"Tapering" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... itself, lapping with small stealthy gurgles angles of masonry and ancient piles. On the farther bank tall warehouses reared square old-time heads, their uncompromising, rugged profile relieved here and there by tapering mastheads. A few, scattering, feeble lights were visible. Nothing moved save the river and ...
— The Black Bag • Louis Joseph Vance
... encircling reef. The island, which, being dry, was of course the highest part of the atoll, measured about three and a quarter miles long, and was crescent-shaped, being about three-eighths of a mile wide in the middle, tapering off north and south in the form of the cusps of the crescent moon; and from the extremities of the two cusps there swept away the encircling reef which enclosed the lagoon in a very perfect natural breakwater, having the inevitable opening as nearly as might be in its middle, just opposite the widest ...
— Turned Adrift • Harry Collingwood
... had flattened itself into the crevices and irregular surfaces of the block, but it was too large to hide in anything but a huge space. They saw before them its great bulk, bright red skin blotched with black, which rose and fell with the breathing of the reptile. Its long, powerful tail, tapering off from the fat, loathsome body, was curled around the bottom ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science July 1930 • Various
... his face would have been enough for an experienced guess that he had no rare and ravishing tenor such as nature reluctantly makes at some sacrifice. Look at his hands: they are not small and dimpled, with tapering fingers that seem to have only a deprecating touch: they are long, flexible, firmly-grasping hands, such as Titian has painted in a picture where he wanted to show the combination of refinement with force. And ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... Wake-Robin, or White Wood Lily (T. grandiflorum). Under favorable conditions the waxy, thin, white, or occasionally pink, strongly veined petals may exceed two inches; and in Michigan a monstrous form has been found. The broadly rhombic leaves, tapering to a point, and lacking petioles, are seated in the usual whorl of three, at the summit of the stem, which may attain a foot and a half in height; from the centre the decorative flower ...
— Wild Flowers Worth Knowing • Neltje Blanchan et al
... begins to be colored, when the rotation is stopped, and only one spot heated until a spot the diameter of the tube to be sealed on has become red hot and begun to shrink. This is now gently blown out into a small bulb, as in a, Fig. 7, and it will be noted that this bulb will have walls tapering from the thick walls of the tube to a very thin wall at the top. The sides of this bulb, below the dotted line, are to form the small side tube to which the main side tube is to be sealed. The top of the bulb is now softened by directing a small flame directly upon it, and as soon as it ...
— Laboratory Manual of Glass-Blowing • Francis C. Frary
... stroke of the steel! a great splash! and the salmon is lifted upon the shore. How he flounces about on the stones. Give him the coup de grace at once, for his own sake as well as for ours. And now look at him, as he lies there on the green leaves. Broad back; small head tapering to a point; clean, shining sides with a few black spots on them; it is a fish fresh-run from the sea, in perfect condition, and that is the reason why he has given such ...
— Little Rivers - A Book Of Essays In Profitable Idleness • Henry van Dyke
... parterres of flowers ... broad terraced gardens laid out between the buildings. Occasionally a great square intervened surrounded by its porticoes of stone and stucco; or a pyramidal temple reared its colossal bulk crowned with its tapering sanctuaries, and altars blazing with unextinguishable fires. But what most impressed the Spaniards was the throngs of people who swarmed through the streets ...
— The Story of Extinct Civilizations of the West • Robert E. Anderson
... not belong to the peasant class: of that she felt assured. The shrunken, tapering hand had never worked at peasant's work. The profile turned towards her was delicate to effeminacy. The man's clothes were shabby and old-fashioned, but they were a gentleman's garments, the cloth of a finer ...
— Phantom Fortune, A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... afternoon tea? I had not the slightest idea, and should not have been astonished at seeing any of the three. I was getting beyond astonishment. The curtain agitated itself a little, then suddenly between its folds there appeared a most beautiful white hand (white as snow), and with long tapering fingers, ending in the pinkest nails. The hand grasped the curtain, and drew it aside, and as it did so I heard a voice, I think the softest and yet most silvery voice I ever heard. It reminded me of the ...
— She • H. Rider Haggard
... too, was familiar to him when it was new to our generation. He had been trained also at a time when instruments were in a rudimentary state, and when men learned to trust more to their own fingers. He has a model surgical hand, muscular in the palm, tapering in the fingers, "with an eye at the end of each." I shall not easily forget how Dr. Patterson and I cut Sir John Sirwell, the County Member, and were unable to find the stone. It was a horrible moment. Both our careers were at stake. And then it ...
— Round the Red Lamp - Being Facts and Fancies of Medical Life • Arthur Conan Doyle
... under twenty. In form she rose above the usual stature of an Indian maid, though the proportions of her person were as light and buoyant as at all comported with the fullness that properly belonged to her years. The limbs, seen below the folds of a short kirtle of bright scarlet cloth, were just and tapering, even to the nicest proportions of classic beauty; and never did foot of higher instep, and softer roundness, grace a feathered moccason. Though the person, from the neck to the knees, was hid by a tightly-fitting vest of calico and the short ...
— The Wept of Wish-Ton-Wish • James Fenimore Cooper
... for my own part, I would venture to affirm that not only metre but even rhyme itself was not without suggestion in outward nature. Look at the pine, how its branches, balancing each other, ray out from the tapering stem in stanza after stanza, how spray answers to spray in order, strophe, and antistrophe, till the perfect tree stands an embodied ode, Nature's triumphant vindication of proportion, number, and harmony. Who can doubt the innate charm ...
— The Function Of The Poet And Other Essays • James Russell Lowell
... I had learned it was named. I fancy the term has been taken from an old vellum, which describes the dagger and its supposed abnormal properties. I took the dagger down, and examined it minutely and with method. The blade is ten inches long, two inches broad at the base, and tapering to a rounded but sharp point, ...
— Carnacki, The Ghost Finder • William Hope Hodgson
... sounded like a bird-like burst of music upon a summer morning. She moved, and each attitude was fascination. She was still, and he regretted that she moved. Now her neck, now her hair, now her round arm, now her tapering waist, ravished his attention; now he is in ecstasies with her twinkling foot; now he is ...
— The Young Duke • Benjamin Disraeli
... the orchard pass; Bow low, as in lords' halls; and springtime grass Tangles a snare to catch the tapering toe. ...
— Silverpoints • John Gray
... this baby sole is very like any other fish-baby; but from now onwards it enters on a most remarkable career. At six days old he shows all the promise of a well-grown fish; that is to say, his body is round and tapering, he has an eye in each side of his head, and both sides of the body are alike in colour—in ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various
... 1864, M. Leverrier had sent to the Academy three letters from witnesses of a long luminous body, tapering at both ends, that had been seen ...
— The Book of the Damned • Charles Fort
... my attention from the new box of bricks which Mrs. Bundle (commissioned by my father) had brought from the town for me; but when I had put all the round arches on the pairs of pillars, and had made a very successful "Tower of Babel" with cross layers of the bricks tapering towards the top, I had leisure to ...
— A Flat Iron for a Farthing - or Some Passages in the Life of an only Son • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... can be no objection, because there can be no danger of abuse, and they are a convenience both to merchants and individuals. I think they should even be encouraged, by allowing them a larger than legal, interest on short discounts, and tapering thence, in proportion as the term of discount is lengthened, down to legal interest on those of a year or more. Even banks of deposite, where cash should be lodged, and a paper acknowledgment taken out as its representative, entitled to a return of the ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... tremendous animal. Not the seventeen hands that the hotel proprietor had described to Bull, but a full sixteen three, and so proudly high-headed, so stout-muscled of body, so magnificently long and tapering of leg, that a wiser horseman than the hotelkeeper might have put Diablo down ...
