"Surface" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... began to fill a glass of water on the washstand, and they poised it on the chest of that body. Not the slightest vibration troubled its surface. I was—not angry; no, tremendously disgusted is the only term I can use—at all this flummery with that body on the bed. It was shocking to me that they should confuse that body with me. I thought them silly, ...
— The Matador of the Five Towns and Other Stories • Arnold Bennett
... a Mrs. Roberts introduced raps and table turnings to England. There, and more particularly on the Continent, Spiritualism met and merged with a second line of development which in turn reacted upon American Spiritualism, and, in America, released movements on the surface wholly unrelated to Spiritism. In France to a degree and in Germany strongly Mesmerism lent itself to spiritistic interpretations. I quote Podmore, who is commenting upon the trance utterances of a Mrs. Lindquist: "It is to be noted that the ascription of these somnambulic utterances to spirit ...
— Modern Religious Cults and Movements • Gaius Glenn Atkins
... extremities of a male child growing from his epigastric region. Haller and Meckel have also observed cases like this. Bordat described before the Royal Institute of France, August, 1826, a Chinaman, twenty-one years of age, who had an acephalous fetus attached to the surface of his ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... never earnest is at times well-nigh as wearisome as a temperament that is never gay; there comes a time when, if you can never touch to any depth, the ceaseless froth and brightness of the surface will create a certain sense of impatience, ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... will steam on and on, until the furnaces die down or until they run full tilt upon some beach. The sailing ships too—how they will back and fill with their cargoes of dead sailors, while their timbers rot and their joints leak, till one by one they sink below the surface. Perhaps a century hence the Atlantic may still be dotted with the old ...
— The Poison Belt • Arthur Conan Doyle
... fury demands a raucous outlet. Every man in the place, lost, for the moment, to all the dictates of honest manhood, was ready to follow the leadership of one whom, in sober moments, they all disliked. It was an extraordinary exhibition of the old savage which ever lies so near the surface in men upon ...
— The Golden Woman - A Story of the Montana Hills • Ridgwell Cullum
... and noted the sudden jerk and quiver of her response. He became grotesquely, academically interested. He touched the same nerve surface again and studied her ...
— Ten From Infinity • Paul W. Fairman
... there were here sober hearts, full of anxious portent for the future, but on the surface at least was naught but merriment. The gayest abandon prevailed. Strathspey and reel and Highland fling alternated with the graceful dances of France and the rollicking jigs of Ireland. Plainly this was no state ceremonial, rather an international ...
— A Daughter of Raasay - A Tale of the '45 • William MacLeod Raine
... round of the cellar, carefully inspecting the walls and sounding them with the butt of his revolver. He went round the cistern. Its surface was black and still. A broken bottle, floating head downward, remained half immersed, ...
— The Exploits of Juve - Being the Second of the Series of the "Fantmas" Detective Tales • mile Souvestre and Marcel Allain
... remained. Years before, the slats had begun to decay, until the dilapidation became an eyesore to even Miss Elizabeth herself. But when the cow-boys in search of their charges that always pastured along the sides of the road, rattled their sticks over its surface, it became a nuisance she could no longer stand. So one morning after having been awakened unusually early by her noisy tormentors, she had every vestige removed, and the post-holes filled, leaving the yard as open and unprotected as the ...
— The Little Gold Miners of the Sierras and Other Stories • Various
... embassy of Dusar. A clerk arose questioningly as he entered, and at his request to have a word with the minister asked his credentials. The visitor slipped a plain metal armlet from above his elbow, and pointing to an inscription upon its inner surface, whispered a word or ...
— Thuvia, Maid of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... quarrelling, but with the second son whom he idolised, in whom he believed. Don't you remember how John O'Neill heard the words 'liar' and 'deceit'? Percival Brooks had never deceived his father. His sins were all on the surface. Murray had led a quiet life, had pandered to his father, and fawned upon him, until, like most hypocrites, he at last got found out. Who knows what ugly gambling debt or debt of honour, suddenly revealed to old Brooks, was the cause of that last ...
— The Old Man in the Corner • Baroness Orczy
... the East Isaac, a rock rising ten or twelve feet above the surface of the water, which he identified by its nearness to one over which the sea was breaking. The captain was too much occupied in the study of the surroundings to take any notice of him, and he endeavored to ...
— Fighting for the Right • Oliver Optic
... betake themselves to the country? The surface reasons are as many as why they are Republicans or Democrats, but the basic one is escape from congestion and confusion. For themselves or their children their goal is the open country beyond the suburban fringe. Here the children, like young colts, can be turned out to run and ...
— If You're Going to Live in the Country • Thomas H. Ormsbee and Richmond Huntley
... known hydraulic works of the Romans is the tunnel which serves to discharge the surplus waters of the Lake of Albano, about fourteen miles from Rome. This lake, about six miles in circuit, occupies one of the craters of an extinct volcanic range, and the surface of its waters is about nine hundred feet above the sea. It is fed by rivulets and subterranean springs originating in the Alban Mount, or Monte Cavo, the most elevated peak of the volcanic group just mentioned, which rises to the height of about three thousand feet. At present the lake has no discoverable ...
