"Speck" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... spring-time when they could be wound up and rival their owners in animation; and the shining tiled roofs, mosaic courtyards, and polished house trimmings flashed up a silent homage to the sky, where never a speck of dust could dwell. ...
— Hans Brinker - or The Silver Skates • Mary Mapes Dodge
... "Whatever you say—you, behind those stars there, if you are a God. We Spurlocks take our medicine, standing. Pile it on! But if you can hear the voice of the mote, the speck, don't let her suffer for anything I've done. Be a sport, and pile ...
— The Ragged Edge • Harold MacGrath
... this speck of a room, and purified it. He had literally compelled Sam to help him. That compelling was almost a modern miracle, and wrought by radiant smiles, and a firm grip on Sam's shoulder when he told ...
— Lo, Michael! • Grace Livingston Hill
... was immensely proud of it. In Petrograd he was always very smartly dressed. He bought his clothes in London and his plump hands had a movement familiar to all his friends, a flicker of his hands to his coat, his waistcoat, his trousers, to brush off some imaginary speck of dust. It was obvious now that he had given very much thought to his uniform. It fitted him perfectly, his epaulettes glittered, his boots shone, his sword was magnificent, but he looked, in spite of all his efforts, exactly what he was, a rich successful merchant; never was there any ...
— The Dark Forest • Hugh Walpole
... a speck thou art in comparison with the Universe?—-That is, with respect to the body; since with respect to Reason, thou art not inferior to the Gods, nor less than they. For the greatness of Reason is not measured by length or height, but by the ...
— The Golden Sayings of Epictetus • Epictetus
... retardation in its velocity in December. Such a piece of news was scarcely calculated to interest a world the greater portion of whose inhabitants were unaware of the existence of the planet Neptune, nor outside the astronomical profession did the subsequent discovery of a faint remote speck of light in the region of the perturbed planet cause any very great excitement. Scientific people, however, found the intelligence remarkable enough, even before it became known that the new body was rapidly growing larger and brighter, that its motion was quite different ...
— The Door in the Wall And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... lest I were mistaken; but, straining my eyes, in the course of a few minutes I made out the speck to be beyond doubt the royals of a ...
— Humphrey Bold - A Story of the Times of Benbow • Herbert Strang
... having about one's own person a little of that misery, like the dust of labor? Is it possible to imagine a man near a brazier who is not warm? Can one imagine a workman who is working near a furnace, and who has neither a singed hair, nor blackened nails, nor a drop of sweat, nor a speck of ashes on his face? The first proof of charity in the priest, in the ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... is, therefore, to act upon things as they are and to make a reasonable provision for whatever they may be. Were armies to be raised whenever a speck of war is visible in our horizon, we never should have been without them. Our resources would have been exhausted on dangers which have never happened, instead of being reserved for what is really to take place. A steady, perhaps a quickened, pace in preparation for the defense ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... their Master transfigured, his raiment white and glistening, and his face like the light, so are there hours when our whole mortal life stands forth in a celestial radiance. From our daily lot falls off every weed of care,—from our heart-friends every speck and stain of earthly infirmity. Our horizon widens, and blue, and amethyst, and gold touch every object. Absent friends and friends gone on the last long journey stand once more together, bright with an immortal ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... when weary nature required rest, to be ready at a moment's call. His days and nights were full of toil, care, and watchfulness, and thus the time wore on. It was a lovely day; the sky was of the most intense blue, without a cloud or speck to dim its brilliancy; the sea calm as a mirror, and reflecting the hue of the bright canopy above, was of so crystal a clearness that the eye seemed capable of piercing to its very lowest depths; the sun shone ...
— The Pirate of the Mediterranean - A Tale of the Sea • W.H.G. Kingston
... in complete darkness and in silence, save the gurgling of another stream, hid from sight the shadowy semblance of houses and barns and sheds. Their disappearance slumped her spirits again, for without them she was no more than a solitary speck in the vast loneliness. Their actual nearness could not comfort her. She was seized with a reasonless, panicky fear that by the time she crossed the stream and climbed the hill beyond they would no longer ...
— Sawtooth Ranch • B. M. Bower
... anxiety to quit Bologne, it was evening before I was on board the packet; nor did I feel myself at ease, until the heights had dwindled to a speck, and the loud carols of the fishermen returning home from their day's sport, had sunk into a faint, undistinguished whisper. Our vessel's course for the first hour or so was delightful. Towards night, the weather, which had hitherto proved so serene, began to fluctuate; the wind shifted, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 323, July 19, 1828 • Various
... did most of the talking, Pen scarcely responding. Then he was off, steering in great circles toward town, Pen watching with the quickening of pulse and a renewal of the elation she had felt when taking the air. When he was but a mere speck in the sky, she went ...
— Penny of Top Hill Trail • Belle Kanaris Maniates
... had the wind free, the booms were run out, and all were aloft, active as cats, laying out on the yards and booms, reeving the studding-sail gear; and sail after sail the captain piled upon her, until she was covered with canvas, her sails looking like a great white cloud resting upon a black speck. Before we doubled the point, we were going at a dashing rate, and leaving the shipping far astern. We had a fine breeze to take us through the Canal, as they call this bay of forty miles long by ten wide. The breeze died away at night, and we were becalmed all day on Sunday, ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... Sila (I was in sight of the Black Mountain once more), and southwards by a long low promontory, its level slowly declining to the far-off point where it ends amid the waves. On this Cape I fixed my eyes, straining them until it seemed to me that I distinguished something, a jutting speck against the sky, at its farthest point. Then I used my field-glass, and at once the doubtful speck became a clearly visible projection, much like a lighthouse. It is a Doric column, some five-and-twenty feet high; the one pillar that remains of ...