— Bull Hunter • Max Brand
... is regarded as the largest example of the improved breeds, very productive, and yielding a good fleece. He has a small head, covered with short white hairs, a clean muzzle, an open countenance, full eye, long thin ear, tapering neck, well-arched ribs, and straight back. The meat is indifferent, its flavour not being so good as that of the South-Down, and there is a very large proportion of fat. Average weight of carcase from 90 ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... tree! And the redwood is more beautiful even than the stone-pine of Italy. Gray lavender in color, hard as though cut from stone, swelling at the base to an incredible bulk, shooting straight to an incredible height and tapering exquisitely as it soars, it drops not foliage but plumage. To walk in a redwood forest at night and to look up at the stars tangled in the tree-tops, to watch the moonlight sift through the masses of soft black-green feathers, down, down, until ...
— The Californiacs • Inez Haynes Irwin
... in the front rank of strong natural defensive positions. The foothills of the Julian Alps descend sharply to a plain near where the Isonzo issued from the gorge which it has cut through the mountains. The line between the plain and the mountains is sharp and clearly marked. There is no gentle tapering off of one into the other. This line between the hills and plain is somewhat irregular in shape and incloses a pocket in which Gorizia is situated. It is not unlike a huge elliptical stadium. At the north end, level with the ground, is Gorizia, ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume IV (of 8) • Francis J. (Francis Joseph) Reynolds, Allen L. (Allen Leon)
... a full account of the rites, etc., see Riggs' "Thkoo Wahkan", Chapter VI. The Ta-sha-ke—literally, "Deer-hoofs"—is a rattle made by hanging the hard segments of deer-hoofs to a wooden rod a foot long—about an inch in diameter at the handle end, and tapering to a point at the other. The clashing of these horny bits makes a sharp, shrill sound something like distant sleigh-bells. In their incantations over the sick they sometimes use ...
— Legends of the Northwest • Hanford Lennox Gordon
... free from hair, except at the sides, where it grew like whiskers. It also rather projected over his forehead, but he had very little beard. His coat was jet black, as was the skin of his face. His hands and fingers were long, narrow, and tapering; and both feet and hands had great prehensile power, as he used to prove by the fearless way in which he swung himself from rope to rope. He used to walk about the deck with great steadiness, let the ship roll ever so much, though with rather ...
— Mark Seaworth • William H.G. Kingston
... marble, the proud, patrician face was pure as some bending lily frozen on its graceful, rounded stem: and the tapering fingers with daintily curved, polished nails would have suited better the lace and velvet of royal robes than the rough home-spun sleeves folded ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... their use, and others only affording matter of ingenious speculation to the antiquary, but all bearing evidence of early civilisation. The frontlet of gold indicated noble estate, and the long and tapering bodkin of the same metal, with its richly enchased knob or pendent crescent, implied the robe it once fastened could have been of no mean texture, and the wearer of no mean rank. Weapons were there, too, of ...
— Handy Andy, Vol. 2 - A Tale of Irish Life • Samuel Lover
... politeness, and for all the rest of the house, indifference. As to her person, she had a neat oval face, thin and sallow, in expression subacid; a lithe, rather graceful figure, and hands too long, with fingers almost too tapering—of which hands and fingers she was very careful, contemplating them in secret with a regard amounting almost to reverence: they were her sole witnesses to a descent in which she believed, but of which she had ...
— The Marquis of Lossie • George MacDonald
... was a woman to the very tips of her long, tapering fingers, and finding herself in a position of power was not going to capitulate at once. It was delightful to be coaxed, and by the boys, too. So she merely sat up and, gazing back up the lane, sighed in a hopeless way and said, "You don't want me, I know you don't, I might ...
— 'Lizbeth of the Dale • Marian Keith
... proud: "To my friend, Mr. Wilbur Cowan, from his friend, Eddie—Spike—Brennon, 133 lbs. ringside." It was a spirited likeness of the hero, though taken some years before, when he was in the prime of a ring career now, alas, tapering ...
— The Wrong Twin • Harry Leon Wilson
... sex ripen long before their pallid sisters of the North. She belonged to the Soosoo tribe, but was descended from Mandingo ancestors, and I was particularly struck by the uncommon symmetry of her tapering limbs. Her features and head, though decidedly African, were not of that coarse and heavy cast that marks the lineaments of her race. The grain of her shining skin was as fine and polished as ebony. A melancholy languor subdued and deepened the blackness of her large eyes, while ...
— Captain Canot - or, Twenty Years of an African Slaver • Brantz Mayer
... Hazret Mevlana, the founder of the sect of Mevlevi Dervishes, which is reputed one of the most sacred places in the East. The tomb is surmounted by a dome, upon which stands a tall cylindrical tower, reeded, with channels between each projection, and terminating in a long, tapering cone. This tower is made of glazed tiles, of the most brilliant sea-blue color, and sparkles in the sun like a vast pillar of icy spar in some Polar grotto. It is a most striking and fantastic object, surrounded by a cluster of minarets and several ...
— The Lands of the Saracen - Pictures of Palestine, Asia Minor, Sicily, and Spain • Bayard Taylor
... expedition to the woods—the whole party, the donkey-cart, and one of the keepers to choose the Tree—a most important performance, as we wanted the real pyramid "sapin," tapering off to a fine point at the top. Labbey (keeper) told us his young son and the coachman's son had been all the morning in the woods getting enormous branches of pine, holly, and ivy, which we would find at the church. We came across various old women making up ...
— Chateau and Country Life in France • Mary King Waddington
... Telouchkine, provided with nothing more than a coil of ropes, ascends the spire in the interior to the last window. Here he looks down at the concourse of the people below, and up at the glittering "needle," as it is called, tapering far above his head. But his heart does not fail him; and stepping gravely out upon the window, he sets about ...
— Happy Days for Boys and Girls • Various
... rowers to leave his moorings and to make fast alongside Li Chia's junk. Then, in a sable bonnet and wrapped in his fox-skin robe, he opened his cabin window, pretending to look at the white snow as it fell. Shih-niang had just arranged her hair, and, with her tapering fingers, was pushing back the short curtains to throw out the dregs of tea in the bottom of her cup. The freshened splendor of her rouge ...
— Eastern Shame Girl • Charles Georges Souli
... no one who knew him would have wished himself able to deny, and one less like a thief would have been hard to find. His hands were very rough and ingrained with black; his fingers were long, but chopped off square at the points, and had no resemblance to the long, tapering fingers of an artist or pickpocket. His clothes were of corduroy, not very grimy, because of the huge apron of thick leather he wore at his work, but they looked none the better that he had topped them with his tall Sunday hat. His complexion ...
— Mary Marston • George MacDonald
... whip was used to keep them in subjection. This was of braided walrus hide an inch thick at its butt and tapering to a thin lash. To the butt was attached a short wooden handle a foot in length, to which was fastened a loop which was hooked over the protruding end of the forward cross-bar and the whip permitted to trail upon the ice when not in use, and at the same time it was ...
— Troop One of the Labrador • Dillon Wallace
... head not much bigger than a pea was seen peeping up, and then a body followed, which in size did not exceed that of a large gooseberry! To this a tail was suspended, just one inch in length, of a square shape, and tapering from root to point, like that of any other mouse. The little creature was covered with a close smooth fur, of a clove-brown colour above, but more yellowish upon the belly and sides; and was certainly, as ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid
... there tall figures came looming, ghostly-fashion, out of chaos, to take slow shape and form, to resolve themselves into tapering lodges, ...