— The Earth as Modified by Human Action • George P. Marsh
... plates, framed with ebony, which had once formed a part of the General's personal property. It had been for two centuries in his family, but had since become a valued heirloom in mine. His manly features must often have been reflected on its brilliant surface, and that circumstance, which had formerly endeared it to his aged mother, had made it prized ...
— Twenty-Seven Years in Canada West - The Experience of an Early Settler (Volume I) • Samuel Strickland
... through his sleeve, his rifle was struck by a bullet; a dervish striking at him with a spear only split his haversack; a shot entered the lid of his ammunition pouch, passed into his coat pocket, smashing a penknife and two pencils, tore four holes in his shirt, made a surface wound on his left breast, and came out near his left shoulder through his ...
— Our Soldiers - Gallant Deeds of the British Army during Victoria's Reign • W.H.G. Kingston
... devoured by the savage bloodhounds, or to become again and forever the prisoner of the abhorred marquis. But she felt no pain and, stretching out her hand to make an effort to rise, she perceived that she was on a smooth, hard surface, and lay against the battlements, or rather against a heavy stone balustrade that surrounded the castle-roof. With this balustrade to grasp, she could arrive at the chimney she was seeking; all she had to do, was to use it as a guide to the remote wing she was trying ...
— Prince Eugene and His Times • L. Muhlbach
... brambles, and the everlasting smilax, from which proceeded loud cries of distress and alarm, indicating that some terrible calamity was threatening my sombre-colored minstrel. On effecting an entrance, which, however, was not accomplished till I had doffed coat and hat, so as to diminish the surface exposed to the thorns and brambles, and, looking around me from a square yard of terra firma, I found myself the spectator of a loathsome yet fascinating scene. Three or four yards from me was the nest, beneath which, in long festoons, rested a huge black snake; a bird two thirds ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs
... I hadn't any teeth; I hadn't any clothes." He sketched the meagerness of that little hamlet which had seen his birth, sketched it playfully, delightfully, so that his hearers laughed and shouted; but there was always a tenderness under it all, and often the tears were not far beneath the surface. He told of his habits of life, how he had attained seventy years by simply sticking to a scheme of living which would kill anybody else; how he smoked constantly, loathed exercise, and had no other regularity of ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... surely had not offended, yea, the very earth also; for the earth, because of man's sin, had not retained after the flood its pristine excellence. Some have written, as Lyra reminds us, that by the flood the surface of the earth was washed away three hands deep. Certain it is that paradise has been utterly destroyed through the flood. Therefore, we possess today an earth more deeply cursed than before the flood ...
— Commentary on Genesis, Vol. II - Luther on Sin and the Flood • Martin Luther
... the "Oceana." Among the others was the family of Dr. Kerr. Later in the day, as Ishmael and his shadow, the professor, were standing leaning over the bulwarks of the ship and watching the setting sun sink into the water, leaving a trail of light upon the surface of the sea, he heard ...
— Self-Raised • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth
... had seen so French in France, appeared all at once a Moslem to the bottom of his soul! The same thing is true indeed of the greater number of these Orientals, who, if we meet them in our own country, seem to be quite parisianised; their modernity is only on the surface: in their inmost souls Islam remains intact. And it is not difficult to understand, perhaps, how the spectacle of our troubles, our despairs, our miseries, in these new ways in which our lot is cast, should make them ...
— Egypt (La Mort De Philae) • Pierre Loti
... her tastes were Arcadian, and the satisfactions incidental to her position as a Countess—wealth and position, with all the world at her feet, and a most docile husband, ready to make any reasonable, and many unreasonable, sacrifices to idols of her selection—were the merest drops on the surface of Life's crucible. What her soul really longed for was a modest competence of two or three thousand a year, with a not too ostentatious house in town, say in Portland Place; or even in one of those terraces ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... nearer, were hung curtains of woven silver thread. On this altar was placed a large statue of silver, that, backed as it was by the black rock, seemed to concentrate and reflect from its burnished surface the intense light of the two ...
— Ayesha - The Further History of She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed • H. Rider Haggard
... summer of 1885, along with many others, I met with a great loss. This was the death at Vichy of my dear old friend, Lord Houghton. No kinder friend than he man ever had. The world was inclined to laugh at his peculiarities, which lay upon the surface, and to ignore the sterling qualities that formed the basis of his character. If it is right to speak of a man as you find him, then I am entitled to say that there never lived a kinder or more generous ...
— Memoirs of Sir Wemyss Reid 1842-1885 • Stuart J. Reid, ed.
... superficial innovation affords no indication of the real order of existence. Fashions and formalities, house-interiors and street-vistas, habits and methods, and all the outer aspects of life are changed; but the old regimentation of society persists under all these surface-shiftings; and the national character remains little affected by all the transformations ...
— Japan: An Attempt at Interpretation • Lafcadio Hearn
... the fixed air, is plainly broke loose; but we ought to suspend our judgment until the first effervescence is a little subsided, till the liquor is cleared, and until we see something deeper than the agitation of a troubled and frothy surface. I must be tolerably sure, before I venture publicly to congratulate men upon a blessing, that they have ...
— Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 276 - Volume 10, No. 276, October 6, 1827 • Various
... what I had thought was the bed of a river we found unequal ground and saw, at a distance, patches of reeds, also lofty yarra trees growing all about. On reaching the reeds we found they filled only very slight hollows in the surface and, after passing through them, we crossed another firm plain with atriplex and salsolae. No river was to be seen, but another line of trees bounded this plain, exactly like those on the banks of streams, and on reaching it I felt confident of finding water; but on the contrary there was only ...
— Three Expeditions into the Interior of Eastern Australia, Vol 2 (of 2) • Thomas Mitchell
... I have kept the Greek word ([Greek: stele]), for no English word exactly expresses the thing. It was a stone placed upright, with an inscription on a flat surface, the summit of which sometimes ended with an ornamental finish. There are ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume II • Aubrey Stewart & George Long
... there, big trees all of them, spruce, cedar, hemlock; there was no underbrush. He stood, looking about him, all distraught; bereft of any power of judgment. Then he set to work to search again, and again, and yet again, but always with the same result: nothing. The feet that printed the surface of the snow thus far had ...
— The Wendigo • Algernon Blackwood
... from him Tarzan saw Olga seated before a little desk on which stood her telephone. She was tapping impatiently upon the polished surface of the desk. She had ...
— The Return of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... have seen plenty of it here during the past winter. But Kent says, and he is right, that malemployment is a worse thing. All these poor engineers and doctors and lawyers are busily engaged, and every thing on the surface seems to be going on well. But as a matter of fact, the world would be better off if each one of them should stop working and never do another stroke. It would pay the community to support them ...
— A Librarian's Open Shelf • Arthur E. Bostwick
... of making his way at once to the water, he should run about the house for keys, break into the room, and at last, going to the window, draw from the fact that "an object shows itself at intervals on the surface, and appears to be still in a state of agitation," the no doubt quite logical inference that Blanche is drowning—when, and only then, he precipitates himself after her,—this question would achieve, if ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... beasts spread out and almost surrounded him. While he limped on most awkwardly, the strong, sharp claws of the wolves helped them over the surface and soon the leader—a gaunt, gray monster with cropped ears and scarred back—leaped to seize the prey. Enoch, without a thought of his own danger, had hurried on, re-priming his rifle as he ran; but ...
— With Ethan Allen at Ticonderoga • W. Bert Foster
... Sometimes she was the able advocate of loyalty to the country; sometimes she rose to heights of supplication for an applied democracy which shall include women; sometimes the mischief that is in her bubbled and sparkled to the surface." ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume V • Ida Husted Harper
... many happy homes beneath whose calm surface this process is working out. The parents are deeply attached to their children, who still remain children to them even when they are grown up. They wish to guide them and mould them and cherish them, to protect them ...
— Little Essays of Love and Virtue • Havelock Ellis
... I was working below — I was filling the bucket with clay, When Alister cried, 'Pack it on, mon! we ought to be bottomed to-day.' He wound, and the bucket rose steady and swift to the surface until It reached the first log on the top, where it suddenly stopped, and hung still. I knew what was up in a moment when Cameron shouted to me: 'Climb up for your life by the footholes. I'LL STICK TAE TH' ...
— In the Days When the World Was Wide and Other Verses • Henry Lawson
... water to-morrow," announced the inventor after supper one night. "Everything is complete as far as I can make it, and the only thing remaining is to see if she will float, sink when I want her to, and, what is most important, rise to the surface again. For," he added with a twinkle in his eye, "anybody can make a ship that will sink, but it isn't every one who can make one that will come ...
— Under the Ocean to the South Pole - The Strange Cruise of the Submarine Wonder • Roy Rockwood
... gold in the ground it was near the surface, and was not very difficult to get. But when this had all been taken, they had to dig deeper and deeper, until at last they found it easier to cut out roads and rooms far down underneath the ground, and to look for the gold among the earth and stones they found ...
— People of Africa • Edith A. How
... labours are uninterrupted; they watch over the young, and perform all their ordinary occupations. But, in a few hours, agitation ensues; all appears a scene of tumult in the hive. A singular humming is heard; the bees desert their young; and rush over the surface of the combs with a delirious impetuosity. Then they discover their queen is no longer among them. But how do they become sensible of it? How do the bees on the surface of the comb discover that the queen ...
— New observations on the natural history of bees • Francis Huber
... in, lighting a gleam of faded colour or tarnished gilt in the rich gloom—her interview with the daughter of the house, I say, effectually settled this question. Pansy was really a blank page, a pure white surface, successfully kept so; she had neither art, nor guile, nor temper, nor talent—only two or three small exquisite instincts: for knowing a friend, for avoiding a mistake, for taking care of an old toy or a new frock. ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 2 (of 2) • Henry James
... lips, however, often moving, as if he were communing with himself, or endeavoring to shape some words of rude comfort in her sorrows; but ever and anon, as he seemed to go about it, his face moved with feelings which he could not utter, like the surface of a brook stirred by the breeze that passes over it. At length he laid his hand gently on her shoulder, and exclaimed in a tone of wild ...
