"Topmost" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... believe the evidence of her senses, she found herself once again in the narrow hall, shepherded by the maestro's portly form. As he held the door open for her to pass out into the street, some one ran quickly up the steps, pausing on the topmost. ...
— The Splendid Folly • Margaret Pedler
... they gained the heights of Vicksburg. When the precipice was too steep for the horses to draw up the artillery, our brave boys did the work themselves, and then fought and conquered. When they had gained the topmost line of rifle-pits, they entered in and took possession; and when I made my last visit to the Army of the Mississippi, there they were ensconced as conies in the rock, enduring the heat of a vertical sun, and crouching, like beasts of prey, to escape the rebel bullets from the earthworks, ...
— Woman's Work in the Civil War - A Record of Heroism, Patriotism, and Patience • Linus Pierpont Brockett
... eating some fruit, we lay down to sleep, but were soon awakened by the hissing of an enormous serpent. One of my comrades was instantly devoured by this terrific creature. I climbed up a tree as fast as I could, and reached the topmost branches; my remaining companion was following me, but the dreadful reptile entwined itself round the tree and caught him. The serpent then went down and glided away. I waited until late the next day before I ventured to descend. ...
— Favorite Fairy Tales • Logan Marshall
... said Peter. 'I don't suppose there is anything very important, but I will look through them presently.' He glanced at the topmost addresses of the notes, and decided that they were probably belated wedding invitations to people who had been forgotten, and he put an indiarubber band about them and thrust them into ...
— Peter and Jane - or The Missing Heir • S. (Sarah) Macnaughtan
... heart-bracing colloquies, 470 In spite of real fervour, and of that Less genuine and wrought up within myself— I could not but bewail a wrong so harsh, And for the Matin-bell to sound no more Grieved, and the twilight taper, and the cross 475 High on the topmost pinnacle, a sign (How welcome to the weary traveller's eyes!) Of hospitality and peaceful rest. And when the partner of those varied walks Pointed upon occasion to the site 480 Of Romorentin, home of ancient kings, [T] To the imperial ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. III • William Wordsworth
... to summer and from summer to winter, indicating at each noon the meridian altitude of the Sun from day to day, the latitude of Jerusalem being 31 deg. 47', and the Sun's altitude there on the shortest day being 34 deg. 41'. If the gnomon were raised above the topmost step so as to bring the tip of the gnomon or any aperture in it so much above the step as would be the equivalent of 2 deg. 54' or slightly more, then the top of the shadow of the gnomon (or a spot of light passing through a hole in it) would, on the shortest ...
— The Story of Eclipses • George Chambers
... Cinderella's mother, but her sisters too (their curiosity aroused to the topmost pitch) appeared ...
— Everychild - A Story Which The Old May Interpret to the Young and Which the Young May Interpret to the Old • Louis Dodge
... master, you canting old thief," was the reply; "and if we have him not instantly, the topmost stone of your house shall lie as low ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... steamy heat of the earth into the forest glades. The tall forest trees shut out every breath of air so completely that the little valley across which the sportsman was making his way was as hot as a furnace; the silent forest seemed parched with the fiery heat. Birds and insects were mute; the topmost twigs of the trees swayed with scarcely perceptible motion. Any one who retains some recollection of the summer of 1819 must surely compassionate the plight of the hapless supporter of the ministry who toiled and sweated over the stubble to rejoin his satirical comrade. That gentleman, ...
— Farewell • Honore de Balzac
... not long been with us ere her fame reached the little "village over the river," and drew from thence many calls, both from gentlemen and ladies. Among these was a Mr. Richard Evelyn and his sister, both of whom had the honor of standing on the topmost round of the aristocratic ladder in the village. Mr. Evelyn, who was nearly thirty years of age, was a wealthy lawyer, and what is a little remarkable for that craft (I speak from experience), to an unusual degree of intelligence and polish of manners, he added many social and religious qualities. ...
— Homestead on the Hillside • Mary Jane Holmes
... when a scene more beautiful than I had ever before beheld burst on our view. On our right hand appeared the mountains of Cumana, on the mainland of South America, their summits towering to the clouds; on our left rose up the lofty precipices of Trinidad, covered to their topmost height with numerous trees, their green foliage contrasting with the intense blue of the sky. The shore, as far as the eye could reach, was fringed with mangrove-trees, their branches dipping into the sea. Astern were the four entrances to the bay, called by ...
— The Wanderers - Adventures in the Wilds of Trinidad and Orinoco • W.H.G. Kingston
... Golspie, a lofty, sombre mountain, with its bald head enveloped in the mist, and which I had been two hours apparently in passing, cleared away and revealed its full stature—and more. Towering up from its topmost summit, a tall column lifted a human figure in bronze skyward cloud-high and frequently higher still. I believe the brazen face that thus looks into the pure and holy skies without blushing, is a duplicate of the one worn in human flesh ...
— A Walk from London to John O'Groat's • Elihu Burritt
... light wood; the wind blowing steadily from the northwest, produced a powerful draught, and in a few moments the roaring and crackling of the fire and the suffocating smell of burning soot attracted Mrs. Dalton's attention. To her dismay, both the stoves were red hot from the front plates to the topmost pipes which passed through the plank-ceiling and projected three feet above the roof. Through these pipes the flames were roaring as if through the chimney of a ...
— Woman on the American Frontier • William Worthington Fowler
... the bridegroom's yard, the cabbage is taken from its stretcher and borne to the topmost peak of the house or barn. Whether it be a chimney, a gable, or a dove-cote that crowns the roof, the burden must, at any risk, be carried to the very highest point of the building. The "infidel" accompanies it as far as ...
— The Devil's Pool • George Sand
... surface. Pendant roots and immersed branches create on each hand a continuous scroll of wavering ridges and eddies bordered with the living tints of the steadfast wall of leafage. The sun so burnishes the midstream ribbon that the boat seems to float on an invisible element. Though the topmost leaves of the mangroves fail to disclose any movement in the air, an unceasing and inharmonious hum tells of the sea idly shouldering ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... sometime He thinks on us an' gi's us a lift, but hasna tha thysen seen times when tha stopt short an' axed thysen, 'Wheer's God-a'-moighty 'at he isna straighten things out a bit? Th' world's i' a power o' a snarl. Th' righteous is forsaken, 'n his seed's beggin' bread. An' th' devil's topmost agen.' I've talked to my lass about it sometimes, an' I dunnot think I meant harm, Mester, for I felt humble enough—an' when I talked, my lass she'd listen an' smile soft an' sorrowful, but she never gi' me ...
— "Surly Tim" - A Lancashire Story • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... time to utter any protest he had snatched the lantern from his hand and was racing up the third flight to the topmost landing. ...
— High Noon - A New Sequel to 'Three Weeks' by Elinor Glyn • Anonymous
... en-masse, thy high original festivals, operas, lecturers, preachers, Thee in thy ultimate, (the preparations only now completed, the edifice on sure foundations tied,) Thee in thy pinnacles, intellect, thought, thy topmost rational joys, thy love and godlike aspiration, In thy resplendent coming literati, thy full-lung'd orators, thy sacerdotal bards, kosmic savans, These! these in thee, (certain ...
