"Compass" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... and clever juggle by which she used Alencon's ambition to wed her as a means to compass her ends without marrying him. Huguenots flocked to Alencon's standard, whilst he sent by every post love-lorn epistles to Elizabeth, praying her to aid him to free Flanders from the bloodthirsty Spaniards. On July 7, 1578, Alencon entered Flanders with his ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol X • Various
... why not?" he demanded. "Were I a king, now, that is even what I would be—in love with being in love. Were I a king, now, so deep in love were I with being in love, that my messengers should compass earth to fetch me the right princess. Yes, and could they not reach to her, if I but heard of one hidden and afar that was worth my loving, I would build ships and launch them, enlist crews and armies, sail all seas and challenge all wars, to win her. If I were king, ...
— Sir John Constantine • Prosper Paleologus Constantine
... dust in the tea and the smaller leaves and stems frequently form lines of dots. These are significant of a journey, and their extent and direction shows its length and the point of the compass towards which it will extend: the handle for this purpose being considered as due south. If the consultant is at home and lines lead from the handle right round the cup and back to the handle, it shows that he will return; if they end before getting back to the handle, and especially ...
— Tea-Cup Reading, and the Art of Fortune-Telling by Tea Leaves • 'A Highland Seer'
... have seen, yet it looked grand; and all acts of this nature are very successful because they are attended with dignity without any odium. That which generally draws an unaccountable odium upon even the most necessary actions of statesmen, is that, in order to compass them, they are commonly obliged to struggle with very great difficulties, which, when they are surmounted, are certain to render them objects both of envy and hatred. When a considerable occasion offers, where there is no victory to be gained because there is no difficulty to encounter, which ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... recommendations were frequently adopted, but a large class of inquirers were too far from the sphere of her influence to be moved in this way. For the sake of these, and the general public, she deemed it wise to embody her opinions and rules in a treatise, which gives in small compass, but very clearly, the rationale of her treatment of prisoners; and lays down suggestions, hints, and principles upon which others could work. Within about seventy octavo pages, she discourses practically and plainly on the formation of Ladies' Committees for visiting ...
— Elizabeth Fry • Mrs. E. R. Pitman
... the best Greek I could furnish extempore; for the necessity of ransacking my memory and invention for all sorts and combinations of periphrastic expressions as equivalents for modern ideas, images, relations of things, &c., gave me a compass of diction which would never have been called out by a dull translation of moral essays, &c. "That boy," said one of my masters, pointing the attention of a stranger to me, "that boy could harangue an Athenian mob better than ...
— Confessions of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas De Quincey
... duchess of you; and blue is set off by this magnificent brown head of yours. I will answer for my taste in either event; and I think you could bear, and consequently I could, all the other colours in the rainbow. As for your idea, of making yourself a woman that I would not like, I do not think you can compass it. You may try. I will not ...
— The Old Helmet, Volume I • Susan Warner
... most women prefer it to all others. A strong right arm on which to lean, a safe harbor where adverse winds never blow, nor rough seas roll, makes a most inviting picture. But alas! even good husbands sometime die, and the family drifts out on the great ocean of life, without chart or compass, or the least knowledge of the science of navigation. In such emergencies the woman trained to self-protection, self-independence, and self-support holds the vantage ground against all theories on ...
— The Woman's Bible. • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... didn't you get into the water out of sight of the houseboat?" Rick asked, and suddenly he knew. That would have meant plotting a compass course around a turn. So many feet in one direction, then change to another compass heading. He had explained it to them, but they just hadn't learned. It was not easy, he had to admit, and it took practice even on land. "Never mind," he said. "I know the ...
— The Electronic Mind Reader • John Blaine
... interviewing of heads of departments, a day of meeting respectful objections, enlightening thick understandings, gently reducing decorously opposing wills. Commissariat, transport, housing of guests, and the servants of guests—all these entered into the matter of the coming wedding. To compass the doing of all things, not only decently and in order, but handsomely, and with a becoming dignity, this required time and thought. And so, it was not until after dinner that Katherine found herself at leisure to cease taking thought for the morrow. Too tired ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... Jimmy. "It does seem funny that, with all our traveling, we haven't come to the American lines. They can't be so far away as all this. I guess we must have traveled in a circle. Pity we haven't a compass." ...
— The Khaki Boys Over the Top - Doing and Daring for Uncle Sam • Gordon Bates
... rickyard back to the sheaves, whence we returned toilfully on foot, to career it again over the billowy acres in these great galleys of a stubble sea. It was the nearest approach to sailing that we inland urchins might compass: and hence it ensued, that such stirring scenes as Sir Richard Grenville on the Revenge, the smoke-wreathed Battle of the Nile, and the Death of Nelson, had all been enacted in turn on these dusty quarter decks, as they ...
— The Golden Age • Kenneth Grahame
... ago, when his hair was like a raven's wing, he must have been hard to discriminate from a born Bohemian. Borrow is best on the tramp: if you can walk 4.5 miles per hour, as I can with ease and do by choice, and can walk 15 of them at a stretch—which I can compass also—then he will talk Iliads of adventures even better than his printed ones. He cannot abide those Amateur Pedestrians who saunter, and in his chair he is given to groan and be contradictory. But on Newmarket- heath, in Rougham Woods he is at home, and specially when he meets with ...