— Valentine M'Clutchy, The Irish Agent - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... had disappeared, I got out my sweeps and rowed for the place where the dark objects had been dropped overboard. I knew that they must be resting somewhere on the closely criss-crossed mesh of wires just below the surface of the water; but I probed for an hour before I located anything. Another hour passed in trying to hook into the object with the little three-fluked grapnel which I used as an anchor. I got hold of something finally; a heavy chest of olive ...
— The Dark Star • Robert W. Chambers
... darkness had come, but the four boys held lighted torches over the hole—this was their part. The bear, disheartened with his long and futile effort to escape, lay on the uneven surface below, alternately growling and roaring. As the torches flared above him he sprang to his feet with a vast roar, his eyes as green and glittering as marsh lights. In a moment a lasso had flown over ...
— The Valiant Runaways • Gertrude Atherton
... short days which followed that happy accident—days that seemed like so many swift, fleeting seconds, Dick floated on a summer sea whose surface was unmarred by shadow or ripple. All the world had changed. He felt as though he had only just begun to live, and he spun a golden web of fancies out of the reality of things which, for one so deeply versed in the game of life, ...
— When Dreams Come True • Ritter Brown
... be", the Stoics would reply, "but the man who is only one stade from Canopus is as much not in Canopus as the man who is a hundred stades off; and the eight day old puppy is still as blind as on the day of its birth; nor can a man who is near the surface of the sea breathe any more than if he were full five ...
— A Little Book of Stoicism • St George Stock
... after a coal-strike. Throttle-Ha'penny put new life into him. During a coal-strike the miners themselves began digging in the fields, just near the houses, for the surface coal. They found a plentiful seam of drossy, yellowish coal behind the Methodist New Connection Chapel. The seam was opened in the side of a bank, and approached by a footrill, a sloping shaft down which the men walked. ...
— The Lost Girl • D. H. Lawrence
... me down easy into the water, my unexpected immersion making no noise to speak of and hardly causing a ripple on the surface of the tide as it gurgled past the ship's counter and eddied away ...
— Crown and Anchor - Under the Pen'ant • John Conroy Hutcheson
... axis. This being turned, operates on the air, as a screw does, and may be literally said to screw the vessel along: the thinness of the medium, and its want of resistance, occasion a loss of much of the force. The screw, I think, would be more effectual, if placed below the surface of the water. I very much suspect that a countrymen of ours, Mr. Bushnel of Connecticut, is entitled to the merit of a prior discovery of this use of the screw. I remember to have heard of his submarine navigation during the war, and, from what Colonel ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... in the lovely summer twilight, now resting on some grassy hedge-row bank, or standing still, looking at the great barges, with their crimson sails, lazily floating down the river, making ripples on the glassy opal surface of the water. They did not talk very much; Ellinor seemed disinclined for the exertion; and her lover was thinking over Mr. Wilkins's behaviour, with some surprise and distaste of the habit so ...
— A Dark Night's Work • Elizabeth Gaskell
... which the pagan Tarahumares bury their dead. Another mode, equally common, is to place the body lying on its back, on the surface, without any earth to cover it; in this case the mouth of the cave is walled up with stones, or stones and mud, and several bodies may be ...
— Unknown Mexico, Volume 1 (of 2) • Carl Lumholtz
... already carry with them the accumulated associations of traditional usage, and he should select his expressions so that they shall give the reader the definite impact and vivid shock of thoughts that leap up from immediate contact with sensation, like fish from the surface ...
— The Complex Vision • John Cowper Powys
... the most lamentable events of the voyage. They had been out more than a month without having had sight of land, and not even a distant sail had lighted up the dismal loneliness of the ocean. It must be recollected what a solitude was the vast surface of the Indian and Pacific seas in those days. Beside the Portuguese fleets that followed each other at long and regular intervals, Christian commerce there was none, while Arabian trade was small in amount, and confined to certain narrow channels. The Moorish slaves had never before ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various
... Composition of Trachyte and Granite. Granite Veins in Glen Tilt, Cape of Good Hope, and Cornwall. Metalliferous Veins in Strata near their Junction with Granite. Quartz Veins. Exposure of Plutonic Rocks at the surface ...
— The Student's Elements of Geology • Sir Charles Lyell
... we say; for heaven may be a million times further off, and Spurgeon's soul may pull the bell and rouse Saint Peter long after the earth is a frozen ball, and not only the human race but all life has disappeared from its surface. Nay, by the time he arrives, the earth may have gone to pot, and the whole solar system may have vanished from the ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (First Series) • George W. Foote
... now time to think of returning, for these researches could not be prolonged indefinitely. The colonists were certainly right in believing that the mysterious being did not reside on the surface of the island, and the wildest fancies haunted their excited imaginations. Pencroft and Neb, particularly, were not contented with the mystery, but allowed their imaginations to wander into the domain of ...
— The Mysterious Island • Jules Verne
... caught it you'd be all right, your uncle being a doctor. A doctor at a farm—queer, isn't it, now?" So Dick went skimming from subject to subject, very like a swallow skimming over the surface of water after ...