— The Maid of the Whispering Hills • Vingie E. Roe
... was high and indicative of decided intellectual power. She was of medium height, very shapely, and daintily graceful. She had a good nose and a sweet, sympathetic mouth. Her hands were slender and tapering, though suggestive of strength. She wore a simple white shirtwaist and a black skirt than which nothing could have been more becoming. Hearing her uncle's step, she turned and greeted his smile with a dubious one of ...
— The Desired Woman • Will N. Harben
... neck was like a giraffe's, but over twenty feet in length to its juncture with the mild little head, which looked as if Nature had set it there as a pleasantry at the expense of the titanic body. The tail, enormous at the base and tapering gradually to a whip-lash, trailed out to a distance of nearly fifty feet. As its owner came ashore, this tremendous tail was gathered and curled in a semi-circle at his side—perhaps lest the delicate tip, ...
— In the Morning of Time • Charles G. D. Roberts
... accident or design the lamp had been so placed that as the two men approached its light fell full upon their faces, while that of the prisoner remained in shadow. He was leaning forward with both elbows on the table, his thin, tapering fingers toying with the pen and ink-horn which had been placed close to ...
— El Dorado • Baroness Orczy
... Weatherbee. "I wish you could have seen that place," he said. "Imagine a great billowing sea of infinite shades of green, fronds waving everywhere, light, beautifully stencilled elk-fern, starting with a breadth of two feet and tapering to lengths of four or five; sword-fern shooting stiffly erect, and ...
— The Rim of the Desert • Ada Woodruff Anderson
... had excited our interest ever since the ship came into the port. He was a delicate, slender little fellow, with a beautiful pearly complexion, regular features, forehead as white as marble, black haired, curling beautifully, rounded, tapering, delicate fingers, small feet, soft voice, gentle manners, and, in fact, every sign of having been well born and bred. At the same time there was something in his expression which showed a slight deficiency of intellect. How great the deficiency was, or what it resulted from; whether he was ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... light fell on them, they withdrew into their burrows with almost instantaneous rapidity. This occurred perhaps once out of a dozen times. When they did not withdraw instantly, they often raised the anterior tapering ends of their bodies from the ground, as if their attention was aroused or as if surprise was felt; or they moved their bodies from side to side as if feeling for some object. They appeared distressed ...
— The Formation of Vegetable Mould through the action of worms with • Charles Darwin
... vain. I cannot remember having seen elsewhere so promising a "ducking-point." Imagine a low, marshy peninsula, verging landward into stunted woods, full of irregular water-courses and stagnant pools—tapering off seaward into a mere spit of sand, on which reeds and bent-grass scarcely deign to grow, towards the extreme point, just where the neck is narrowest, are the "blinds"—ten or twelve in number—a long gunshot apart, in which the "fowlers" lurk, ...
— Border and Bastille • George A. Lawrence
... it, and it well deserved the name. At the bottom of a tree-covered precipice reaching a height of 2700 feet, was a strip of firm, level sand, tapering off with a slope down to the water, making a perfect landing and dooryard. A great mass of driftwood, piled up at the end of the rapid, furnished us with all fuel we needed with small effort on our part. Our tent was backed against a large rock, while other flat rocks near at hand made ...
— Through the Grand Canyon from Wyoming to Mexico • E. L. Kolb
... gateway of the town. On their way, as had probably been arranged, Antonio met them. We may have introduced him to the reader before, who likely enough has forgotten by this time our portraiture; so we shall say again, that the man was past thirty, tall, straight, well-made, even to the tapering of his well-formed limbs, as are the generality of the peasantry of that favored region. His teeth were white as sea-pearl; his cheek, though swarthy, had a deep, healthy flash; and his great velvet black eyes looked straight out from ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 50, December, 1861 • Various
... 10 in. in depth. These fenders standing on claw feet were afterwards fitted with bottom plates of iron, on which was a ridge or rest against which the fire brasses were prevented from slipping. Then came iron or steel scroll-shaped fenders, tapering down from a few inches in height at the ends to centres almost level with the ground. To obviate the inconvenience of there being no resting-place for the fireirons loose supports were fitted into sockets at the ends, and these afterwards were cast as part of the scroll. ...
— Chats on Household Curios • Fred W. Burgess
... old one, in love or not in love, has obtained possession by a contract duly recorded at the registration office in heaven and on the rolls of the nation, of a young girl with long hair, with black liquid eyes, with small feet, with dainty tapering fingers, with red lips, with teeth of ivory, finely formed, trembling with life, tempting and plump, white as a lily, loaded with the most charming wealth of beauty. Her drooping eyelashes seem like ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... asked them how their mothers were, she went and sat down in one of the front windows, and made little scollops and eyelets. I remember her long ivory stiletto, with a loop of green ribbon through the head of it, and the sharp, tiny, big-bowed scissors that lay in her lap, and the bright, tapering silver thimble ...
— Real Folks • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... sieves, padlocks, and nails being to all appearance the goods most sought after by the country Moor. Quite a brisk demand for candles prevailed; they were highly-coloured things, thick at the base and tapering to the wick. There was a good sale too for native butter, that needed careful straining before it could be eaten with comfort, and there were eggs in plenty, fetching from twopence to threepence the dozen, a high price for Morocco, and brought about by the export ...
— Morocco • S.L. Bensusan
... Bot. Mag. 4417.—A dwarf plant, the stems not more than 1 ft. in height, and about 5 in. in diameter at the base, tapering gradually towards the top, so that it forms a cone; the furrows number about a dozen, and the ridges are 1/2 in. high, the angles sharp, and clothed with clusters of pale brown spines, the central one 1 in. long, the others much shorter. ...
— Cactus Culture For Amateurs • W. Watson
... were mumble-the-peg, high-spy, snap- the-whip, a rather dangerous performance, in which a long row of boys, with the biggest boy at one end, and tapering down to the smallest at the other end, would run over a field or open space until suddenly the big boy would stop, turn half around, and stand still and hold fast with all his might. The result was that the boy next to him had to move a very little distance, but the little fellow at the ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar
... of litters, which are either plain balls of metal or tapering cones based on crescents or on balls and crescents. See in Lane (M. E. chapt. xxiv.) the ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton
... the Chinaman, with a wave of his tapering hand toward the roofs. "It reminds you of a red sea ...
— The Ragged Edge • Harold MacGrath
... peculiar furtive expression in her eyes, which were of a very pretty shape and colour, that aroused Hellen's curiosity, and made him scrutinize her carefully. Her hands were noticeably long and slender, with tapering fingers and long, almond-shaped, rosy nails, that glittered each time they caught the rays of the fast fading sunlight. Hellen's first impression of her was that she was marvellously beautiful, but that there was a something about her that he did not understand—a something ...
— Werwolves • Elliott O'Donnell
... glance at the compact clusters of nuts, nestling beneath the graceful tufts of long leaves that crowned each straight and tapering trunk; but he had so recently learned from experience, the hopelessness of undertaking to climb a cocoa-nut tree, that he was not at present disposed to renew the attempt. Max, however, who greatly valued himself ...
— The Island Home • Richard Archer
... frail, My mast is a tapering reed, My rudder a blush-rose petal pale, My ballast ...
— Cap and Gown - A Treasury of College Verse • Selected by Frederic Knowles
... How can the modern American Ritualistic Spire be here! The well-known tapering brown Spire, like a closed umbrella on end? How can that be here? There is no rusty rim of a shocking bad hat between the eye and that Spire in the real prospect. What is the rusty rim that now intervenes, ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 11, June 11, 1870 • Various
... disapproval that the Arab appeared to be vain of his hands, on which he wore two or three rings that might have been bought in Paris, or even given him by European women—for they looked like a woman's rings. The brown fingers were slender, tapering to the ends, and their reddened nails glittered. They played, as the man talked, with a piece of bread, and often he glanced down at them, with the long eyes which had a blue shadow underneath, like a faint ...