— By the Ionian Sea - Notes of a Ramble in Southern Italy • George Gissing
... is his own. Keep your hands from picking and stealing is no ways referable to his acquists. I doubt whether bearing false witness against thy neighbor at all contemplated this possible scrub. Could Moses have seen the speck in vision? An ex post facto law alone could relieve him, and we are taught to expect no eleventh commandment. The out-law to the Mosaic dispensation!—unworthy to have seen Moses' behind—to lay his desecrating ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... traverse the remainder of the distance on foot. Apparently all the burghers had escaped across the plain, and their field-cornet was preparing to lead them to another position when a solitary horseman, a mere speck of black against a background of brown, lifeless grass, issued from a rocky ravine below the kopje occupied by the enemy, and plunged into the open space. Lee-Metfords cracked and cut open the ground around him, but the rider bent forward and seemed to become ...
— With the Boer Forces • Howard C. Hillegas
... charwomen distracted. If the old house had been infected with smallpox, it could not have been more vigorously scrubbed, aired, and refreshed. Early as it was, every carpet was routed up, curtains pulled down, cushions banged, and glory holes turned out till not a speck of dust, a last year's fly, or stray straw could be found. Then they all sat down and rested in such an immaculate mansion that one hardly dared to move for fear of destroying the shining ...
— Rose in Bloom - A Sequel to "Eight Cousins" • Louisa May Alcott
... far as the crest of the hill with Marget, and watched her on the way to the post office till she was only a speck upon the road. ...
— Beside the Bonnie Brier Bush • Ian Maclaren
... Thoughts of the heroes and heroines of legends come and go in my mind, mixing with thoughts of Christ and His apostles; yet there is little of me in these flitting remembrances. My stage life does not interest me any longer, but the Prioress does not see it as I do, far away, a tiny speck. My art was once very real to me, and I am surprised, and a little disappointed sometimes, that it should seem so little now. But what I would not have, if I could change it, is the persistency with which I remember my lovers; ...
— Sister Teresa • George Moore
... sight,' said Robert, as they left the great mass of Murewell behind them, 'come and see our scandal. Both run by the same proprietor, if you please. There is a hamlet down there in the hollow'—and he pointed to a gray speck in the distance—'which deserves a Royal Commission all to itself, which is a disgrace'—and his tone warmed—'to any country, any owner, any agent! It is owned by Mr. Wendover, and I see the pleasing prospect straight before me of beginning my acquaintance with ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... until it was a mere white speck on the horizon, a faint idea that it might yet see the error of its ways and return for her chaining her to the spot. Compelled at last to recognise the inevitable, she rose from the turf on which she had been sitting and, her face crimson with wrath, denounced ...
— Dialstone Lane, Complete • W.W. Jacobs
... displeasure, to eat that Injun's liver raw. Some versions say he mentioned liver rare, but the commonly accepted legend has it that the word used was raw. With this he put the spur to his steed's flank and was soon but a mere moving speck in ...
— One Third Off • Irvin S. Cobb
... answer. "There is a speck there on your shoulder; it is dust, perhaps, a speck of mud from the road; I must kiss that little spot. No—let me—I will. Everything about you stirs me so! I am half out of my senses. I did ...
— Pan • Knut Hamsun
... but it was the talk of men. Even Dave Harney forgot to curse the country for its sugar shortage, and waxed facetious over the newcomers,—chechaquos, he called them, having recourse to the Siwash tongue. In the midst of his remarks his quick eye lighted on a black speck floating down with the mush-ice of the river. "Jest look at that!" he cried. "A Peterborough canoe ...
— A Daughter of the Snows • Jack London
... must be somewhere in the vicinity of the old California Crossing. I crawled back to the boat and told my companion to go ahead, while I continually used the field glass. After fifteen minutes, I discovered a white speck in the eastern horizon. We were soon over our fright, and with light hearts were sailing over the rippling waters of the old Platte feeling assured that we would soon reach a place of safety, as far as the ...
— Dangers of the Trail in 1865 - A Narrative of Actual Events • Charles E Young
... the toe of your boot, Harborough," he said. "You know it is! And it's been picked up—just now, as it were—where this affair happened. You must have lost it there during the last few hours, because it's quite bright—not a speck of rust on it, you see. What do you say ...
— The Borough Treasurer • Joseph Smith Fletcher
... off, dearie. Your own natural skin is no more color-fast. I handled Elaine Doremus in 'The Snowdrop' for three seasons. Never so much as a speck or a spot on ...
— The Vertical City • Fannie Hurst
... seen from a distance so vast, that in comparison with it the whole diameter of our solar system is but a point, would be visible from this earth? In the case of the other nebulae, a multitude of perfectly formed suns, uniting their respective beams, are seen only as a faint, whitish speck on the blue arch. And yet we are required to believe, that the luminous matter which will ultimately form but one sun, or perhaps two, while still thinly diffused over an immense tract of space, the process of aggregation having hardly ...
— A Theory of Creation: A Review of 'Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation' • Francis Bowen
... had no difficulty in making her out, and in recognising her rig, form, and character. Stimson also examined her, and knew her to be the schooner. On that vast and desolate sea, she resembled a speck, but the art of man had enabled those she held to guide her safely through the tempest, and bring her up to her goal, in a time that really ...
— The Sea Lions - The Lost Sealers • James Fenimore Cooper
... she said dressing. Dislike dressing together. Nicked myself shaving. Biting her nether lip, hooking the placket of her skirt. Timing her. 9.l5. Did Roberts pay you yet? 9.20. What had Gretta Conroy on? 9.23. What possessed me to buy this comb? 9.24. I'm swelled after that cabbage. A speck of dust on the patent leather ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... week by parcel post to join our circus. The senor is looking for a wife. Oh, you needn't laugh! It's true. Some of you near-sighted ladies should have brought magnifying glasses, for Senor Macaroni Spaghetti is the smallest speck of humanity that ever lived in captivity. He stands on a silver dollar and puts his hand in a thimble. (TEDDY makes funny gestures during this entire speech.) The senor will now entertain you in his ...