— Leaves of Grass • Walt Whitman
... arose, unlocked a small niche let into the wall of the house, and produced the heavy oaken casket in which the old man kept the documents relating to his property. This he placed upon a small table beside his chair, opened it, and took out the topmost paper. He was completely master of the situation, and the deliberation with which he surveyed the circle of excited faces around him seemed to indicate that he ...
— The Story Of Kennett • Bayard Taylor
... moments Miss Anthony was unable to reply and then she said: "I have heard of standard bearers in the army who carried the banner to the topmost ramparts of the enemy, and there I am going to try to carry this one. You know without my telling how proud I am of this flag and how my heart is touched by this manifestation." Large boxes of flowers were sent her from Georgia and South Carolina, ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various
... only a bit this time and barked reproachfully for more; but Chad shook his head and the dog started out, with both eyes open, to look for his own food. The sun was high enough now to make the drenched world flash like an emerald and its warmth felt good, as Chad tramped the topmost edge of Pine Mountain, where the brush was not thick and where, indeed, he often found a path running a short way and turning into some ravine—the trail of cattle and sheep and the pathway between one little valley settlement and another. He must have made ten ...
— The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come • John Fox
... The effects it produced were wonderful. Multitudes were brought over by it to the cause of independence, who but a few months before would have regarded the proposition with abhorrence. As for the writer he at once gained by it the topmost pinnacle of the temple of popularity. The legislature of Pennsylvania voted him L500; the university of the same province conferred on him the degree of Master of Arts; he was elected member of the American Philosophical Society, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... these laws were actual and not formal only was proved by the instance that within the hundred years before the birth of Elissa, a lady Baaltis had been executed for some such offence, having been hurled indeed from the topmost pinnacle of the fortress above the temple to the ...
— Elissa • H. Rider Haggard
... the topmost spray of a birch, sings the brown thrasher—or red mavis, as some love to call him—all the morning, glad of your society, that would find out another farmer's field if yours were not here. While you are planting the seed he cries,—"Drop ...
— The Last Harvest • John Burroughs
... existence, but all covered by the sea. He would not take it upon him to be positive; but this he could tell Daisy; there was never a stick or a leaf to be found in those old rocks that ever lived and grew on dry ground, though there were plenty that grew in the sea, until in the very topmost or latest of those rocks some few bits of fern-growth began ...
— Melbourne House • Elizabeth Wetherell
... days he grew more and more unsure of himself, as he felt compelled to work at his topmost speed. His Journal for 1829 has the following record in regard to a review he was writing: "I began to warm in my gear, and am about to awake the whole controversy of Goth and Celt. I wish I may not make some careless blunders."[379] The criticisms of "J.B." became more frequent ...
— Sir Walter Scott as a Critic of Literature • Margaret Ball
... so round and trim, Hollowing it with care,— Nothing too far away for him, Nothing for her too fair,— Hanging it safe on the topmost limb, Their castle in ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 1 (of 4) • Various
... Den?" I asked, for I felt that I should like to climb to the topmost pinnacle of the highest peak in all the world and shout the good news to the four corners of ...
— The Mystery of the Green Ray • William Le Queux
... sun came up with his great, round, red face, for there was a light smoky haze floating above the eastern horizon, and threw his light like a stream of crimson flame across the water; and the meadow lark perched upon his fence stake, the blackbird upon his alderbush, the brown thrush on the topmost spray of the wild thorn, and the bob-o'-link, as he leaped from the meadow and poised himself on his fluttering wings in mid air, all sent up a shout of gladness as if hailing the ...
— Wild Northern Scenes - Sporting Adventures with the Rifle and the Rod • S. H. Hammond
... it simply. He took out a dozen cigars in the layer on top and one from the layer next the bottom; then, rearranging the underlying layer so as to fill in the empty space, he replaced the others in perfect order in the topmost row, and thus had one cigar left over to substitute for the one he had taken ...
— A Husband by Proxy • Jack Steele
... ten seconds after the shore logs began drifting down from above, the jam was taking shape. Slowly it formed, low and broad. Then, as the water gathered pressure, the logs began to slip over one another. The weight of the topmost sunk those beneath to the bed of the stream. This to a certain extent dammed back the water. Immediately the pressure increased. More logs were piled on top. The piers locked the structure. Below the improvised dam the water fell ...
— The Riverman • Stewart Edward White
... the webs of the spiders hang along the hedge bowed a little with dew, like hammocks of gossamer slung from thorn to thorn. Then the hedge-sparrows, perching on the topmost boughs of the hawthorn, cry 'peep-peep' mournfully; the heavy dew on the grass beneath arranges itself in two rows of drops along the edges of the blades. From the day when the first leaf appears upon the hardy woodbine, in the early year, to the time when the partridge finds ...
— Round About a Great Estate • Richard Jefferies
... evening of the last day of June when we rounded Kvarven and stood in for Bergen in the gloom of the sullen night. Next morning when I came on deck Vagen lay clear and bright in the sun, all the ships being gayly decked out with bunting from topmost to deck. The sun was holding high festival in the sky—Ulriken, Floeiren, and Loevstakken sparkled and glittered, and greeted me as of old. It is a marvellous place, that ...
— Farthest North - Being the Record of a Voyage of Exploration of the Ship 'Fram' 1893-1896 • Fridtjof Nansen
... were worn only through the streets, and laid by again as soon as they entered the forest. Silent, modest, dejected, the gentle savages used to vanish into the woods by paths known to their kinsfolk centuries ago—paths which run, wherever possible, along the vantage-ground of the topmost chines and ridges of the hills. The smoke of their fires rose out of lonely glens, as they collected the fruit of trees known only to themselves. In a few weeks their wild harvest was over; they came back through San Fernando; ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley
... thought. Fat chance they had of getting old. Who ever heard of an old war pilot? Ha! That's a good one! And here's a double row of tall poplars fringing the road directly ahead. Hold her close to the ground and then zoom her at the last minute ... landing gears just clearing the topmost branches ... make it, and that's hedge hopping. Fail to make it—and that's ...
— Aces Up • Covington Clarke
... live long enough, Doctor, you may see me on the topmost rundle, for I shall climb with ...
— The Allen House - or Twenty Years Ago and Now • T. S. Arthur
... seemed that the sixshooter was barely out of the holster before it was back again. But there was a swirl of smoke adrift in the windless air and the topmost branch of a wild currant bush thirty feet distant had been that instant ...
— The Heart of the Range • William Patterson White
... who have not seen a Persian walnut tree in full foliage, have something to live for. Imagine a tree, that was a nut in the spring of 1877, its branches now spreading full fifty feet, its topmost bough fully that far from the ground, its trunk measuring seventy-six inches around, well above ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association, Report of the Proceedings at the Fourth Annual Meeting - Washington D.C. November 18 and 19, 1913 • Various
... propelled himself up the hill to the bungalow that evening, and seated himself on the topmost step near where Eliza was rocking. She had come to occupy a considerable place in his thoughts of late, for she was quite beyond his understanding. She affected him as a mental gad-fly, stinging his mind into an activity quite unusual. At times he considered her ...