— The Life of George Borrow • Herbert Jenkins
... now, how unworthy a thing you make of me! You would play upon me; you would seem to know my stops; you would pluck out the heart of my mystery; you would sound me from my lowest note to the top of my compass: and there is much music, excellent voice, in this little organ; yet cannot you make it speak. 'Sdeath, do you think I am easier to be played on than a pipe? Call me what instrument you will, though you can fret me, ...
— Hamlet • William Shakespeare
... bed he quickly dressed himself, and then carefully took the sheet, and folding it up in small compass put ...
— Paul Prescott's Charge • Horatio Alger
... the baggage, and four thousand killed or wounded, were missing. Many of the soldiers had dispersed. Their honour was saved, but there were immense gaps in the ranks. It was necessary to close them up, to bring every thing within a narrower compass, to form what remained into a more compact whole. Each regiment scarcely composed a battalion, each battalion a platoon. The soldiers had no longer their accustomed places, comrades, ...
— History of the Expedition to Russia - Undertaken by the Emperor Napoleon in the Year 1812 • Count Philip de Segur
... the other, it is every thing. The springs that move the human form, and make it friendly or adverse to me, lie hid within it. There is an infinity of motives, passions, and ideas, contained in that narrow compass, of which I know nothing, and in which I have no share. Each individual is a world to himself, governed by a thousand contradictory and wayward impulses. I can, therefore, make no inference from one individual to another; nor can my habitual sentiments, with respect ...
— Lectures on the English Poets - Delivered at the Surrey Institution • William Hazlitt
... was the more difficult just now because he was practically alone. It was too early in the season for the "old grads" to put in an appearance. By and by they would come flocking in droves from all quarters of the compass, eager to renew their youth, and to infuse into the raw recruits some of the undying enthusiasm that they felt for their old Alma Mater. Then every separate player on the team could have the benefit ...
— Bert Wilson on the Gridiron • J. W. Duffield
... without having been introduced by reason, but first of all took sufficient time carefully to satisfy myself of the general nature of the task I was setting myself, and ascertain the true method by which to arrive at the knowledge of whatever lay within the compass of my powers. ...
— A Discourse on Method • Rene Descartes
... can know nothing more of the matter than the arms they carry. They hardly know what troops are upon their own right or left the length of a regiment away. If it is a cloudy day they are ignorant even of the points of the compass. It may be said, generally, that a soldier's knowledge of what is going on about him is coterminous with his official relation to it and his personal connection with it; what is going on in front of him he does not know at all ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce • Ambrose Bierce
... experimenting with it in his shed in London. It was leaving the laboratory to take its place in life; and it would be a triumph to see the daring trick succeed, every day, at the fixed hour, within a restricted compass; to see it go through the opening above; to see that machine worked by a young girl in whom one would have suspected neither the strength nor the nerve: it would make the public infer the excellence of the ...
— The Bill-Toppers • Andre Castaigne
... the whole compass of human life, you find anything preferable to justice and truth, temperance and fortitude, or to a mind self-satisfied with its own rational conduct and entirely resigned to fate, then turn to it as to your supreme happiness. But if there be nothing more valuable than the divinity ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books, Volume XIII. - Religion and Philosophy • Various
... hazard of our lives we were the beginning of the third night, when God in mercy ceased the storm of a sudden, and there was a great calm, which made us exceeding joyful; but when those beasts, for they were scarce men, that manned the vessel, began to rummage the bark, they could not find their compass anywhere, for the loss of which they began again such horrible lamentations as were as dismal to ...
— Memoirs of Lady Fanshawe • Lady Fanshawe
... being caught upon a lee-shore in her present trim. We steered in for the land with the wind at N.E. and in the evening brought to; but the wind coming to the westward, we were driven off in the night. At seven the next morning, we stood in again, steering S.W. by S. by the compass, and soon perceived the sea to break right a-head of us; we immediately sounded, and shoaled our water from thirteen to seven fathom, soon after deepening it again from seventeen to forty-two; so that we went over the end of a shoal, which a little farther to the ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 12 • Robert Kerr
... pulling their shallop ashore on the Cape yonder in 1620—what reverence can exceed their just merit! What praise can compass the virtue of that sublime, unconquerable manhood, by which in the calamitous, woful days that followed, not accepting deliverance, letting the Mayflower go back empty, they stayed perishing by the graves of their fallen; rather, stayed fast by the flickering flame of their living truth, ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z • Various
... we are impatient of misunderstandings, of disagreements; we make haste to have them explained; but while we are young, life seems so spacious and so full of chances that we fetch a large compass round about such things, and wait for favoring fortuities, and hope for occasions precisely fit; we linger in dangerous delays, and take risks that may ...