— The White Christmas and other Merry Christmas Plays • Walter Ben Hare
... or waking is it? for her neck Kissed over close, wears yet a purple speck Wherein the pained blood falters and goes out; Soft and ...
— This Side of Paradise • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... along, Borrow's eyes, which were as long-sighted as a gypsy's, perceived a white speck in a twisted old hawthorn bush some distance off. He stopped and said: "At first I thought that white speck in the bush was a piece of paper, but it's a magpie," next to the water- wagtail the gypsies' ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... the Metzer murder, the conversation had turned, not illogically, upon the physiognomy of criminals in general. Jimmie Dale, lazily ensconced now in a lounging chair in one of the club's private library rooms, flicked a minute speck of cigar ash from the sleeve of his dinner jacket, and smiled whimsically across the ...
— The Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... in the afternoon, feeling that to-morrow would see us at our destination. About the second hour of the March Bowers' sharp eyes detected what he thought was a cairn; he was uneasy about it, but argued that it must be a sastrugus. Half an hour later he detected a black speck ahead. Soon we knew that this could not be a natural snow feature. We marched on, found that it was a black flag tied to a sledge bearer; near by the remains of a camp; sledge tracks and ski tracks going and coming and the clear trace of dogs' ...
— Scott's Last Expedition Volume I • Captain R. F. Scott
... said Leonard. "Up in the morn hours before the sun, to mass like a choir of novices, to clean our own arms and the Knight's, like so many horse-boys, and if there be but a speck of rust, or a sword-belt ...
— The Lances of Lynwood • Charlotte M. Yonge
... men are from day to day meditating torment and torture for his [Louis XVI.'s] heroic widow, on whom, with all their power and malice, and with every page, footman, and chamber-maid of hers in their reach, and with the rack in their hands, they have not been able to fix a speck. Nay, do they not talk of the inutility of evidence? What other virtue ever sustained such an ordeal?" Walpole's testimony in such a matter is particularly valuable, because he had not only been intimately acquainted with all the ...
— The Life of Marie Antoinette, Queen of France • Charles Duke Yonge
... down behind it not long before, and the sky was glowing in the clear, light night. I had to stand still for a minute. In the midst of all this beauty, man was doing the work of a beast of prey! At this moment I saw to the north a dark speck move down the height where the mate and Hansen ought to be. It divided into two, and the one moved east, just to the windward of the animals I was to stalk. They would get the scent immediately and be off. There was nothing for it but to hurry on, while I rained anything but good wishes on these ...
— Farthest North - Being the Record of a Voyage of Exploration of the Ship 'Fram' 1893-1896 • Fridtjof Nansen
... and will occasionally lift up his little pipe in a glee. He does not dance, but the honest fellow would give the world to do it; and he leaves his clogs in the passage, though it is a wonder he wears them, for in the muddiest weather he never has a speck on his foot. He was at St. John's College, Cambridge, and was rather gay for a term or two, he says. He is, in a word, full of the milk-and-water of human kindness, and his ...
— Men's Wives • William Makepeace Thackeray
... friends are one little infinitesimal drop in one hundred million people, and what those above and below and beyond and around about think and do, we know nothing, nor care nothing, about. But those others are the world, with us, a speck of—well, in this case it happened to be curiosity—in the ...
— Working With the Working Woman • Cornelia Stratton Parker
... this homestead business. You know I'm only waiting until you've finished and we can be married and go away where there is something worth while. Now be reasonable. You work too hard, so that every little speck looks like a mountain. And it's making you narrow, too, or will if you don't watch out. I have to kill time somehow till we can be married and so you ought not to find fault with my doing it. Run along over and talk to Imo in her cabin now, Lee; that's ...
— The Iron Furrow • George C. Shedd
... readers again on one or two points before I leave the subject of the hatching trays, rearing boxes, and ponds. Enamel, varnish, or charr all woodwork thoroughly, leaving no speck of wood bare and no crack open. Let the water run through and over all your ponds and apparatus for as long as possible ...
— Amateur Fish Culture • Charles Edward Walker
... having got rid of an imaginary speck of rust that had troubled his soul, replaced the bolt, and was putting away the oil rag, when there was a sharp stifled gasp, followed by a slithering fall, and Captain Dashwood lay in a heap among the white wet mud at the bottom of the trench. His cap had spun round and dropped ...
— With Haig on the Somme • D. H. Parry
... He flecked a speck of dust off his embroidered waistcoat and exuded vanity. Prescott would have gone away at once, but such an act would have had an obvious meaning—the last thing that he desired, and he stayed, hoping that the current of talk would float to a new topic. Winthrop and Raymond ...
— Before the Dawn - A Story of the Fall of Richmond • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... seemed a long time that he pressed the rifle back against his shoulder and held his eye along the barrel. He was wondering as he covered the crouching man with the deadly sight which of his enemies this might be. He even slipped the rifle from his shoulder and looked long and silently at the black speck before he drew the weapon back again into place. Then he fired before Nan could believe he had lined the sights. Once, twice, three times his hand fell and rose sharply on the lever, with every mark of precision, yet so rapidly Nan could not understand how ...