— The Iron Trail • Rex Beach
... been the turning-point in his life, when he had listened to the preacher, when he had walked the streets unmindful of the wet, led on by visions, racked by fears. And the same terror returned to him now after all the years of respite, tenfold increased, of falling in the sight of man from the topmost tower. ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... mounted the steps slowly, his mind crowded with memories—with what burning hatred in his heart he had come to face the owner of that house, to disarm Victor Mahr of his revengeful power. With what primeval elation he had stood upon that topmost step and drawn long breaths of satisfaction at the thought of the encounter in which, with his own hands he had laid his enemy low! Its thrill came to him anew. Again he recalled the hurried purposeful visit that had ended with his finding the enemy passed forever beyond ...
— Out of the Ashes • Ethel Watts Mumford
... lift her over the racing, fear-ridden creatures who clutched desperately at the wheels, and then the little ship shot ahead, barely cleared the trees to the east of the field, and began to roar at her topmost speed toward Rio. ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, May, 1930 • Various
... the gallery," she gasped; and on she went to the topmost of the large branches. There she paused, and from her lap she drew ...
— A Flat Iron for a Farthing - or Some Passages in the Life of an only Son • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... that way were also mine! O noble poet! thou whose heart Is like a nest of singing birds Rocked on the topmost bough of life, Wilt thou, too, from our sky depart, And in the clangor of the strife Mingle the music of ...
— The Golden Legend • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... tinged ruddily with the dying light, and between these crowding peaks was an arched opening, as if a vaulted passageway had been blasted through the mass of rock, giving a vista of pale blue sky, from which radiated prismic bars of light, while way above the topmost peak, like some beacon-light suspended high, swung the new moon, a slender crescent, also ...
— Sara, a Princess • Fannie E. Newberry
... he stood still and Userti sat herself down on the topmost step, resting her chin upon her jewelled hand. There he stood searching the place with his eyes. He lifted his sceptre and all rose, hundreds and hundreds of them throughout the hall, their garments rustling as they rose like leaves in a sudden wind. He seated himself and once ...
— Moon of Israel • H. Rider Haggard
... dawn broke, it found us traveling through a narrow valley, beside a stream of some width. Upon its banks grew trees of extraordinary height and girth; cypress and oak and walnut, they towered into the air, their topmost branches stark and black against the roseate heavens. Below that iron tracery glowed the firebrands of the maples, and here and there a willow leaned a pale green cloud above the stream. Mist closed the distances; we could hear, but not see, the ...
— To Have and To Hold • Mary Johnston
... hill, a cloud of misty blue when he started, now hung in aerial fluted cliffs above his head. As he raced across the long glacis which lay below the hill, he could see a solitary eagle wheeling round the topmost pinnacles, against the clear blue sky; then the hill was behind him, and before him another stretch of plain, bounded by timber, which marked ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley
... time, too, and sympathy, and kindness. It's no use, Mrs Willoughby. I've put you on the topmost pinnacle in my mind, and nothing that you can say can pull you down. I think you are the ...
— The Independence of Claire • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... ostriches," retorted Sergeant Archelaus, as he gained the topmost step and, after a fearful glance behind him, sank against a pilaster and ...
— Major Vigoureux • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... hastened away to Padua, drove to Arqua, "for Petrarch's sake," passed through Brescia in a flood of white moonlight, and having reached Milan climbed—the invalid of Wimpole Street and her husband—to the topmost point of the cathedral. From the Italian lakes they crossed by the St Gothard to Switzerland, and omitting part of their original scheme of wandering, journeyed in twenty-four hours without ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden
... d'un chene Then 'mid the flowers springing Que je m'suis repose; At the oak-tree's foot I lay; Sur la plus haute branche Sweet the nightingale was singing Le rossignol chantait. High on the topmost spray. ...
— Canada • J. G. Bourinot
... one hole he put a nail into it, and drove it almost through, but not quite through, as he said it might prove that he should wish to alter it. He then went to the other end of the same cross-bar, bored a hole there, and put a nail in, driving it as far as he had driven the first one. This was the topmost cross-bar of the ladder, and it was held securely in its place by the two nails. Stuyvesant then took the bottom cross-bar and secured that in the same way. Then he put on the other bars one at a time, ...
— Stuyvesant - A Franconia Story • Jacob Abbott
... mental condition, the impression of her came slowly. First it was as though I saw three cubes, one above the other, the largest in the middle. Then these took on clothing, blue calico with large polka dots, and the topmost one crowned itself with thin wisps of hair, parted in the middle and plastered down at the side. So, little by little, John Shadrack's widow grew on me, till I saw her a square little old woman, with a wrinkled, ...
— The Soldier of the Valley • Nelson Lloyd
... domes of quivering leaves contrasted with the columnar aisles of the banyan fig. They admired the old monarchs of the forest, bearded to the waist with hangings of moss, the flowing creepers delicately climbing from the lower branches to the topmost shoots, and the cordage of llianas stretching from trunk to trunk like bridges for the monkeys to pass over. Then they issued into a clear space dotted with asokas bearing rich crimson fiowers, cliterias of azure blue, madhavis exhibiting petals virgin white as the snows ...
— Vikram and the Vampire • Sir Richard F. Burton
... inflooence Genius is denied a suitable opening. At several literary Clubs in the West End I made the acquaintance of the authors whose letters you have just had the opportunity of reading—men who have since attained to the topmost pinnacle of Fame. At that time they were comparatively obscure; they 'eard my conversation, they realised that I 'ad ideers, of which they knew the value better, perhaps, than I did myself. I used ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, VOL. 100. Feb. 28, 1891 • Various
... you between two such miserable saplings as these? No! They would scorn to practice such pitiful torture. They would bring the tops of two tall pines together, trees a hundred and fifty feet high, and put their prisoner on the topmost boughs, for the crows and ravens to pick his eyes out. But you are miserable Injins! You know nothing. If you know'd any better, would you act such poor torment ag'in' a great brave? I spit upon ye, and call you squaws. The ...
— Oak Openings • James Fenimore Cooper
... hidden by the black throng, and still the crowds arrived, seating themselves row behind row on the wild thyme and heather. The topmost corner of the field merged into a rocky wilderness of stunted heath and patches of burnt grass, studded with harebells, and this unapportioned piece of ground stretched away into the adjoining corner ...
— By Berwen Banks • Allen Raine
... strength of lunacy, but Lottchen hung like a weight of lead upon her. She rushed into the room, but at the very entrance Lottchen fell. At that moment the assassin exchanged his stealthy pace for a loud clattering ascent. Already he was on the topmost stair; already he was throwing himself at a bound against the door, when Louisa, having dragged her sister into the room, closed the door and sent the bolt home in the very instant that the murderer's hand came into contact with the handle. Then, from the violence of her emotions, she ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... passage, and for some distance up the middle of the street. Then she stopped and looked up at one of the black houses. There were lights, more or less curtain-dimmed, in nearly all the windows. Emma regarded a faint gleam in the topmost storey. ...
— Demos • George Gissing
... from the skies, but each one comes from its own path, for were two to proceed from the same path, they would destroy the whole world. It hath never happened that a path hath been misplaced. Should I, then, have mistaken Job for another? The gazelle gives birth to her young on the topmost point of a rock, and it would fall into the abyss and be crushed to death, if I did not send an eagle thither to catch it up and carry it to its mother. Were the eagle to appear a minute earlier or later than the appointed time, the little gazelle would ...