— The Coast of Bohemia • William Dean Howells
... stretched in blankets, with their feet to the camp fire, the tired explorers rested. They were still on the north shore of what we now call the state of Michigan, and their course had been due westward by the compass. A cloud of Indian tobacco smoke rose from the lowly roof of each canoe, and its odor mingled with the sweet acrid breath of burning wood. Jolliet and the voyageurs had learned to use this dried brown weed, ...
— Heroes of the Middle West - The French • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... how vain! on, onward strain, Brave barks, in light, in darkness too; Through winds and tides one compass guides,— To that, and your own ...
— Tom Brown's Schooldays • Thomas Hughes
... supremely master of his materials. He has an efficiency that is scientific as compared with the vaguer broodings of Mr. Conrad. Where Mr. Conrad will drift into discovery, Henry James will sail more cunningly to his end with chart and compass. ...
— Old and New Masters • Robert Lynd
... to keep the craft before the wind, but presently Brian found that half the men's fear sprang from the fact that the fog and snow blinded them, shutting out the land, and that the shifting wind had completely bewildered them. When he asked for their compass, their leader grunted: ...
— Nuala O'Malley • H. Bedford-Jones
... were too half-hearted and too shallow, and understood their own principles too imperfectly, to be a match for antagonists who were in deadly earnest, and put them to shame by their zeal and courage. But Newton and Romaine and the Milners were too limited and narrow in their compass of ideas to found a powerful theology. They undoubtedly often quickened conscience. But their system was a one-sided and unnatural one, indeed in the hands of some of its expounders threatening morality and soundness of character.[11] It had none of the sweep which carried the justification ...
— The Oxford Movement - Twelve Years, 1833-1845 • R.W. Church
... them a small ivory compass, which he had with him, and, by signs, explained many wonderful things to them, till his enemies were inspired with a most profound respect, and resolved not to kill the extraordinary ...
— Parker's Second Reader • Richard G. Parker
... Grief, with compass bearings and binoculars, identified the volcano that marked Redscar, ran past Owen Bay, and lost the last of the breeze at the entrance to Likikili Bay. With the two whaleboats out and towing, and with Carl-sen heaving the lead, the Kittiwake sluggishly ...
— A Son Of The Sun • Jack London
... delight that I could have sung and shouted for pure joy of it. Greatly invigorated and prodigiously hungry, I donned my unlovely garments happily enough but stooping above this watery mirror to comb my damp locks into such order as my fingers might compass, I beheld my face, its features bruised and distorted out of all shape; and remembering Diana had laughed at and made mock of these disfigurements, I sat down, not troubling about my hair, and began to muse upon her heartlessness, contrasting this with ...
— Peregrine's Progress • Jeffery Farnol
... could be sold. He looked across empty acres, rich pasture lands void of grazing stock. A slow, thoughtful frown gathered in his eyes; he must somehow put stock into them, stock to be bought skilfully and sold skilfully. All of this glorious sweep of country stretching to the four corners of the compass was his, his very own, if he were man enough to go on with the work to which he had somewhat lightly set his hand. He had loved it always, since first he had come here as John Carr's guest. He loved it now with a mounting passion. It ...
— The Desert Valley • Jackson Gregory
... of musketry became incessant. Advancing under cover of rocky bluffs, the shells passed harmlessly over the Brigade. We soon ascertained that the Rebels had made a stand at a point where our advance, from the character of the country, necessarily narrowed into the compass of a strip of meadow-land. Here a brigade of Rebel infantry were drawn up in line of battle. Their batteries posted on a neighboring height, were guided by signals, the country not admitting of extended observation. ...
— Red-Tape and Pigeon-Hole Generals - As Seen From the Ranks During a Campaign in the Army of the Potomac • William H. Armstrong
... the ruin of Persia. He was now to compass that of Turkey. Hartwig was a man to stick at nothing. Dr. Dillon tells us that his methods were so abominable that even the Russian Foreign Office protested. "People asked how he dared oppose the Foreign Office on which he depended. The answer was that he was encouraged, and put up ...
— Twenty Years Of Balkan Tangle • Durham M. Edith
... the ways was reached. On the morning of July 12, the different outfits in charge of Lovell's drive in '84 started on three angles of the compass for their final destination. The Rosebud Agency, where Flood's herd was to be delivered on September 1, lay to the northeast in Dakota. The route was not direct, and the herd would be forced to make quite an elbow, touching on the different forks of the Loup ...
— The Outlet • Andy Adams
... fruitful of golden deeds, With joy and peace triumphing, and fair truth. Then thou thy regal scepter shalt lay by, For regal scepter then no more shall need, God shall be all in all. But, all ye Gods, Adore him, who to compass all this dies; Adore the Son, and honour him as me. No sooner had the Almighty ceased, but all The multitude of Angels, with a shout Loud as from numbers without number, sweet As from blest voices, uttering joy, Heaven rung With jubilee, and loud Hosannas filled ...
— Paradise Lost • John Milton
... lawful liberty, debarred from the good and wholesome fruit of the garden, man breaks out into a liberty which is unlawful; he eats of the forbidden fruit, whose taste is death; or, surfeited with an unholy freedom, and let to run wild in a space far too vast for his strength to compass, he turns cravingly for that support to his weariness which a narrowed range would afford him; and he limits himself on that very quarter in which alone he might expatiate freely. Superstition, in fact, is the rest of wickedness, and wickedness ...
