was no saddle or bridle on him, nothing but the halter. He was not grazing, although the bleached white grass ...
— The U.P. Trail • Zane Grey
... The path along which he was walking passed under the lee of a wall of clipped yew. Behind the hedge the ground sloped steeply up towards the foot of the terrace and the house; for one standing on the higher ground it was easy to look over the dark barrier. Looking up, Denis saw two heads overtopping the hedge immediately above ...
— Crome Yellow • Aldous Huxley
... white and blue of the standards, the brass of the eagle guidons, the grey tossed manes of the chargers, the fierce swarthy faces of the soldiery, the scarlet of the Spahis' cloaks, and the snowy folds of the Demi-Cavalerie turbans, the shine of the sloped lances, and the glisten of the carbine barrels, fused together in one sea of blended colour, flashed into a million of prismatic hues against the sombre bistre shadow of the sunburnt plains and the ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... as if searching for some one. She was a tall, spare woman, with a firm mouth, keen blue eyes, and a look of patient endurance in her face, bred by the stern life of pioneer New England. Far away across the pasture which sloped southward from the cabin she could see long meadow grass waving in the breeze, and beyond a thread of blue water where the Charles River flowed lazily to the sea. Westward there was also pasture land where sheep were ...
— The Puritan Twins • Lucy Fitch Perkins
... sixty years since it had had its beginning, when Grandfather King brought his bride home. Before the wedding he had fenced off the big south meadow that sloped to the sun; it was the finest, most fertile field on the farm, and the neighbours told young Abraham King that he would raise many a fine crop of wheat in that meadow. Abraham King smiled and, being a man of few words, said nothing; but in his mind ...
— The Story Girl • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... got into the way of playing a kind of stab shot. The tees consisted not of grass but of hard soil, and one had to tee up much higher than usual in order to avoid damaging the sole of the driver. This provoked the habit of cocking the ball up, and as a corrective all the teeing grounds in Florida sloped upwards in front. Locusts were responsible for eating all the grass away from some courses, and I had a unique experience when I played Findlay at Portland. When we were on the putting greens, men had constantly to be beating sticks to keep the locusts off the lines of ...
— The Complete Golfer [1905] • Harry Vardon
... unimpair'd by time. The Western height primeval rocks inclose; Low-murmuring to the south a river flows: The rest with towers and tower-like works was crown'd, And cast a various shadow o'er the ground. Unnumber'd outworks, lessening by degrees, Sloped to the plain: wide quivering to the breeze The Danish standard, on the heights unrolled, Inflames the air with many a waving fold. Stupendous gates the massy fabric crown'd, That rough with iron studs impervious frown'd. Oft had the rocky cattle's rugged form From its steep sides roll'd off the ...
— Gustavus Vasa - and other poems • W. S. Walker
... French to break out on that side. Bazaine, however, massed his great army on the west along a ridge stretching north and south, and presenting, especially in the southern half, steep slopes to the assailants. It also sloped away to the rear, thus enabling the defenders (as was the case with Wellington at Waterloo) secretly to reinforce any part of the line. On the French left wing, too, the slopes curved inward, thus giving ...
— The Development of the European Nations, 1870-1914 (5th ed.) • John Holland Rose
... scant half mile away. At some distant time there had been an enormous fall of rock. This, disintegrating, had formed a gently-curving breast which sloped down to merge with the valley's floor. Willow and witch alder, stunted birch and poplar had found roothold, clothed it, until only their crowding outposts, thrusting forward in a wavering semicircle, ...
— The Metal Monster • A. Merritt
... this was going on, I stepped toward the window, but had not stood there long, before I heard the clanking hoofs of a horse beyond the paling, and a shout wafted into the room—"Sloped for Texas!" ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 2, No. 8, January, 1851 • Various
... about half-way between the island and the heavy rapids, where for a distance of some six or eight yards frost action had caused disintegration of the rock, and the wall sloped down toward the river at an ...
— The Gaunt Gray Wolf - A Tale of Adventure With Ungava Bob • Dillon Wallace
... better if I could only meet Don Pike and swell up his eyes for him," he continued to growl. "But the coward has sloped." ...
— Frank Merriwell's Reward • Burt L. Standish
... marshy bottom and passed over a quarter of a mile of dry, hard turf. Again the ground sloped, and again we came on the tracks. Then we lost them for half a mile, but only to pick them up once more quite close to Mapleton. It was Holmes who saw them first, and he stood pointing with a look of triumph ...
— Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... about half past one. All was quiet and not a blade stirred. I paused near the tent opening, with my face toward the opposite side of the river, which could be seen through an opening among the trees. Standing motionless on the bank, which from there sloped gradually down toward the river, more than a minute had elapsed when my attention was distracted by a slight noise behind me. Looking to the right and backward my surprise was great to perceive the tail-end of a black snake ...
— Through Central Borneo: - An Account of Two Years' Travel in the Land of Head-Hunters - Between the Years 1913 and 1917 • Carl Lumholtz
... sat down on a rock overhanging the clay bank which sloped up about four feet above the lazy brooklet. He carefully arranged his expensive rod, placed his fish basket near by and entered into a dissertation on angling that would make old Ike Walton get up and leave ...
— Back to the Woods • Hugh McHugh
... contrast between the Queen's life, with its formality and crowded households, and its retinues and solemn pageantry and this empty little New England farm-house on a long hillside that sloped eastward. It was so funny to hear the Queen discussed and to find her a familiar personage, just as one might in old England, where one was always hearing about "our dear Queen." But to sister Sarah the Queen ...
— Betty Leicester - A Story For Girls • Sarah Orne Jewett
... feast around that humble board which graced That palace senatorial once. He stood: He raised a casket from an open chest, And from that casket drew a blazoned scroll, And placed it on the window-sill up-sloped Breast-high, and faintly warmed by sinking sun; Then o'er it bent a space. With sudden hands The old man raised that scroll; aloud he read: 'I, Ethelbert the King, and all my Thanes, Honouring the Apostle Peter, cede to God This Abbey and its lands. If heir of mine Cancel that gift, when Christ ...
— Legends of the Saxon Saints • Aubrey de Vere
... close-set clump of four or five scrub oaks at the highest point of a thinly wooded knoll that sloped down in all directions to the prairie. Their view was wide, but in places obstructed by ...
— Alice of Old Vincennes • Maurice Thompson
... tall boots, an' spurs With rowels to 'em big ez ches'nut-burrs, An' his gret sword behind him sloped away Long'z a man's speech thet dunno wut to say.— "Ef your name's Biglow, an' your given-name Hosee," sez he, "it's arter you I came; I'm your gret-gran they multiplied by three." "My wut?" sez I.—your gret-gret-gret," ...
— Selections From American Poetry • Various
... side, a dear little round table before the fire, and a large arm-chair. The room was a large attic which really stretched over the whole of the top of the house, but though it was so large, there was really not very much available space in it, for the sides sloped steeply. Miss Patch had curtained off the sides, and out of the long narrow strip down the middle had formed, in Jessie's opinion, one of the nicest rooms she ...
— The Story of Jessie • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... that is to say, where it enters into the lower part of the open canal of the Chimney, THERE the three walls which form the two covings and the back of the Fire-place all end abruptly.—It is of much importance that they should end in this manner; for were they to be sloped outward and raised in such a manner as to swell out the upper extremity of the throat of the Chimney in the form of a trumpet, and increase it by degrees to the size of the canal of the Chimney, this manner of uniting the lower extremity of the canal ...
— ESSAYS, Political, Economical and Philosophical. Volume 1. • Benjamin Rumford
... said a rough-haired, dark-faced man, who walked by the knight's other stirrup, with his head sloped to catch all that he was saying. "By your leave, I have no doubt that you are skilled in land fighting and the marshalling of lances, but, by my soul! you will find it another thing upon the sea. I am the master-shipman ...
— The White Company • Arthur Conan Doyle
... to the left, just over a rise, the hill was gashed by the grey steeps of the quarries. In front rose another curve covered with thick woods. To the right was the batch, down which a road—in winter a water-course—led into the valley. Behind the house God's Little Mountain sloped softly up and away apparently ...