— The Golden Silence • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... architecture which was peculiar to it must be mentioned; namely, the obelisk. Obelisks were nearly always erected in pairs in front of the pylons of the temples, and added to the dignity of the entrance. They were invariably monoliths, slightly tapering in outline, carved with the most perfect accuracy; they must have existed originally in very large numbers. Not a few of these have been transported to Europe, and at least twelve are standing in Rome, one is in ...
— Architecture - Classic and Early Christian • Thomas Roger Smith
... beam and length, her superstructure towering proudly aloft, her massive armoured sides sweeping up in noble curves, a Super-Dreadnought complete from trucks to keelson. Yacht-like she sat the water all buoyant grace from lofty prow to tapering counter, and to me there was something sublime in the grim and latent power, the strength ...
— Great Britain at War • Jeffery Farnol
... more than those Which paint the Theban (24) marble; horned snakes With spines contorted: like to torrid sand Ammodytes, of hue invisible: Sole of all serpents Scytale to shed In vernal frosts his slough; and thirsty Dipsas; Dread Amphisbaena with his double head Tapering; and Natrix who in bubbling fount Fuses his venom. Greedy Prester swells His foaming jaws; Pareas, head erect Furrows with tail alone his sandy path; Swift Jaculus there, and Seps (25) whose poisonous juice ...
— Pharsalia; Dramatic Episodes of the Civil Wars • Lucan
... possess of this species, given me by Dr. Jerdon, is probably an exceptionally small one. It is a broad oval, tapering a good deal towards one end, a good deal smaller than the eggs of Chibia hottentotta, and not very much larger than some eggs of D. ater. Its coloration, however, resembles that of Chibia hottentotta, and differs conspicuously, when compared with them (though it may be difficult to make ...
— The Nests and Eggs of Indian Birds, Volume 1 • Allan O. Hume
... more species of bananas native to Queensland, and they form a conspicuous feature of the jungle. With remarkable rapidity one of the species shoots up a ruddy symmetrical, slightly tapering stem—smooth and polished where the old leaf-sheaths have been shed—to a height of 20 and 30 feet, producing leaves 15 feet long and 2 feet broad, small and crude flowers, and bunches of dwarf fruit containing ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... broke off from the herd and were lost in the bushes, but the rest ran, packed close, a long column, tapering at the front like an arrow head, with the big bull as its point. They bellowed with fright and made a tremendous crashing as they raced over the mile that divided them from the Indian camp. Warriors heard the uproar, ...
— The Keepers of the Trail - A Story of the Great Woods • Joseph A. Altsheler
... from Pachuca could hardly have gone so far. The first place we visited was Penas Cargadas, the "loaded rocks." Riding through a thick wood of oaks and pines, we came suddenly in view of several sugar-loaf peaks, some three hundred feet high, tapering almost to a point at the top, and each one crowned with a mass of rocks which seem to have been balanced in unstable equilibrium on its point,—looking as though the first puff of wind would bring them down. The pillars were of porphyritic conglomerate, which had been disintegrated ...
— Anahuac • Edward Burnett Tylor
... given its high population growth and unequal distribution of income. MACAPAGAL-ARROYO averted a fiscal crisis by pushing for new revenue measures and, until recently, tightening expenditures. Declining fiscal deficits, tapering debt and debt service ratios, as well as recent efforts to increase spending on infrastructure and social services have heightened optimism over Philippine economic prospects. Although the general macroeconomic outlook has improved significantly, the Philippines continues ...
— The 2008 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... unless I deceive myself, a highly psychic man. I was a nervous, sensitive boy, a dreamer, a somnambulist, full of impressions and intuitions. My black hair, my dark eyes, my thin, olive face, my tapering fingers, are all characteristic of my real temperament, and cause experts like Wilson to claim me as their own. But my brain is soaked with exact knowledge. I have trained myself to deal only with fact and with proof. Surmise and fancy have ...
— The Parasite • Arthur Conan Doyle
... Now-a-days, they are generally made either of canvas, or of a twilled sacking, and, when spread out, measure 4-1/2 feet by 3-1/2; but when lashed up, and ready for stowing away in the netting, they form long sacks, about as big as a man's body, but not tapering to the ends. ...
— The Lieutenant and Commander - Being Autobigraphical Sketches of His Own Career, from - Fragments of Voyages and Travels • Basil Hall
... now bent over the doctor's manuscript, endeavoring to resolve a portion of it into comprehensible words. Then she held up the page to the light, replaced it on the table, stood up and looked at it, and finally sat down again, her elbows on the paper, and her tapering fingers in the little brown curls at the sides of her head. Presently she raised her head, with a sigh. "It is of no use," she said. "I must go and ask him what this means; that is, ...
— The Girl at Cobhurst • Frank Richard Stockton
... the dear creature, not only in her eyes, which were of uncertain hue, veiled or laughing like the sky of her Paris, but in her voice, in the folds of her dress, in everything, even to the long curl that shaded her straight, graceful statue-like neck and attracted you by its tapering shaded point, deftly curled over a ...
— The Nabob, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... assure work during the coming fiscal year to the individuals now on relief, or until such time as private employment is available. In order to make adjustment to increasing private employment, work should be planned with a view to tapering it off in proportion to the speed with which the emergency workers are offered ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... in what manner she did not observe, nor was she curious to learn. Next from the large casket Mrs. Sin took another smaller casket and a very long, tapering silver bodkin. The first casket had perceptibly increased in size. It was certainly much larger than Rita had supposed; for now out from its shadowy interior Mrs. Sin began to take pipes—long pipes and short pipes, pipes of gold and pipes of silver, pipes of ivory and pipes of ...
— Dope • Sax Rohmer
... land and water on the surface of the globe is to be got by considering the globe alternately from one pole and from the other. In the south, a clump of ice-bound land, well within the Antarctic Circle, surrounds the pole. All else is a wide domain of ocean broken only where tapering and isolated tongues of land, South America, the Cape, Australia, lean down from the great land masses of the north. On the other hand, all the great land masses expand in the Northern Hemisphere, and shoulder one another round the North Pole. America is separated ...
— Thomas Henry Huxley; A Sketch Of His Life And Work • P. Chalmers Mitchell
... organs, which are only longest at the small end. At the point which answers to that from which the two cilia arise in Heteromita, there is a conical depression, the mouth; and, in young specimens, a tapering filament, which reminds one of the posterior cilium of Heteromita, ...
— Discourses - Biological and Geological Essays • Thomas H. Huxley
... continued unchanged in the family mansion,— a Dutch-built house, with a front, or rather gable end, of yellow brick, tapering to a point, with the customary iron weathercock at the top. Everything about the building bore the air of long- settled ease and security. Flights of martins peopled the little coops nailed against its walls, and swallows built their nests under the eaves, and everyone ...
— Stories by Modern American Authors • Julian Hawthorne
... chubby girl came, with golden face and old-gold hair, faithful and solemn. 'Thenie was on hand early,—a jolly, ugly, good-hearted girl, who slyly dipped snuff and looked after her little bow-legged brother. When her mother could spare her, 'Tildy came,—a midnight beauty, with starry eyes and tapering limbs; and her brother, correspondingly homely. And then the big boys,—the hulking Lawrences; the lazy Neills, unfathered sons of mother and daughter; Hickman, with a stoop in his ...