— The Christian Life - Its Course, Its Hindrances, And Its Helps • Thomas Arnold
... innocence and sincerity and unconsciousness of Riley's old farmer are perfectly simulated, and the result is a performance which is thoroughly charming and delicious. This is art—and fine and beautiful, and only a master can compass it." ...
— The Complete Works • James Whitcomb Riley
... a beetle when observed on the floor of a dwelling-house after nightfall. The popular belief is that in obedience to a certain form of incantation (called cooroominiya-pilli) a demon in the shape of a beetle is sent to the house of some person or family whose destruction it is intended to compass, and who presently falls sick and dies. The only means of averting this catastrophe is, that some one, himself an adept in necromancy, should perform a counter-charm, the effect of which is to send back the disguised beetle to destroy his original employer; for in such a conjuncture ...
— Sketches of the Natural History of Ceylon • J. Emerson Tennent
... the men came up to take the place of the retreating redskins, and, if anything had been needed to stiffen the backs of our people, surely they got it when seeing those whom they had once called friends, moving into line to compass their death. ...
— The Minute Boys of the Mohawk Valley • James Otis
... views find expression. On the other hand, only a few have the patience and the insight to gather the specific facts and find out what they mean. Still fewer—having done so much as this—can explain the meaning lucidly and in brief compass. ...
— Broken Homes - A Study of Family Desertion and its Social Treatment • Joanna C. Colcord
... completely within their jurisdiction, they engage in the offensive and hopeless undertaking of reforming the domestic institutions of other States, wholly beyond their control and authority. In the vain pursuit of ends by them entirely unattainable, and which they may not legally attempt to compass, they peril the very existence of the Constitution and all the countless benefits which it has conferred. While the people of the Southern States confine their attention to their own affairs, not presuming officiously ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... to the President, was not without its amusing incidents. Bainbridge regaled the President with accounts of his Mohammedan passengers, who found much difficulty in keeping their faces to the east while the frigate went about on a new tack. One of the faithful was delegated finally to watch the compass so that the rest might continue their prayers undisturbed. And at Constantinople Bainbridge had curious experiences with the Moslems. He announced his arrival as from the United States of America he had hauled down ...
— Jefferson and his Colleagues - A Chronicle of the Virginia Dynasty, Volume 15 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Allen Johnson
... moon sunk below the horizon, her crew took their last look of the Athenienne. The situation of the launch was of itself imminently perilous: she had neither sail, bread, nor water on board. Fortunately there was a compass, and for a sail the officers made use of their shirts and the frocks of the seamen. On the following morning they fell in with a Danish brig, which relieved, in some degree, their urgent necessities. Lieutenant John Little, a passenger in the Athenienne, with a party ...
— Narratives of Shipwrecks of the Royal Navy; between 1793 and 1849 • William O. S. Gilly
... any one to convince himself of this relation of the magnetic power would be, in one and the same experiment, to interpose the same piece of iron between the magnet and the compass needle first breadthways; and in this case it will be found that the needle, which had been previously deflected by the magnet from its natural position at one of its poles, will instantly resume the same, either wholly or very ...
— Hints towards the formation of a more comprehensive theory of life. • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... life are sounded by emotions—cold reason lags behind. As thought cannot compass, so words cannot describe the anguished spirit's flight; and whether it soars to ecstasy or sinks to despair it comes back wide-eyed and silent. So any action which has been prompted by passion cannot be explained by a calculating mind, and to seek a reason where none exists is ...
— Shadow Mountain • Dane Coolidge
... unfortunately for this opinion, the passage on which it is founded will not allow of his interpretation. The original words are in Sir Thomas Herbert's Travels, and, in his expressive language, they are as follows:—"By Providence, the best compass, and benefit of the pole-star, he returned safely to his own country." Most certainly this cannot imply that Madoc was acquainted ...
— Notes & Queries 1850.02.09 • Various
... so happy here, Amid our toils and pains, With thronging cares and dangers near And marr'd by earthly stains, How great must be the compass given Our souls, to ...
— Lives of the Three Mrs. Judsons • Arabella W. Stuart
... something personal. But this time she assented, and said that she knew she was eager for facts. "One must make hay while the sun shines," she added. "I must lay up a store of learning against dark days. Somehow, my imagination refuses to compass the idea that I may ...
— Roderick Hudson • Henry James
... I'd like to see them throw as straight as girls. Did you ever watch them at it? Men can throw straight in one direction only—but watch a girl! she'll throw straight all round the compass. Why, a man will throw straight at the moon and miss it by the eighth of an inch; but a girl will throw at the sun and hit the moon as straight as a die. I never saw a girl throw yet without straightway ...
— Martin Pippin in the Apple Orchard • Eleanor Farjeon
... his somewhat flamboyant speech to awaken enthusiastic approval, he must have been disappointed. His words were received in grave silence. The fact of war was far too unfamiliar and too overwhelming to make it easy for them to compass it in their thoughts or to deal in any adequate ...