— Gone to Earth • Mary Webb
... reddening and crackling into embers beneath its intangible intensity. It made a grateful contrast to the soft, cold bank of snow that lay, light and round, upon the outside sill and the slighter ridges that sloped and clung along the narrow foothold of the window-pane frames. Presently Cornelia got up from the low stool on which she had been sitting, and, having slipped on the waist of her new dress, invited Sophie's criticism with ...
— Bressant • Julian Hawthorne
... so as to throw the light upon that particular cage. The hospitable individual who had been extending all these hoarse invitations to partake of intoxicating beverages was an inhabitant of the cage. It was a large Mino-bird, who now stood perched on his cross-bar, with his yellowish orange bill sloped slightly over his shoulder, and his white eye cocked knowingly upon the Wondersmith. The respondent voice in the other corner came from another Mino-bird, who sat in the dusk in a similar cage, also attentively watching the Wondersmith. These Mino-birds, I may remark, in passing, have ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... a brief way in the western sky when the youthful warrior found himself steadily climbing an elevation of several hundred feet. He had been over the ground before, and he knew that, after passing the ridge, the surface sloped downward for many miles, shutting the Mississippi ...
— The Lost Trail - I • Edward S. Ellis
... more awful than an offence against "Taste," that far-off divinity of whom "Form" was the mere visible representative and vicegerent. Madame Olenska's pale and serious face appealed to his fancy as suited to the occasion and to her unhappy situation; but the way her dress (which had no tucker) sloped away from her thin shoulders shocked and troubled him. He hated to think of May Welland's being exposed to the influence of a young woman so careless of ...
— The Age of Innocence • Edith Wharton
... strongly tempted to go out and walk over the site of the village, but I did not. For one thing I was afraid I might disturb the people of the house, and besides there was a mist coming up over the meadows which sloped away outside the garden. So ...
— The Five Jars • Montague Rhodes James
... three sides to the air, the roof being supported by slender columns. We were now on the opposite side of the house and looked upon the river, which was not more than a couple of hundred yards from the terrace or platform on which it stood. The ground here sloped rapidly to the banks, and, like that in the front, was a wilderness with rock and patches of tall fern and thickets of thorn and bramble, with a few trees of great size. Nor was wild life wanting in this natural park; some deer were feeding near the bank, while on the water numbers of wild ...
— A Crystal Age • W. H. Hudson
... It was scarcely possible to discern surrounding objects, they seemed to be covered with a veil, that imagination might be permitted to take a loftier flight. The gardens, terraced on the side of a mountain, sloped down, platform after platform, to the banks of the Seine, and the eye took in the many windings of the stream covered with islets green and picturesque. These variations in the landscape made up a thousand pictures which gave to the spot, naturally charming, a thousand ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part III. • Honore de Balzac
... the prophet that he wrote in his book: "I said: 'Who art thou that bemoans beside the river?' And he answered: 'I am the fool.' I said: 'Upon thy brow are the marks of wisdom such as is stored in books.' He said: 'I am Zodrak. Thousands of years ago I tended sheep upon a hill that sloped towards the sea. The gods have many moods. Thousands of years ago They were in a mirthful mood. They said: 'Let Us call up a man before Us that We ...
— The Gods of Pegana • Lord Dunsany [Edward J. M. D. Plunkett]
... taste the strawberries At Strawberry Hill. I went. How long I stayed, Urged by dear friends and the restoring breeze, Let me not say; long enough to complete My rhythmic structure; day by day it grew, And all sweet influences helped its growth. The lawn sloped green and ample till the trees Met on its margin; and the Hudson's tide Rolled beautiful beyond, where purple gleams Fell on the Palisades or touched the hills Of the opposing shore; for all without Was but an emblem of the symmetry I found within, where love held perfect ...