— The Heiress of Wyvern Court • Emilie Searchfield
... was a large room and seemed quite bare because of the absence of curtains, rugs, and cushions. The unsociable roommate was sitting beside the centre table, her elbows propped on its shiny surface that was innocent of any cover and ignorant of the duster. A green shade over her eyes connected a blur of nondescript hair with a rather long nose beneath which a pair of pale lips in the glow of the drop-light was rapidly gabbling over ...
— Beatrice Leigh at College - A Story for Girls • Julia Augusta Schwartz
... surface, lowest surface: acc. sg. þone grund-wong (bottom of the sea), 1497; (bottom of ...
— Beowulf • James A. Harrison and Robert Sharp, eds.
... both. One hundred counties, divided into about twelve wards each, on an average, and a school in each ward of perhaps ten children, would be one thousand and two hundred schools, distributed proportionably over the surface of the State. The inhabitants of each ward, meeting together (as when they work on the roads), building good log-houses for their school and teacher, and contributing for his provisions, rations of pork, beef, and corn, in the proportion, each of his other taxes, would thus lodge and feed him ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... buried in Aladdin's name. And he sent the boy to fetch the lamp, giving him a magic ring, and waited on the earth for his return. But Aladdin, his pockets full of jewels, refused to give up the lamp till his false uncle helped him to the surface of the earth, and in rage the magician caused the stone to fall upon the cave, and ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol. I • Various
... on two small seats with slender steel arm rests. Harry's seat was by the engine and Frank sat at the steering wheel, which manipulated the dipping and diving rudders as well as the rearward steering surface. One of his feet was on the brake—an automatic contrivance that cut off the spark. The other reposed on the foot pump which was used in case anything went ...
— The Boy Aviators' Treasure Quest • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... from out the mine, Unsightly and unfair, Have veins of purest metal hid Beneath the surface there; Few rocks so bare but to their heights Some tiny moss-plant clings, And round the peaks, so desolate, The sea-bird sits and sings. Believe me, too, that rugged souls, Beneath their rudeness hide Much that is beautiful and good— We've ...
— Friends and Neighbors - or Two Ways of Living in the World • Anonymous
... an even greater variety of choice. Her most cherished site is the lower surface of the projecting tiles of a roof. There is not a cottage in the fields, however small, but shelters her nests under the eaves. Here, each spring, she settles in populous colonies, whose masonry, handed down from one generation to the next and enlarged year by year, ends by covering considerable ...
— The Mason-bees • J. Henri Fabre
... place set for a guest. All the appointments of the table were of crystal and silver, and in its centre there was a great crystal bowl filled with Spring flowers. The effect was strikingly artistic and wholly delightful. The overhead lights reflected the table appointments and the flowers in the surface of the table itself, much in the way that sunlight and shadow reflect the surrounding ...
— Bandit Love • Juanita Savage
... morning the weather was still and dull. Not a breath of wind ruffled the surface ...
— The Dragon and the Raven - or, The Days of King Alfred • G. A. Henty
... fort Edward, he employed to the utmost advantage the short respite from action which Burgoyne unavoidably gave. The country between Skeensborough and fort Edward was almost entirely unsettled, was covered with thick woods, and of a surface extremely rough, and much intersected with creeks and morasses. Wood creek was navigable with batteaux as far as fort Anne; and military stores of every description might be transported up it. He obstructed its navigation by sinking numerous impediments in its course, broke up the ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 2 (of 5) • John Marshall
... "that I'm simply putting them all together for you." She looked at him, on this, long again—still as if it shouldn't be said she hadn't given him time or had withdrawn from his view, so to speak, a single inch of her surface. This at least she was fully to have exposed. It represented her as oddly conscientious, and he scarce knew in what sense it affected him. On the whole, however, with admiration. ...
— The Golden Bowl • Henry James
... with great violence upon a shoal over against the island of Cephalonia and parting amidships, broke all in sunder no otherwise than a glass dashed against a wall. The sea was in a moment all full of bales of merchandise and chests and planks, that floated on the surface, as is wont to happen in such cases, and the poor wretches on board, swimming, those who knew how, albeit it was a very dark night and the sea was exceeding great and swollen, fell to laying hold of such things as came within their reach. Among the rest the unfortunate Landolfo, albeit many a time ...
— The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio • Giovanni Boccaccio
... long moment, and then Dr. Sevier continued: "Your trouble isn't want of sense. I know that very well, Richling." His voice was low and became kind. "But you don't get the use of the sense you have. It isn't available." He bent forward: "Some men, Richling, carry their folly on the surface and their good sense at the bottom,"—he jerked his thumb backward toward the distant Narcisse, and added, with a stealthy frown,—"like that little fool in yonder. He's got plenty of sense, but he doesn't load any of it on deck. Some men ...
— Dr. Sevier • George W. Cable
... recedes beyond the upper margin of the basin, leaving it open from shore to shore for the first time, thousands of years after its conception beneath the glacier that excavated its basin. The landscape, cold and bare, is reflected in its pure depths; the winds ruffle its glassy surface, and the sun fills it with throbbing spangles, while its waves begin to lap and murmur around its leafless shores,—sun-spangles during the day and reflected stars at night its only flowers, the winds and the snow its only visitors. Meanwhile, the glacier continues ...
