"Smooth" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... but not on our boat, leaning over the taffrail,—if that is the name of the fence around the cabin-deck, looking at the moon in the western sky and the long track of light in the steamer's wake with unutterable tenderness. For the sea was perfectly smooth, so smooth as not to interfere with the most perfect tenderness of feeling; and the vessel forged ahead under the stars of the soft night with an adventurous freedom that almost concealed the commercial nature of her mission. It seemed —this voyaging through the sparkling water, under ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... on gray paper, there gaped a deep hole which might have measured six feet in diameter. Around this hole, eight poles as tall and stout as telephone poles stood up in bristling array. The moonlight showed that the whitish earth of the clearing was tamped smooth as though thousands of creatures had danced or walked about there for centuries. But not a ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, December 1930 • Various
... not unapt to be very good acting of high comedy, while tragedy, which underlies all life, if by chance it rises to the smooth surface of polite, social intercourse, agitates and disturbs it and produces even in that uncongenial sphere the rarely heard discord of a natural condition and natural ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... transporting all the lightning they could possibly accommodate. Well, nothing was ever seen like it since the world began. For one whole day and night not a member of my family stuck his head out of the window but he got the hair snatched off it as smooth as a billiard-ball; and; if the reader will believe me, not one of us ever dreamt of stirring abroad. But at last the awful siege came to an end-because there was absolutely no more electricity left in the clouds above us within grappling distance of my insatiable rods. Then I sallied ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... Mrs. Rastall-Retford Eve had been governess to Hildebrand, aged six, the son of a Mrs. Elphinstone. It had been, on the whole, a comfortable situation. She had not liked Mrs. Elphinstone, but Hildebrand had been docile, and altogether life was quite smooth and pleasant until Mrs. Elphinstone's brother came for a visit. Peter ...
— Death At The Excelsior • P. G. Wodehouse
... resides in everything supremely old; it has arrived at the age at which such things cease to feel the years; the waves of time have worn its edges to a kind of patient dulness; there is something mild and smooth, like the stillness, the deafness, of an octogenarian, even in its rudeness of ornament, and it has become insensible to differences of a century or two. The cathedral interested me much less than Our Lady the Great, and I have not the spirit to go into statistics about it. ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James
... 4th January we sighted Cyprus at about fifty miles distance, after a smooth voyage of twenty-six hours from Alexandria. The day was favourable for an arrival, as the atmospherical condition afforded both intense lights and shadows. The sky was a cobalt blue, but upon all points of the compass local rain-clouds hovered ...
— Cyprus, as I Saw it in 1879 • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... partially destroyed. "On the outer sides, they are almost intact, but the tombs have been driven bodily down into the ground, and on either side to east and west, there is a depression with a vertical side parallel to the outer surface of the tomb and a smooth flat bottom over which the base of the tomb has slid.... The edge of the western depression has the grass growing undisturbed up to the edge of it, and along the edge small fragments of lime and plaster show ...
— A Study of Recent Earthquakes • Charles Davison
... mosquitoes everywhere, and the report that people have been driven away by them is manifestly untrue, for whoever comes to Jocelyn's remains. The beach at the foot of the bluff is almost a mile at its curve, and it is so smooth and hard that it glistens like polished marble when newly washed by the tide. It is true that you reach it from the top by a flight of eighty steps, but it was intended to have an elevator, like those near the Whirlpool at Niagara. In ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... thing happened, he set me to oiling up the torpedoes. Gee, it made me so mad to see those great smooth things lying there on their shelves ready to roll into the tubes and be shot at some good American ship! All at once it came to me what to do if I could work it. So I took that knife Mr. Leffingwell gave me, the one with a whole tool-chest in it, and I opened it behind my hand, and ...
— The Boy Scouts on a Submarine • Captain John Blaine
... know something about women!" With one of her sudden smooth movements she again raised herself on her elbow. "How much?" ...
— The Leopard Woman • Stewart Edward White et al
... with the light, firm step of a good walker out on to the highway. To walk upon the fine, smooth old Roman road was a pleasure in itself, but she soon struck away from it and went through lanes and by-ways, following sign-posts because she knew where she was going. Her walk was to take her to Mount Dunstan and home again by another road. ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... and the earth freshly green. The sunrises had the pomp of Persian mornings, the nights the soft bright glory of the Texan moon. They rode for days over a prairie studded with islands of fine trees, the grass smooth as a park, and beautiful with blue salvias and columbines, with yellow coronella and small starry pinks, and near the numerous creeks the white feathery tufts of the fragrant meadow-sweet. It looked like miles and miles of green rumpled velvet, full of dainty crinklings, ...