— The Souls of Black Folk • W. E. B. Du Bois
... roan, traversing the level meadow lands between the Brezon and the Mole. With each mile, now, the landscape took on new beauty and wildness. The superb mountains—some with cloudy white turrets, some thrusting out huge snow-powdered prongs, and others tapering to steely dagger-points—hemmed them in on ...
— The Queen of Sheba & My Cousin the Colonel • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... having cut it open with his axe, we found the body of a young deer, and three pacas, each larger than a hare, perfectly entire, showing that the creature had only just swallowed them. Its appearance was most hideous, the creature being very broad in the middle, and tapering abruptly at both ends. It had probably come up a small stream which ran into the main river, and which passed at no great distance from the spot ...
— The Wanderers - Adventures in the Wilds of Trinidad and Orinoco • W.H.G. Kingston
... we journeyed, we approached the town of Fierbois, a place very well known to me; and when we halted in a wood with the first light of day, and the wearied soldiers made themselves beds amid the dried fern and fallen leaves, I approached the Maid, who was gazing wistfully towards the tapering spire of a church, visible at some distance away, and I ...
— A Heroine of France • Evelyn Everett-Green
... pot and chocolate pot first used in England closely resembled each other in form", says Charles James Jackson in his Illustrated History of English Plate, "each being circular in plan, tapering towards the top, and having its handle fixed at a ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... THE PONTOONS.—We are now ready to design the shapes. Fig. 75 shows three general types, A being made rectangular in form, with a tapering forward end, so constructed as to ride ...
— Aeroplanes • J. S. Zerbe***
... canvas. Her foretopgallant-sail swelled to its cotton-like hue out of the black shadow of its incurving. High aloft, the swelling squares of her studding-sails gleamed in the misty sheen of the pale luminary, flinging her frosty light from point to point of the tapering masts, which rose, rose, rose into the morning air, as though with intent to pierce the glowing orb of day, poised in the heavens like one vast ball of liquid fire. Through the wind-hushed spaces of the canvas, ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100., Jan. 24, 1891. • Various
... face even more beautiful than that of the portrait I had just replaced on the wall. I must also mention that she seemed conscious of her charms, for with an air of much grace and dignity, she raised her jeweled fingers, so tapering, and smoothed the glossy black hair over her polished brow, while the diamonds of her bracelets sparkled through the white ruffles that ...
— The Life and Adventures of Maj. Roger Sherman Potter • "Pheleg Van Trusedale"
... again overwhelming her. The Marquise watched her clench the shapely hands with their tapering fingers and many rings, the pretty graceful bit of human furniture in an establishment for ...
— The Bondwoman • Marah Ellis Ryan
... are almost all blue roans, like Lord Grosvenor's horses in London, or those of the Duke of Cestos at Milan: the horns longer, and much more finely shaped, than those of our bulls, and white as polished ivory, tapering off to a point, with a bright black tip at the end, resembling an ermine's tail. As this creature is not a native, but only a neighbour of Italy, we will say no ...
— Observations and Reflections Made in the Course of a Journey through France, Italy, and Germany, Vol. I • Hester Lynch Piozzi
... Beneath a tapering ash-tree's shade Three graves are by each other laid. Around the very place doth brood A strange and holy ...
— The Heir of Redclyffe • Charlotte M. Yonge
... come; and the curves of her bust, the long lines of her limbs, were not obscured by her absolutely plain gown of soft, light-brown linen. She was tall, but not too commanding, and, as her hand was raised to fasten back a wisp of hair, there was the motion of as small a wrist and as tapering a bare arm as ever made ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... as "a long dark cloud stretching across the heavens, broad in the centre and tapering at each end, resembling the figure of the ark, and supposed to foretell great floods. But it depends on the direction of the ark. If it is from south to north it is a sign of good weather, but if from east to west ...
— Weather and Folk Lore of Peterborough and District • Charles Dack
... a sloop on one quarter and a schooner on the other, and in disengaging the rigging which had caught in the spars. The sloop had the appearance of a wreck. The laniards of the shrouds had been cut away on both sides, and the tall and tapering mast was quivering and bending like a whipstock, from the action of the wind and the waves. One of the cables, it was supposed, had parted; the sails, not having been properly furled, were fluttering and ...
— Jack in the Forecastle • John Sherburne Sleeper
... succession of fresh sights, from the Turkish man-of-war that was of British build, to the low fishing-boat with its long graceful lateen sail, spread out upon its curved and tapering spar. ...
— Yussuf the Guide - The Mountain Bandits; Strange Adventure in Asia Minor • George Manville Fenn
... the tripod, the chief saw, a little way up the shore, three objects that, from their resemblance to a canoe, attracted his attention. Going close to them, he found the largest ten feet long, and four wide in the middle, oval at the bottom, and tapering to a point at the ends. They seemed to be made of metal, for, though quite strong, they were covered inside and out with corroding rust. A thought struck the chief that, perhaps, they were canoes, and might still be used. To settle the point was but a moment's work; and he dragged one ...
— The American Family Robinson - or, The Adventures of a Family lost in the Great Desert of the West • D. W. Belisle
... Set-on low; short, 10 TAIL: Set-on low, short, fine and tapering; fine and tapering, straight or screw; devoid of fringe or devoid of fringe or coarse hair, and not coarse hair, and not carried above ...
— The Boston Terrier and All About It - A Practical, Scientific, and Up to Date Guide to the Breeding of the American Dog • Edward Axtell
... We dare not attempt to carve a single stone from the living rock,—all our modern appliances fail to make the task as easy to us as it seems to have been to the early Egyptians. No artistic skill is required in giving a four-square tapering figure to a stone column. If we cannot shape a solid obelisk of the proper dimensions, we can build one of separate blocks. How can we give it the distinction we demand for it? The nation which can brag that it has "the biggest ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... much pleasure. A single locust is now heard near noon from a tree two hundred feet off, as I write—a long whirring, continued, quite loud noise graded in distinct whirls, or swinging circles, increasing in strength and rapidity up to a certain point, and then a fluttering, quietly tapering fall. Each strain is continued from one to two minutes. The locust-song is very appropriate to the scene—gushes, has meaning, is masculine, is like some fine old wine, not sweet, but far better ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... tapering rods and rattling reels of modern days, fishers never become fully aware of the strength of salmon, unless, indeed, a hitch in their line occurs, and everything snaps! It was otherwise about the ...
— The Crew of the Water Wagtail • R.M. Ballantyne
... me a very fine one, but tastes differ, and to the Lady Capilla it seemed quite the reverse. Rising indignantly, she marched away, her queue running in through the window and gradually tapering off the interview, as it were. Prince Champou saw that he had missed his opportunity, and resolved to repair his error. Straightway he forged an order on Beersheba for thirty yards of love-lock. To serve this writ he sent his business partner; for the Prince was wont to beguile his dragging ...
— Cobwebs From an Empty Skull • Ambrose Bierce (AKA: Dod Grile)
... a mile from the town. Labour had long ceased; a beautiful heaven, clear and serene, canopied the city of smoke and toil; in all directions rose the columns of the factories, dark and defined in the purple sky; a glittering star sometimes hovering by the crest of their tall and tapering forms. ...
— Sybil - or the Two Nations • Benjamin Disraeli
... more plentiful in the cold northern localities than in the southern latitudes. It is an amphibious animal, and can remain for a long time beneath the water. In size it is larger than a cat, and it possesses a tapering tail some eighteen inches in length. Its fur is of a rich brown color, and the hair is of two kinds, the one a close, fine, and exquisitely soft down, which lies next the skin, and which serves to protect the animal from the extremes ...