— Nan of Music Mountain • Frank H. Spearman
... told the story of her heart. She described her lover as he appeared to her in the early days of courtship, young, handsome, good, noble in sentiment, and warm and tender in manner. Halcyon days—not a speck to be seen on ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade
... to defeat them; and several who were concerned in the scheme confessed the share which they were to have had in the execution of it. Mr. King had hitherto, from the peculiarity of his situation—secluded from society, and confined to a small speck in the vast ocean, with but a handful of people—drawn them round him, and treated them with the kind attentions which a good family meets with at the hands of a humane master; but he now saw them in their true colours, and one of his first steps, when peace was restored, was ...
— An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 1 • David Collins
... straight to the cook's tent and crept under the flap. Plainly he had been there before. Flies are everywhere by the million, but he knew where they were particularly plentiful. Half an hour ago I saw a brilliant speck of light on a piece of heath, which I thought was too bright to be the reflection of the moon from some bright object. I found it came from an insect nearly one inch long, jointed like a lobster, the glow coming ...
— The Incomparable 29th and the "River Clyde" • George Davidson
... the surface; the rims and legs of tables, and the backs and legs of chairs and sofas, should be rubbed vigorously daily; if there is a book-case, every corner of every pane and ledge requires to be carefully wiped, so that not a speck of dust can ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... At sunset, the speck presented by the reefed top-sail of the corvette had sunk beneath the horizon, in the southern board, and that ship was seen no longer. Several islands had been passed, looking tranquil and smiling amid the fury of ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... great wings. Up, and up, and up, they soared. The council wood became a little speck and then was seen no more. Over, and under, and through the clouds, on, and on, and on, they sailed, along the ...
— Stories the Iroquois Tell Their Children • Mabel Powers
... man sat down, removed his glasses, held them up to the light, found a speck upon them, polished it carefully away, replaced the spectacles upon his nose, and peered ...
— The Night Horseman • Max Brand
... it," says a recent and ingenious critic, "that in all the miry paths of life which he had trod, no speck ever sullied the robe of his modest and graceful muse. How amid all that love of inferior company, which never to the last forsook him, did he keep his genius so free from ...
— Oliver Goldsmith • Washington Irving
... A clown—Struan—his thin frame throbbing with fire, and his eyes of a hawk in a cage, farset, communing with invisible things! Why, when he was rapt in his work he never saw her at all. She was a speck at his feet! He had sent her away once. "I'm busy," he had said, without looking at her; and she had gone away on tiptoe. These things vexed her to remember, and she felt that Mrs. Benson's dwelling ...
— Rest Harrow - A Comedy of Resolution • Maurice Hewlett
... all this ever drips into my auricles in Holland. A country so small that they build dikes to keep the inhabitants from being spilt off the edge, is hardly the place for a scandal—certainly not in stolid Dordrecht or in that fly-speck of a Papendrecht, whose dormer windows peer over the edge of the dike as if in mortal fear of another inundation. And yet, small as it is, it is still big enough for me to approach it—the fly-speck, of course—by half ...
— The Parthenon By Way Of Papendrecht - 1909 • F. Hopkinson Smith
... dreary mass of long-winded ceremonial nothingnesses, and intricate Belleisle cobwebberies, we seize this one poor speck of human foolery in the native state, as almost the memorablest in that stupendous business. Stupendous indeed; with which all Germany has been in travail these sixteen months, on such terms! And in verity has got the thing called "German Kaiser" constituted, ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... dusk when they arrived at the little Highland station. As he stepped out of the carriage with jingling spurs he was greeted by Grey Bob, who stood impatiently pawing the platform. Flicking a speck of dust from his favourite's glossy neck, Ralph leaped lightly into the saddle and cantered out of the station towards ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, September 9, 1914 • Various
... shook and quivered under the force of the explosions. The next instant the first aeroplane to invade the Big Alkali scudded off across the level floor of the desert, and after some five hundred feet of land travel soared upward. In fifteen minutes it was a fast diminishing speck against the burnished ...
— The Girl Aviators on Golden Wings • Margaret Burnham
... tell you, had been saved from the heat of the season by a breeze which blew from the water and once or twice even reached the velocity of a storm wind. A hundred times I had looked out my office window and a hundred times I had seen that not one speck of cloud showed in the sky. Yet all day long, while I tried to work, only to find myself all on edge with expectancy, I could hear the flap and rustle of the American flag on the Custom-House roof, which was straining at its cords and lashing itself ...
— The Blue Wall - A Story of Strangeness and Struggle • Richard Washburn Child
... to their companion that she hoped she knew Mrs. Touchett considered she hadn't a speck on her perfection. On which "I'm obliged to you," Madame Merle replied, "but I'm afraid your aunt imagines, or at least alludes to, no aberrations that the ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 1 (of 2) • Henry James
... years are over and gone to-night, and the close, unrivalled companionship of them, and I am alone from now on—but you'll not forget!) and then they turned to each other and I was no more than a speck on the evening water. "Put your back into it, man; get along, can't you?" I growled to Caliban. We shot ahead and left them to each other, alone under the heavy, yellow moon and the ...
— Margarita's Soul - The Romantic Recollections of a Man of Fifty • Ingraham Lovell
... resolved to take all possible precautions against being surprised by the Indians. On Cuttyhunk there was a large pond, and in the pond there was an islet; and Gosnold, with his score of followers, fixed upon this speck of rocky earth as the most suitable spot in the western hemisphere wherein to plant the roots of English civilization. They built a hut and made a boat, and gathered together their stores of furs and sassafras; ...
— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne
... wolves, which the mayor of Solignie had cautioned me against, as abounding throughout the country. We travelled, after leaving the main road, at the distance of a league, through a country scarcely appearing to be inhabited. Here and there a lone cot, a mere speck, met the eye amidst a landscape composed of nothing but barren wastes and thick forests, nearly impervious to the light. We had penetrated about half a mile through one of the latter, my attention occupied with the romantic wildness of the scene, ...