— The Major • Ralph Connor
... their starting-point. But as the time went on, and we seemed to fly over the waves at undiminished speed, I began to think this whale might be the exception necessary to prove the rule, so I got out the compass and watched his course. Due east, not a degree to north or south of it, straight as a bee to its hive. The ship was now far out of sight astern, but I knew that keen eyes had been watching our movements from the masthead, and that every effort ...
— The Cruise of the Cachalot - Round the World After Sperm Whales • Frank T. Bullen
... not see this and remain contented. He has more cleverness than ten thousand men, and he found means to compass his end. He betook himself to the marsh, and collected a few little bubbles of stagnant water. Then he uttered over them the echoes of lying words that they might become strong. He mixed up together songs of praise ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... evident that the post-office and the surveyor's compass were not making a rich man of him, they were sufficient to enable him to live decently, and during the year he greatly increased his acquaintance and his influence in the county. The one followed the other naturally; every acquaintance ...
— Abraham Lincoln: A History V1 • John G. Nicolay and John Hay
... of life, and the gap it made in the smooth ground was wonderful. The figure of my sister in her chair by the kitchen fire, haunted me night and day. That the place could possibly be, without her, was something my mind seemed unable to compass; and whereas she had seldom or never been in my thoughts of late, I had now the strangest ideas that she was coming towards me in the street, or that she would presently knock at the door. In my rooms too, with which she had never been at all associated, there was at once the blankness of death ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens
... temple required a strong effort of the imagination to invest it with the least interest, but the view from this point was fine. A couple of miles southeasterly was the broad, glistening Bay of Tokio, and round the other points of the compass was the imperial city itself, covering a plain of some eight miles square, divided by water-ways, bridges, and clumps of graceful trees, looming conspicuously above the low dwellings. The whole was as level as a checker-board, but yet there was ...
— Due West - or Round the World in Ten Months • Maturin Murray Ballou
... not give way to the centrifugal forces imposed upon it, nor should the field magnets be so flexible as to yield to the statical pull of the magnetic poles. The compass of this paper does not permit of a detailed discussion of the essential points to be observed in the construction of electro-motors; a reference to the main points, may, however, be useful. The designer ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 430, March 29, 1884 • Various
... only as a piece of stuff, a marble column, or a jewel, beautiful truly and therefore serviceable to paint from, but nothing more. Let Agostino bring Maria Dovizio here. I desire nothing more warmly than to compass her meeting with Raphael. But give me a moment with her to prepare her for that meeting, and one in which to withdraw Margherita and all others from the scene, and think you that in the joy of their reconciliation either he or ...
— Romance of Roman Villas - (The Renaissance) • Elizabeth W. (Elizbeth Williams) Champney
... throb of their pursuers already seemed to come from every point of the compass—from below, from either side and, what was more alarming, from above; but banking sharply to the right he thrashed his course at topmost speed, praying that the ...
— With Haig on the Somme • D. H. Parry
... "Without compass or landmark to guide me, there was no use in further attempts to find the caravan. Following the Mongol custom, I carried a long rope attached to my saddle-bow, and with this I managed to picket the pony where he could graze and satisfy his hunger. How I envied his ...
— Overland through Asia; Pictures of Siberian, Chinese, and Tartar - Life • Thomas Wallace Knox
... through the crooked working of his mind, Brought Wyndham to a very grievous pass. Yet 't was a grapestone choked Anacreon And hushed his song. There is no little thing In nature: in a raindrop's compass lie A planet's elements. This Wyndham's woe Was one Griselda, daughter to a man Of Bideford, a shipman once, but since Turned soldier; now in white-haired, wrinkled age Sitting beneath the olive, valiant still, With sword on nail above the ...
— Wyndham Towers • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... dying hippopotamus, and several have bagged camelopards and elephants by scores. In short, they have trodden with a bold disdainful step all the high-roads and by-roads of our wondrous planet, displaying, in every quarter of the compass, the daring and devil-may-care spirit of their youth and the spleen of their mature age, as well as the yellow guineas from their ...
— Le Morvan, [A District of France,] Its Wild Sports, Vineyards and Forests; with Legends, Antiquities, Rural and Local Sketches • Henri de Crignelle
... to the glade, with its yellow cassia blooms where he had spent his caterpillarhood. Nor did he fly toward the north star or the sunset, but between the two. Twelve years before, as I passed up the Essequibo and the Cuyuni, I noticed hundreds of yellow butterflies each true to his little compass variation ...
— Edge of the Jungle • William Beebe
... because it is found that there is some definite goal to which he is leading his readers: he does not conduct them they know not whither, as a traveller who has lost his way in a mist, or a navigator who is steering his ship without a compass. The influence exercised by Mr. Mill does not chiefly depend upon the originality of his writings. He did not make any great discovery which will form an epoch in the history of human thought; he did not create a new science, ...
— John Stuart Mill; His Life and Works • Herbert Spencer, Henry Fawcett, Frederic Harrison and Other
... a wing vein that at one point seems broken so as to permit of a folding or bending; either to pack into a small compass or ...