— The Hallam Succession • Amelia Edith Barr
... canoe will probably be broken to pieces on the rocks. At times some of the crew jump out and clinging with their feet to the rocks, while up to their middle in the torrent, push the boat up with all their strength. At length smooth water is reached and on we go quietly for an hour or two, when another rapid is reached and the struggle commences again. The work is intensely hard and dangerous, but the Sangos are expert boatmen and seem anxious to finish their task as soon ...
— A Journal of a Tour in the Congo Free State • Marcus Dorman
... reigns throughout the country, and that there is no disturbance threatening its peace, endangering its safety, but that which was produced by busy, restless politicians. It has been maintained that the surface of the public mind is perfectly smooth and undisturbed by a single billow. I most heartily wish I could concur in this picture of general tranquillity that has been drawn upon both sides of the Senate. I am no alarmist; nor, I thank God, at the advanced age at which His providence has been pleased to allow ...
— American Eloquence, Volume II. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1896) • Various
... a few words to a clerk, who hurried from the room. Then he motioned to two smooth-faced, well-built men who sat near by, spoke a word to the coroner, and retired with them into the latter's private office. The reporters crowded about us with congratulations and questions. They scented a mystery. ...
— The Holladay Case - A Tale • Burton E. Stevenson
... the tranquil river, past the little town of Troy. Loafers hailed them from the bank, but Bill turned a deaf ear to all temptation; and they pushed on happy in the thought that now their troubles were over; the last rapid was past; the broad, smooth waters extended to ...
— Rolf In The Woods • Ernest Thompson Seton
... with emphatic earnestness— "An' God bless ye an' make all the rough places smooth for ye! You'll find us all 'ere, lovin' an' true, whenever ye comes, mornin', noon or night—the village ain't the world, but you've got round it, my dearie—you've ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli
... genuine picture of Japanese kodoma. They are in every-day dress, with hair and shoes just as one sees them in their own village. There is the baby carried pickapack, and laid on the back of its sister like a slice of meat on a sandwich. Baby's head is shaved as smooth as one's palm, and kept so until it is two years old. Then the next style—a little fringe of hair above the ears and one near the neck—will be proper. The next step will be a tiny top-knot and a circle, in addition ...
— Harper's Young People, July 13, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... drive or walk inland over smooth roads, formed of smooth, levelled coral rocks, brings us to the extensive pineapple fields, where this handsome fruit may be seen in the several stages of growth, varying according to the season of the year and the purposes ...
— Foot-prints of Travel - or, Journeyings in Many Lands • Maturin M. Ballou
... who was a blue-eyed young man of medium size and medium appearance every way, with a smooth shaven, clear-skinned face whereon sat good nature overlaid with self-esteem, spread himself in his chair, and made ready for content. Just then there was a knock at his door, and a negro boy servant shambled in with ...
— The Mystery of Murray Davenport - A Story of New York at the Present Day • Robert Neilson Stephens
... scattered and rearranged itself. In Nicky's perfect garden, a garden of smooth grass plots and clipped yew-trees, of lupins and larkspurs, of roses that would have been riotous but for the restraining spirit of the place; in a green alley between lawn and orchard, Mr. Hugh ...
— The Creators - A Comedy • May Sinclair
... comin' from the village, a crumb or two of news of the big world so far away; an' often he left a newspaper, that I might read myself what was a-goin' on. This man did everything, in his grave, soothin' way, to smooth down my sorrow—not to lead me to forget, for that was impossible—an' make the roadway of my life as pleasant as a country lane hedged in with sweet-smellin' flowers an' alive with birds nestlin' and twitterin' among ...
— McClure's Magazine December, 1895 • Edited by Ida M. Tarbell
... In this cloister play was mingled with heaven. Nothing is so delightful and so august as all these fresh, expanding young souls. Homer would have come thither to laugh with Perrault; and there was in that black garden, youth, health, noise, cries, giddiness, pleasure, happiness enough to smooth out the wrinkles of all their ancestresses, those of the epic as well as those of the fairy-tale, those of the throne as well as those of the thatched cottage from Hecuba ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... wanted, the young mistress of the house had imperatively commanded the presence in the living-room of the middle-aged housekeeper until such time as Max and the boys should arrive. Joanna, with her neat black dress and smooth hair, was certainly fitted in appearance for the duties of duenna, and Sally had felt no hesitation whatever in requiring her to ...
— Strawberry Acres • Grace S. Richmond
... at maturity filled with numerous unicellular spores. These are usually spherical, sometimes flattened at various points by mutual contact; they are of various colors, more commonly yellow or violet brown, are sometimes smooth (?), but generally roughened either by the presence of minute warts, or spines, or by the occurence of more or less strongly elevated bands dividing reticulately the entire surface. The spores are in all cases small 3-20 ...