— Camp Life in the Woods and the Tricks of Trapping and Trap Making • William Hamilton Gibson
... away. Only the embers lay in a glowing heap, and while she looked, the last stick that lay across the andirons, broke through its tapering center and fell amongst them, stirring a fitful light by which she discovered her husband seated and bowed like a man who has been stricken. Uncomprehending, she stood a moment speechless, then crept back ...
— At Fault • Kate Chopin
... habits. The elephant is widely diffused through the vast forests, and is met with in herds of various numbers. The male is very much larger than the female, consequently much more difficult to kill. He is provided with two enormous tusks. These are long, tapering, and beautifully arched; their length averages from six to eight feet, and they weigh from sixty to a hundred pounds each. In the vicinity of the equator the elephants attain to a greater size than to the southward; and I ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 6 • Charles H. Sylvester
... watching the ever varying sea and sky. To the captain's merry challenge to find anything so grand as the ocean, she replied, "Yes, these mighty forces in nature do indeed fill me with awe; but this vessel, with deep-buried fires, powerful machinery, spacious decks, and tapering masts, walking the waves like a thing of life, and all the work of man, impresses one still more deeply. Lo! in man's divine creative power is fulfilled the prophecy, 'Ye ...
— Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... snapping or seizing, but there was a sharp whistling sound and, quick as lightning, the long, tapering thin tail crooked twice round Carey's legs, making him utter a cry of pain, for it was as if he had been flogged sharply with a ...
— King o' the Beach - A Tropic Tale • George Manville Fenn
... one of these gins when set produced a vivid impression that it was endowed with life. It exhibited the combined aspects of a shark, a crocodile, and a scorpion. Each tooth was in the form of a tapering spine, two and a quarter inches long, which, when the jaws were closed, stood in alternation from this side and from that. When they were open, the two halves formed a complete circle between two and three feet in diameter, the plate or treading-place in the midst being about a foot square, while ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... Catalpa is more erect and taller of growth than C. bignonioides. The flowers too are larger, and of purer white, and with the throat markings of purple and yellow more distinct and not inclined to run into each other. Leaves large, heart-shaped, tapering to a point, of a light pleasing green and soft to the touch. It flowers earlier, and is more hardy ...
— Hardy Ornamental Flowering Trees and Shrubs • A. D. Webster
... the Bonnet Style for Women with Broad Face and Heavy Chin Style for Women with Tapering Chin Hat for the Chubby Woman For Women Who Have Sharp and Prominent Profiles For the Woman with an Angular Face Women ...
— What Dress Makes of Us • Dorothy Quigley
... woman is richly arrayed in a brocade dress, cut so as to show her beautiful neck and arms. A mass of wavy golden hair falls over her shoulders and upon her bosom. Her tapering wrists and delicate hands indicate gentle blood, but her features are somewhat heavy, and the face would not attract us by its beauty. The rapt expression of devotion is what makes it interesting. The whole attitude ...
— Correggio - A Collection Of Fifteen Pictures And A Portrait Of The - Painter With Introduction And Interpretation • Estelle M. Hurll
... answer. The conversation dropped. A short time afterwards, on being asked to play, she consented, and drawing off her gloves laid them on the music-stand in front of her. Her fingers, tapering and glittering with rings, looked very white as she drew off their delicate covering. On the ring finger of her left hand blazed ...
— The Child of Pleasure • Gabriele D'Annunzio
... enter our open windows with the morning sun. Its branches, always turning upward and closely gathered together, afford a harbor to the singing-birds that make them a favorite resort, and its long, tapering spire that points to heaven gives an air of cheerfulness and ...
— Among the Trees at Elmridge • Ella Rodman Church
... showing muscular form and power, with the blue veins here and there marking the clear delicate skin. Only look at the arm, without even seeing the face, and you would feel there was nervous energy and power of will; no weak, flabby, undecided action would ever come of it. The wrist was tapering enough, and the hand perfectly shaped, like the arm; not quite so white. The face,—you could not read it at once; possibly not till it had seen a few more years. It was very reposeful this afternoon. Yet the brow and the head bore tokens ...
— Diana • Susan Warner
... not until the morning of the seventh day after leaving Calcutta that we found ourselves on the banks of the Ganges. The Holy City loomed large in the grey dawn of morning, with its tapering minarets barely discernible above it, looking like ...
— A Journey to Katmandu • Laurence Oliphant
... must be drawn over very tight, and tacked well to prevent folds when in use. Make slips of fine white cotton cloth; put a clean one on every week. A shirt-board must be made in the same way for ironing dresses; five feet long, tapering from two feet at one end to a foot and a half at the other, the large end should be round. A clean slip should be upon it whenever used. A similar but smaller board should be kept for ironing gentlemen's summer pants. ...
— Practical Suggestions for Mother and Housewife • Marion Mills Miller
... harmonious colors that are born of light. While endeavoring, in broken expressions, to describe my feelings to my friends, who sat looking upon me incredulously—not yet having been affected by the drug—I suddenly found myself at the foot of the great Pyramid of Cheops. The tapering courses of yellow limestone gleamed like gold in the sun, and the pile rose so high that it seemed to lean for support upon the blue arch of the sky. I wished to ascend it, and the wish alone placed me immediately upon ...
— The Lands of the Saracen - Pictures of Palestine, Asia Minor, Sicily, and Spain • Bayard Taylor
... fingers, and six or eight foot long, on both sides of them set full of Thorns, and a streak of Thorns runs thro the middle. These leaves they split to weave Matts withal. The Tree bears a bud above a span long, tapering somewhat like a Sugar-loaf. Leaves cover this bud folding it about, like the leaves of a Cabbage. Which leaves smell rarely sweet, and look of a lovely yellow colour like gold. This bud blowes into divers bunches of Flowers, spreading it self open like a Plume of Feathers, each Flower whitish, but ...
— An Historical Relation Of The Island Ceylon In The East Indies • Robert Knox
... and with a long pair of slender, tapering horns, sharply pointed, crowning his great head, he was a magnificent animal, far finer in make and shape than any of these brutes round him who had come to see him die. As he galloped round the ring, I saw that he was looking wildly, eagerly, for somewhere to escape. ...
— Five Nights • Victoria Cross
... were carved colossal figures of Osiris, as at Luxor, Medmet Abou, and Karnak (Fig. 15). The columns, which were seldom over six diameters in height, were treated with greater variety; the shafts, slightly tapering upward, were either round or clustered in section, and usually contracted at the base. The capitals with which they were crowned were usually of one of the five chief types described below. Besides round and clustered shafts, the Middle ...
— A Text-Book of the History of Architecture - Seventh Edition, revised • Alfred D. F. Hamlin
... were built of sod cut in lengths of from two to four feet, four inches in thickness and eighteen inches in width and laid grass side down. The side walls were laid either single or double, six feet in height, with the end walls tapering upward. A long pole was then placed from peak to peak and shorter poles from side walls to ridge pole. Four inches of grass covered the poles and the same depth of earth completed the structure making the best ...
— Dangers of the Trail in 1865 - A Narrative of Actual Events • Charles E Young
... five pieces, which, when fitted together, form a wooden tube about 8 ft. long (93 in.) with a conical bore tapering from a diameter of 1-3/4 in., at the bell, to 3/16 in. at the reed. The tube is doubled back upon itself, the shorter joint extending to about two-thirds of the length of the longer, whereby the height of the instrument is reduced to about 4 ft. The holes are brought ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 3 - "Banks" to "Bassoon" • Various
... one with less sensitive ears than the doctor's could have detected it. Assured after a few minutes of listening that some kind of a craft was coming up the river, the doctor sank back into his hiding place, an automatic pistol firmly grasped in his long tapering fingers. ...