— The Mountains of California • John Muir
... surface-water sharpens the powers of observation of some birds and increases the trustfulness of certain species towards human beings in a region wherein they are held to have rights on equality with those of their superiors ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... twenty years I now led a life of almost perfect quiet. My Henry had his weaknesses; I was twice driven to flee from his roof, but not for long; for though he was easily over-excited, his nature was placable below the surface, and, with all his faults, I loved him tenderly. At last he was taken from me; and such is the power of self-deception, and so strange are the whims of the dying, he actually assured me, with his latest breath, that he forgave the violence ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 5 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... three years contending armies had been marching up and down it, the fertile soil still yielded ample subsistence for Early's men, with a large surplus for the army of Lee. The ground had long been well cleared of timber, and the rolling surface presented so few obstacles to the movement of armies that they could march over the country in any direction almost as well as on the roads, the creeks and rivers being everywhere fordable, with little or no difficulty beyond that of leveling ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... those intimate friendships which would bring this knowledge within their grasp. French homes are rarely open to birds of passage, and visitors leave us with regret that they have not been able to see more than the surface of our civilization or to recognize by experience the note ...
— Widger's Quotations from The Immortals of the French Academy • David Widger
... abandon—back against her husband, resting her hand on his shoulder, drew his arm around her waist for support, drew his face down to her upturned face until their lips met, while the moonlight played upon the jewels on her bare arms and neck and gleamed softly on the surface of her ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... constant change of scene, with variety and novelty. They asserted that these things were to be found in the West Indies, and I believed them. Look at the climate, too; even that never changes. Look at the sky; English people cannot stand this eternal surface of dead blue. They are not accustomed to it, and it frets their optic nerves. In fact, the whole scheme of things here sets the nervous system on edge from morning till night. There is a cannon somewhere in this steamer, and it will fire in a moment; for no reason, that ...
— The Idler Magazine, Volume III, April 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... strongly, the penetration and perception that nothing could escape, and which set down all things essential and let the "huddling silver, little worth," go by. The clearness, terseness, and entire sufficiency of the narrative are obvious and lie on the surface; but we find also another quality of the man which is one of the most marked features in his character, and one which we must dwell upon again and again, as we follow the story of his life. Here it is that ...
— George Washington, Vol. I • Henry Cabot Lodge
... elevations which we call mountains, and the depressions which contain the seas and oceans; that it has been worn by the action of heat from within and water from without, and in consequence of this action presents the appearance when examined below the surface of successive strata or layers; that different kinds of animal and vegetable life have followed one another on the surface, and that some of their remains are found in these strata now; and that all this has taken enormous periods of time. All this is exceedingly probable, because it is the way ...
— The Relations Between Religion and Science - Eight Lectures Preached Before the University of Oxford in the Year 1884 • Frederick, Lord Bishop of Exeter
... on the great privilege he was enjoying in speaking to the students of Cornell, proceeding blandly under the conviction that he was at Ithaca instead of under the elms of New Haven. But this clumsiness in Freeman and in others was only a surface blemish. He was a great writer treating with profound learning the story of Greece and Rome and South-western Europe in general, and illuminating as probably no other man has done the distant Saxon and early Norman dimnesses that lie in the background of our own past. I held him in thorough ...
— The Last Leaf - Observations, during Seventy-Five Years, of Men and Events in America - and Europe • James Kendall Hosmer
... much swimming. So he found a shallow place where he could stand on the bottom of the brook, with just enough water to cover him, and where he could poke his nose out whenever he had to. And just as often as his little black nose came up above the surface of the pool the bees lighted on it ...
— The Tale of Cuffy Bear • Arthur Scott Bailey
... sometimes said to me that he found it pleasant to stand at one of our windows after dark, when the tide was running down, and to think that it was flowing, with everything it bore, towards Clara. But I thought with dread that it was flowing towards Magwitch, and that any black mark on its surface might be his pursuers, going swiftly, silently, and surely, ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens
... begun an odd tendency to fade gradually from the canvas. He couldn't catch it in the act, but he could have ever a suspicion on glancing at it that the hand of time was rubbing it away little by little—for all the world as in some delicate Hawthorne tale—and making the surface indistinct and bare of all resemblance to the model. Of course the moral of the Hawthorne tale would be that his personage would come back in quaint confidence on the day his last ...
— The Tragic Muse • Henry James
... town-meeting to secure some system of sewerage for 'the center,' but the 'ends of the town' always voted 'no'. On one occasion, in order to allay suspicion of extravagance, a leading villager moved that, whatever system of sewerage be adopted, the surface water and rainfall be allowed to take their natural course down-hill in the ordinary gutters. The farmers sniffed danger in this wily proposition and voted an overwhelming 'No.' Accordingly by the local law of Amherst, water had to run uphill until the next town-meeting! Such ...
— The Farmer and His Community • Dwight Sanderson
... smoked. You will see that the parts of such an instrument are held together by gravitation, and a very little friction, and that a tremor communicated to the plate will not simultaneously affect the platform. The needle-point describes on the smoked surface which it moves across the converse of any movement of the plate which is not simultaneously a movement of the platform, and the error between this and the description of the tremor drawn by an ...