— A Visit to the Monastery of La Trappe in 1817 • W.D. Fellowes
... on the cliffs, dotted about which lay Eilygugg, there was a white speck here and a blue speck there, and a little more intent gazing proved to the lad that there was another speck upon the edge of ...
— The Lost Middy - Being the Secret of the Smugglers' Gap • George Manville Fenn
... he quitted the near view, and let his eye run along the edge of the horizon, until it rested upon a small speck, which he knew to be the lofty spire of Saint Paul's Cathedral. If, as he supposed, the Fair Geraldine was in attendance upon Anne Boleyn, at the palace at Bridewell, she must be under the shadow of ...
— Windsor Castle • William Harrison Ainsworth
... freshening breeze carried her along faster than she had hitherto been moving. The wind still further increased. Away she shot ahead, distancing her pursuers. She gained the harbour's mouth, and, steering out to sea, ran on till her white sail appeared a mere speck in the horizon; while the savages, disappointed of their prey, ...
— Charley Laurel - A Story of Adventure by Sea and Land • W. H. G. Kingston
... giving way under such protracted mental suffering. The door was opened, and I found Alice alone. As I looked at her I felt one of the severest pangs I had ever yet experienced. Never in my life had I seen anybody so altered. There was not a single speck of colour in her cheek; her eyes looked unnaturally large, and the black under them was deeply marked She came to meet me, but did not offer to kiss me; she held out her thin pale hand; and, slightly pressing mine, made me sit down by her. ...
— Ellen Middleton—A Tale • Georgiana Fullerton
... loyal and devoted thoughts, Billie had followed Mary, and the two girls stood with clasped hands watching the distant motor, now a black speck ...
— The Motor Maids at Sunrise Camp • Katherine Stokes
... could I wean her from this one sad vice! Wipe out this only speck in her rich volume! Then, all my woes should cease; then, would I write, In truth's fair characters, her matchless worth, Nor blush to boast the fondness ...
— The Female Gamester • Gorges Edmond Howard
... the land where all remained that he coveted upon earth. And Katerina, she too felt as if her existence was a blank; and as the vessel sailed from the port, she breathed short; and when not even her white and lofty topgallant sail could be discovered as a speck, she threw herself on her couch and wept. And M'Clise as he sailed away, remained for hours leaning his cheek on his hand, thinking of, over and over again, every lineament and feature of ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... might be due in some way to her contact with the orchids, was in part responsible for this confused memory, but it seemed to be associated, too, with the story of Crombie the gardener—and with Antony Ferrara. He felt that somewhere in the darkness surrounding him there was a speck of light, if he could but turn in the right direction to see it. So, whilst Robert Cairn walked restlessly about the big room, the doctor sat with his chin resting in the palm of his hand, seeking to concentrate his mind upon ...
— Brood of the Witch-Queen • Sax Rohmer
... the sail. Then he straightened and swept the sea with keen, puckered eyes. It was a scrutiny that was rewarded. Ahead, across the horizon sky, floated a dark smudge, like the smoke-trail of a steamer, and beneath it was a black speck. It was no ship, but land, he knew. It was the expected landfall, the volcanic island, there ahead, and he, of all of the ship's company, first perceived it ...
— Fire Mountain - A Thrilling Sea Story • Norman Springer
... the smaller English dirigible pattern," Fernald announced, still studying the distant speck in the sky, which, of course, looked much larger in the field of his glass. "Yes, it's an ...
— Dave Darrin After The Mine Layers • H. Irving Hancock
... Partnered is she to the swirling river; They plant with flowers the sandy lea, 10 While the bearded surf, tossed by the breeze, Vaunts on the hills as the sun-bow, Looks on the crystal stream Makaweli, And in the wildwood makes her abode With Hinahina of silvern wreaths. 15 Koaea's a speck to the eye, Under the low-hanging rain-cloud, Woodland ...
— Unwritten Literature of Hawaii - The Sacred Songs of the Hula • Nathaniel Bright Emerson
... blue above me I perceived a speck, no larger than a mote of dust. The aasvogel on watch up there far out of the range of man's vision had seen the deed, and, by sinking downwards, signalled it to his companions that were quartering the ...
— Marie - An Episode in The Life of the late Allan Quatermain • H. Rider Haggard
... over it. As we crossed the banks there came a rushing sound from beneath us, as of a mighty gust of wind, and, looking through one of the small windows in the side of the car, I saw in the distance a speck, which, in another moment, disappeared. Our aerenoid now gently rocked with the motion of a boat that is in the swell of a passing steamer, and I instantly realized that another aerenoid, travelling at a terrific speed, had passed in the ...
— Zarlah the Martian • R. Norman Grisewood
... slow-match, and the crowd scattered. There was a loud explosion, a general distribution of fragments of tin around the yard, and then out from the upper end of the spout there sailed something black. It ascended; it went higher and higher and higher, until it was a mere speck; then it came sailing down, down, down, until it struck the earth. It was the cat, singed off, burned to a crisp, looking as if it had been spending the summer in Vesuvius, but apparently still active and ...
— Elbow-Room - A Novel Without a Plot • Charles Heber Clark (AKA Max Adeler)
... boat, during the latter part of the afternoon, but none came; until toward sundown, when I saw a speck on the water, and as it drew near I found it was the gig, with the captain. The hides, then, were not to go off. The captain came up the hill, with a man, bringing my monkey jacket and a blanket. He looked pretty black, but inquired whether I had enough to eat; told me to make a house ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... noted a dark speck moving rapidly across the prairie toward the ranch house. It seemed to skim the ground and in five minutes had developed into a cow pony and its rider. A quarter of an hour later and the pony proved himself of "calico" variety, while the rider developed into a girl who bestrode her mount as ...
— The Free Range • Francis William Sullivan
... an isolated rock a hundred yards from shore. From its wave-drenched top a man shrieked wildly, for the instant cutting the storm with his voice. But the next instant the Alma was by, and the rock growing a black speck in ...
— The Faith of Men • Jack London
... smokeless, for the fine spray of oil which comes from the injector consists of such minute drops of the liquid and is so thoroughly mixed with oxygen that when it burns the combustion is complete, and only steam and carbonic acid gas go out of the top of the kiln. Not a speck of soot comes from the kiln or the smokestack or soils the whitewashed purity of the boiler room. Oil fuel is absolutely clean. It is labor saving, too. No fireman has to keep shoveling coal, there are no ashes to be dragged out from ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 841, February 13, 1892 • Various
... by the garden wall, had watched the boat that carried Robin disappear on the water. Till it was only a speck she watched. It vanished. Evening came on. Still she stood there. She did not feel very sad. The strange, dreamlike sensation of the preceding day had returned to her, but with a larger vagueness ...
— The Woman With The Fan • Robert Hichens
... balloon with inflammable gas; how the brave four got into the car and everybody prophesied their destruction; and of the speechless thrill with which he saw at last the strange machine dart upwards and carry them swiftly higher and higher, until it was but a speck drifting across ...
— The False Chevalier - or, The Lifeguard of Marie Antoinette • William Douw Lighthall
... moonlight; and beyond the wall there was a space of blue and silver lake; and girdling the lake the forest-covered Monte Cavo rose towering into the moonlit sky, just showing on its topmost peak that white speck which once was the temple of the Latian Jupiter, and is now, alas! only the monument of an Englishman's crime against history, art, and Rome. The air was soft, and perfumed with scent from the roses in the side-alleys below. A monotonous bird-note came ...
— Eleanor • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... worlds have, as I say, been reduced to fire-mist. Some have been shattered to tiny fragments to make asteroids and meteorites—stars and worlds, in comparison with which this bit of a planet of ours is nothing more than a speck of sand, a mere atom of matter drifting over the wilderness of immensity. In fact, such a trifle is it in the organism of the Universe, that if some celestial body collided with it—say a comet with a sufficiently solid nucleus—and the heat developed by the impact turned it into ...
— The World Peril of 1910 • George Griffith
... about the eight younger children, but there ain't a speck of no kind of blood about me and Lulu Violet but African. We are slick black Negroes. (She is very black, large ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - Volume II. Arkansas Narratives. Part I • Work Projects Administration
... does with it. You pick up every single speck," ordered the girl; and the boy scraped the floor with his sharp finger-nails, and crammed the candy and dust into a small paper bag. The girl stood watchfully over him; not the smallest particle escaped her eyes. "There's some more over there," said she, sharply, when the boy was ...
— The Debtor - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... boat flotilla that accompanied us during the last two days was made up mostly of American and British destroyers, though there were two French boats among them. They made a lively scene, and surely gave us great protection. If a speck would appear on the horizon, two boats would be off to investigate it, and would return later to join the fleet. We were also accompanied on the last day of the voyage by two airplanes as a further protection ...
— In the Flash Ranging Service - Observations of an American Soldier During His Service - With the A.E.F. in France • Edward Alva Trueblood
... tone into the soliloquy of the lonely traveller, it was still a time of excessive enjoyment. The noble rocks towered up high on the left, and the endless water opened out wide on the right with only some dot of a sail, hull down, far far off on the horizon, a little lonely speck fixed in hard exile; but very probably the crew in that vessel too were happy in the breezy morn, and felt themselves and their craft to be the very ...
— The Voyage Alone in the Yawl "Rob Roy" • John MacGregor
... ocean, from the central speck on which he stood to the vast, vanishing circle of the horizon, seemed one boundless, boiling caldron. Millions of waves were simultaneously leaping in thunder from the abyss and rearing themselves into blue mountain peaks, capped with white foam, ...
— Self-Raised • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth
... marriage, in the eyes of Heaven at least. Getting married seemed a very casual and brief matter. Susan wished that there was more form to it; pages, and heralds with horns, and processions. What an awful carpet this red one must be to sweep, showing every speck! She and Billy had painted their ...
— Saturday's Child • Kathleen Norris
... fair wind, and the fatherland in sight, a sea like a mill-pond, the melancholy sound of the ripples, a fair, solitary vessel, gliding across the surface of the water like a woman stealing out to a tryst—it was a picture full of harmony. That mere speck full of movement was a starting-point whence the soul of man could descry the immutable vast of space. Solitude and bustling life, silence and sound, were all brought together in strange abrupt contrast; you could not tell where life, ...
— A Woman of Thirty • Honore de Balzac
... "Yonder whitish speck is Hawkesmore Crag in Scotland," she said, "the distance is hardly eighteen miles, as the crow flies. Your horse will carry you there in two hours—and I will lend you my mare if you think her ...
— Red Cap Tales - Stolen from the Treasure Chest of the Wizard of the North • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... Mont Blanc knows that he is going to be climbed by a party below. He sees a speck or ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... except immediately in the ship's wake. The distant promontory, which he suspected to be the point whither he had been washed by the waves, after the explosion of the Halcyon, and which seemed the extremity of a small island, had now receded into an azure speck: the ship's course lay to the southward or south-east: and on the larboard quarter a long line of coast trended away to the south-west. A remarkable pile of rock on this coast attracted his attention, and rivetted his gaze as by some power of fascination. ...
— Walladmor: - And Now Freely Translated from the German into English. - In Two Volumes. Vol. I. • Thomas De Quincey
... bowling along at a rate of quite eight miles the hour. The shore grew dim behind us, but for a long while above the clinging mists I could see the flag that we had planted on the mound. By degrees it dwindled till it became a mere speck and vanished. As it grew smaller my spirits sank, and when it was quite gone, I felt very ...