— Poisoned Air • Sterner St. Paul Meek
... paused; certain unregistered packages under the wagon, which had preyed at intervals upon the minds of Alf, Croesus, and Bartholomew, were now drawn forth. Life is a series of surprises; surprise No. 1, a brace of long, tapering javelins having villainous-looking heads, i.e., two marine rockets, with which to rend the heavens, and notify the vassals at the bungalow of our approach. One of these rockets we planted with such care that having touched it off, ...
— In the Footprints of the Padres • Charles Warren Stoddard
... the posterior one was very minute and faint; the anterior one, on the other hand, was long and broad, but interrupted in the middle, and truncated at its lower extremity, with the anterior angle produced into a long tapering point. I mention this latter fact because the shoulder-stripe of the ass occasionally presents exactly the same appearance. I have had an outline and description sent to me of a small, purely-bred, light fallow-dun Welch pony, ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication - Volume I • Charles Darwin
... water for washing is also coming short, and as I walk round the edges of the sea, I often come on a girl with her petticoats tucked up round her, standing in a pool left by the tide and washing her flannels among the sea-anemones and crabs. Their red bodices and white tapering legs make them as beautiful as tropical sea-birds, as they stand in a frame of seaweeds against the brink of the Atlantic. Michael, however, is a little uneasy when they are in sight, and I cannot pause to watch them. ...
— The Aran Islands • John M. Synge
... to iron shirt-bosoms, should be made, one foot and a half long, and nine inches wide, and covered with white flannel. A skirt-board on which to iron frock-skirts, should be made, five feet long, and two feet wide at one end, tapering to one foot and three inches wide, at the other end. This should be covered with flannel; and will save much trouble, in ironing nice dresses. The large end may be put on the table, and the other, on the back of a chair. Both these boards should have cotton covers, made to fit them; and ...
— A Treatise on Domestic Economy - For the Use of Young Ladies at Home and at School • Catherine Esther Beecher
... mourn for ever. And now, his blood quite exhausted by incessant weeping, his limbs began to be changed into a green colour, and the hair, which but lately hung from his snow-white forehead, to become a rough bush, and, a stiffness being assumed, to point to the starry heavens with a tapering top. The God {Phoebus} lamented deeply, and in his sorrow he said, "Thou shalt be mourned by me, and shalt mourn for others, and shalt {ever} attend upon those who are sorrowing[23] ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Copious Notes - and Explanations • Publius Ovidius Naso
... Him, to the front advancing, in the breast, By the right nipple, Ajax struck; right through, From front to back, the brass-tipp'd spear was driv'n, Out through the shoulder; prone in dust he fell; As some tall poplar, grown in marshy mead, Smooth-stemm'd, with branches tapering tow'rd the head; Which with the biting axe the wheelwright fells, To bend the felloes of his well-built car; Sapless, beside the river, lies the tree; So lay the youthful Simoisius, felled By godlike Ajax' hand. At him, in turn, The son of Priam, Antiphus, encas'd ...
— The Iliad • Homer
... the American and the Englishman which I have long recognized in the two elms as compared to each other. It may be fanciful, but I have thought that the compactness and robustness about the English elm, which are replaced by the long, tapering limbs and willowy grace and far-spreading reach of our own, might find a certain parallelism in the people, especially the females of ...
— Our Hundred Days in Europe • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... not have meant it—he is not a brute!" she cried, as she began to nervously clasp her hands and turn her wedding ring over and over again on her tapering finger, until it seemed a band of fire to ...
— The One Woman • Thomas Dixon
... along the Imperial Way, on both sides, these ruins stretch, ending in the Kuttub Minar, the glory of Delhi, as the Taj is of Agra. This is a tower standing alone, two hundred and forty feet in height, fifty feet in diameter at the base, and tapering to nine feet at the top. But pictures and photographs have made all familiar with this superb monument. It and the tomb of Humayun, father of the great Akbar, alone remain vividly impressed upon my memory. A ruin now and then is acceptable, but eleven miles of them ...
— Round the World • Andrew Carnegie
... herself at the sight of him, he received his introduction to her with reprehensible indifference. He sank into a chair and looked sadly at the fire, taking the point of his white beard in his long, tapering fingers. Professor Marshall turned from the piano, where he sat, striking A for the conscientious Bauermeister to tune, and said laughingly, "Hey there, Knight of the Dolorous Countenance, what vulture is doing business at the old stand ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield
... she admired in the mirror her freshly-budded breasts, her supple waist, her arms, a trifle slender, round and tapering, and her smooth, beautiful knees; and, seeing all this subservient to the fine art of comedy, she became animated and exalted; a slight flush, like ...
— A Mummer's Tale • Anatole France
... colliers—all crowded together, and among them but one single sailing vessel—a Liverpool barque of 1,000 tons, loading wool. She looked lost, abandoned, out of place, and my heart went out to her as my eyes travelled from her shapely lines and graceful sheer, to her lofty spars, tapering yards, and curving jibboom, the end of the latter almost touching the stern rail of an ugly bloated-looking German tramp steamer of 8,000 tons. On that very spot where I stood I, when a boy, had played at the foot of lofty trees—now covered ...
— The Call Of The South - 1908 • Louis Becke
... massaged his long tapering digits in the perfumed water, he leaned over and whispered to Inspector Letstrayed, who sat next to him. Letstrayed's eyes bulged out, and Holmes then arose, pushed his chair back, inserted his left thumb in the left armhole of his vest, expanded his chest, cleared his throat, and pointed ...
— The Adventures of the Eleven Cuff-Buttons • James Francis Thierry
... her attention was surprised by a thin tapering flame, that appeared, by fits, at the point of the pike, which Bertrand carried, resembling what she had observed on the lance of the sentinel, the night Madame Montoni died, and which he had said was an omen. The event immediately ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe
... at whose behests Trembled a hundred martial breasts, Be heard without a smile Urging astonished Cingalese To tap the tapering rubber trees Upon ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Feb. 5, 1919 • Various
... night on my return from the Scala, which gave a very pleasing effect to the Duomo or Cathedral as I passed by it. The innumerable aiguilles or spires of the most exquisite and delicate workmanship, tapering and terminating in points all newly whitened, gave such an appearance of airiness and lightness to this beautiful building that it looked more visionary than substantial, and as if a strong puff of wind would blow it away. The next morning I went ...
— After Waterloo: Reminiscences of European Travel 1815-1819 • Major W. E Frye
... at her critically,—at her thin sallow little face with the intense eyes burning like flame under her well-marked black eyebrows,—at her drooping angular arms and unformed figure, tapering into the scraggy, long black-stockinged legs which ended in a pair of large buckled shoes that covered feet of a decidedly flat- iron model,—then he ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli
... great contrast it presented to the form of Viola, which was so wonderfully ethereal, so divine in colour and design. Every line in it was long and tapering, never coming to a sudden stop, but merging with infinite grace into the next, and the dazzling, immaculate whiteness of it all made it seem like something of heaven. It suggested the vision, the ideal, all that man longs after with his soul, that stirs the celestial fires ...
— Five Nights • Victoria Cross
... alone—now nobody could see her, nobody could hear her. With a wild cry she raised her beautiful arms, tore the splendid diadem of brilliants from her hair, and hurled it upon the floor. She then with trembling hands loosened the golden sash from her tapering waist, and the diamond pins from her hair, and threw all these precious trinkets disdainfully upon the floor. And now with her small feet, with her embroidered silken shoes, she furiously stamped on them with flaming eyes, and in her paroxysm of ...