— The Alleged Haunting of B—— House • Various
... the dato and learned that it was a well known fact that rice had appeared on the surface of the lake from no apparent source. As it had never been grown in that district, the authorities were puzzled over the persistent rumors. If it could be cultivated there, it might be possible to supply the tribes with enough to avoid these ...
— The Adventures of Piang the Moro Jungle Boy - A Book for Young and Old • Florence Partello Stuart
... convenience, the lines, &c. may be first delineated upon a piece of paper, from which they may be accurately transferred to their proper places on the globe, by the intervention of black-leaded paper, or by pricking the lines through the paper, and pouncing powdered blue through the holes upon the surface of the globe. ...
— Practical Education, Volume II • Maria Edgeworth
... landslide, and the road along the rocky slope was cut away for a thousand feet. In order to build a new road it was necessary to crack the rocks. This the soldiers did by making huge fires and pouring wine over the heated surface. At last, worn out, ragged, and half starved, the army reached the plains of Italy, but with a loss ...
— Introductory American History • Henry Eldridge Bourne and Elbert Jay Benton
... If our ways in life must part, let us hold each other at least in kind remembrance. It will ever grieve me to think that our meeting occasioned a ripple to disturb the tranquil surface of your feelings. I could not help loving you—and for that I am not responsible. Alas! that, in loving, I should bring pain to the heart of the ...
— The Good Time Coming • T. S. Arthur
... it seemed as though the bosom of the land rose and fell. She had felt this vibrating life beat beneath the frozen surface. Now, as she gazed, she smiled sadly to herself, with drooping eyelids looking out from ...
— Northern Lights • Gilbert Parker
... and arrange them on the ground, as seen in our engraving, letting them rest on their narrow sides. If properly arranged, they should have a space between them, nearly as large as the broad surface of the brick. A small, forked twig of the shape shown in the separate drawing (b) having a small piece cut away from each side of the end, should then be procured. Next cut a slender stick, about four ...
— Camp Life in the Woods and the Tricks of Trapping and Trap Making • William Hamilton Gibson
... their pursuit burst into the enclosure with them, slaughtered their opponents and plundered their tents. Meantime the soldiers of Albinus arrayed on the right wing, who had trenches hidden in front of them and pits in the earth covered over only on the surface, approached as far as these snares and hurled javelins from a distance. They did not go very far but turned back as if frightened, with the purpose of drawing their foes into pursuit. This actually took place. Severus's men, nettled by their brief charge and despising them for their ...
— Dio's Rome, Volume V., Books 61-76 (A.D. 54-211) • Cassius Dio
... nature came to the surface in an instant, yet his amazement kept him silent and staring. It was such a slight, feeble, contemptible figure, that of the woman who was threatening to punish him,—him, Tom Kimper, whom few men in town would care to meet in a trial of strength. It set Tom to thinking; ...
— All He Knew - A Story • John Habberton
... have contributed in some degree to the stand so generally made throughout the colonies in defense of their privileges." "Reading became fashionable," he adds. But it was not difficult to cultivate the desire for reading; that lay close to the surface. The boon which Franklin conferred lay rather in setting the example of a scheme by which books could be cheaply ...
— Benjamin Franklin • John Torrey Morse, Jr.
... dark serpentine line that lay like a dead snake upon the lighted surface of the road. Jules grunted in token of comprehension. Liane Delorme breathlessly ...
— Alias The Lone Wolf • Louis Joseph Vance
... of Refraction. This law was itself the result of pure observation, but was clothed in a conceptual form devoid of reality. In this form it states that a ray of light in transition between two media of different densities is refracted at their boundary surface so that the ratio of the angle which is formed by the ray in either medium with a line at right angles to the boundary surface is such that the quotient of the sines of both angles is for these media a constant factor. In symbols sin α / sin ...
— Man or Matter • Ernst Lehrs
... a dozen or two yards behind me, but out of sight. I afterwards reproached myself for not stopping and lending him a steadying hand, and showing him the slight footsteps I had made by kicking out little blocks of the crumbling surface, instead of simply warning him to be careful. Only a few seconds after giving this warning, I was startled by a scream for help, and hurrying back, found the missionary face downward, his arms outstretched, ...
— Travels in Alaska • John Muir
... grew cold, very cold! The Duckling was forced to swim about in the water, to prevent the surface from freezing entirely; but every night the hole in which it swam about became smaller and smaller. It froze so hard that the icy covering crackled again; and the Duckling was obliged to use its legs continually to prevent the hole from freezing up. At last it became exhausted, and lay ...
— The Junior Classics, Volume 1 • Willam Patten
... either did not hear my appeals for help or else did not dare return to succor me. Nobs and I had gained some little distance from the ship when it rolled completely over and sank. We were caught in the suction only enough to be drawn backward a few yards, neither of us being carried beneath the surface. I glanced hurriedly about for something to which to cling. My eyes were directed toward the point at which the liner had disappeared when there came from the depths of the ocean the muffled reverberation of an explosion, and almost simultaneously ...