— The Legends of the Jews Volume 1 • Louis Ginzberg
... High Street was almost empty of people at that early hour; one side was entirely covered by the cool morning shadow which lay on the pavement, and crept up the opposite houses till only the topmost story caught the rosy sunlight. Up the hill-road, through the gap in the stone wall, across the dewy fields, Sylvia went by the very shortest path ...
— Sylvia's Lovers — Complete • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... lifeless substances such as water, lime, sulphur, potash, and phosphorus are transformed and converted into living and organic vegetable matter, and from which this is sent forth to build up every part of the tree from deepest root to topmost sprig. It is in the leaves also that all the food of man and all other animals is prepared, for if any do not feed upon vegetable substances directly but upon flesh, that flesh nevertheless has been made only as vegetable food has been eaten to form ...
— Arbor Day Leaves • N.H. Egleston
... but agreed to continue our excursion, and find out what was here concealed. Our work to-day would make our progress to-morrow so much the easier. We therefore went on, and laid our course straight over the topmost flat terrace of the Heiberg Glacier. As we advanced, the ground between Nansen and Engelstad opened out more and more, and without going any farther we were able to decide from the formations that here we should undoubtedly find the best way up. If ...
— The South Pole, Volumes 1 and 2 • Roald Amundsen
... I assured her. But I was feeling hurt all the way up to my topmost hair and down to my tipmost toe. Not that I mind going with the Tyndals, but that Sir Lionel should pick me out as the bit of superfluous ballast to cast to the winds! That was what made me feel cold and old, and alone in ...
— Set in Silver • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... sixty feet higher than the first. This process is continued until the lode lying above the lowest level has been divided off into horizontal bands, each about sixty feet in depth. The quartz is then excavated above the topmost level, and thrown down the shafts to the lowest, where it is received into waggons and conveyed to the reduction works. As both the ore and the enclosing rocks are greatly decomposed and very soft, ...
— The Naturalist in Nicaragua • Thomas Belt
... presented him to the peer, and an engagement was made. In those days the patronage of a powerful peer was a ready road to preferment. Young Moore gave satisfaction to his noble patron, and was pushed up the ecclesiastical tree until he reached its topmost branch, being created in 1783 archbishop of Canterbury. In 1770 he formed a very judicious marriage with Miss Eden. This lady was sister of Sir Robert Eden, governor of Maryland in 1776 (who married the sister and co-heir ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 87, March, 1875 • Various
... height, he saw far off to westward a rising column of vapor which for a while diverted his thoughts. He recognized the column, even though he could not hear the distant roaring of the cataract he knew lay under it. And, standing erect and tall on the topmost pinnacle, eyes shaded under his level hand, he studied ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... as do earthly beetles, these insects stood erect on their two lower pairs of legs, which were of different lengths so that all four feet touched the ground when the shell was vertical. The two upper pairs of legs were used as arms, the topmost pair[A] being quite short and splitting out at the end into four flexible claws about five inches long, which they used as fingers. These upper arms, which sprouted from a point near the top of the head, were peculiar in that ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science September 1930 • Various
... side of the startled maiden, he sprang to the nearest length of the fence, here enclosing the road, and grappling, with main strength, the topmost of the heavy poles of which it was composed, soon effected a breach sufficiently low to allow the horse to leap over without endangering the seat ...
— The Rangers - [Subtitle: The Tory's Daughter] • D. P. Thompson
... of the fresh salt air, when he wriggled out into the well, was almost as good as a feast to him. He climbed hastily to the surface, and, as he crept out from under the topmost slab, took careful note of its position, and then scored with a piece of rock each stone which led up to it. For, if ever he should need an inner sanctuary, here was one to his hand, and evidently quite unknown to the ...
— A Maid of the Silver Sea • John Oxenham
... forest bough; Those homes of delight they need not now; And the young and the old they wander out, And traverse their green world round about; And hark! at the top of this leafy hall, How one to the other in love they call! "Come up! Come up!" they seem to say, "Where the topmost twigs ...
— Required Poems for Reading and Memorizing - Third and Fourth Grades, Prescribed by State Courses of Study • Anonymous
... was Penny's friendly voice, hailing him from the topmost landing of the steep stairs. "All winded, ...
— Murder at Bridge • Anne Austin
... terrible; and a woman, to say nothing of a woman who was in love with him, might well have felt a heart-sick fear at sight of that yawning water, and those towering walls of blackthorn, where one touch of the hoofs on the topmost bough, one spring too short of the gathered limbs, must have been death to both horse and rider. But, as she said it, she was smiling, radiant, full of easy calm and racing interest, as became her ladyship who had had "bets at even" before now on Goodwood fillies, and could lead the first ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... of ice, two feet thick, at a temperature below zero, are brought in by railroad from the lakes, and are placed on board the ships with a rapidity which must be seen to be appreciated. The blocks are packed in sawdust, which is used very much as mortar is used in a stone wall. Between the topmost layer of ice and the deck there is sometimes a layer of closely packed hay, and sometimes one of barrels of apples. It has occasionally happened that the profit upon the apples has paid the freight upon the ice, which usually amounts to about ten thousand dollars, ...
— Captains of Industry - or, Men of Business Who Did Something Besides Making Money • James Parton
... Excellenza, you can see him from the back terrace." The sun was not yet risen, but the east was bright with his coming, and there was not a cloud in the sky. All the features of Etna were sharply sculptured in the clear air. From the topmost cone, a thick stream of white smoke was slowly puffed out at short intervals, and rolled lazily down the eastern side. It had a heavy, languid character, and I should have thought nothing of the appearance but for the alarm of my hosts. ...
— The Lands of the Saracen - Pictures of Palestine, Asia Minor, Sicily, and Spain • Bayard Taylor
... that had taken form out of the elements. The muzzles of great guns rose tier above tier, along her side; great boats hung one above another, on successive pairs of davits, at her stern. So high was her hull, that the topmost boat and the topmost gun appeared to be suspended in middle air; and yet this was but the beginning of her altitude. Above these were the heavy masts, seen dimly through the mist; between these were spread eight dark lines of sailors' ...
— Malbone - An Oldport Romance • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... seized the man by the arm. His eyes were fixed upon the topmost step. Violet stood there, smiling down upon them. She was wearing a black and white gown, and a black hat with white ospreys. It was the hour of five o'clock tea and many people were passing in and out. She came gracefully down the steps. The ...
— Mr. Grex of Monte Carlo • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... changeful autumn, When the leaves are turning brown, From a tall oak's topmost branches Fell ...
— Ohio Arbor Day 1913: Arbor and Bird Day Manual - Issued for the Benefit of the Schools of our State • Various
... on the morrow shone over earth and sea Ashore went the Volsung Children a goodly company, And toward King Siggeir's dwelling o'er heath and holt they went But when they came to the topmost of a certain grassy bent, Lo there lay the land before them as thick with shield and spear As the rich man's wealthiest acre with the harvest of the year. There bade King Volsung tarry and dight the wedge-array; "For duly," he said, "doeth Siggeir to meet his guests by the way." So shield by shield ...
— The Story of Sigurd the Volsung and the Fall of the Niblungs • William Morris
... to shin that tree," announced Sam, and went up, and so did all of the others, reaching the topmost branches only after a difficult climb lasting ...
— The Rover Boys on the Plains - The Mystery of Red Rock Ranch • Arthur Winfield
... lifted up one of the gray-coloured, diamond-shaped paper seals. He moistened the adhesive side, and, still holding it by the tweezers, dropped it on his handkerchief and pressed the seal down on the face of the topmost package of banknotes. He tied the parcel up then, and, picking up the pen, ...
— The Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... time no spot was more inviting, the short moss-grass before its shattered door, the lichen on its crumbling stones. From its topmost platform one saw the distant mountains, faint like spectres, and the silent ships that came and vanished; and about one's feet the pleasant farm lands ...
— Paul Kelver • Jerome Klapka, AKA Jerome K. Jerome
... example of most ambitious men of his class by repairing to St. Petersburg (whither, as we know, the more spirited youth of Russia from every quarter gravitates—there to enter the Public Service, to shine, to obtain promotion, and, in a word, to scale the topmost peaks of that pale, cold, deceptive elevation which is known as society). But the real starting-point of Tientietnikov's ambition was the moment when his uncle (one State Councillor Onifri Ivanovitch) instilled into him the maxim that the only ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... get nearer, so as to touch them," said he, and immediately the obedient cloak ducked down; Prince Dolor made a snatch at the topmost twig of the tallest tree, and caught a bunch of leaves in ...
— The Little Lame Prince - And: The Invisible Prince; Prince Cherry; The Prince With The Nose - The Frog-Prince; Clever Alice • Miss Mulock—Pseudonym of Maria Dinah Craik
... branches of the Civil Service are so rigidly provided for that the foreign service is like the topmost rock which you sometimes see in old pictures of the Deluge. The pressure for a place in it is ...
— The United States Since The Civil War • Charles Ramsdell Lingley
... the topmost stair now, and a key was thrust with a rasping sound into the lock. But before it could be turned—it fortunately fitted ill—we three had jumped on the bed and were crouching in a row at the head of it, where the curtains of the alcove concealed, and ...
— The House of the Wolf - A Romance • Stanley Weyman
... there should be in any respectable house. The only door was in the upper story, and was reached by a flight of rickety steps. There was no sign of life about the place except—sight of ill omen—a large black cat, sitting on the topmost step. We thought of Uncle Roger's gruesome hints. Could that black cat be Peg? Nonsense! But still—it didn't look like an ordinary cat. It was so large—and had such green, malicious eyes! Plainly, there was something out of the ...
— The Story Girl • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... bottom of the icy sea, which covered it with huge masses of drift and boulder clay. Sea-beasts, such as the walrus, now restricted to the extreme north, paddled about where birds had twittered among the topmost twigs of the fir-trees. How long this state of things endured we know not, but at length it came to an end. The upheaved glacial mud hardened into the soil of modern Norfolk. Forests grew once more, the wolf and the beaver replaced the reindeer and the elephant; ...
— Autobiography and Selected Essays • Thomas Henry Huxley
... after one of these depressing interviews with Waters that Ralph and Evelyn found the new owner of Vandon, when they rode over together to call, a day or two after the school-feast. Poor Dare was sitting on the low ivy-covered wall of the topmost terrace, a prey to the deepest dejection. If he had lived in Spartan days, when it was possible to conceal gnawing foxes under wearing apparel, he would have made no use of the advantages of Grecian dress for such a purpose. Captivated by Evelyn's ...
— The Danvers Jewels, and Sir Charles Danvers • Mary Cholmondeley
... the topmost floor in the electric lift, passing to the left and up five stairs in accordance with the lift boy's instructions, the intending client would be faced by three doors. Upon the first ...
— Once Aboard The Lugger • Arthur Stuart-Menteth Hutchinson
... heart of the King's dominions stood the palace, perfect in beauty, from its dazzling foundations to its topmost flaming turret. Brightness unquenchable shone from its walls, warmth and the spirit of friendliness streamed from its windows and wide-flung golden doors. Beyond it, in the garden of the Princess, ...
— The Shadow Witch • Gertrude Crownfield
... pile untouched for some time, Mr. Spatt took advantage of the diversion caused by the brushing of the cloth and the distribution of finger-bowls to glance at the topmost letter, which was addressed in ...
— The Lion's Share • E. Arnold Bennett
... a hand appeared on the topmost rung of the nearer ladder, and a bulky sailor, a very human sailor in very human dungarees, poked his head out of the aperture, surveyed ...
— World's War Events, Volume III • Various
... and shaking hands with Dic and Mrs. Bright, Billy hurried out through the door, and the new-made husband and wife watched him as he mounted and rode away. He was singing—not humming, but singing—at his topmost pitch, "Maxwelton's braes are bonny, where early falls the dew." He had never before been known to complete the stanza. His voice could be heard after he had passed out of sight into the forest, and just as the sun peeped from the east, turning the frost ...
— A Forest Hearth: A Romance of Indiana in the Thirties • Charles Major
... days after these things, the younger brother was in the valley of the acacia; there was none with him; he spent his time in hunting the beasts of the desert, and he came back in the even to lie down under the acacia, which bore his soul upon the topmost flower. And after this he built himself a tower with his own hands, in the valley of the acacia; it was full of all good things, that he might provide for ...
— Egyptian Tales, Second Series - Translated from the Papyri • W. M. Flinders Petrie
... under an olive tree, Which by the reins two Sarrazins do lead; Those messengers have wrapped them in their weeds, To the palace they climb the topmost steep. When they're come in, the vaulted roof beneath, Marsilium with courtesy they greet: "May Mahumet, who all of us doth keep, And Tervagan, and our lord Apoline Preserve the, king and guard from harm the queen!" Says Bramimunde "Great foolishness I hear: ...
— The Song of Roland • Anonymous
... dizzy exaltation of him who mounts above the world. Alas, in me is no such unfathomable mystery. I but trick myself. Yet I have my moments. These stones that I carry on the mountain, what of them? On what windy ridge do I build my castle? It is shrill and bleak, they say, on the topmost peaks of the Delectable Mountains, so lower down I have reared its walls. There is no storm in these upland valleys and the sun sits pleasantly on their southern slopes. But even if there be unfolded no broad prospect from the devil to the sunrise, there ...
— Journeys to Bagdad • Charles S. Brooks
... the bare stumps within his field, Truncheons cleft four-wise, or sharp-pointed stakes; Some forest-trees the layer's bent arch await, And slips yet quick within the parent-soil; No root need others, nor doth the pruner's hand Shrink to restore the topmost shoot to earth That gave it being. Nay, marvellous to tell, Lopped of its limbs, the olive, a mere stock, Still thrusts its root out from the sapless wood, And oft the branches of one kind we see Change to another's ...
— The Georgics • Virgil
... birds' turn to perform. Hundreds of wood-grouse in shining dark-brown array, and with bright red eyebrows, flung themselves up into a great oak that stood in the centre of the playground. The one who sat upon the topmost branch fluffed up his feathers, lowered his wings, and lifted his tail so that the white covert-feathers were seen. Thereupon he stretched his neck and sent forth a couple of deep notes from his thick throat. "Tjack, tjack, tjack," it sounded. More than this he could not utter. It ...
— The Wonderful Adventures of Nils • Selma Lagerlof
... citizens, before the eyes of the proudest and fairest mothers and daughters of New Orleans, glaringly, on the open Plaza, the Creole whom Joseph had met by the graves in the field, Honore Grandissime, the uttermost flower on the topmost branch of the tallest family tree ever transplanted from France to Louisiana, Honore,—the worshiped, the magnificent,—in the broad light of the sun's going down, rode side by side with the Yankee ...
— The Grandissimes • George Washington Cable
... standing upright with a broad, lofty passage-way through its entire trunk, large enough for our stage, laden with passengers inside and out, to drive through. Though time has made such havoc with this trunk, it still possesses sufficient vitality to bear leaves upon its topmost branches, some three hundred feet above the ground. It is curious that these enormous trees, among the largest upon the globe, have cones only about the size of walnuts, with seeds of hardly a quarter of an inch in length. There ...
— Foot-prints of Travel - or, Journeyings in Many Lands • Maturin M. Ballou
... establishes thee, So that in everything thou dost prosper. Like the high hills and the mountain masses, Like the topmost ridges and the greatest bulks, Like the stream ever coming on, Such is ...
— The Shih King • James Legge
... a shallower rise and a wider tread when they approach the top. The next notable point is the formation of the tread of the upper flooded step. This is grooved by a somewhat circular sinking, from 4 to 5in. wide, immediately against the riser of the topmost step. Everyone frequenting a public bath must have noticed the dashing of the water against the wall or upper step, and the nuisance created from the breaking of the water against it. The grooving would remedy, I believe, this annoyance, as the little waves of water would be made ...
— The Excavations of Roman Baths at Bath • Charles E. Davis
... that each waved his hat Upon the topmost peak— To trivial query such as this No answer will I seek. Yet can I tell the distance well They must have travelled o'er: On hill and plain, 'twixt three and nine, The miles ...
— A Tangled Tale • Lewis Carroll
... melody than the orchard orioles. What a ringing voice the oriole possesses! His song has a saucy note of challenge running through it, and also a human intonation that makes it rarely attractive. All day long the male sings his cheery solos, scarcely pausing for breath or food, now sitting on the topmost twig of a dead apple tree in the orchard, now amid the screening foliage of a maple in the yard, and anon on the other side of the street in a stately cottonwood. But where is that modest little personage, his wife? She ...
— Our Bird Comrades • Leander S. (Leander Sylvester) Keyser
... second infant mustered up courage to start on the journey of life. A tall twig led from the nest straight up into the air, and this was the ladder he mounted. Step by step he climbed one leaf-stem after another, with several pauses to cry and to eat, and at last reached the topmost point, where he turned his face to the west, and took his first survey of the kingdoms of the earth. A brother nestling was close behind him, and the pretty pair, seeing no more steps above them, rested a while from their labors. In the mean time the first young oriole had gone farther into the ...
— A Bird-Lover in the West • Olive Thorne Miller
... large square panels by pilasters or columns set pretty close together, the topmost story having candelabrum shafts, the one below it Corinthian columns, the lowest Doric pilasters, and the half-story below pedestals for these pilasters. Entablatures with ornamental friezes divide each story, while at the top the centre is raised to admit of ...
— Portuguese Architecture • Walter Crum Watson
... to the student, are placed in a low, dark corridor. Not a glimmer of light can be obtained on some of the cases, which also are upright, and placed so closely together that on attempting to see the topmost specimen on one side the unfortunate student literally bangs her head into the glass of the next one. A gentle complaint at the Directors' office concerning the difficulty brought forth the astonishing information ...
— Chats on Old Lace and Needlework • Emily Leigh Lowes
... on the boughs Of some tall graceful ash, or maple tree? Each leaf illumin'd by the noon-tide beam Transparent shines.—Anon a heavy cloud Floats for a moment o'er the car of day, And gloom descends upon the forest bowers; A ray steals forth—and on the topmost twig Falls, like a silver star. From leaf to leaf The glory spreads, shoots down the rugged trunk And gilds each spray, till the whole tree stands forth Arrayed in light.—This is beyond thy art. All thy enthusiasm, all thy boasted skill, But ...
— Enthusiasm and Other Poems • Susanna Moodie
... far away, seen from the topmost cliff, Filling with purple gloom the vacancies Between the tufted hills the sloping seas Hung in mid-heaven, and half-way down rare sails, White as white clouds, floated from sky to sky. Oh! pleasant breast of waters, quiet bay, Like to a quiet mind ...
— The Suppressed Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson • Alfred Lord Tennyson
... pitched our tent under the lee of the topmost knob of rock and ate a couple of handfuls of dried fish and corn-cake. This was the last of the food that we had brought with us from the Lamasery, and we reflected with dismay that unless we could shoot something, our commissariat was now represented by the carcass of our old friend ...
— Ayesha - The Further History of She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed • H. Rider Haggard
... this is afforded by the picture of the Sekhet-Aaru, or Elysian Fields, which is given in the Papyrus of Anhai, [Footnote: Brit. Mus., No. 10,472.] a priestess of Amen who lived probably about B.C. 1000. Here we see the deceased entering into the topmost section of the district and addressing two divine persons; above one of these are written the words "her mother," followed by the name Neferitu. The form which comes next is probably that of her father, and thus we are sure that the Egyptians believed they would meet their relatives in ...
— Egyptian Ideas of the Future Life • E. A. Wallis Budge
... that scarce the feathery weed Sown by some eagle on the topmost stone Swayed in the air:—so bright, that noon did breed 1245 No shadow in the sky beside mine own— Mine, and the shadow of my chain alone. Below, the smoke of roofs involved in flame Rested like night, all else was clearly shown In that broad glare; yet sound to me none came, 1250 ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... is now at its best. The magpie-robin is in full song. At earliest dawn he takes up a position on the topmost bough of a tree and pours forth his melody in a continuous stream. His varied notes are bright and joyous. Its voice is of wide compass and very powerful; were it a little softer in tone it would rival that of the nightingale. The magpie-robin is comparatively ...
— A Bird Calendar for Northern India • Douglas Dewar
... at the door and looked up into the branches. They were very much forked, and upon every difficult branch Hugh had nailed steps and made a railing. In some of the forks he had inserted wooden seats, others he had left to nature. The topmost seat was almost at the summit of the tree, and behind it was firmly lashed a flagpole, with a Union Jack hanging limply in the still air, and a lantern with green and red glass on two of its sides. Near the door of the little house there hung from a stout branch a curious-looking ...
— The Happy Adventurers • Lydia Miller Middleton
... farther station. It seems to throw its head back, like a laughing senior when children struggle up for kissings. The party of five had come through the vines from Stresa and from Baveno. The mountain was strange to them, and they had already reckoned twice on having the topmost eminence in view, when reaching it they found themselves on a fresh plateau, traversed by wild water-courses, and browsed by Alpine herds; and again the green dome was distant. They came to the highest chalet, where a hearty wiry young fellow, busily employed in making cheese, invited them to the ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... stood he on the topmost peak of praise From tongues of men, as mountains tipped with snow Stand with their lofty foreheads all a-glow, Lit up with beauty by ...