— The North American Slime-Moulds • Thomas H. (Thomas Huston) MacBride
... We traveled perhaps an hour more. There were many instances of Glora's skill. We squeezed into a gully and waited until it widened; we leaped little expanding caverns; we slid down a smooth yellowish slide of rock like a child's toboggan, and saw it behind and over us, rising to become a great spreading ramp extending upward into the blue of the sky. Now, up there, little sailing white clouds were visible. And down where we stood it was deep ...
— Astounding Stories, March, 1931 • Various
... the duty of the threshers who are in charge. [9] It is theirs to turn the sheaves, and ever and again to push the untrodden corn under the creatures' feet; and thus, of course, to keep the threshing-floor as smooth, and finish off the ...
— The Economist • Xenophon
... few uneasy moments, the door of the office was opened and Herr Diener appeared. He had a large red face, marked with a purple scar down his cheek and chin, a fair mustache, smooth hair, parted on one side, a gold-rimmed eyeglass, gold studs in his shirt-front, and rings on his fat fingers. He had his hat and an umbrella in his hands. He came up to Christophe in a nonchalant manner. Christophe, who was dreaming ...
— Jean Christophe: In Paris - The Market-Place, Antoinette, The House • Romain Rolland
... February, 1919, was about as perilous to some of them as the war had been. It was a period of unusually rough weather. The north Atlantic, never very smooth during the winter months, put on some extra touches for the returning Negro soldiers. An experience common to many on several different transports has been described by Mechanic Charles E. Bryan of ...
— History of the American Negro in the Great World War • W. Allison Sweeney
... vein had drawn the notice, although accompanied with the gentle censure, of Charles I., when, in 1647, he obtained access to his person by the intercession of Hugh Peters. Suckling, whom Dryden has termed "a sprightly wit, and a courtly writer," may be added to the list of smooth and easy poets of the period, and had the same motives as Denham and Waller for attaching himself to that style of composition. He was allowed to have the peculiar art of making whatever he did become him; and it cannot be doubted, that his light and airy style of ballads and ...
— The Dramatic Works of John Dryden Vol. I. - With a Life of the Author • Sir Walter Scott
... within his reach. Another huge lurch now brought the starboard side of the vessel out of water nearly as far as her keel, when the cause of his anxiety was rendered obvious enough. The body of a man was seen to be affixed in the most singular manner to the smooth and shining bottom (the Penguin was coppered and copper-fastened), and beating violently against it with every movement of the hull. After several ineffectual efforts, made during the lurches of the ship, and at the imminent risk of swamping the boat I was finally disengaged ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 3 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... so perfect intelligence as they that came after him, doeth not fullie satisfie your expectation in describing the foresayd countrey and people; I then referre you to Clement Adams his relation next following, to M. Ienkinsons discourse as touching that argument to the smooth verses of M. George Turberuile, and to a learned and excellent discourse set downe pag. 536. of this volume, [Footnote: Refers to original edition.] and the pages following. Vnto all which (if you please) you may adde Richard Iohnsons strange report of the Samoeds pag. 316. ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries - of the English Nation, v. 1, Northern Europe • Richard Hakluyt
... their dreams fulfilled in you. You neglected! you unloved! I do not believe a word of all that you have written me about your lonely and obscure life, your hunger for an idol,—sought in vain until now. You have been too well loved, monsieur; your brow, white and smooth as a magnolia leaf, reveals it; and it is I who must be neglected,—for who am I? Ah! why have you called me to life? I felt for a moment as though the heavy burden of the flesh was leaving me; my ...
— Modeste Mignon • Honore de Balzac
... however, of this day—to anticipate a little—my specimen was obtained. While the boat waited at the shore of a low island, the Judge and I sauntered up the smooth, bare granite slope to the ridge, and, looking over a breast-high wall of solid rock, saw a flock of these birds in a cove on ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 88, February, 1865 • Various
... sea separated into two distinct waves, which came with a sweep round the western side, where they met, and rose in a burst of spray to a considerable height. Watching, however, for what the sailors termed a smooth, and catching a favourable opportunity, they rowed between the two seas dexterously, and made a successful landing ...
— The Lighthouse • Robert Ballantyne
... lovely to-day; the sunlight adding its brightening touch to all that moss and ivy and lichen and fern had done. They sauntered up what had been an aisle of the church; carpeted now with soft shaven turf, close and smooth. ...
— The Old Helmet, Volume I • Susan Warner
... energies, walked straight up to the crucible, drew it out of the furnace, and looked in. The gold was all melted, and its surface as smooth and polished as a river; but instead of reflecting little Gluck's head, as he looked in, he saw, meeting his glance from beneath the gold, the red nose and sharp eyes of his old friend of the mug, a thousand times redder and ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... summer evening, luminous even before the moon- rising. The last drift of smoke was gone, and the garden drenched with scent. Under the first stars the shrubs and trees stood in panoramic perspective; the lawns looked wide and smooth. Down the street, under a dark arch of elms, the lights of other houses showed yellow and warm; now and then a motor-car swept by, sending a circle of white light for a few moments ...
— Undertow • Kathleen Norris
... next landing, the smooth and beaming churchman was left by his friends; and he soon retired to the cabin, where I saw him self-sacrificingly denying himself the views on deck, and consoling himself with a substantial lunch and a bottle ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... land on the coast of Holland, forming a ridge from one to three miles wide along the northern coast. Screvinning is principally inhabited by fishermen. The road to the Hague is perfectly straight, level, and smooth, lying between two rows of oak trees, one row of which divides between it and a collateral canal—the accompaniment of every road throughout Holland. At 5 p.m. we went to the French Protestant Church, the place in which ...
— The Story of My Life - Being Reminiscences of Sixty Years' Public Service in Canada • Egerton Ryerson
... knew whether it was a dream or no; but she could not help fancying that she saw the delicate print of Violet's fingers on the child's neck. It looked just as if, while Violet was shaping out the image, she had given it a gentle pat with her hand, and had neglected to smooth the ...
— The Snow-Image - A Childish Miracle • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... had black hair, straight in some cases, wavy in others. Most of them had a semblance of mustache and some hair on the chin. Their bodies looked perfectly smooth, as they remove what little hair there may be. Some of them had high-arched noses. The thigh was large, but the calf of the leg usually was not well-developed, though a few had very fine ones; and they walked with feet turned outward, as all the ...
— Through Central Borneo: - An Account of Two Years' Travel in the Land of Head-Hunters - Between the Years 1913 and 1917 • Carl Lumholtz
... of true God never did run smooth. God to be of any use must be made manifest, and he can only be made manifest in and through flesh. And flesh to be of any use (except for eating) must be alive, and it can only be alive by being inspired of God. The trouble lies in the getting the flesh and the God together in the right ...
— The Note-Books of Samuel Butler • Samuel Butler
... cast—moreover, it was momentary. It was precisely the look of a hawk when its hood is suddenly removed in full daylight. This resemblance was furthered by the fact that the man's profile was birdlike. He was clean-shaven, and there was in his sleek head and determined little face that smooth, compact self-complacency which is to be noted in the head ...
— The Slave Of The Lamp • Henry Seton Merriman
... the animals for their kindness and, going close to them, she stroked the smooth feathers of the cock and the hen and patted the brindled cow on the white star in her forehead. She made ready the supper and set it before the old man; but, before satisfying her own hunger, she said, "The good animals are hungry too. I must ...
— A Kindergarten Story Book • Jane L. Hoxie
... away, and the Baronet was left alone kneeling beside the body. The young and supple limbs, the rounded cheeks, the delicate ripe lips, the smooth white hands, were lying cold and rigid; and the aged face was bending over them in silent anguish; the aged deep-veined hands were seeking with tremulous inquiring touches for some symptom that ...
— Scenes of Clerical Life • George Eliot
... the truth, our hero, and now malefactor, (the combination is of high antiquity,) enjoyed, for several months, the peace of mind that belongs of right to innocence; and his days passed in a state of smooth complacency. Mercy was a good, wise, and tender wife; she naturally looked up to him after marriage more than she did before; she studied his happiness, as she had never studied her own; she mastered his character, admired ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 105, July 1866 • Various
... of the structure, and jealously guard its sacred precincts. Immediately beneath the nave of the cathedral is a commodious marble chamber, constructed over the spot where the far-famed stable was said to have stood and reached by a flight of stone steps, worn smooth by the tread and kisses of multitudes of worshippers. The manger is represented by a marble slab a couple of feet in height, decorated with tinsel and blue satin and marked at the head with a chiseled star, bearing above it the inscription in Latin, "Here was Jesus ...
— Myths and Legends of Christmastide • Bertha F. Herrick
... cattle rub their backs against a rail (you remember Sydney Smith's contrivance in his pasture) or their sides against an apple-tree (I don't know why they take to these so particularly, but you will often find the trunk of an apple-tree as brown and smooth as an old saddle at the height of a cow's ribs). I think they begin rubbing in cold blood, and then, you know, l'appetit vient en mangeant, the more they rub the more they want to. That is the way to use your friend's prejudices. This ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... of the house was opened, and a shrewish voice cried, "Mr. Birkenholt—here, husband! You are wanted. Here's little Kate crying to have yonder smooth pouch to stroke, and I cannot reach ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... side, by an iron fence with spaces sufficiently wide to allow moderately stout dogs to enter in easily. So one fine morning some fifteen or twenty dog friends of his, connoisseurs no doubt, to whom Zamore had sent letters of invitation to his debut in the choregraphic art, met around a square of smooth ground nicely levelled off, which the artist had previously swept with his tail, and the performance began. The dogs appeared to be delighted and manifested their enthusiasm by ouahs! ouahs! closely resembling the bravi of dilettanti at the ...
— My Private Menagerie - from The Works of Theophile Gautier Volume 19 • Theophile Gautier
... to the other, it was measured with small line and every five fathoms of it was a chip of light wood in length 120 fathoms. We had the boats employed in this business; alternately anchored them till we got across to the southern end of the point of the cove; and as the water was smooth I fancy the length of base line to be correct. I then surveyed the eastern side of the Sound and Cove. Sent the first mate and some hands to the north-east cove to cut some of ye wood growing there...I sent the carpenter with him—overhauled our bread and ...
— The Logbooks of the Lady Nelson - With The Journal Of Her First Commander Lieutenant James Grant, R.N • Ida Lee
... made of three pieces of wood, glued together with the grain running in opposite directions. They are round, six inches in diameter with body one inch thick, and finished with a hard, smooth polish. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... given way to a perfectly calm afternoon, and after they had enjoyed their Christmas dinners, Mrs. McDonald had watched Helen toddle behind her brothers to where the passing siding turned away from the main line, permitting a small pond to form, which, being smooth as glass and swept clear of snow by the storm, offered a splendid opportunity to try out their new skates, which they had received amongst ...
— The Trail of the Tramp • A-No. 1 (AKA Leon Ray Livingston)
... galvanized wire, so that it is quite smooth, and there are none of the rough pieces and splinters which we sometimes find on clothes-pins. As the pin is of galvanized wire, it ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 59, December 23, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... gathering was primitive and peculiar, like the gathering at a Western camp-meeting—footmen, and men and women on horseback, and whole families in two-horse lumber wagons. Some were dressed in Kentucky-jeans, and some in broadcloth; there were smooth-shaven men and bearded men; there were hats and bonnets of every form and fashion; all were dressed in such ways as best suited their convenience or necessities. In this crowd were those that, as ...
— Personal Recollections of Pardee Butler • Pardee Butler
... ignorance. Good by, my dear, believe that I regret that I cannot have you come. Say to yourself, 'It is a proof how dear I am to him.'" All these fine words could not console Josephine, who knew from experience that Napoleon, like many unfaithful husbands, had a smooth, tongue when he needed forgiveness. In vain she had waited four months at Mayence for permission to rejoin her husband. She at last, found herself obliged to leave this town where she had no other pleasure than the sight of her ...
— The Court of the Empress Josephine • Imbert de Saint-Amand
... dear little cabin That stood by the weather-brown mill, And the beautiful wavelets of sunshine That flowed down the slope of the hill, And way down the winding green valley, And over the meadow—smooth shorn,— How the dew-drops lay flashing and gleaming On the pale ...
— The Poets and Poetry of Cecil County, Maryland • Various
... was dressed in black. She sat down in her place, and did not stir. There was nothing in the woman to remind Christophe of the woman he was expecting. Only once or twice she made a certain queer little gesture as though to smooth out the folds of her skirt about her knees. In old days, she had made such a gesture,... As she went out she passed slowly by him, with her head erect and her hands holding her prayer-book, folded in front of her. For a moment her somber, ...
— Jean-Christophe Journey's End • Romain Rolland
... and rigging, lashing casks, stowing lines and fenders, and securing chafing gear aloft. The big man that had spoken to him was undoubtedly the first mate, as was evidenced by his louder voice. The second mate, a short, broad, square-jawed man with a smooth face, spoke little to the men, but struck them often. Rogers saw three floored before six bells. As for the crew, they were of all nations and types, and by these signs he knew that she was an American ship; but nothing yet of her name or destination. Astern was a blue spot on the horizon which ...
— The Grain Ship • Morgan Robertson
... which there is but a single Species, Fagus ferruginca, the American beech, a handsome tree, of symmetrical growth, and clean, smooth, ash-gray bark: the nut, of triangular shape, is sweet and palatable. The wood is brittle, and used only for a ...
— Voyages of Samuel de Champlain, Vol. 2 • Samuel de Champlain
... eyes. It was the sight of the old man's feeble state of mind and body, and the fear that some night he should fail to come home, having been overtaken by illness or sudden death. Such fears as these drove the roses from her smooth young cheeks, and stilled the songs which before had rung through the dim old shop, while the gay, lightsome step passed among the dusty treasures. Now she seldom smiled or sang, and among the few bits of comedy in her sad days, were the visits of Kit Nubbles, her grandfather's ...
— Ten Girls from Dickens • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... more the buckboard hummed along the trail smooth and winding, the bronchos pulling hard on the lines without a sign of weariness, till the bluffs began to grow thicker and gradually to close into a solid belt of timber. Beyond this belt of timber lay the Ruthenian Colony but newly placed. ...
— The Foreigner • Ralph Connor
... that guaranteed the brummagem umbrageousness of Riverside Drive. Across the water were the Palisades, crowned by the ugly framework of the amusement park—yet soon it would be dusk and those same iron cobwebs would be a glory against the heavens, an enchanted palace set over the smooth radiance of a ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... charms which they wear about their persons, but there is one custom of theirs which is very singular. They polish rubies; that is, without cutting them in facettes, but merely the stone, whatever its primitive shape, is rubbed down on every side until it is perfectly smooth. They then make an incision in the flesh, generally the arm or leg, put in the ruby and allow the skin to heal over it, so that the stone remains there. Soldiers and sailors in search of plunder ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... battery. On November 30, the Turks were surprised by a Russian fleet commanded by Admiral Nachimov, consisting of six ships of the line and three steamers—all vessels of large size, armed with the smooth-bore shell-gun. For the first time in naval history the disastrous effect of shell fire on wooden ships was demonstrated. Only one Turkish steamer escaped ...
— A History of the Nineteenth Century, Year by Year - Volume Two (of Three) • Edwin Emerson
... never allowed to flag. When he spoke of the difficulties in his way, she twitted him by being overcome by straws; and told him that no one was worth having who was afraid of every lion that he met in his path. When he spoke of money, she bade him earn it; and always ended by offering to smooth for him any real difficulty which want of means might put ...
— Doctor Thorne • Anthony Trollope
... and calm evening when the troops who were to form the assaulting column moved out on to the broad and smooth beach left by ...
— The Black Phalanx - African American soldiers in the War of Independence, the - War of 1812, and the Civil War • Joseph T. Wilson
... individual evidence was entirely accidental. They found under the safe a small nail file. On its smooth portion they found a clear thumb and forefinger print. They were rather mysterious about it, so evidently they think they can lay their hands on the man who left this print. Off hand, I should say that finding the man who did it and fixing ...
— Death Points a Finger • Will Levinrew
... also put many an English song to music, notably the deeply sincere "At Twilight," the strenuous lilt "In a Bower," Bourdillon's beautiful lyric, "Before the Daybreak," the smooth and unhackneyed treatment of the difficult stanza of "'Twas April," that popular song, "One Spring Morning," which has not yet had all the charm sung out of it, and two songs with obbligati for violin and 'cello, "Deep in the ...
— Contemporary American Composers • Rupert Hughes
... the inheritance of modifications acquired by the individual. Because English children may inherit blue eyes and flaxen hair from their Anglo-Saxon ancestors, it by no means follows that an Englishman must inherit his father's sunburnt complexion or smooth-shaven face. Of course atavism ultimately adopts many instances of revolt against its sway. But to assume that these changes of type follow the personal change rather than cause it, is to assume the whole ...
— Are the Effects of Use and Disuse Inherited? - An Examination of the View Held by Spencer and Darwin • William Platt Ball
... fashionable people. The ball-room was at the side of the house, and from it French windows opened on to a wide verandah, which was enclosed with drapery and hung with many-coloured Chinese lanterns. Beyond this the smooth green lawns stretched away to a thick fringe of trees, which grew beside the fence and screened the Meddlechip residence from the ...
— Madame Midas • Fergus Hume
... Gray-haired, rosy-cheeked, a face smooth as a boy's, twinkling eyes behind spectacles, he was one of the most astute, learned, and patient of the French secret police. And he did not care the flip of his strong brown fingers for the methods of Vidocq or Lecoq. His only disguise was that ...
— A Splendid Hazard • Harold MacGrath
... it happened to Lamoriciere who was seized by Blanchet, who threatened him with the gag; to Greppo, who was brutally treated and thrown down by Gronfier, assisted by six men carrying a dark lantern and a pole-axe; to Cavaignac, who was secured by Colin, a smooth-tongued villain, who affected to be shocked on hearing him curse and swear; to M. Thiers, who was arrested by Hubaut (the elder); who professed that he had seen him "tremble and weep," thus adding falsehood to crime; to Valentin, who was assailed in his bed ...
— The History of a Crime - The Testimony of an Eye-Witness • Victor Hugo
... Mare Tranquilitatis, with several others.[6] Mare Imbrium is of great depth, and from its floor rise several conical mountains with circular craters, the largest of which, Archimedes, is fifty miles in diameter; its vast smooth interior being divided into seven distinct zones running east and west. There is no central mountain or other obvious internal sign of former volcanic activity, but its irregular wall rises into abrupt towers, and is marked ...
— Volcanoes: Past and Present • Edward Hull
... himself all trouble and delay by knocking it senseless with a blow of his whip-handle, and without checking his horse. I have seen a lamb, about two days old, start up from sleep, and immediately start off in pursuit of a puff ball about as big as a man's head, carried past it over the smooth turf by the wind, and chase it for a distance of five hundred yards, until the dry ball was brought to a stop by a tuft of coarse grass. This blundering instiuct is quickly laid aside when the lamb has learned to distinguish its dam from other objects, and its dam's ...