— The Woman Who Dared • Epes Sargent
... That lane sloped, much as the bottles do, From a house you could descry O'er the garden wall: is the curtain blue, Or green ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... wood, well seasoned, and hewn out in the arrow shape, indicated in our illustration. It should first be cut three-cornered, the inside face being about eight inches, and the other two ten inches. Its length should be about eleven inches, and its under side should be sloped off on a line with the under curve of the bows. At about five inches from the inner face, and on each side, a piece should be sawn out, one inch in thickness, thus leaving on each side a notch which will exactly receive the side-boards of the boat, ...
— Camp Life in the Woods and the Tricks of Trapping and Trap Making • William Hamilton Gibson
... Descending the hill beyond, on the road to Rodez, I passed a very strange-looking spot where huge flat blocks of bare gneiss, laid together as though giants of the Titanic age had here been trying to pave the world, sloped with extraordinary regularity towards the highway. And these prodigious slabs of gneiss now lay amidst schistous marl ...
— Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine • Edward Harrison Barker
... where the hill sloped steeply, an area had been cleared by digging away the bank, so that the wall of the house, for nearly half its circumference, was the side of the hill, faced with stone.... The hypogeum or subterranean gallery is on a level with the floor, pierced towards the hill, and is entered by a ...
— Fians, Fairies and Picts • David MacRitchie
... round-faced youth who made his deprecating bow to us in the drawing-room. His shoulders sloped, his gray-blue kimono lay in narrow folds across his chest like what the old-fashioned people at home used to call a sontag. American boots were visible under the skirt of the garment, and an American stiff felt ...
— Humour of the North • Lawrence J. Burpee
... sluggish engines I panted down and came to rest in the dull yellow glow of the field lights. A new world here. The field was flat, caked ooze, cracked and hardened. It sloped upward from the shore toward where, a quarter of a mile away, I could see the dull lights of the settlement, blurred by ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science September 1930 • Various
... behind, and the men who were not driving went afoot. Over each shoulder sloped a gun. It was the oddest little expedition for an English country road, more like a Yankee party, trekking west in the good old ...
— The Food of the Gods and How It Came to Earth • H.G. Wells
... pass over her face as she said this, vanishing, however, immediately into the melancholy of her usual expression. She went along Septimius's path, while he stood gazing at her till she reached the brow where it sloped towards Robert Hagburn's house; then she turned, and seemed to wave a slight farewell towards the young man, and began to descend. When her figure had entirely sunk behind the brow of the hill, Septimius slowly followed along the ridge, meaning to watch from that elevated station ...
— Septimius Felton - or, The Elixir of Life • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... opened by an old-fashioned half-window, half-door—which proved a constant source of grief to me, for whenever I had on a new frock I always tore it on the bolt as I flew through—into a large garden which sloped down one side of the hill, and was filled with the most delightful old trees, fir and laurel, may, mulberry, hazel, apple, pear, and damson, not to mention currant and gooseberry bushes innumerable, and large strawberry beds spreading down the sunny slopes. There was not a tree ...
— Annie Besant - An Autobiography • Annie Besant
... were standing by the river. "Look there," he went on, pointing to a spot where the hurricane of the previous night had torn up one of the magnolia trees by the roots, which had grown on the extreme edge of the bank just where it sloped down to the water, and lifted a large cake of earth with them. "Is not that stonework? If not, ...
— She • H. Rider Haggard
... through the casement and the joyous barking of hounds in the castle court. From the window-seat he looked out on a scene extraordinarily novel to his lowland eyes. The chamber commanded the wooded steep below the castle, with a stream looping its base; beyond, the pastures sloped pleasantly under walnut trees, with here and there a clearing ploughed for the spring crops and a sunny ledge or two planted with vines. Above this pastoral landscape, bare crags upheld a snowpeak; and, as if to lend a human interest to the scene, the old Marquess, his flintlock ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton
... like an oath, the major turned away and, hurrying along the street, descended that which sloped down the bluff to the river. Here stood an officer, while in the water lay a flatboat which already held, besides two rowers, a horse and a pair of fat saddle-bags. Without a word Phil jumped in and the rowers struck their oars ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford
... a clear space ahead of him, and in a little, sinking on his knees on a bank, was peering downhill to an old-fashioned, Jacobean manor-house, from whose chimney smoke was lazily wreathing upward. Between him and the house a meadow sloped for a hundred yards, and the back of the house was bounded by an ...