— The Land That Time Forgot • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... plane almost to the exclusion of the knife in cutting our scions of hard wood trees. Perhaps the majority of scions are shaped with the plane rather than with the knife because it gives a much truer surface. The block plane, then, I believe, is to be used more and more instead of the knife because of the very true surface that we make on the scion and on the ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the 13th Annual Meeting - Rochester, N.Y. September, 7, 8 and 9, 1922 • Various
... wilderness delightful spectacles in the eye of immigrants who had come two hundred leagues without seeing a human habitation. Around the interior of these walls the habitations of the immigrants arose, and the remainder of the surface was a clean-turfed area for wrestling and dancing, and the vigorous and athletic amusements of the olden time. It is questionable if heartier dinners and profounder sleep and more exhilarating balls and parties fall to the lot of their ...
— The First White Man of the West • Timothy Flint
... and was said to have been the death-trap of many patrols, which had gone there and never been seen since. The trenches had been dug in the summer when the country was dry, with no regard to the fact that in winter the water level rises to within two inches of the surface of the ground. In consequence, the trenches were full of mud and water, and most of the bivouacs and shelters were afloat. The mud was the worst, for although only two feet deep, yet it was of the clinging variety, ...
— The Fifth Leicestershire - A Record Of The 1/5th Battalion The Leicestershire Regiment, - T.F., During The War, 1914-1919. • J.D. Hills
... formal commitment, and had stayed there. Not knowing her name,—she could not tell it herself, to be understood,—they had given her one of their own choosing; and thus disguised, she might have stayed there forever but for the fortunate chance that cast her up to the surface once more, and gave the clew to her identity at last. Even then her father had nearly as much trouble in proving his title to his child as he had had in looking for her, but in the end he made it good. The frock she had worn when she was lost ...
— Children of the Tenements • Jacob A. Riis
... incomplete. And, since it was certain that inter-systemic matters were involved, they could not extrapolate—any guess was far too apt to be wrong. Thus nothing went on the air or appeared in print; and, although the surface remained calm, all newsdom seethed to ...
— The Galaxy Primes • Edward Elmer Smith
... the territory assigned to them marched our little band; keen-nosed dogs went first, secured by leashes, that the game they continually aroused might not lead them astray; men followed who, like American Indians, looked for "trails" in every soft surface of ground, and along the banks of each stream of sweet water, where men might come to drink, but by noon they had traversed the whole extent of their territory in a straight line, and discovered nothing. Once, indeed, they thought they were on the scent of man; but ...
— The Rival Heirs being the Third and Last Chronicle of Aescendune • A. D. Crake
... talked with a number of the rank and file, and noticed in them great satisfaction with their method of life. They were, on the surface, the commoner kind of German laborers; but they had evidently thought pretty thoroughly upon the subject of communal living; and knew how to display to me what appeared to them its advantages in their society: the absolute equality of all men—"as ...
— The Communistic Societies of the United States • Charles Nordhoff
... the swallows are asleep; The bats are flitting fast in the gray air; The slow soft toads out of damp corners creep, And evening's breath, wandering here and there Over the quivering surface of the stream, Walkes not one ripple ...
— Shelley • Sydney Waterlow
... was an obvious way. He had not to wait long for an excuse for annihilating it. There is a game called poker, at which a man without much control over his features may exceed the limits of the handsomest allowance. His lordship's face during a game of poker was like the surface of some quiet pond, ruffled by every breeze. The blank despair of his expression when he held bad cards made bluffing expensive. The honest joy that bubbled over in his eyes when his hand was good acted as an efficient danger-signal to his grateful opponents. Two weeks of poker ...
— The Intrusion of Jimmy • P. G. Wodehouse
... where every roughness is smoothed, every bramble eradicated, and where the eye is delighted by the smiling verdure of a velvet surface.—WASHINGTON IRVING. ...
— Many Thoughts of Many Minds - A Treasury of Quotations from the Literature of Every Land and Every Age • Various
... They stretched one behind the other for several miles, overshadowed by thick woods. The bright green grass, which covered the hill sloping down to the largest lake, gave the water itself an extraordinarily vivid emerald colour. Even at the water's edge not a ripple stirred the smooth surface. One might fancy it a solid mass of glass lying heavy and shining in a huge font; the sky seemed to drop into its depths, while the leafy trees gazed motionless into its transparent bosom. All were absorbed in long and silent admiration of the view; even Shubin was still; even Zoya was impressed. ...
— On the Eve • Ivan Turgenev
... especially the case when they left the grassy and flowery prairie and entered upon an arid plain, on which for months of the year no drop of rain or dew fell, while the whitened bones of men and beasts told of former havoc of starvation and drouth. The heated surface was in places incrusted with alkaline earth worn into ash-like dust, or paved with pebbles blistering hot to the feet. At times these were diversified by variegated ridges of sandstone, blue, red, and yellow ...
— Historical Tales - The Romance of Reality - Volume III • Charles Morris
... their enemies. This is, at least, a very improbable statement, for a river like the Thames occupies always the lowest channel of the land through which it passes to the sea. Besides, such a river, in order that it should be possible for vessels to ascend it from the ocean, must have the surface of its water very near the level of the surface of the ocean. There can, therefore, be no place to which such waters could be drawn off, unless into a valley below the level of the sea. All such valleys, whenever they exist in ...
— King Alfred of England - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott |
