"Zigzag" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... evening flight. It is a revelation. They rise above the houses and shoot across my sky like a charge of canister. I can almost hear them whizz. Down by the cemetery I have seen them dash into view high up in the slit of sky, dive for the trees, dart zigzag like a madly plunging kite, and hurl themselves, as soft as ...
— Roof and Meadow • Dallas Lore Sharp
... walking along the edge of the green mound on which the Montmartre telegraph stands. Below me, along one of the zigzag paths which wind up the hill, a man and a girl were coming up, and arrested my attention. The man wore a shaggy coat, which gave him some resemblance to a wild beast; and he held a thick stick in his hand, with which he described various strange figures ...
— An "Attic" Philosopher, Complete • Emile Souvestre
... men could be seen creeping across the plain like ants, now hesitating and dropping, now running on from shelter to shelter. To Brand they seemed as numberless as the pebbles on the seashore. His face grew grave as he saw how near they were to the long zigzag line of entrenchments. The Thetian firing, too, had certainly slackened. A horrible idea flashed into his brain. If the weakening fire were due to lack ...
— The Traitors • E. Phillips (Edward Phillips) Oppenheim
... picturesque town, built up a steep promontory, the old part at the bottom, very dingy and mouldy, the new part at the top, very showy and elegant. Nothing can be more exquisite in its way than the grande place in the very heart of the city, surrounded with those toppling, zigzag, ten-storied buildings bedizened all over with ornaments and emblems so peculiar to the Netherlands, with the brocaded Hotel de Ville on one side, with its impossible spire rising some three hundred and seventy feet into the air and embroidered ...
— Memoir of John Lothrop Motley, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... number of articles such as pillows, books, handkerchiefs, inexpensive bric-a-brac, etc., on the floor. One person acts as leader and walks in a zigzag path around the obstacles, followed by the others. Then one of the party is blindfolded and told by the leader to "follow my foot-steps and if you do not break or mar anything you shall ...
— Games For All Occasions • Mary E. Blain
... that their past omission of corresponding with you, is, in a considerable measure, unaccountable. It is certainly better to step forward towards a man of candor, in the straight line of honest confession, than in the zigzag track of awkward apology. ...
— The Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution, Vol. I • Various
... and crouched close to his master's legs, but Rose ran again to the door and stood, heedless of the rain which beat in upon her wind-whipped skirt, peering out with evident delight. A still more vivid, zigzag flash rent the serried masses of black storm-clouds which were rolling up over the mountain's top, edging the nearer one with fire, and she laughed merrily and clapped her hands ...
— 'Smiles' - A Rose of the Cumberlands • Eliot H. Robinson
... Mother ere she sleep, Looks out upon the zigzag-lighted square, The beautiful bare trees, the blue night-air, The revelation of the star-strewn deep, World above world, and heaven over heaven. Between the tree-tops and the skies, her sight Rests on a steadfast, ruddy-shining light, High in the tower, ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. I (of II.), Narrative, Lyric, and Dramatic • Emma Lazarus
... 'Ay, ay, my dear, chalk it down, a damned dangerous navigation, eh! If you don't make a sputter about it you'll get no credit in England.' After we had cleared this remarkable place, where the channel forms a complete zigzag, the master called to his mate to give the helm to somebody else, saying, 'Damn me if there are not a thousand places in the Thames fifty times more hazardous than this; I am ashamed that Englishmen should make such a rout about it.' The Frenchman asked ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman
... breakfast, Maltese boatmen in scarlet caps and sashes, who stood up while handling their oars, rowed us to the shore. Their brightly painted boats had peculiar carved wooden posts erected at prow and stern and white awnings overhead. Walking up a sloping, zigzag pathway, constructed in a passage cut down through the high cliffs, we ascended from the busy docks to the heights above. At the summit a Maltese gentleman kindly directed us on our way to the Queen's Garden located ...
— A Trip to the Orient - The Story of a Mediterranean Cruise • Robert Urie Jacob
... the Lachu and the Shakta join the Kali, was Dubart (3700 feet), and from thence one gradually rose to 4120 feet at the Relegar River, also a tributary of the larger stream. Having crossed the Rankuti River I ascended still higher by zigzag walking, slowly leaving behind me range after range of mountains beyond the valley of the river; while on the Nepal side, beyond the three nearer ranges, snow peaks of great height and beauty stood out against the sky-line. The ...
— In the Forbidden Land • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... of the table land; ascended it, which they all did well except one horse, which refused to go up, and caused me to lose more than an hour with him; we had to take all the things off him and carry them to the top on our backs. We had to zigzag him backwards and forwards, and got him to the top after a deal of trouble. Crossing on the top we met with a large fire about two miles broad. The wind not being strong, nor the grass very long, we got through it well, but ...
— Explorations in Australia, The Journals of John McDouall Stuart • John McDouall Stuart
... zigzag-cornered fence Where sassafras, intrenched in brambles dense, Contests with stolid vehemence The march of culture, setting limb and thorn As pikes against the army of ...
— The Poems of Sidney Lanier • Sidney Lanier
... consisted everywhere of perfectly vertical cliffs, some two hundred feet high, so that, look where I would, I could at first discover no way down into it. Looking a little closer, however, I presently became aware of an exceedingly narrow and dangerous zigzag path traversing the cliff-face, about a quarter of a mile farther on, and toward this we at once made our way. A quarter of an hour later, having first encountered a sentry at the upper end of the path, to whom Carlos whispered some password which I could not catch, we found ourselves ...
— A Middy of the King - A Romance of the Old British Navy • Harry Collingwood
... storm spirits had maliciously waited that their onset might be the more effective, for when all was quiet, and everybody in camp asleep, the muttering of the thunder grew louder, lightning began to zigzag across the black cloud masses, and the whistling of the wind deepened to a steady ominous growl. Tent ropes creaked under the strain of the heavy blasts; trees writhed and twisted, and the rain came in gusts, swift, ...
— The Torch Bearer - A Camp Fire Girls' Story • I. T. Thurston
... having no desire to throw obstacles in the way, promptly told Ben he was at liberty, and he lost no time in profiting by the information. Just as he passed out of the door, he saw his master coming, and ran full speed. He had sufficient presence of mind to take a zigzag course, and running through a house occupied by colored people, he succeeded in ...
— Isaac T. Hopper • L. Maria Child
... finally went up in smoke as the rest. You could not look in any direction in the city but what mass after mass of flame stared you in the face. To get about one had to dodge from one street to another, back and forth in zigzag fashion, and half an hour after going through a street, it would be impassable. One after another of the magnificent business blocks went down. The newer buildings seemed to have withstood the shock better than any others, except well-built frame buildings. ...
— The San Francisco Calamity • Various
... the triodia, it is almost as annoying, both to horse and man, as it grows too high for either to step over without stretching, and it is too strong to be easily moved aside; hence, horse-tracks in this region go zigzag. ...
— Australia Twice Traversed, The Romance of Exploration • Ernest Giles
... distant flapping of pantalettes and frilled trousers, going up what seemed to be a ladder, farther back in the shed. So, with a dissatisfied cluck, Miss Petingill drew back her head, perched the spectacles on her nose, and went to work again on Katy's plaid alpaca, which had two immense zigzag rents across the middle of the front breadth. Katy's frocks, strange to say, always ...
— What Katy Did • Susan Coolidge
... has come to us zigzag as quick as lightning, yet it does not flash conviction upon ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. III - Belinda • Maria Edgeworth
... manner of opening communication with parties known or supposed to be hostile is to ride toward them in zigzag manner, or to ride in a circle. (Custer's My Life on the Plains, loc. ...
— Sign Language Among North American Indians Compared With That Among Other Peoples And Deaf-Mutes • Garrick Mallery
... memorandum which your correspondent may desire to make concerning anything contained in the letter, but its greater value lies in the open, airy, and cheerful dress which it imparts to the letter. A margin too narrow conveys the idea of stinginess, as if to economize paper, while an irregular or zigzag margin conveys the idea of carelessness or want of precision. On a sheet of note paper the margin may be only one-half inch in width, thus making its width proportionate to the ...
— Burroughs' Encyclopaedia of Astounding Facts and Useful Information, 1889 • Barkham Burroughs
... then staying long times with a sick man who might soon be dying. One day the sick man was resting. Dr. Campbell went to the window to look out a little, while he was waiting. It was very early now in the southern springtime. The trees were just beginning to get the little zigzag crinkles in them, which the young buds always give them. The air was soft and moist and pleasant to them. The earth was wet and rich and smelling for them. The birds were making sharp fresh noises all around them. The wind was very gentle and yet urgent to them. And the buds and the long ...
— Three Lives - Stories of The Good Anna, Melanctha and The Gentle Lena • Gertrude Stein
... they came to a winding staircase cut in the rock, which led them a zigzag course up through galleries and grottos looking out through curious windows and loop-holes upon the sea, till finally they emerged at the old sculptured portal of a shady garden which was surrounded by the cloistered arcades of the Convent of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 44, June, 1861 • Various
... with the instinctive intention of turning it to the wall. It was very heavy; I could scarcely lift it. Pausing a moment, and looking forward at its shattered face in utter anguish of despair, I saw again, repeated in a hundred jagged splinters, up and down in zigzag confusion, in demoniac omnipresence, the uncanny eye, the spectral shape, which had so appalled me. The little phantom had arisen, its slim finger was outstretched,—it beckoned, slowly beckoned, growing indistinct, it receded farther ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., February, 1863, No. LXIV. • Various
... I always had a fairly accurate sense of direction; but, standing in many places in this giant battlefield, it was impossible for me to say where were the Germans and where the French, so completely was I turned around on account of the constant zigzag of the trench lines. Sometimes, when I was positive that a furious cannonade coming from a certain position was German, it turned out to be French. At other times, when I thought I was safely going in the ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 4, July, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... a description of a many-roomed huaca as follows: "Thanks to the energy of treasure-hunters who have penetrated its sides, we find that it had numerous large painted chambers, was built in successive diminishing stages, ascended by zigzag stair-ways, and was stuccoed over and painted in bright colors. The conquerors filled up these chambers, and recast the edifice with a thick ...
— The Prehistoric World - Vanished Races • E. A. Allen
... overlooking the capital. On the side toward the city the fortress was practically impregnable on account of the precipitous slopes of the cliffs. The other side was defended by three stone walls laid out in zigzag shape, with salient and reentrant angles (demi-lunes), like an old-fashioned rail fence, with many doors, each closed by stone portcullis, in each wall. Within the walls was a citadel of three tall towers. The whole constituted a most ...
— South American Fights and Fighters - And Other Tales of Adventure • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... natural in their hour. For of one will, the actions will be harmonious, however unlike they seem. These varieties are lost sight of at a little distance, at a little height of thought. One tendency unites them all. The voyage of the best ship is a zigzag line of a hundred tacks. See the line from a sufficient distance, and it straightens itself to the average tendency. Your genuine action will explain itself and will explain your other genuine actions. Your conformity ...
— Essays, First Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... sides by the nature of the ground; but on the side that faced the French line of march there was only a zigzag wall, pierced, and a low tower or two at each of ...
— White Lies • Charles Reade
... shocked me with the most excruciating agony that the hide of man ever felt. Flashes and waves of pain darted up my arm to the elbow and the muscles in my forearm jumped. The sensitive nerve in my elbow sang and sent darting waves of zigzag needles up to my shoulder. My hand was a source of searing heat and freezing cold and the pain of being crushed and twisted and wrenched out of joint all at ...
— Highways in Hiding • George Oliver Smith
... shine with a double light? To shorten the distance home, as the hour was late and the bright moon threw some light even among the thick trees, he determined to take a footpath among the hills. This course led him close to the cabin of Simon Wiles, Sam Wiles' father. He was walking in a zigzag path, now watching the moonlight as it lilted down through the leafy canopy, making a dim but peaceful light around him; now listening to the sounds which exist in Kentucky forests in winter, the flight of nocturnal birds and moving of animals; seeing the raccoon ...
— The Kentucky Ranger • Edward T. Curnick
... cause of this letter being dated on the coast of South America. Some singular disagreements in the longitudes made Captain Fitz-Roy anxious to complete the circle in the southern hemisphere, and then retrace our steps by our first line to England. This zigzag manner of proceeding is very grievous; it has put the finishing stroke to my feelings. I loathe, I abhor the sea and all ships which sail on it. But I yet believe we shall reach England in the latter half of October. At Ascension I received Catherine's letter of October, and yours of November; the ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume I • Francis Darwin
... while learning." The address took me to Brooklyn Bridge and down a strange, dark thoroughfare running toward the East River. Above was the great bridge, unreal, fairy-like in the morning mist. I was looking for Rose Street, which proved to be a zigzag alley that wriggled through one of the great bridge arches into a world of book-binderies. Rose Street was choked with moving carts loaded with yellow-back literature done up in bales. The superintendent proved to be a civil young man. He did not need me ...
— The Long Day - The Story of a New York Working Girl As Told by Herself • Dorothy Richardson
... him into a fight. So that, in the whole man, a sensitive observer would have felt a peculiar pathos, as though nature had given him a desire to be, and no power to become, and had then sent him on his zigzag way, never to dream ...
— Christmas Eve on Lonesome and Other Stories • John Fox, Jr.
... By the time her voice reached Owen's ears the men had scattered, running in all directions. Several ran directly away from the house, others toward it, some went toward the corners of the building nearest them. All were running zigzag fashion. ...
— Square Deal Sanderson • Charles Alden Seltzer
... station (fare, to the sanctuary and back, eight francs), my friend, Mr. H. F. Jones, and myself ascended to Serralunga, finding the views continually become more and more bewitching as we did so; soon after passing through Serralunga we reached the first chapel, and after another zigzag or two of road found ourselves in the large open court in front of the church. Here there is an inn, where any one who is inclined to do so could very well sleep. The piazza of the sanctuary is some ...
— Ex Voto • Samuel Butler
... followed hard— Lightning broke forth out of the cloud, Zigzag and dart, cleaving their way Slantwise to earth, their ...
— Indian Games and Dances with Native Songs • Alice C. Fletcher
... and there was comfort in the very miserableness of the cornstalks with their disheveled blades hanging like tattered banners and rattling discordantly in the rising wind. Wandering without purpose, Ralph followed the rows of stalks first one way and then the other in a zigzag line, turning a right angle every minute or two. At last he came out in a woods mostly of beech, and he pleased his melancholy fancy by kicking the dry and silky leaves before him in billows, while ...
— The Hoosier Schoolmaster - A Story of Backwoods Life in Indiana • Edward Eggleston
... windows and of walls, gaping like the shattered skulls of a civilization which was no more. To the nostrils of the man and woman up floated an acrid, pitchy smell. And birds, dislodged from sleep, began to zigzag about, aimlessly, with frightened cries. One even dashed against the building, close at hand; and fell, a fluttering, broken ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... intellectual insight seems to me greater than your breadth of view, your penetration greater than your comprehension; and the consequence has been a course of thought, as I believe you are aware, somewhat zigzag. ...
— Autobiography and Letters of Orville Dewey, D.D. - Edited by his Daughter • Orville Dewey
... few score or a hundred miles per generation, for that is generally the way with migrations of primitive people advancing into unoccupied territory. Yet sometimes they may have moved with comparative rapidity. I have seen a tribe of herdsmen in central Asia abandon its ancestral home and start on a zigzag march of a thousand miles because of a great drought. The grass was so scanty that there was not enough to support the animals. The tribe left a trail of blood, for wherever it moved it infringed upon the rights of others and so with conflict was driven onward. In ...
— The Red Man's Continent - A Chronicle of Aboriginal America, Volume 1 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Ellsworth Huntington
... broadside view is disappointing by reason of the high deforming roof, giving an impression as of a hunched back. (One sees the same effect at Udimore, in the east of Sussex.) Within are two rows of superb circular arches, with zigzag mouldings, ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas
... the miner, with the firmness of a great conviction. "It's full of yeast powders. Why, it's r'arin' and risin' like a buckin' hoss. I'm plumb sea-sick." He laid a zigzag course for ...
— The Barrier • Rex Beach
... moving-picture. He will enable us to follow the flying words in a talk from Boston to Denver. We will flash first to Worcester, cross the Hudson on the high bridge at Poughkeepsie, swing southwest through a dozen coal towns to the outskirts of Philadelphia, leap across the Susquehanna, zigzag up and down the Alleghenies into the murk of Pittsburg, cross the Ohio at Wheeling, glance past Columbus and Indianapolis, over the Wabash at Terre Haute, into St. Louis by the Eads bridge, through Kansas City, across the Missouri, along the corn-fields of Kansas, and ...
— The History of the Telephone • Herbert N. Casson
... together it is difficult and sometimes impossible to force a way through, but when there is release of pressure the sum of many little gaps allows one to take a zigzag path.' ...
— Scott's Last Expedition Volume I • Captain R. F. Scott
... hand, as shown in Fig. 1. Then by moving the tracing point round and round an imaginary figure and allowing the hatchet to go where it pleases, it will be seen that the hatchet moves to and fro along zigzag lines, and travels sideways—the side travel being nearly proportional to the area of the figure described by the tracing point. If the tracing point be too tightly grasped, the hatchet will not move freely, and, will have a ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 1082, September 26, 1896 • Various
... think their statues older than they really are. They sometimes set a stiff beard upon a face without expression, or arranged the hair of the head in an old-fashioned manner, and, while making the drapery fly out in a direction opposed to that of the figure, gave to it formal zigzag lines, which could only be proper if it were hanging down in quiet. At other times, while they gave to the human figure all the truth to which their art had then reached, they yet gave to the drapery ...
— History Of Egypt From 330 B.C. To The Present Time, Volume 10 (of 12) • S. Rappoport
... of the thunder-weapon thus: "From the old Babylonian representation of the lightning, i.e. two or three zigzag lines representing flames, a tripartite thunder-weapon was evolved and earned east and west from the ancient seat of civilization. Together with the axe (in Western Asia Minor the double-edged, and towards the centre of Asia ...
— The Evolution of the Dragon • G. Elliot Smith
... the moonlight, slackened speed, half-turned as if in hesitation, then ran on more slowly, with zigzag steps, as if desperately looking for a way out. But he said to me in ...
— Old Man Savarin and Other Stories • Edward William Thomson
... while the blinding spray O'erleaps the barrier, and comes drifting on In lines as level as the window-bars. What curious visions, in a night like this, Will the eye conjure from the rocks and trees And zigzag fences! I was almost sure I saw a man staggering along the road A moment since; but instantly the shape Dropped from my sight. Hark! Was not that a call— A human voice? There's a conspiracy Between my ...
— Bitter-Sweet • J. G. Holland
... triangle, was, after careful examination, recognized and correctly described by him. When he was asked to point out either of the figures, he never moved his hand directly and decidedly, but always as if feeling, and with the greatest caution; he pointed them out, however, correctly. A zigzag and a spiral line, both drawn on a sheet of paper, he observed to be different, but could not describe them otherwise than by imitating their forms with his finger in the air. He said he had no ...
— The Mind of the Child, Part II • W. Preyer
... betokened the mental action. The shrine in so exalted a position is of the simplest: a rude hut, with or without the only distinctive emblems of the cult, a mirror typical of the god and the pendent gohei, or zigzag strips of paper, permanent votive offerings of man. As for the belief itself, it is but the deification of those natural elements which aboriginal man instinctively wonders at or fears, the sun, the moon, the thunder, the lightning, and the wind; all, in short, that ...
— The Soul of the Far East • Percival Lowell
... the towers into transepts. The exterior of the northern tower is plain walling for part of its height, when it is divided into four stages by horizontal bands, each stage containing elaborate Norman arcading, ornamented with zigzag moulding. It is surmounted with an embattled parapet with a turret at each angle. In the north wall a fine Decorated window was inserted by Quivil for the purpose of lighting his newly made transepts. To make way for this window a portion of the arcading of the first stage ...
— Exeter • Sidney Heath
... rear room with the zigzag of fire escape across it was already full of dusk. She took off her hat, a black straw with a little pink-cotton rose on it, and, rubbing her brow where it had left a red rut, sat down beside the window. There were smells there from a city bouquet of frying foods; from a pool ...
— The Vertical City • Fannie Hurst
... have dived into the recesses say the fruit is as savoury as the husk is repulsive. The windowless houses with their backs grudgingly turned to the thoroughfares are low for the most part, and the thoroughfares are—oh! so crooked—zigzag, up and down, staggering in a drunken way over hard cobble-stones and leading nowhere. There are mosques and stores entered by horse-shoe arches, a bazaar dotted over with squatting women, cowled with dirty ...
— Romantic Spain - A Record of Personal Experiences (Vol. II) • John Augustus O'Shea
... consisted of one row of miserable huts, sunk beneath the side of the road, the mud walls crooked in every direction; some of them opening in wide cracks, or zigzag fissures, from top to bottom, as if there had just been an earthquake—all the roofs sunk in various places—thatch off, or overgrown with grass—no chimneys, the smoke making its way through a hole in the roof, or rising in clouds from the top of the open door—dunghills before the doors, ...
— The Absentee • Maria Edgeworth
... said—even when she was most rude to her grandmother—she was never offensive. No one could have helped feeling all the time that she was a little lady.—I thought I would venture a question with her. I stood still at a turn of the zigzag, and looked down into the hollow, still a good way below us, where I could now distinguish the form, on the opposite side of the pond, of a woman seated at the foot of a tree, and stooping ...
— Annals of a Quiet Neighbourhood • George MacDonald
... He felt himself becoming dizzy. The beloved burden in his arms became unsupportably heavy. They travelled in utter darkness, near them the desirous clamor of the waves. Seaward, at times, where the splitting floes crashed against one another, there ran zigzag lines of phosphorescence. The winds howled in the ears of Ootah like the voices of the unhappy dead. Occasionally he heard the voice of Maisanguaq ahead urging ...
— The Eternal Maiden • T. Everett Harre
... streets of the white man, were situated high on isolated rocks, inaccessible to approach except by narrow planking forming a causeway from rock walls across the sea to the branches of a tree. In other places rope ladders formed the only path to the aerial dwellings, or the zigzag trail up the steep face of a rock down which defenders could hurl stones. Howe's Sound, Jervis Canal, Bute Inlet, were passed; {275} and in July Johnstone came back with news he had found a narrow channel out ...
— Vikings of the Pacific - The Adventures of the Explorers who Came from the West, Eastward • Agnes C. Laut
... in silence a few zigzag miles until Humphrey came to another thicket, in which he announced they would pass the night. "Had we kept the open path," he observed, "we might have been further along on our journey, if, perchance, we had not ...
— A Boy's Ride • Gulielma Zollinger
... and beautiful example of this kind of cornice is the Venetian, in which the rain from the tiles is received in a stone gutter supported by small brackets, delicately moulded, and having its outer lower edge decorated with the English dogtooth moulding, whose sharp zigzag mingles richly with the curved edges of the tiling. I know no cornice more beautiful in its ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume I (of 3) • John Ruskin
... reach an object, his hand described a sort of zigzag before it succeeded in reaching what it was in search of, and after a little while this movement annoyed me so that I turned aside my head in order ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... crawled slowly up the zigzag road, climbing the long and steep hill, the occupants of both gazed at the towers of the Castle whenever they came in sight at a turn of the road, or at an opening in the mighty horse-chestnuts and beeches, but they spoke little about them. Those ...
— Great Possessions • Mrs. Wilfrid Ward
... north and south the Cascade mountains in a zigzag course lift their clustered peaks and mountain passes from four to eight thousand feet above the sea, while Mount Olympus and his colleagues higher still poke their inspiring [Page 17] front heavenward. Between these two white and green clad mountain ranges, protected from the ...
— A Review of the Resources and Industries of the State of Washington, 1909 • Ithamar Howell
... fallen into the gulf between. We turned to the left along the edge of the rock, and so by a narrow path reached and crossed to the other side of the isthmus. We then found that the path led to the foot of the rock, formerly island, of the keep, and thence in a zigzag up the face of it to the top. We followed it, and after a great climb reached a door in a modern battlement. Entering, we found ourselves amidst grass, and ruins haggard with age. We turned and surveyed the ...
— The Seaboard Parish Vol. 2 • George MacDonald
... (July 6th) a zigzag road brought us, after many descents and rises, to Spa. The approach, through a rocky vale, is not totally devoid of picturesque merit, and as I met no cabriolets or tituppings on the chaufee, I concluded that the waters were not as yet much visited; and that I should ...
— Dreams, Waking Thoughts, and Incidents • William Beckford
... starting from a point halfway up the rock, joined the hill behind it. Along this shoulder were walls and gateways. An enemy attacking these would be exposed to the fire from the summit of the rock. From the point where the shoulder joined the rock, a zigzag road had been cut, with enormous labour, in the face of ...
— With Clive in India - Or, The Beginnings of an Empire • G. A. Henty
... chirps, to resume his stand. Meanwhile the female is invisible, keeping closely concealed under the long grass. But at length, attracted perhaps by the bright bosom and aerial music of the male, she occasionally exhibits herself for a few moments, starting up with a wild zigzag flight, and, darting this way and that, presently drops into the grass once more. The moment she appears above the grass the male gives chase, and they ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 3 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... into the outer enclosure of the ancient stronghold, and with them their sheep and goats and the few cattle which remained to them, were employed in building up the entrance permanently with stones, a zigzag secret path upon the river side, that could be stopped in a few minutes, being now their only method of ingress and egress through the thickness of the walls. A certain number of men were also sent out as spies ...
— Benita, An African Romance • H. Rider Haggard
... cold. Still, with set teeth, and a hard look in his eyes, he groped his way along the trench, through Piccadilly, and Haymarket, and Bond Street, and Whitehall (for in this manner do the soldiers name the various parts of the zigzag cuttings through the clay): while all the time he could hear the pep, pep, pep, pep of the machine guns, and the shrieking ...
— Tommy • Joseph Hocking
... waving tree-tops, and then hill after hill, slope after slope, waved and rolled far, far down to the green river. Open grassy patches, bright little islands in that ocean of dark green, shone on the hillsides. The rounded ridges ran straight, curved, or zigzag, but shaped their graceful lines in the descent to make the valley. Long, purple-hued, shadowy depressions in the wide expanse of foliage marked deep clefts between ridges where dark, cool streams bounded on to meet ...
— The Last Trail • Zane Grey
... an instant's advantage, for climbing upon it I leaped to another a few paces farther on, and in this way was able to keep clear of the mush that carpeted the surrounding ground. But the zigzag course that this necessitated was placing such a heavy handicap upon me that my pursuer was ...
— At the Earth's Core • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... The basement story has widely-splayed loopholes in its north and east walls, and retains portions of the old stone staircases which led to the principal room occupying the whole of the upper story. This upper room was lighted by three Norman windows on each side, enriched with the billet, zigzag, and rosette mouldings. At the north end the arch and shafts remain of a large window decorated with the familiar chevron ornament. Near the centre of the east wall is a fireplace with a very early specimen of a round chimney, which ...
— Bournemouth, Poole & Christchurch • Sidney Heath
... beside the calling ripples of the river, while saddled horses, laden burros in long lines, and now and then a vast yellow or red ore-wagon creaking dolefully as it descends, still give evidence of the mining which goes on far up the zigzag trails towards the soaring, shining ...
— The Tyranny of the Dark • Hamlin Garland
... gloom of the zigzag ravine along which they had made their way, to the sunlit amphitheatre, was almost painful, and the party stood in a group shading their eyes, gazing about in silence, till Chris suddenly snatched off his hat, waved it in the air, ...
— The Peril Finders • George Manville Fenn
... ah's and oh's. Far famed his flock for frightning; And thundering with his voice, the while His eyes zigzag like lightning. ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... detached himself from the window-sill, and set the lawnmower on another zigzag journey. His hat, his coat, and his trousers hung limper than ever. He moved wearily, and at the end of the garden he sat down under a cherry-tree to muse on the strange, sad fact that his new employer promised to be not one whit more companionable ...
— Treasure Valley • Marian Keith
... others, though feeble elsewhere, it forms a distinct, though undefined, brownish cap or zone at the large end. The eggs generally have little or no gloss. It is not uncommon to find a few hair-like dark brown lines, more or less zigzag, about the ...
— The Nests and Eggs of Indian Birds, Volume 1 • Allan O. Hume
... ahead on a zigzag course. We were in the most deadly submarine infested zone of the ocean. Only yesterday the Susquehanna had been torpedoed in these very waters, and, no doubt, the same evil periscopes were watching us now from beyond yonder kopje of a wave! Our temples throbbed ...
— The Greater Love • George T. McCarthy
... to be our place of refuge in case of danger, sir," observed Ready; "and therefore I have selected this thick part of the wood, as it is not very far from the house, and by cutting the path to it in a zigzag, it will be quite hidden from sight; and we must make the path just wide enough to allow the wheels to pass, and stump up the roots of the trees which we are obliged to cut down, otherwise the ...
— Masterman Ready • Captain Marryat
... along the southern foot of The Mountain. The "Dudley mansion" was near the eastern edge of this declivity, where it rose steepest, with baldest cliffs and densest patches of over-hanging wood. It seemed almost too steep to climb, but a practised eye could see from a distance the zigzag lines of the sheep-paths which scaled it like miniature Alpine roads. A few hundred feet up The Mountain's side was a dark, deep dell, unwooded, save for a few spindling, crazy—looking hackmatacks or native larches, with ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 31, May, 1860 • Various
... into practice, which might either constitute a more comprehensive language for painters, or for other arts; as those of ciphers and signs have done for arithmetic and algebra, and crotchets for music, and the alphabets for articulate sounds; so a zigzag line made on white paper by a black-lead pencil, which communicates with the surface of the mercury in the barometer, as the paper itself is made constantly to move laterally by a clock, and daily to descend through the space necessary, has ingeniously ...
— The Temple of Nature; or, the Origin of Society - A Poem, with Philosophical Notes • Erasmus Darwin
... arm through the reins of her horse's bridle, and leading the faithful animal, stepped fearlessly out on to the muskeg. As she trod the rotten crust she took a zigzag direction from one side of the secret path to the other. That which, in early spring, had scarcely been six feet in width, would now have borne ten horsemen abreast. Presently she turned back. "We need ...
— The Story of the Foss River Ranch • Ridgwell Cullum
... for the honour of yielding precedence, Chichikov succeeded in making his way (in zigzag fashion) to the dining-room, where they found awaiting them a couple of youngsters. These were Manilov's sons, and boys of the age which admits of their presence at table, but necessitates the continued use of high chairs. Beside them was their tutor, ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... into an opulent vineyard, some two miles east of Cheylas, stood the low, square grey building of the Convent of Saint Francis. Thither did Monsieur de Garnache bend his horse's steps. Up the long white road that crept zigzag through the Franciscans' vineyards rode the Parisian and his servant under the welcome sunshine of that ...
— St. Martin's Summer • Rafael Sabatini
... the Brown School, writes: "Our library contains the usual school reference-books. Recently we have added quite a number of books especially adapted to interest and instruct children, such as The Boy Travellers, Miss Yonge's Histories, Butterworth's Zigzag Journeys, Forbes's Fairy Geography, etc. The children are not permitted to take these books away from the building. Pupils are invited to bring such additional facts in geography, or history, as they may obtain by reading. Topics are assigned. Should spices be the topic, one pupil ...
— Library Work with Children • Alice I. Hazeltine
... incredible, but that night brought him a strange confirmation of their truth. Upon disrobing for the night, what was his astonishment to discover upon his right shoulder and extending downward diagonally across the right breast a long, blue mark of irregular, zigzag form, while running parallel with it its entire length, perfect as though done in India ink with an artist's pen, was the outline of the very scene surrounding him where he lay that morning—cliff and crag and mountain peak—traced indelibly upon the living flesh, an ...
— At the Time Appointed • A. Maynard Barbour
... The narrow, zigzag track of the deer and the buffaloes was the only beaten path through the prairie; and this could only be traveled by two or three horsemen abreast. The old Sachem, and Henrich, and Oriana, led the party; and Jyanough, and Mailah, and young Lincoya, all well mounted, rode immediately in the ...
— The Pilgrims of New England - A Tale Of The Early American Settlers • Mrs. J. B. Webb
... preceding, but when they are made of fibre and attached to yuccas, they cannot be distinguished from nests of the former variety. Their eggs are similar to those of the Hooded Oriole, but generally more strongly marked and usually with some zigzag lines. Size .85 ...
— The Bird Book • Chester A. Reed
... summer-time, and the perfume of flowers stole into the darkened room through the half-opened window. The sunlight forced its way through a chink in the blind, and stretched across the floor in strange zigzag fashion. From without came the pleasant murmur of bees and many lazier insects floating over the gorgeous flower beds, resting for a while on the clematis which had made the piazza a blaze of purple splendour. And inside, in ...
— The Yellow Crayon • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... a large corn-field, a full half-mile in breadth, before we reached the woods. Between this and the timber was a zigzag fence— the common 'rail' fence of the American farmer. For some distance beyond the fence the timber was small, but farther on was the creek 'bottom,' where the 'coons were more likely ...
— The Hunters' Feast - Conversations Around the Camp Fire • Mayne Reid
... squatting on their haunches, offer oranges, pineapples, figs, and bananas for sale. How these Mexican markets swarm with people and glow with color, backed by moss-grown walls and ruined archways! Long burro trains block the roadway, and others are seen winding down the zigzag paths of the overhanging declivities. Close at hand within these low adobe hovels, pulque is being retailed at a penny a tumbler. It is the lager-beer of the country. Poverty, great poverty, stares us in the face. No people could be more miserably ...
— Aztec Land • Maturin M. Ballou
... it; we could quite picture to ourselves its beauties by the scenery in the Black Canyon we came through yesterday by daylight. The engineering all along the line is marvellous, the way we rose nearly 7,000 feet by a zigzag over the Marshall Pass, or the Great Divide, going down nearly as many feet on the other side and then through these canyons, which are only narrow gorges for a raging torrent to rush ...
— A Lady's Life on a Farm in Manitoba • Mrs. Cecil Hall
... their hearts and no longer be oppressed with humility. But on the second I determined for a rousing Latin thing, such as men shouted round camp fires in the year 888 or thereabouts; so, the imagination fairly set going and taking wood-cock's flight, snipe-fashion, zigzag and devil-may-care- for-the-rules, this seemed ...
— The Path to Rome • Hilaire Belloc
... on the terrace and a little way up the zigzag path. The day was superb. I found Mr. Tillington, in spite of his studiously languid and supercilious air, a most agreeable companion. He knew Europe. He was full of talk of Rome and the Romans. He had epigrammatic wit, curt, keen, and pointed. We sat down on a bench; ...
— Miss Cayley's Adventures • Grant Allen
... her long sleep and the cold endured—it is a wonder how she had stood the latter at all—and when, with a subdued inward sort of hum, she finally launched herself in flight, she nearly fell to the ground before righting herself and flying in a zigzag heavily across the lawn. ...
— The Way of the Wild • F. St. Mars
... fro in zigzag line, and emitting those peculiar doleful notes invented for them, automobiles were mixed up in apparently inextricable confusion with all this hurly-burly of vehicles, while the trams clanged their bells, and passengers stood waiting ...
— A Little Garrison - A Realistic Novel of German Army Life of To-day • Fritz von der Kyrburg
... beautiful view of the bridge at about two miles' distance, and a fine landscape of the country both ways. From thence, an excellent road, judiciously conducted, through very romantic scenes. In one part, descending the face of a hill, it is laid out in serpentine, and not zigzag, to ease the descent. In others, it passes through a winding meadow, from fifty to one hundred yards wide, walled, as it were, on both sides, by hills of rock; and at length issues into plain country. The waste hills are covered with thyme, box, and chene-vert. Where the body of the mountains ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... on each side of the streets bore the same names and looked but little altered. In the churchyard the same grave-stones were standing as they stood when he, as a child, spelt out their inscriptions through the open railings which separated them from the causeway. There was a zigzag crack in one of the flag-stones, which was one of his earliest recollections; he stood and put his clumsy boot upon it as he had often placed his little foot in those childish years, and leaning his head against the railings of the churchyard, where all his English forefathers for many a generation ...
— Cobwebs and Cables • Hesba Stretton
... advance over the Nek, and was retreating westward towards the positions near the right bank of the Tugela, but no attempt was made to pursue him. The motto of Buller's Army was festina lente and its track towards Ladysmith was in zigzag. ...
— A Handbook of the Boer War • Gale and Polden, Limited
... slumber, it followed infallibly that I was quickly roused with a start, while the words "Basseterre," "Guadaloupe," seemed pronounced over my pillow, or ran athwart the darkness round and before me, in zigzag characters of red ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... festoons of wild roses. They bring to the great festival joy and love of life - a telling addition to all that has been expressed in the court. They savor of old Greek days, these maidens of archaic hair and zigzag draperies. Paul Manship loves the classic which brings with it much of free expression, and he has adopted the archaic style that recalls the figures such as are seen on old Greek vases. No one is more joyous among the sculptors ...
— Sculpture of the Exposition Palaces and Courts • Juliet James
... down Zigzag Hill!" Her smile became a laugh, the laugh a song, the song a dance which joined the lightness of a butterfly with the grace of a girl whose mothers had never worn a staylace, and she ran with tossing arms and willowy undulations ...
— John March, Southerner • George W. Cable
... typewriters!' he exclaimed, 'how rude he'll think me!' And he rubbed something out of his eyes. He gave one long, yearning glance at the spangled sky where an inquisitive bat darted zigzag several times between himself and the Pleiades, that bunch of star-babies as yet unborn, as the blue-eyed guard ...
— A Prisoner in Fairyland • Algernon Blackwood
... something white from a bureau-drawer, stripped the worn, patched old cotton nightgown from the skeleton-like body, and, handling the invalid with a strong, sure touch, slipped on a soft, woolly outing-flannel wrapper with a curious trimming of zigzag braid down the front. Mrs. Purdon opened her eyes very slightly, but shut them again at her sister's quick command, "You lay still, Em'line, and drink some of this brandy." She obeyed without comment, ...
— Hillsboro People • Dorothy Canfield
... The celebrated zigzag up the Coryarich must not be passed over. Moll takes notice of Hamilton and Drumlanrig, and such capital houses; but a new survey, no doubt, should represent every seat and castle remarkable for any great event, or celebrated for its paintings, ...
— The Natural History of Selborne, Vol. 1 • Gilbert White
... box on the edge of the world, and watch the ever-varying splendor. At night there is the same sense of infinity, with the unclouded stars above, and only the twinkling lights of motors threading their way down the zigzag of the coast road as it descends the cliffs to the plain below us. These lights make up in part for the fewness of the harbor lights in the bay. The Pacific is a lonely ocean. There are so few harbors along the coast where small boats can find ...
— The Smiling Hill-Top - And Other California Sketches • Julia M. Sloane
... circles. And there had never been any reason to believe that Throg powers of sight were less than human; there was perhaps some evidence to the contrary. Shann crouched, charting the clumps ahead for a zigzag course which would take him to at least momentary safety ...
— Storm Over Warlock • Andre Norton
... point and range lights near it give direction to vessels approaching, which run from the northwest, head on, till they seem almost ashore at the foot of the lighthouse tower, when they turn sharply to the southwest, the channel being zigzag up to the city, which lies on the southeast shore. It did not need a second glance to determine that Cedar Point was the place to fortify, and that batteries there would rake any vessel approaching the harbor, as well as on its ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V2 • Jacob Dolson Cox
... appeared to have intended to return and, by the zigzag course he took, that he had either been travelling in the dark, or looking for his own track, that he might retrace it. In this manner his steps actually approached within a mile of our route, but in ...
— Three Expeditions into the Interior of Eastern Australia, Vol 1 (of 2) • Thomas Mitchell
... for the subject would have been the tree one-third from the left side, the white cow touching its line, one or two of those lying on the ground working toward the foreground in a zigzag, little or no diversion from the distance on the left of tree. The swing of the picture would then have been from the foreground to the focus, the white cow and tree, thence to the group under the tree and out ...
— Pictorial Composition and the Critical Judgment of Pictures • Henry Rankin Poore
... at the skill of our trench guide who went confidently on in the darkness, with scarcely a pause. At length, after a winding, zigzag journey, we arrived at our trench ...
— Kitchener's Mob - Adventures of an American in the British Army • James Norman Hall
... forest, which leads to the Lac de Gaube, is excessively steep, and turns at least twenty times as it pursues its zigzag course. For the first half-hour nothing was visible but pine-trees, firs, and blocks of granite; and the road was difficult even for the sure-footed beasts which we bestrode; at length, we cleared the wood, and at once the ...
— Barn and the Pyrenees - A Legendary Tour to the Country of Henri Quatre • Louisa Stuart Costello
... the season and the weather was slightly uncertain, but they had a lovely Italian forenoon for going up the wonderful, zigzag road on the western side of the pass. At the top there was a slight sprinkling of snow, and clouds hung over the lofty Ortler group of peaks. As they got lower down a steady persistent rain set in, and they were glad to get to the shelter and warmth of the oblong stone inn at Franzenshoehe, where ...
— Revenge! • by Robert Barr
... than your English ones; but then let me ask you this question: Why do you not form your Roman characters better? for I maintain, that it is in every man's power to write what hand he pleases; and, consequently, that he ought to write a good one. You form, particularly, your 'ee' and your 'll' in zigzag, instead of making them straight, as thus, 'ee', 'll'; a fault very easily mended. You will not, I believe, be angry with this little criticism, when I tell you, that by all the accounts I have had of late from ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... we descended was a narrow road carried zigzag down the cliff—for the pass by which we had entered the valley was fully six hundred feet above the level of the lake—and at short intervals along its course this road was defended by walls of very solid masonry, pierced ...
— The Aztec Treasure-House • Thomas Allibone Janvier
... extravagant with rails, as you are with everything else. A few loads can be spared from the fences here and there, as well as not. Harness up the team, boys, and git together enough to make about ten rods o' zigzag, two rails high.' ...
— The Man Who Stole A Meeting-House - 1878, From "Coupon Bonds" • J. T. Trowbridge
... of nations or at least of national alliances was a frontier not of language but of faith. Germany was but a geographical expression. The union of Protestantism, subscribed by a large proportion of its three hundred and seven sovereigns, ran zigzag through the country, a majority probably of the people at that moment being ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... made a victim on the 21st of February, 1915, but instead of sending a torpedo into her hull, the commander of the U-12, the submarine which overhauled her, resorted to boarding. After trying to elude the submarine by steering a zigzag course, the Downshire was finally overtaken. The crew was ordered to take to the small boats, while nineteen men of the submarine, which had come above water, watched the operations from the deck. A crew from the submarine took one of the small boats of the steamship and rowed ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume V (of 12) - Neuve Chapelle, Battle of Ypres, Przemysl, Mazurian Lakes • Francis J. Reynolds, Allen L. Churchill, and Francis Trevelyan
... Leicester, where is a fine Norman triple sedile, divided into graduating seats by double cylindrical piers with sculptured capitals, and the recessed arches they support are enriched on the face with a profusion of the zigzag moulding. In the south wall of the choir of Broadwater Church, Sussex, is a stone bench beneath a large semicircular Norman arch, the face of which is enriched with the chevron or zigzag moulding. In Avington Church, ...
— The Principles of Gothic Ecclesiastical Architecture, Elucidated by Question and Answer, 4th ed. • Matthew Holbeche Bloxam
... where her eldest daughter, Cecile, afterward took the veil, and William founded, at the same place, the Abbey of St. Stephen, of which Lanfranc was the first abbot. But fair as were the proportions of that exquisite building, noble as were its clustered columns, and rich as were the zigzag mouldings of its deep arches, its foundation was insecure, for it was on iniquity. It stood on ground violently taken from a number of poor people; and where could the blessing ...
— Cameos from English History, from Rollo to Edward II • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... coming this way; you have danced with him but once, and he is a very desirable partner; so, pray, accept, if he asks you," said Mrs. Carroll, watching a far-off individual who seemed steering his zigzag course toward them. ...
— A Modern Cinderella - or The Little Old Show and Other Stories • Louisa May Alcott
... on amid the gorse and heather till they came to a broad-spreading oak tree, sheltering a farmhouse built in frames of heavy timber, filled up with bricks set in zigzag patterns, with a high- pitched roof and tall chimneys. Barns and stacks were near it, and fields reclaimed from the heath were waving with corn just tinged with the gold of harvest. Three or four cows, of the tawny hue that looked so home-like to the ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte M. Yonge
... incessant flashes of white sheet lightning almost blinded us. Each white flash was riven by red forks of flame, until, with the horizon one constant blaze, the plain seemed a vast sea of fire. Over our heads, in great zigzag lines, shot the fire fluid, as the thunder rattled, roared, crashed, and broke around us; then, in a momentary lull, came torrents of rain, rushing madly across the sward, and drowning the noise of the fast-flying ...
— A Trip to Manitoba • Mary FitzGibbon
... freakish behavior. In the course of it, oddly enough, his omnipresent competitor, Douglas, crossed his path, his rival in love as well as in politics, and ultimately outstripped by him in each alike. After many months of this queer, uncertain zigzag progress, it was arranged that the marriage should take place on January 1, 1841. At the appointed hour the company gathered, the supper was set out, and the bride, "bedecked in veil and silken gown, and nervously toying with the flowers in her hair," ...
— Abraham Lincoln, Vol. I. • John T. Morse
... Beaton, meeting this zigzag in the queries as seriously as the rest. "I don't think I am good ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... how, by all that was marvelous, had she for a moment doubted it? Down to its very heart, which was near to black, it was clear fire, and outward toward the facets struck flaming hyacinth hues with zigzag white cross-lights that dazzled and mesmerized. Just the look of it—the marvelous deep well of its ...
— The Coast of Chance • Esther Chamberlain
... points, which have to be replaced after passing once over a record. A screw, S, working in a socket projecting from the carrier, holds the point fast. The record moves horizontally under the point in a plane perpendicular to the page. The groove being zigzag, the needle vibrates right and left, and rotating the carrier a minute fraction of an inch on the pivot, shakes the glass diaphragm and sends waves of ...
— How it Works • Archibald Williams
... jungle roads to the cadjan metropolis—provided he is able to give instructions in Tamil, or a college-bred coolie can be found who knows English. Still another way is to take the semi-weekly steamer from Colombo to Tuticorin, in southern India, then zigzag about the continent of Asia until he makes Paumben. Then it is a matter of only a few days when there will be a boat crossing to the pearl-camp. This is the surest way of getting to Marichchikkaddi; but it is like making the journey from ...
— East of Suez - Ceylon, India, China and Japan • Frederic Courtland Penfield
... waiters are seen darting across the arched passage from door to door, and it requires a guide (in my case, at least) to show you the way to the coffee-room or the bar. I have never been up stairs in any of them, but can conceive of infinite bewilderment of zigzag corridors between staircase ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... been prepared for us. This is one of the advantages of the zigzag approach by the Fox River—travellers never take their friends by surprise; and when the whole circle sat down to the hospitable board, we were ...
— Wau-bun - The Early Day in the Northwest • Juliette Augusta Magill Kinzie
... shouts and a mad gallop. All the batteries were in their possession; they looked to see an army in rout. Suddenly they beheld the double line of British squares—or, rather, "oblongs"—with their fringe of steady steel points; and from end to end of the line ran the zigzag of fire—a fire that never slackened, still less intermitted. The torrent and tumult of the horsemen never checked; but as they rode at the squares, the leading squadron—men and horses—smitten by the spray of lead, tumbled ...
— Deeds that Won the Empire - Historic Battle Scenes • W. H. Fitchett
... from the wind, toward her—when clear of her broadside, and so come up from astern without being raked. The interested reader may compare this method with that pursued by Hull, who steered down by zigzag courses. The Court Martial censured Carden's decision, which was clearly wrong, for the power of heavy guns over lighter, of the American 24's over the British 18's, was greatest at a distance; therefore, to close rapidly, taking the chances of being raked—if not avoidable by yawing—was the ...
— Sea Power in its Relations to the War of 1812 - Volume 1 • Alfred Thayer Mahan
... Psychologists tell us that "a curved line is pleasing because the eye is so hung as best to move in it." Pleasing, yes; but not beautiful. And precisely herein is illustrated the distinction. A life wearied with an undulating uniformity of days will find beauty less in the curve than in the zigzag, because the sight of the broken line brings to the spirit suggestions of change and adventure. A supine temper finds shock, excitement, and a meaning in the vertical. Yet the significance of forms is not determined necessarily by contrasts. A quiet spirit sees its own ...
— The Gate of Appreciation - Studies in the Relation of Art to Life • Carleton Noyes
... the house; regretful rumor among the Officers, 'He is gone!' In about a quarter of an hour Algarotti too slipped out; and vanished by extra post"—straight towards Wesel; but could not overtake the King (whose road, in the latter part of it, went zigzag, on business as is likely), nor see him again till they met in that Town. [From Helden-Geschichte ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... effect was required; but as the particular action might be supposed to be exerted only at the moments of making and breaking contact, the induction was produced in another way. Several feet of copper wire were stretched in wide zigzag forms, representing the letter W, on one surface of a broad board; a second wire was stretched in precisely similar forms on a second board, so that when brought near the first, the wires should everywhere touch, except that ...
— Experimental Researches in Electricity, Volume 1 • Michael Faraday
... just setting and, as it were, suddenly the purple glooms banked up heavy with thunder. The sky was black with fury, the earth passive with dread. I never saw such lightning—it was continuous and tore in zigzag flashes down the mountains like rents in the substance of the world's fabric. And the thunder roared up in the mountain gorges with shattering echoes. Then fell the rain, and the whole lake seemed to rise to meet it, and ...
— The Ninth Vibration And Other Stories • L. Adams Beck
... only twenty-five miles from Epi, I was five days on the way, so zigzag a route did the steamer pursue. But if one is not in a hurry, life on board is quite entertaining. The first day we anchored near the volcano of Lopevi, a lofty peak that rises from a base six kilometres in diameter ...
— Two Years with the Natives in the Western Pacific • Felix Speiser
... been selected which experience has shown to make the most interesting game. Sometimes these differences are so great as to amount to a different game, or one suited to different ages of players. In a few instances, as with Prisoners' Base, Captain Ball, Zigzag Ball, etc., it has seemed best to present several typical forms of the same game with an analytic statement of the differences, leaving the leader to select the form best adapted to his conditions. At no time, however, ...
— Games for the Playground, Home, School and Gymnasium • Jessie H. Bancroft
... Alfred rose from the chair in front of his desk and threw himself into the easy-chair which his guest had been occupying. A ray of city sunshine found its way through the tangle of tall buildings on the other side of the street, lay in a zigzag path across his carpet, and touched the firm lines of his thoughtful face. He sat there, slowly tapping the sides of the chair with his pudgy fingers. So a great soldier might have sat, following out the progress ...
— The Kingdom of the Blind • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... down along the edge of the bluff, and finally followed a zigzag path to the great rocks below, that at this point seemed to have hurled themselves down there to do battle with the eager, dominating flood. For a while he stood gazing into the rushing water, not as though he were fascinated by it, but ...
— The Eye of Dread • Payne Erskine
... certain point in the drunkard's downward career he ceases to have any control over himself, and increases his speed from the usual staggering jog-trot to a brisk zigzag gallop that generally ...
— Fighting the Flames • R.M. Ballantyne
... enabling it to run upon the surface of the aquatic vegetation, as if it were solid ground. It was in the month of January, their breeding season, and at every turn of the boat we started them up in pairs. Their flat, open nests generally contained five flesh-colored eggs, streaked in zigzag with dark brown lines. The other waders were a snow-white heron, another ash-colored, smaller species, and a large white stork. The ash-colored herons were always in pairs, the white one always single, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 105, July 1866 • Various
... sea,—including some of the most picturesque views to be found in Crete,—and of the rich odors of many aromatic herbs and flowers, through whose rifled sweets the Akroteri is famous for its honey. A three hours' ride—first up the zigzag road that climbs the ridge above Kalepa, and then over an undulating plain sparsely dotted with hamlets and clouded here and there with olive-orchards—brings one, with a sufficient appreciation of good cheer, and clean, cool rooms, shade, and quiet, into ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 121, November, 1867 • Various
... rather what was once the site of that ancient house, tradition points through the dim vista of past ages as the scene of an unnatural and cruel tragedy. Not that this picturesque and stately pile, with its gable and zigzag terminations, the subject of our present engraving, was the very place where the murder was perpetrated; but a low, dark, and wooden-walled tenement, such as our forefathers were wont to construct in times anterior to the Tudor ages. The present building, ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... of the two inosculations all the vessels on the same side of the leaf are brought into some sort of connection. Near the circumference of the larger leaves the bifurcating branches also come into close union, and then separate again, forming a continuous zigzag line of vessels round the whole circumference. But the union of the vessels in this zigzag line seems to be much less intimate than at the main inosculation. It should be added that the course of the vessels differs somewhat in ...
— Insectivorous Plants • Charles Darwin
... bonne. Je ne sais comment cela arrive. Il n'y a pas de motifs parmi ceux qu'on trouve heureux, que je n'ai pas ecrit entre deux baillements. Je pourrais," he went on, "vous montrer tel passage ou ma plume a fait un long zigzag parce que mes yeux se sont fermes et ma tete tombait sur la partition. On dirait, n'est ce pas? qu'il y a des ...
— In the Courts of Memory 1858-1875. • L. de Hegermann-Lindencrone
... climbed slowly up the zigzag path, neither of them troubled to make conversation. All in a moment it had come back—mysteriously, unaccountably—the sense of understanding, the quiet kinship of minds—for her, the sudden utter content at his nearness. While he was there beside her, by ...
— The Rhodesian • Gertrude Page
... undeviating consistency, and to this day I still believe it to have been the only right policy. A thorough prosecution of the U-boat campaign was also a feasible scheme. But the worst thing that we could possibly do, was, to steer the zigzag course; for by so doing we were certain not only to cause constant vexations to America, but, by our half measures and partial pliancy, also to drive Mr. Wilson even further and further into the inflexible attitude of a policy of prestige. Unfortunately, ...
— My Three Years in America • Johann Heinrich Andreas Hermann Albrecht Graf von Bernstorff
... range, where she had sometimes to follow on foot. It seemed miles across that wilderness of stone. Foxes and wolves trotted over open places, watching stealthily. All around dark mountain peaks stood up. The afternoon was far advanced when Kells started to descend again, and he rode a zigzag course on weathered slopes and over brushy benches, down and down into the ...
— The Border Legion • Zane Grey
... the mountain banks, the first twenty-five li is by the river. At the half-way place a fearful ascent is experienced, the most notable precipice on the route between Sui-fu and Yuen-nan-fu, up a broad zigzag path, and as I sat at dinner I could see neither top nor bottom owing to the overhanging masses of rock: this is after having negotiated an ascent quite as steep, but smaller. To Ta-kwan-hsien a few natural obstacles occur, although ...
— Across China on Foot • Edwin Dingle
... a track led them through the sand, and by a zigzag route to the top of the knoll that had barred their way along the shore. They came to an edge. Before them lay an arm of the sea, sweeping and eddying with a strong incoming tide. Over the way stood a great mountain, like a sentinel. ...
— The Gray Dawn • Stewart Edward White
... These zigzag roads gave access to the rock dwellings honeycombing the mountains, the sculptured entrances to which were clearly discernible through the variegated colours that splashed the slopes, these variegated colours being due to the fact that the mountain slopes had been terraced from base to summit, ...
— Through Veld and Forest - An African Story • Harry Collingwood
... description of another object, a curious metal casket brought to Europe by a member of the Punitive Expedition. In design, according to Ling Roth, this casket "is bold and artistic; the high relief of the bizarre face and the zigzag conventionalized serpents and tadpoles being well thrown up by enchasing of the ground work. The proportions are all good, and this is especially the case with an enchasing of the enclosed lines." Ling Roth says that the relief portions ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 6, 1921 • Various
... an odd chap. When he was still he liked to hang by his feet, upside down. And when he was flying he sailed about in a zigzag, helter-skelter fashion. He went in so many different directions, turning this way and that, one could never tell where he was going. One might say that his life was just one continual dodge—when he wasn't resting with his heels where ...
— The Tale of Solomon Owl • Arthur Scott Bailey
... aspect does the Missouri appeal to the imagination. From Three Forks to its mouth—a distance of three thousand miles—this zigzag watercourse is haunted with great memories. Perhaps never before in the history of the world has a river been the thoroughfare of a movement so tremendously epic in its human appeal, so vastly significant in its relation to the development of man. And in the building ...
— The River and I • John G. Neihardt
... attained these groves, through which the wintry sea-wind was now whistling hoarse and shrill, she seemed to pause a moment as if to recollect the way. 'We maun go the precise track,' she said, and continued to go forward, but rather in a zigzag and involved course than according to her former steady and direct line of motion. At length she guided them through the mazes of the wood to a little open glade of about a quarter of an acre, surrounded by trees and bushes, which made a wild and irregular boundary. ...
— Guy Mannering, or The Astrologer, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... not, however, returning along the same line. Afterwards other irregular ellipses or ovals are successively described, with their longer [page 2] axes directed to different points of the compass. Whilst describing such figures, the apex often travels in a zigzag line, or makes small subordinate loops or triangles. In the case of leaves the ellipses ...
— The Power of Movement in Plants • Charles Darwin
... but stalking-horses and willing or unwilling dupes,—it might have seemed wonderful how Herr Heuschrecke should be named a Rath, or Councillor, and Counsellor, even in Weissnichtwo. What counsel to any man, or to any woman, could this particular Hofrath give; in whose loose, zigzag figure; in whose thin visage, as it went jerking to and fro, in minute incessant fluctuation,—you traced rather confusion worse confounded; at most, Timidity and physical Cold? Some indeed said withal, he was "the very ...
— Sartor Resartus - The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdrockh • Thomas Carlyle
... everything depended upon the lie of the ground, and the means at the enemy's disposal; a greater distance than a thousand paces was exceptional. They were always so placed that each of them could be seen by its neighbours on both sides, the line which they followed being a zigzag. ...
— Three Years' War • Christiaan Rudolf de Wet
... flat bit with long grass at the sides and more flowers. They felt the grass flicking wet against their stockings, and the invisible flowers were everywhere. Then up again through trees, along a zigzag path with the smell all the way of the flowers they could not see. The warm rain was bringing out all the sweetness. Higher and higher they went in this sweet darkness, and the red light on the jetty dropped ...
— The Enchanted April • Elizabeth von Arnim |