— The Death of Saul and other Eisteddfod Prize Poems and Miscellaneous Verses • J. C. Manning
... of New York there was practising, at that time, a lawyer by the name of Bansemer. His office, on the topmost floor of a dingy building in the lower section of the city, was not inviting. On leaving the elevator, one wound about through narrow halls and finally peered, with more or less uncertainty and misgiving, at the half-obliterated sign which said that James Bansemer held forth ...
— Jane Cable • George Barr McCutcheon
... of nothing but somehow reaching the garden. Once there he would face the next difficulty. One was enough at a time. And then, when he had made the rope fast to one of the marble pillars and slid down it, it proved too short. He swung with his feet just touching the topmost branch of a blossoming peach tree. There was nothing for it but to let go, snatch at the branches as he fell and trust to chance for safety. He found it; and dropped to the ground amid a perfect shower of shed ...
— The Adventures of Akbar • Flora Annie Steel
... early morning sail. Satisfied upon this point, the Indian next made his way round to the front of the palace, and here at once the evidences of a visit of a large party of people to the palace, some time during the preceding night, once more presented themselves, the latest—that is to say the topmost—set of footprints showing that quite a crowd of people had hurried from the main entrance of the building down the broad path leading to the entrance gates of the garden and thence into the main road. Moreover, ...
— Harry Escombe - A Tale of Adventure in Peru • Harry Collingwood
... the topmost letter and a moist silence prevailed till a sudden jerk fished up the bag, and before the dolls could recover their wits they were spread out on the floor of a mail car to dry, while several busy men sorted and saved such papers and ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag VI - An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott
... the ardor of the assailants. They threw themselves from their horses, and, bringing forward the scaling-ladders, planted them against the walls. Gonsalvo was the first to gain the summit; and, as a powerful Moor endeavored to thrust him from the topmost round of the ladder, he grasped the battlements firmly with his left hand and dealt the infidel such a blow with the sword in his right, as brought him headlong to the ground. He then leapt into the place, and was speedily followed by his troops. The enemy made a brief and ineffectual resistance. ...
— The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella The Catholic, V2 • William H. Prescott
... had traversed all about it, with great interest, and had gone up to the topmost round of seats, and turning from the lovely panorama closed in by the distant Alps, looked down into the building, it seemed to lie before me like the inside of a prodigious hat of plaited straw, with an enormously broad brim and a shallow crown; the plaits being ...
— Pictures from Italy • Charles Dickens
... precipitous climb in the truck that hauled them, up and up, to the head of the high diamonded stair; the brief, exciting passage along the gangway to the boat that waited for them, its prow positively overhanging the topmost edge, the sliding lip of danger, where the rails plunged shining to the blackness below; the race they had for the front seat where, Ranny said, they would get the best of it; and ...
— The Combined Maze • May Sinclair
... of the topmost chambers of the Hotel Plaza, Nikasti, after his conference with Von Schwerin and Fischer, sought solitude. He opened the high windows, out of which he could scarcely see, dragged up a chest of drawers and perched himself, Oriental fashion, on the top, his long yellow ...
— The Pawns Count • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... weight on the seat of the chair, thereby balancing Bates and preventing an upset. Miss Willmot sat on the corner of the table, so that it wobbled very little. Bates, perilously balanced, hammered a nail, the last necessary nail, into the wall through the topmost ray of a large white star. Then he ...
— Our Casualty And Other Stories - 1918 • James Owen Hannay, AKA George A. Birmingham
... Their steps made precise clicks on the layaplast floor. The stainless steel walls threw back tinny echoes. The chromium molding glistened, always pointing the way—the straight and mathematical way. They were in the topmost section of the topmost building of Computer City. The several hundred clean, solid, wedding-cake structures of the town could be seen ...
— Two Plus Two Makes Crazy • Walt Sheldon
... of chestnut-trees as blue and leafless as a grove of spears; and in the plain between the river and the wood stood a great palace of gray stone, with turrets, pinnacles, and battlemented walls, over the topmost tower of which a broad flag, blazoned with golden lions and silver lilies square for square, whipped the winter wind. Amid a group of towers large and small a lofty stack poured out a plume of sea-coal smoke against the milky sky, and on the countless windows in ...
— Master Skylark • John Bennett
... toward the north, and three more close together looking west, and forming a bay so deep as to be quite a small room in itself. It almost overhung the high-road, only a tall holly-hedge being between them, but so near that the topmost twigs of the holly grew up to the window-sill. It was a quiet road, however, too far from the town for much traffic, and Evadne could sit there with the windows open undisturbed, and enjoy the long level prospect of fertile land, ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... feet square, of the topmost story, is open to the sky, but the original intention was to provide a light dome, presumably similar to that built a little later to crown the mausoleum of Itimad-ud-daula. Finch, the traveller, who ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... sorrow, grow poor to enrich, To fill up his life, starve my own out, I would—knowing which, I know that my service is perfect. Oh, speak thro' me now! Would I suffer for him that I love? So wouldst Thou—so wilt Thou! 300 So shall crown Thee the topmost, ineffablest, uttermost crown— And Thy love fill infinitude wholly, nor leave up nor down One spot for the creature to stand in! It is by no breath, Turn of eye, wave of hand, that salvation joins issue with death! As Thy ...
— Browning's Shorter Poems • Robert Browning
... officer who had been sent on in advance pointed out a figure perched on the topmost rail of a fence overlooking the road and field, and said it was Jackson. Approaching, I saluted and declared my name and rank, then waited for a response. Before this came I had time to see a pair of cavalry boots covering feet of gigantic size, a mangy ...
— Destruction and Reconstruction: - Personal Experiences of the Late War • Richard Taylor
... lilac-tinted cuckoo-flowers, drawn up on taller stalks than those that grow in the meadows. The black flowers of the sedges are powdered with yellow pollen; and dark green sword-flags are beginning to spread their fans. But just across the road, on the topmost twigs of birch poles, swallows twitter in the tenderest tones to their loves. From the oaks in the meadows on that side titlarks mount above the highest bough and then descend, sing, sing, singing, ...
— Nature Near London • Richard Jefferies
... in his scheme of punishment, representing the souls crying out in their diligence, "Haste, haste, let no time be lost through little love." These souls are condemned to rush round and round at the topmost speed, those in front proclaiming instances of alacrity, viz., how the Blessed Virgin hastened to the hill country to visit Elizabeth and how Julius Caesar hurried to subdue Lerida. Those in the rear recall examples ...
— Dante: "The Central Man of All the World" • John T. Slattery
... Taking out the topmost sheet, she shook it open. Then the next and the next till she reached the bottom of the box. Nothing of a criminating nature came to light. The box as well as its contents was without mystery of any kind. This was not an unexpected result of course, but the smile with which she began to refold ...