— Explanation of Terms Used in Entomology • John. B. Smith
... to be imagined that the vegetable products of Assyria were confined within the narrow compass which the ancient notices might seem to indicate. Those notices are casual, and it is evident that they are incomplete: nor will a just notion be obtained of the real character of the region, unless we take into ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 2. (of 7): Assyria • George Rawlinson
... propositions made in languages that is designed to be intelligible, shows that his first reservation is merely nominal, as it is certainly inconsistent with his general position. Religious people who warn you most solemnly that man who is a worm and the son of a worm cannot possibly compass in his puny understanding the attributes of the Divine Being, will yet—as an eminent divine not in holy orders has truly said—tell you all about him, as if he were the man who ...
— On Compromise • John Morley
... my dear fellow, write the motto NOSCE TEIPSUM o'er your grotto; For he must daily wiser grow, Determined his own scope to know. He never launches from the shore Without the compass, sail, and oar. He, ere he builds, computes the costs; And, ere he fights, reviews the hosts. He safely walks within the fence, And reason takes from common sense: Pride and presumption standing ...
— Fables of John Gay - (Somewhat Altered) • John Gay
... slope of land, on which the country-houses of the Marseilles merchants, always staring white, are jumbled and heaped without the slightest order; backs, fronts, sides, and gables toward all points of the compass; until, at last, ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 4 (of 10) • Various
... go on belt. Three whetstones (one for self and two for gunbearers). One helmet (we used Gyppy pattern Army and Navy stores). One double terai hat, brown (Army and Navy stores). One six-oreight-foot pocket tape of steel to measure horns. One compass. One diary. Writing ...
— In Africa - Hunting Adventures in the Big Game Country • John T. McCutcheon
... commands silence on the part of the author, who has treated a Roman lady, the daughter of Cicero, with disrespect. The duke explains the discovery of America, and taking out his watch, to which is appended, by way of trinket, a small mariner's compass, shows her how, by means of a needle, another hemisphere is reached. The amazement of the fair Roman redoubles at every word which she hears, and every thing she beholds; ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, - Issue 566, September 15, 1832 • Various
... secure an accuracy very gratifying to a workman who believes in precision. For drawing circles on metal, "bar compasses" are much the best, as they are almost entirely free from spring, which attends the jointed compass. To make (because they cannot be bought) such an instrument, take a piece of flat steel, one-eighth by three-eighths of an inch and seven inches long, and after turning and smoothing it carefully, make a slide half an inch wide, as shown at Fig. 15, with a set-screw h on top to secure it at ...
— Watch and Clock Escapements • Anonymous
... did not furnish much which can interest my readers; I shall therefore put into as short a compass as I can, the observations upon it, which I find registered in my journal. It is about fifteen English miles long, and four broad. On the south side is the laird's family seat, situated on a pleasing low spot. The old tower of three stories, mentioned by Martin, was taken down soon after 1746, ...
— The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, LL.D. • James Boswell
... among these excellent people, was a great promoter of reflection and aspiration, frankly adverted to it as an extension of enjoyment. This function was ultimately assumed by Gertrude Wentworth, who was a peculiar girl, but the full compass of whose peculiarities had not been exhibited before they very ingeniously found their pretext in the presence of these possibly too agreeable foreigners. Gertrude, however, had to struggle with a great accumulation of obstructions, both of the subjective, as the metaphysicians say, ...
— The Europeans • Henry James
... and the south-west winds are the prevalent ones, and a slight inspection of the maps will suffice to show that those compass bearings are the lines which the lakes and ...
— Canada and the Canadians - Volume I • Sir Richard Henry Bonnycastle
... awry, was that Defago's stride increased in the same manner, and finally covered the same incredible distances. It looked as if the great beast had lifted him with it and carried him across these astonishing intervals. Simpson, who was much longer in the limb, found that he could not compass even half the stretch by taking ...
— The Wendigo • Algernon Blackwood
... so heightened in interest by his genius as those of Orkney, he is entitled to a monument. To the critical student of the philosophy and history of poetic invention it is not uninstructive to observe how completely the novelist has appropriated and brought within the compass of one fiction, in defiance of all those lower probabilities which the lawyer who pleaded before a jury court would be compelled to respect, almost every interesting scene and object in both the ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller
... actually and wonderfully useful in the compass. Who discovered the compass nobody knows. It was probably invented by the Chinese and brought to Europe through the Arabs. Anyhow, some genius found out that a small needle brought in contact with the so-called lodestone, or magnetic ore, absorbs the qualities of the lodestone, and when placed on ...
— Editorials from the Hearst Newspapers • Arthur Brisbane
... stage-plays, musick in the church, dancing, new-years' gifts, &c.,—then upon altars, images, hair of men and women, bishops and bonfires. Cards and tables do offend him, and perukes do fall within the compass of his theme. His end is to persuade the people that we are returning back again to paganism, and to persuade them to go and serve God in another country, as many are gone already, and set up new laws and fancies among themselves. Consider what may ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... points out the variation of the needle to the west. The map is oriented by the needle without reference to its variation, but the true meridian is laid down by a strong line on which the degrees of latitude are numbered. From this the points of the compass between any two places may be ...