— Allan and the Holy Flower • H. Rider Haggard
... England has in use a machine so delicately adjusted that it can give the accurate weight of a speck of dust, whilst the same machine will also weigh metal up to four hundred pounds. A postage stamp placed on this scale will swing an indicator on a semi-circle a ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various
... that blue star with its attendant speck of white, which but a little while ago shone with great brightness as ...
— Pharaoh's Broker - Being the Very Remarkable Experiences in Another World of Isidor Werner • Ellsworth Douglass
... thus addressed was strikingly different in appearance from his companion. His broad shoulders, burly form, square jaw, and heavy chin betokened strength, energy, and unscrupulousness. With the exception of a small, bristling mustache, his face was clean shaven, with here and there a speck of dried blood due to a carelessly or unskillfully handled razor. A single deep-set gray eye was shadowed by a beetling brow, over which a crop of coarse black hair, slightly streaked with gray, fell almost low enough to mingle with his black, bushy eyebrows. His coat had not been brushed ...
— The Marrow of Tradition • Charles W. Chesnutt
... time Wilhelm heard the boy's lips utter his father's exclamation. Some great emotion must have stirred his heart, and in truth he was not mistaken; the speck piercing the air, which his keen eye had discovered, was no longer a mere spot, but an oblong ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... lad must have been stabb'd as he lay asleep. For by the bedside I found his clothes neatly folded and without a speck of blood. They were clean, though coarse; so thinking they would serve for Delia, I took them, albeit with some scruples at robbing the dead, and covering the body with a sheet, made my ...
— The Splendid Spur • Arthur T. Quiller Couch
... a tangled patch of undergrowth and brambles, broken and pressed down in places, as though it had been entered by a human being. As Colwyn was looking at this place, his eye was attracted by a yellow speck in the background of green. It was a tiny fragment of khaki, caught on one of the ...
— The Hand in the Dark • Arthur J. Rees
... blood quickened and heated at these tales of adventure, just as it used to do when he pored over La Perouse or the History of Great Navigators. The afternoon was darkening, raw and cold; their fire was a mere ruddy speck in the indistinct solitudes; a wall of gray mist moved down the marshes ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 20, August 1877 • Various
... morning, after a good deal of handshaking, and Taffy looked after them wistfully as they turned to wave their caps and trudged away over the rise towards the cross-roads. Away to the left in the wintry sunshine a speck of scarlet caught his eye against the blue-grey of the towans. He watched it as it came slowly towards him, and his heart leapt—yet not quite as he had ...
— The Ship of Stars • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... The little speck of life he placed on a wisp of hay before the small stove, where a can of milk was simmering. Oak extinguished the lantern by blowing into it and then pinching the snuff, the cot being lighted by a candle ...
— Far from the Madding Crowd • Thomas Hardy
... hidden places, and so must the corners of the bed. It is a good plan to use only metal beds with iron spring frames, for bugs like wood much better; they seldom stay where there is none. If you ever find a bug, or the tiny black speck it makes, get the white of an egg and beat it with a teaspoonful of quicksilver, and paint everything with it, and you will have ...
— A Little Housekeeping Book for a Little Girl - Margaret's Saturday Mornings • Caroline French Benton
... I don't appreciate the terrible, the criminal thing I have done! I blame myself," said Uncle Chris cordially, flicking another speck of dust off his sleeve. "I blame myself bitterly. Your mother ought never to have made me your trustee, my dear. But she always believed in me, in spite of everything, and this is how I have repaid her." He blew his nose to cover a not unmanly emotion. "I wasn't fitted for the position. Never ...
— The Little Warrior - (U.K. Title: Jill the Reckless) • P. G. Wodehouse
... vitally concerned in removing an infinitesimal speck from his left cuff. "Ah," he commented, "the Canned Meat Trust. What have ...
— Average Jones • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... said one of them, pausing for a moment before the map to point out a speck in the ...
— The Royal Pawn of Venice - A Romance of Cyprus • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull
... Sanzio had ever handled a brush before. But he had also to learn to breathe, and digest, and circulate his blood. Although his father and mother were fully grown adults when he was conceived, he was not conceived or even born fully grown: he had to go back and begin as a speck of protoplasm, and to struggle through an embryonic lifetime, during part of which he was indistinguishable from an embryonic dog, and had neither a skull nor a backbone. When he at last acquired these articles, ...
— Back to Methuselah • George Bernard Shaw
... on the shore, the yacht only seemed like a small white speck on the horizon. He looked again through his glass, but even then he could not distinguish anything. Gaetano reminded him that he had come for the purpose of shooting goats, which he had utterly forgotten. He took his fowling-piece, and began to hunt over ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... be coming by now,' she said. 'He went about your ferrets to another place, Master Justin. He's been in a fine way at not getting them for you before. Ah! yes, there he is,' and she pointed to a black speck appearing on one of the little white paths at ...
— Miss Mouse and Her Boys • Mrs. Molesworth
... says, in the tenth chapter and nineteenth verse, 'And the rest of the trees of his forest shall be few, that a child may write them.' These words have been particularly applied to the stately cedars of Lebanon, for 'the once magnificent grove is but a speck on the mountain-side. Many persons have taken it in the distance for a wood of fir trees, but on approaching nearer and taking a closer view the cedars resume somewhat of their ancient majesty. The space they cover is ...
— Among the Trees at Elmridge • Ella Rodman Church
... we should be so placed upon the deck that we faced most easily sternward. Suddenly, as I gazed despondently at the serrated horizon receding in the distance, a thrill ran through my nerves at the sight of a dark speck in the sky, which seemed to float over one of the highest peaks. A second look assured me that it was moving; a third gave birth to the wild thought that it was in chase. Then I turned ...