— The Grell Mystery • Frank Froest
... barn high, with walls smooth as your hand. Under the cart-shed were two large carts and four ploughs, with their whips, shafts and harnesses complete, whose fleeces of blue wool were getting soiled by the fine dust that fell from the granaries. The courtyard sloped upwards, planted with trees set out symmetrically, and the chattering noise of a flock of geese was heard ...
— Madame Bovary • Gustave Flaubert
... he reached the point of woods and then looked for a good place to land, finally finding one where there was a narrow white beach and a bank which sloped gradually up to a distance of twenty feet to a ledge whence there was another rise of about twenty feet to another ...
— The Hilltop Boys on Lost Island • Cyril Burleigh
... board, seated on the thwarts with their oars shipped, for Peter had insisted on a certain approximation to man-of-war manners and discipline for the evening, or at least until they got to the fishing-ground. The shore itself formed one side of the harbor, and sloped down into it, and on the sand stood Malcolm with a young woman, whom Clementina recognized at once as the girl she had seen ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 20, August 1877 • Various
... and simplicity—light, air, water, earth. On very early spring days a mantle was suddenly lifted; the Alps were an apex of natural glory, towards which, in broadening spaces of light, the whole of Europe sloped upwards. Through them, on the right hand, as he journeyed on, were the doorways to Italy, to Como or Venice, from yonder peak Italy's self was visible!—as, on the left hand, in the South-german towns, in a high-toned, artistic fineness, in the dainty, flowered ...
— Imaginary Portraits • Walter Horatio Pater
... wound its way from one side of the broad sandy bed to the other; and those parts where it flowed, were generally very steep, and covered with a dense vegetation, whilst, on the opposite side, the banks sloped gently into the broad sands. Among the shrubs and grasses, a downy Abutelon was easily distinguished by its large bright ...
— Journal of an Overland Expedition in Australia • Ludwig Leichhardt
... out to the porch. Here, beyond the roses and honeysuckles, the eye found first the wild garden or pleasure ground. There was not much of it, and it was a mere tangle of what had once been pretty and sweet. It sloped, however, down to a little stream which formed the border of the property; and on the other side of this stream the ground rose in a grassy bank, set with most magnificent oaks and beeches. A little foot-bridge spanned the stream and made a picturesque point ...
— The End of a Coil • Susan Warner
... pines stretched upwards from it to the scarped rocks which held up the snow-fields on the shoulders of the mighty peaks above. Thin white mist and the roar of water rose up from the shadowy gorge below, but in one place, where the rock walls which hemmed it in sloped down, a gossamer-like structure spanned the chasm. This was a wagon-road bridge Julius Savine, the contractor of large interests and well-known name, was building for the Provincial authorities, and on their surveyor's recommendation he had sub-let ...
— Thurston of Orchard Valley • Harold Bindloss
... River, Captain Grey fell in with a charming scene, which he thus describes: "Our" station, "this night, had a beauty about it, which would have made any one, possessed with the least enthusiasm, fall in love with a bush life. We were sitting on a gently-rising ground, which sloped away gradually to a picturesque lake, surrounded by wooded hills,—while the moon shone so brightly on the lake, that the distance was perfectly clear, and we could distinctly see the large flocks of wild fowl, as they passed over our heads, and then splashed into the water, ...
— Australia, its history and present condition • William Pridden
... the fjord branched, one arm running on toward the east, and the other, which was our course, northward. Here, at the meeting of these branches, there was a wider stretch of water, ringed around with mountains which sloped, forest clad, to the shores, and dotted with rocky islets round which the tide swirled and eddied in the meeting of the two currents, for it ...
— A Sea Queen's Sailing • Charles Whistler
... hair was arranged in a great heap which sloped backward from her head. Her face was chalk white, from a bath in rice powder; her fine lips were curled in the most sinister of smiles; and her eyes glowed with a splendid abandon. She ...
— Peter the Brazen - A Mystery Story of Modern China • George F. Worts |