— Voyages of Samuel de Champlain, Vol. 2 • Samuel de Champlain
... farmer or the owner of the herd or flock, but to afford some small rent to the landlord. The rent increases in proportion to the goodness of the pasture. The same extent of ground not only maintains a greater number of cattle, but as they we brought within a smaller compass, less labour becomes requisite to tend them, and to collect their produce. The landlord gains both ways; by the increase of the produce, and by the diminution of the labour which must be maintained out ...
— An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations • Adam Smith
... pleasant, for Dr. Lacey's manner had said as plainly as words could say that she had better mind her own business, and she began to think so herself, for she muttered, "After all, what is it to me if he does like Fanny? I am bound fast, but oh, if I were free, I'd compass heaven and earth to secure him." Her wish to be ...
— Tempest and Sunshine • Mary J. Holmes
... would suit the forest page very well," he said; "for you are slender, and slight in figure. But how would you compass the scenes where Rosalind appears in her proper character—in ...
— The Youth of Jefferson - A Chronicle of College Scrapes at Williamsburg, in Virginia, A.D. 1764 • Anonymous
... in our little farm increased day by day. In a week or two after Pomona's arrival I bought a cow. Euphemia was very anxious to have an Alderney,—they were such gentle, beautiful creatures,—but I could not afford such a luxury. I might possibly compass an Alderney calf, but we would have to wait a couple of years for our milk, and Euphemia said it would be better to have a common cow ...
— Rudder Grange • Frank R. Stockton
... insisted upon: Giotto expresses her vigilance and just measurement or estimate of all things by painting her as Janus-headed, and gazing into a convex mirror, with compasses in her right hand; the convex mirror showing her power of looking at many things in small compass. But forethought or anticipation, by which, independently of greater or less natural capacities, one man becomes more prudent than another, is never enough ...
— Stones of Venice [introductions] • John Ruskin
... others. Or, as the storm-tossed vessel at sea speaks the frigate or "line-packet" to learn its longitude, so it may not be without its advantage that we should now and then encounter rare and gifted men, to compare the points of our spiritual compass, and verify ...
— Ralph Waldo Emerson • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... of printing came to render these communications easy and prompt; to make this commerce of the mind extended and prolific. No other event has so powerfully influenced human civilization. Books became a tribune from which the world was addressed. That world was soon doubled. The compass opened safe roads across the monotonous immensity of the seas. America was discovered; and the sight of new manners, the agitation of new interests which were no longer the trifling concerns of one town or castle with another, but the great transactions of mighty powers, changed ...
— Memoirs To Illustrate The History Of My Time - Volume 1 • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... acquaintance, that thought he was a king, driven from his kingdom, and was very anxious to recover his estate. A covetous person is still conversant about purchasing of lands and tenements, plotting in his mind how to compass such and such manors, as if he were already lord of, and able to go through with it; all he sees is his, re or spe, he hath devoured it in hope, or else in conceit esteems it his own: like him in [2592]Athenaeus, that ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... affairs is to proceed, whoever goes or stays. This cold-heartedness it seems will kill one at any rate. Rather the universe should sigh and be darkened. To pass unheeded is worse than to die. Just now it is impossible to compass even the satirical mood of Pope, who declared himself not at all uneasy that many men for whom he never had any esteem were likely to enjoy the world after him. But before one has time to die, the absent friends write such a kind, sorry letter, in which ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 109, November, 1866 • Various
... and steer, box the compass, pull an oar, or sail a boat; and I know the name and place of every spar, sail, and ...
— The Congo Rovers - A Story of the Slave Squadron • Harry Collingwood
... supposed transverse line amidships and the stern, whether in or out of the ship. It is the relative situation of an object with the ship, when that object is placed in the arc of the horizon contained between a line at right angles with the keel and the point of the compass which is directly opposite the ship's course. An object—as a man overboard—is described by the look-out man at the mast-head as abeam, before, or abaft the beam, by so many points of the compass. As a vessel seen may be "three points ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... conferred with the leaders of Britain and Russia and China on military matters of the present—especially on plans for stepping- up our successful attack on our enemies as quickly as possible and from many different points of the compass. ...
— The Fireside Chats of Franklin Delano Roosevelt • Franklin Delano Roosevelt
... deep nor very full, but, considering his great age, it is wonderfully clear and ringing, and it has a certain incisiveness of sound which gives it great carrying power. Pius the Ninth had as beautiful a voice, both in compass and richness of quality, as any baritone singer in the Sixtine choir. No one who ever heard him intone the 'Te Deum' in Saint Peter's, in the old days, can forget the grand tones. He was gifted in many ways—with great physical beauty, with a rare charm of manner, and ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 2 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... instances of the incredible recklessness of men drunk on the pale liquor of that land—men who, sailing along the dangerous coast, lash the wheels of their vessels, and leaving all sail set, go below for a day's carousal; men who drain the very liquid from the compass to satisfy their burning thirst when hootch is gone. So it was no surprise to the women to learn that the storm which swept the Island so soon after the departure of the three men, had broken upon the Silver Fox when all hands, except the faithful Swimming Wolf, were too far gone in ...