— The Golden Slipper • Anna Katharine Green
... immense pile of buildings, cumbrous and uncouth. These were built something in the fashion of an inverted pyramid; to wit, the smaller area occupying the basement, and the larger spreading out into the topmost story. As she turned the corner of this vast hive of habitation—for many families were located therein—a gay cavalier, sumptuously attired, swept round at the same moment. Man and maid stood still for one instant. With unpropitious courtesy, an unlucky gust turned aside Kate's veil ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... at the critical moment with a stream teeming with crocodiles. He mutilates himself to prove his innocence, and announces that henceforth he will lead a mysterious existence far from mankind; he will retire to the Valley of the Acacia, place his heart on the topmost flower of the tree, and no one will be able with impunity to steal it from him. The gods, however, who frequent this earth take pity on his loneliness, and create for him a wife of such beauty that the Nile falls in love with her, and steals ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 5 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... ever get you away from that. Villiers de l'Isle-Adam once wrote an essay on "Le Sadisme anglais," and supported it with a translation of a large part of "Anactoria." And even Paris was startled. A rare trick for a supreme genius to play on the country of his birth, enshrining in the topmost heights of its literature a lovely poem that cannot be discussed!... Well, Swinburne has got the better of us there. He has simply knocked to pieces the theory that great art is inseparable from the Ten Commandments. His greatest poem ...
— Books and Persons - Being Comments on a Past Epoch 1908-1911 • Arnold Bennett
... stood out clear and beautiful against the gray sky; the men ceased their work and watched it. The vibrations became more violent, and the sounds they produced grew louder and louder till they reached a shrill wild cry. There came a pause, then a deep shuddering groan. The topmost branches began to move slowly, the whole stately bulk swayed, and then shot towards the ground. The gigantic trunk bounded from the stump, recoiled like a cannon, crashed down, and lay conquered, with a roar as of an earthquake, in a cloud of ...
— A Mountain Woman and Others • (AKA Elia Wilkinson) Elia W. Peattie
... six mounted banditti remained there three days, and plundered whomsoever approached from either quarter: their horses, saddled and bridled, stood picqueted at the foot of the trees, and two scouts, one for each eminence, continually sat in the topmost branches and gave notice of the approach of travellers: when at a proper distance the robbers below sprang upon their horses, and putting them to full gallop, made at their prey, shouting Rendete, Picaro! Rendete, Picaro! (Surrender, scoundrel, surrender!) We, ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... with an air of stupefaction, as if he hesitated to believe so great an enormity. Dagobert, regretting, his violence, and feeling that no means of conciliation note remained, threw a rapid glance around him, and, retreating several paces, gained the topmost steps of the staircase. The burgomaster stood near the bench, in a corner of the landing-place, whilst Morok, with his arm in the sling, to give the more serious appearance to his wound, was close beside him. "So!" cried the magistrate, deceived by the backward movement of Dagobert, "you think to ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... highest station he can reach, to enjoy himself; and rises to the topmost boughs of trees, though the female makes her nest on ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 264, July 14, 1827 • Various
... down the stairs I stood and chuckled to myself, As I remembered how I'd oft explored the topmost closet shelf. It all came back again to me—with what a shrewd and cunning way I, too, had often sought to solve the mysteries of Christmas Day. How many times my daddy, too, had come upstairs without a sound And caught me, just as I'd ...
— The Path to Home • Edgar A. Guest
... For we two will rise Upon the city's fall. The common folk Shall suffer; Naaman shall sink with them In wreck; but I shall rise, and you shall rise Above me! You shall climb, through incense-smoke, And days of pomp, and nights of revelry, Unto the topmost room in Rimmon's tower, The secret, lofty room, the couch of bliss, And the ...
— The Poems of Henry Van Dyke • Henry Van Dyke
... the sideboard, and after she had drunk it they sat for some few minutes in agitated silence. The street sounds outside had died away. Julian's was the topmost flat in the block, and their isolation was complete. He suddenly ...
— The Devil's Paw • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... women. There is no stone so sympathetic as the opal, which one might fancy to be a concentration of Mrs. Browning's genius. It is essentially the woman-stone, giving out a sympathetic warmth, varying its colors from day to day, as though an index of the heart's barometer. There is the topmost purity of white, blended with the delicate, perpetual verdure of hope, and down in the opal's centre lies the deep crimson of love. The red, the white, and the green, forming as they do the colors of Italy, render the opal doubly like Mrs. Browning. It is right ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 47, September, 1861 • Various
... sea. This happens generally between six and eight o'clock in the morning, when the thermometer is upon an average at about 72 degrees. During this interval the sea is as smooth as glass, and not a zephyr is found to disport even among the topmost boughs of ...
— Statistical, Historical and Political Description of the Colony of New South Wales and its Dependent Settlements in Van Diemen's Land • William Charles Wentworth
... some worthless succedona for such, who strive not to do their god-given duty though the world reward them with a gibbet, but to win wages of gold and grub, to obtain idle praise by empty plausibility. They aspire to ride the topmost wave, not of a tempestuous ocean which tries the heart of oak and the hand of iron, but of some pitiful sectarian mud-puddle or political goose pond. Under the guidance of these shallow self-seekers we have abandoned the ...
— Volume 12 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... save the beat, beat, of the great water pulses, whilst every eye is strained towards the fluttering garments flapping against the wall. Will the ladder reach, and not dislodge those weary hands clutching so convulsively to the hot stone? Will the nimble figure gain the topmost rung ere nature fails? The blood in a thousand hearts runs cold, and then again break forth a thousand cheers to celebrate a daring rescue. Such scenes as this are of almost nightly occurrence in the Great Metropolis. A still more imposing ...
— Fires and Firemen • Anon.
... surface of the still pools like gigantic frog-broods. There were on the ridges warrior trees burning in the vindictiveness of a long forgotten cause—a blaze of crimson scimitar thorns from root to topmost twig; and down again in the cool hollows were lady-bushes making twilight of the green gloom with their cloudy ivory blossoms and filling the shadows with such a heavy scent that head and heart reeled with fatal pleasure as one pushed aside their ...
— Gulliver of Mars • Edwin L. Arnold
... 17th of October the charter, which the king had sworn to observe twelve years before, was solemnly handed back to him at the palace, Frederick III. thereupon promising to rule as a Christian king to the satisfaction of all the Estates of the realm. On the following day the king, seated on the topmost step of a lofty tribune surmounted by a baldaquin, erected in the midst of the principal square of Copenhagen, received the public homage of his subjects of all ranks, in the presence of an immense concourse, on which occasion he again promised to rule "as a Christian hereditary king and ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 2 - "Demijohn" to "Destructor" • Various
... by an opportune stumble and a noisy effort to recover himself, at the same instant aiming a stealthy kick at the topmost round of the ladder, and scrambling ostentatiously over the edge of the trap. The ladder went down thirty or forty feet with a racket, clattering and banging against ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 10 • Various
... of goods, be it slippers, brass-work, or embroideries, alternating with eatables, fruit, pipes, and the like, there being no attempt at classification. Woe be to the unwary who approach these bazars without the ability to "bargain"; for there is ever a scale of prices, and the topmost ...
— Travels in the Far East • Ellen Mary Hayes Peck
... tall tree, and waves his wings, and sinks to the swaying twigs. I hear too a quail piping from the meadow fence, and another trilling his answering whistle from the hills. Nearer by, a tyrant king-bird is poised on the topmost branch of a veteran pear-tree, and now and then dashes down, assassin-like, upon some homebound, honey-laden bee, and then with a smack of his ...
— Dream Life - A Fable Of The Seasons • Donald G. Mitchell
... south, some five miles distant. It was a slender, inaccessible, dizzy spire of black rock, the angles of which were too steep to retain snow. A great upward-curving horn of rock sprang out from its topmost pinnacle. For a long time it ...
— A Voyage to Arcturus • David Lindsay |