— The Naturalist in La Plata • W. H. Hudson
... finishing which nature has given to the picture is of a different character. It is a true contrast to the foreground. It is as placid and delightful as that is wild and tremendous. For the mountain being cloven asunder, she presents to your eye, through the cleft, a small catch of smooth blue horizon at an infinite distance in the plain country, inviting you, as it were, from the riot and tumult roaring around, to pass through the breach, and partake of the calm below. Here the eye ultimately composes itself; and that way too the ...
— Theory of the Earth, Volume 2 (of 4) • James Hutton
... and floated at her cables buoyantly. She was a strange-looking craft. All that was to be seen of her above water was a low deck about a foot above the water, bearing in the centre a large round iron turret pierced with two great portholes. Besides the turret, the smooth surface of the deck was broken by two other elevations,—a small iron pilot-house forward, made of iron plates about ten inches thick, and with iron gratings in front; aft of the turret was a low smokestack. Beneath the water-line this vessel had some ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 2 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... before, relaxed his grasp upon my shoulder and looked at me with the same cynical regard that I had observed on first meeting him. The dead have not that look—it partly restored me, and turning my head backward, I saw the smooth white expanse of sidewalk, unbroken ...
— Can Such Things Be? • Ambrose Bierce
... thing dawned upon him. There was no fireplace in either room. Was the season summer, and were these merely summer apartments, or was the whole City uniformly heated or cooled? He became interested in these questions, began examining the smooth texture of the walls, the simply constructed bed, the ingenious arrangements by which the labour of bedroom service was practically abolished. And over everything was a curious absence of deliberate ornament, ...
— When the Sleeper Wakes • Herbert George Wells
... great battle of life. Unnumbered centuries of tribal and international war have developed to high perfection the wolfish and tigerish instincts of humanity. What is called peace is a state of financial war. Beneath the smooth skin of the civilized man, we find the wolf in undiminished vigor. The triumphant wolf rides in his chariot; the conquered wolf sleeps in the open air along the alleys, wharves, and streets; but what cares the wolf triumphant for that? for the 30,000 ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 19, June, 1891 • Various
... I know which begins its life in a dark, sunless canyon high up amid the thick forest-clad spurs of the range which traverses the island from east to west. Here, lying deep and silent, is a pool, almost encompassed by huge boulders of smooth, black rock, piled confusedly together, yet preserving a certain continuity of outline where their bases touch the water's edge. Standing far up on the mountainside you can, from one certain spot alone, discern ...
— "Martin Of Nitendi"; and The River Of Dreams - 1901 • Louis Becke
... busted his right arm, he went right on and learned to shoot with his left and started huntin' Jack again. Packed that lead with him till he died, and then they found Jack's bullet in his wrist, all worked smooth by the play of the bones. Afterwards it turned out that Plummer ran a whole gang; but before we learned that we'd been fools enough to make him sheriff. We got to Plummer right after he'd finished hangin' a man, and took him to ...
— The Seventh Man • Max Brand
... Altringham." He fumbled in his pocket and drew out a fountain pen, a handkerchief over which it had leaked, and a packet of dishevelled cigarettes. Lighting one, and restoring the other objects to his pocket, he continued calmly: "Tell me how did you manage to smooth things over with the Gillows? Ursula was running amuck when I was in Newport last Summer; it was just when people were beginning to say that you were going to marry Nick. I was afraid she'd put a spoke in your wheel; and I hear she put a big ...
— The Glimpses of the Moon • Edith Wharton
... mother wrung her hands, and in an instant the earth closed upon them both, and, after falling in the dark down a steep abyss, they found themselves, not at all the worse, standing in a dimly lighted cave with a large table in it piled with mouldy books. Behind the table was a smooth and perfectly round hole in the wall about the ...
— Wonder-Box Tales • Jean Ingelow
... observed. "They's boulders in there as big as a house where it looks all smooth on top. I know a place about a mile or so where I think ...
— The Dude Wrangler • Caroline Lockhart
... for thee, rascal! You would begin again to smooth me over with your coaxing ways, but I have penetrated your secret designs. You are not what you appear to be, and there is perhaps an affair of state at the bottom of all this," added the magistrate, in a very diplomatic tone. "All means are ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... dwell in company. Hazel, elder, few men could Name the kinds of underwood. Summer and winter haunt together, And golden light with misty weather. 'Tis summer where this beech is seen Defenceless in its virgin green; All its leaves are smooth and thin, And the sunlight passes in, Passes in and filters through To a green heaven below the blue. Low the branches fall and trace A circle round that mystic place, Guarded on its outward side By hyacinths in all their pride; And within dim moons appear, Wax and ...