— LOUISA OF PRUSSIA AND HER TIMES • Louise Muhlbach
... hour subserved, I set me upon it. Long with coiled-up sleeves I cleaned and yet cleaned, Till a first fresh spot, a high light, looked forth, Then another, like fair flesh, and another; Then a curve, a nostril, and next a finger, Tapering, shapely, significantly pointing slantwise. "Flemish?" I said. "Nay, Spanish . . . But, nay, Italian!" - Then meseemed it the guise of the ranker Venus, Named of some Astarte, of some Cotytto. Down I knelt before it and kissed the panel, Drunk with the lure of ...
— Late Lyrics and Earlier • Thomas Hardy
... which I and two Indians were to travel from York Factory to Norway House, a distance of nearly three hundred miles, measured between five and six yards long, by two feet and a half broad in the middle, tapering from thence to nothing at each end. It was made of birch bark, and could with great ease be carried by one man. In this we were to embark, with ten days' provisions for three men, three blankets, three ...
— Hudson Bay • R.M. Ballantyne
... death depended upon its speed. On, on, past the green meadows, where the hedgerows were filled with woodbines and wild roses, and the clover filled the air with fragrance; past gray old churches whose tapering spires pointed to heaven; past quiet homesteads sleeping in the sunshine; past silent, quaint villages and towns; past broad rivers and dark woods. Yet never once did the silent woman raise her eyes, ...
— Marion Arleigh's Penance - Everyday Life Library No. 5 • Charlotte M. Braeme
... with the tears of the dead; some their laughter with the laughter of the living. The traveller, sailing up the Nile, holds intercourse with many of these different personalities. He is sad, perhaps, as I was with Denderah; dreams in the sun with Abydos; muses with Luxor beneath the little tapering minaret whence the call to prayer drops down to be answered by the angelus bell; falls into a reverie in the "thinking place" of Rameses II., near to the giant that was once the mightiest of all Egyptian statues; eagerly wakes to the fascination of ...
— The Spell of Egypt • Robert Hichens
... years; Bright harvests smile, sweet meadows scent the air, And peaceful plenty o'er the scene appears. The village rings with labor's jocund laugh, The hoyden shout around the school-house door, The old man's voice, as bending o'er his staff, He waxes valiant in the tales of yore: Far tapering spires from teeming cities rise, The sabbath bell comes stealing on the air, A holy anthem seeks the bending skies, And earth and heaven seem fondly blended there! Aye—and beyond, where distance spreads its blue, Down the unfolding vale of future time, A glorious vision rises on the view, ...
— Poems • Sam G. Goodrich
... or proportion. Mockingly, On coop or kennel he hangs Parian wreaths; A swan-like form invests the hidden thorn; Fills up the farmer's lane from wall to wall, Maugre the farmer's sighs; and at the gate A tapering turret overtops the work. And when his hours are numbered, and the world Is all his own, retiring, as he were not, Leaves, when the sun appears, astonished Art To mimic in slow structures, stone by stone, Built in an age, the mad wind's night-work, ...
— Selections From American Poetry • Various
... one family, and the old gentleman is their private tutor. He is white-bearded and shaven-pated, and has rather long finger-nails, as the fashion is in China among those who do not have to work with their hands. Long finger-nails with them are like white hands and tapering fingers among us. ...
— Harper's Young People, May 4, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... shown full size. Instruments for use on posterior teeth were short and strong, with as few curves as possible; no right and left cutters or pluggers were used, and none of the latter were serrated, but had straight, tapering round points, flat on the ends, and of suitable size to fill a good portion of the cavity. He used what was termed Abbey's chemically pure tin foil, forcing it in hard, layer upon layer,—as he expressed it, "smacked ...
— Tin Foil and Its Combinations for Filling Teeth • Henry L. Ambler
... was an exquisite bit of workmanship, cunningly carved and chased, with a look of mellow age. There were two clasped hands,—not the meaningless models for wedding cakes, slim, tapering, faultless, but two cleverly vital looking hands, a man's and a woman's, the one rugged and strong, the other slender and firm, and the wrists, masculine and feminine, merging at the opposite side of the circle into one. "Oh ..." Honor breathed, ...
— Play the Game! • Ruth Comfort Mitchell
... had made herself by tight-lacing into a notable specimen of the peg-top figure, bulgy at the bust and shoulders, and tapering off at the waist. She had also squeezed her feet into boots that were much too small for them, and fluffed her hair out till her head seemed preposterously large—by which means she had achieved the appearance known to ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... stamp of sex is no longer confined to the pelvis and the chest, but is impressed on every part of the body. The women's feet become smaller and more daintily shaped than the men's, the limbs more rounded and tapering and less muscular, the waist narrower, the neck longer, the skin smoother, softer, and less hairy, the hands more comely, with more slender fingers, the skeleton more delicate, the stature lower, the steps ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... inches broad, first bell-shaped, then flattened or depressed, polished, margin at length grooved (sulcate), flesh white, reddish under the cuticle. Stem 1 1/2 to 3 inches long, 3/4 of an inch thick, white or with a reddish hue, spongy, stuffed, stout, elastic when young, fragile when old, even, tapering slightly upward. Gills free, ...
— Among the Mushrooms - A Guide For Beginners • Ellen M. Dallas and Caroline A. Burgin
... appeared at the surface. When Macurich and Scott were in the act of making the hawser fast to the ring, the chain got suddenly disentangled at the bottom, and this large buoy, measuring about seven feet in height and three feet in diameter at the middle, tapering to both ends, being what seamen term a Nun-buoy, vaulted or sprung up with such force that it upset the boat, which instantly filled with water. Mr. Macurich, with much exertion, succeeded in getting hold of the boat's ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... old tapering, bony hand, in colour like dusky ivory—closed peremptorily, in a dumb-show of receiving; and now, by the bye, you could not have failed to notice the big lucent amethyst, in its setting of elaborately-wrought pale gold, ...
— The Cardinal's Snuff-Box • Henry Harland
... not care to say much about radishes; I do not like them. They are, however, universal favorites. They come round, half- long, long and tapering; white, red, white-tipped, crimson, rose, yellow-brown and black; and from the size of a button to over a foot long by fifteen inches in circumference—the latter being the new Chinese or Celestial. So you can imagine what a revel of varieties the seedsmen may ...
— Home Vegetable Gardening • F. F. Rockwell
... one-third along the slope. This part had been chipped ready for grinding, and the article was evidently unfinished; one side still wanted polishing, and the part opposite the bevel showed signs of tapering, as if a point instead of an edge had been intended. At Axim I split off by gads and wedges a large slice of the grooved rocks described by Burton; it came home with me, and is now lodged in ...
— To The Gold Coast for Gold, Vol. II - A Personal Narrative • Richard Francis Burton and Verney Lovett Cameron
... tangle (ore-weed, as they call it in the south), and the delicate green ribbons of the Zostera (the only English flowering plant which grows beneath the sea). What are they all? What are the long white razors? What are the delicate green-grey scimitars? What are the tapering brown spires? What the tufts of delicate yellow plants like squirrels' tails, and lobsters' horns, and tamarisks, and fir-trees, and all other finely cut animal and vegetable forms? What are the groups of grey ...
— Glaucus; or The Wonders of the Shore • Charles Kingsley
... on the fire, and boil it hard five minutes, but do not stir it, as that will prevent its clearing. Have ready a large white flannel bag, the top wide, and the bottom tapering ...
— Seventy-Five Receipts for Pastry Cakes, and Sweetmeats • Miss Leslie
... his chair and put the tips of his fingers together. Long, tapering fingers they were, sensitive and well shaped, though sadly marred by acid stains. It was in his hands alone that Dr. Bird showed the genius in his make-up, the artistry which inspired him to produce those miracles of ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, December 1930 • Various |