— A Columbus of Space • Garrett P. Serviss
... experience 'when we see, or hear, or feel, or love, or hate, or will, or desire,' would suffice for his entire refutation, he found such an idea produced. He knew too well also to what enormous errors of thought minute errors of expression may lead, to disregard any speck of inaccuracy in any one of his definitions. The apparently slight oversight committed by him on this occasion will, indeed, be presently seen to have sensibly contributed to lead him subsequently into a mistake of no ...
— Old-Fashioned Ethics and Common-Sense Metaphysics - With Some of Their Applications • William Thomas Thornton
... penetration of flesh was apparent, to the photograph of a man's hand. Something in it had pained him for years, and the photograph at once exhibited a small foreign object, as you can see;" and he exhibited a copy of the photograph in question. "The speck there is a small piece of glass, which was immediately extracted, and which, in all probability, would have otherwise remained in the man's hand to the end of his days." All of which indicates that the needle ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. 6, No. 5, April, 1896 • Various
... see my old friends, whom distance cannot diminish, figuring up in the air (so they appear to our optics), yet on terra firma still—for so we must in courtesy interpret that speck of deeper blue, which the decorous artist, to prevent absurdity, had made to spring ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... about to descend. "No, you kyant do dat," interposed Aun' Jinkey, quickly. "Lie down up dar, en I han' you Chunk's supper. He gits his'n at de big house. You's got ter play possum right smart, mars'r, or you git cotched. Den we cotch it, too. You 'speck I doan know de resk ...
— Miss Lou • E. P. Roe
... divide, keeping in the coulees as much as possible, for we knew that other field-glasses would be focused on the hills. Once over the crest, we halted and watched for riders coming our way. But none appeared. Once I thought I glimpsed a moving speck on the farther bank of Lost River. MacRae brought the glasses to bear, and said it was two Policemen jogging toward camp. Then we were sure that our flight had not been observed, and we dropped into a depression that gradually deepened to a narrow-bottomed canyon. Two miles down ...
— Raw Gold - A Novel • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... short, and bowed his head to snuff the ground. Prosper laughed at the plight they were both in, and looked about him, considering what he should do. Very far off he could see a feeble light flickering; it was the only speck of brightness within his vision, and he judged it too steady for a fen-flame. Lodging of some sort should be there, for where there is a candle there is a candlestick. This was not firelight. To it he turned his tired beast, and found that he had been well advised. He was ...
— The Forest Lovers • Maurice Hewlett
... these exquisite blooms. We used every glowing adjective that we could command at every turn of these delightful hills, and at last joined in hymns of praise. Each alluring summit, as soon as reached, dwindled to a speck in comparison with the grandeur that was still further awaiting us. We stopped often to let the men rest, who had to work so hard pulling our little carts up ...
— An Ohio Woman in the Philippines • Emily Bronson Conger
... was settled that if Beth were well enough she should start for Welland next afternoon. She did not see Clarence during the next morning. It surprised her that he sought no explanation, and before three o'clock Briarsfield was a mere speck in the distance. ...
— Beth Woodburn • Maud Petitt
... on our plantation, and if you will take a map of North America, and a powerful magnifying-glass, you may perceive the small speck dignified by the title of "Butler's Island," the Barataria where I ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... the lighthouse on Low Head appeared like a white speck resting on the blue horizon; and by evening we found ourselves at anchor just within the reefs fronting the west entrance point of Port Dalrymple. The first appearance of the Tamar river is not very inviting to the ...
— Discoveries in Australia, Volume 1. • J Lort Stokes
... the summit of the hill, every morning from daylight until the sun sunk, did we sweep the horizon, in hope of seeing a sail. At every fleeting speck which arose from the bosom of the sea, the heart bounded, and the telescope was lifted to the eye. If a ship appeared here, we knew she must be bound to us; for on the shores of this vast ocean (the largest in the world) we were the ...
— A Complete Account of the Settlement at Port Jackson • Watkin Tench
... well appreciate how the blind develop an unusually keen sense of hearing; for there, in the blackness, which (at first) was entirely unrelieved by any speck of light, I became aware of the fact, by dint of tense listening, that Smith was retiring by means of some gateway at the upper end of the little garden, and I became aware of the fact that a lane or court, with which this gateway communicated, gave access ...
— The Hand Of Fu-Manchu - Being a New Phase in the Activities of Fu-Manchu, the Devil Doctor • Sax Rohmer
... with the embroidered cross cannon of the regiment, surmounted by the arms of the United States. This he noiselessly placed upon the edge of the mantel, stepped back to complacently view his work, flicked off a possible speck of dust on the sleeve of the coat, touched with a chamois-skin the gold crescent of the nearest epaulette, then softly, noiselessly as before vanished through the door-way, tiptoed to the adjoining window, and peeked in. Mr. Doyle had thrown himself into Pierce's ...
— Waring's Peril • Charles King
... Spose'n you drap roun' ter-morrer en take dinner wid me. We ain't got no great doin's at our house, but I speck de ole 'oman en de chilluns kin sorter scramble roun' en git up sump'n fer ...
— Uncle Remus • Joel Chandler Harris
... saw. I had scarcely crossed the threshold after him, when, to my eyes, he began to dwindle, and grew less and less. All at once my vision seemed to come right, and I saw that he was moving swiftly away from me. In a minute more he was the merest speck in the distance, with the tops of blue mountains beyond him, clear against a sky of paler blue. I recognised the country, for I had gone there and come again many a time, although I had never known this way ...
— Lilith • George MacDonald |