— Georgian Poetry 1911-12 • Various
... brutish mind of the born and bred Parisian,—the goblin-creature with whom pure virtues, whether in man or woman, are no more sacred than nuts to a monkey. The suave charm of a polished civility sat on M le Due's smooth brow, and beamed in his urbane smile,—his manners were exquisite, his courtesy irreproachable, his whole demeanor that of a very precise and elegant master of deportment. Yet, notwithstanding his calm and perfectly self-possessed exterior, ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... to be any kind of sick; but my daughter and I are on the ocean for the first time. In fact, we are really seeing the ocean for the first time and do not know how we are to behave. So far we feel as well as possible, but I fancy such a smooth sea ...
— Molly Brown's Orchard Home • Nell Speed
... mirror to smooth out her eyebrows with the tips of her perfumed fingers. "Good gracious," she cried in horror as she caught sight of her reflection. "You're not going to put my ...
— Baby Mine • Margaret Mayo
... fence had been made removable, so as to give the Prescott aeroplanes a free run from their stable to the smooth slope of the meadows beyond. This was now removed, and Peggy, followed by the young officer, took her place in the chassis. Peggy made a pretty ...
— The Girl Aviators' Sky Cruise • Margaret Burnham
... the quarry-pit; so that, if I can put it plainly, the moon was across the river from me, and striking the turbulent water athwart, so that her face, or a glimmer thereof, must have been lying upon the river if any smooth place had been left for it. But of this there was no chance, because the whole of the river was in a rush, according to its habit, and covered with bubbles, and froth, and furrows, even where it did not splash, and spout, and leap, ...
— George Bowring - A Tale Of Cader Idris - From "Slain By The Doones" By R. D. Blackmore • R. D. Blackmore
... tiled and spint for her! Why, Molly dear, you are the image of me, barring the color of the hair, mine being a trifle foxy, while yourn is a darkish brown; and barring the lines of care and trouble on my brow,—the hard lines I 've had no child's hand to smooth away, the saints ...
— Stories of Many Lands • Grace Greenwood
... household naturally objects to seeing the boys and girls belonging to him making love under his nose without any reference to his opinion. 'Things were not made so easy for me,' he says to himself, and feels it to be a sort of duty to take care that the course of love shall not run altogether smooth. George, no doubt, was too abrupt with his father; or perhaps it might be the case that he was not sorry to take an opportunity of leaving for a while Granpere and Marie Bromar. It might be well to see the world; and though Marie Bromar ...
— The Golden Lion of Granpere • Anthony Trollope
... Anthony. She was about five feet six; she had a ton and a half of red-gold hair, grey eyes, and one of those determined chins. She was a hospital nurse. When Bobbie smashed himself up at polo, she was told off by the authorities to smooth his brow and rally round with cooling unguents and all that; and the old boy hadn't been up and about again for more than a week before they popped off to the registrar's and fixed it up. Quite ...
— My Man Jeeves • P. G. Wodehouse
... big clothes wringer, but the rolls, instead of being made of smooth rubber, are rough, and ...
— Bunny Brown and His Sister Sue in the Sunny South • Laura Lee Hope
... ancient Egypt is an instance of great unity in conception, and the suppression of variety to a point at which life scarcely exists. The lines of the Egyptian figures are simple and long, the surfaces smooth and unvaried, no action is allowed to give variety to the pose, the placing of one foot a little in front of the other being alone permitted in the standing figures; the arms, when not hanging straight down the sides, are flexed stiffly at the elbow at right angles; the heads ...
— The Practice and Science Of Drawing • Harold Speed
... mangrove-trees, with blue hills rising to a considerable height in the distance. The mangrove-trees marked the entrance of the river up which we were bound. We stood on until within about four miles of the shore, when it fell a dead calm. There the brig lay, rolling her sides in the smooth burnished water on which she floated. We could now perceive, projecting from among the mangrove bushes, a long spit of white sand, from which to the opposite shore ran a line of foam, marking the bar which we had to cross. The heat was intense, making the pitch bubble up between the seams ...
— The Two Supercargoes - Adventures in Savage Africa • W.H.G. Kingston
... back studded with opals, large in the centre of the body and small at head and tail. These were set round with tiny diamonds, and the head was of chased gold with a ruby tongue. Sylvia admired the workmanship and the jewels, and turned the brooch over. On the flat smooth gold underneath she found the initial "R" scratched with a pin. This she showed to Paul. "I expect your mother made this mark to identify the ...
— The Opal Serpent • Fergus Hume
... age (she is eleven) quite wonderfully well proportioned and extremely strong: of all the convent-full, she is the only one for whom I have never been called in. The features are very regular, the hair black, and despite all the good Sisters' efforts to keep it smooth like a Chinaman's, beautifully curly. I am glad she should be pretty, for she will more easily find a husband; and also because it seems fitting that your protegee should be beautiful. Unfortunately her character is not so satisfactory: she hates ...
— Hauntings • Vernon Lee |