— Where the Sun Swings North • Barrett Willoughby
... whole people be landlords, or hold the lands so divided among them that no one man, or number of men, within the compass of the few or aristocracy, overbalance them, the empire (without the interposition of ...
— The Commonwealth of Oceana • James Harrington
... was speaking to me I felt that his last hopes were fading. And who could wonder? Of the land indicated by the half-breed nothing was seen, and we were already more than one hundred and eighty miles Tsalal Island. At every point of the compass was the sea, nothing but the vast sea with its desert horizon which the sun's disk had been nearing since the 21st and would touch on the 21st March, prior to during the six months of the austral ...
— An Antarctic Mystery • Jules Verne
... vi. 440) shows how much Frederick owed to 'the difficulties of his youth.' 'Kings, without this help from temporary infelicity, see the world in a mist, which magnifies everything near them, and bounds their view to a narrow compass, which few are able to extend by the mere force of curiosity.' He next points out what Cromwell 'owed to the private condition in which he first entered the world;' and continues:—'The King of Prussia brought to the throne the knowledge of ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... disgust, and he scarcely needed the urgency of constant application to make him long to get rid of her. But the daughter of Germanicus could not be openly destroyed, while her own precautions helped to secure her against secret assassination. It only remained to compass her death by treachery. Nero had long compelled her to live in suburban retirement, and had made no attempt to conceal the open rapture which existed between them. Anicetus, admiral of the fleet at Misenum, and a former instructor of Nero, suggested the expedient of a pretended public reconciliation, ...
— Seekers after God • Frederic William Farrar
... parts of the world whose good opinion is worth having, Simon Newcomb was one of the best known of America's great men. Astronomer, mathematician, economist, novelist, he had well-nigh boxed the compass of human knowledge, attaining eminence such as is given to few to reach, at more than one of its points. His fame was of the far-reaching kind,—penetrating to remote regions, while that of some others has only created a noisy disturbance ...
— A Librarian's Open Shelf • Arthur E. Bostwick
... that Mr. Knight, who so well and so judiciously exposes the absurdness of attempting to measure out a poet's imaginings by rule-and-compass probability, should himself endeavour to embody and identify Touchstone's dial—an ideal image—a mere peg on which to hang ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 67, February 8, 1851 • Various
... explanation than the alternative which it is framed to escape. So it is always. The difficulties of faith are small by comparison with those of unbelief, gnats beside camels, and that that is so is plain from the short duration of each unbelieving explanation of Jesus. One can remember in the compass of one's own life more than one assailant taking the field with much trumpeting and flag-waving, whose attack failed and is forgotten. The child's story tells of a giant who determined to slay his enemy, and belaboured an empty bed with his club all night, and found his foe untouched ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren
... unto thee of violence, and thou wilt not save. Why dost thou shew me iniquity, and cause me to look upon perverseness? for spoiling and violence are before me: and there is strife, and contention riseth up. Therefore the law is slacked, and judgement doth never go forth: for the wicked doth compass about the righteous; therefore judgement ...
— Select Masterpieces of Biblical Literature • Various
... the boat by compass over a sea that, under the smudged moon, was in colour and curve like pale violently shaken liquid mud. In time we glimpsed the cliffs with the mist creeping up over them. Day was beginning to break, and with a breath of wind that had sprung up from the SE., we glided like a phantom ...
— A Poor Man's House • Stephen Sydney Reynolds
... demeanor fully testified; that he had himself in the days of his youth followed that honorable profession, and travelled over various parts of the world in search of adventures; failing not to visit the suburbs of Malaga, the isles of Riaran, the compass of Seville, the market-place of Segovia, the olive-field of Valencia, the rondilla of Grenada, the coast of St. Lucar, the fountain of Cordova, the taverns of Toledo, and divers other parts, where he had exercised the agility of his heels and the dexterity of his hands; committing ...
— Wit and Wisdom of Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... broad plain the whole army assembled. At no other time in the history of the Army of the Potomac, were all its forces gathered within a compass that the eye could take in at a ...
— Three Years in the Sixth Corps • George T. Stevens
... already received, I should like to point out that a parody of an autobiography should not be a caricature of the people biographed—some of whom must already have suffered enough. I have lowered the social key of the original considerably, not only to bring it within the compass of the executant, but also to make a distinction. I have increased the remoteness from real life—which was sometimes appreciable in the original—to such an extent that it should be impossible to suppose that any of the grotesques of the parody is intended for anybody ...
— Marge Askinforit • Barry Pain
... thirty-five years after it was written, fully up to the standard of the best annotated school editions in this country or in England. It is, of course, a little dry and schematic; that could hardly be avoided in an attempt to compress such a vast amount of information into such a small compass, but, for the most part, the details are so clear and vivid that their mass rather ...
— An Essay Toward a History of Shakespeare in Norway • Martin Brown Ruud
... practice of any lawyer in Askatoon, although his character had its shady side. The prairie standards were not low; but tolerance is natural where the community is ready-made; where people from all points of the compass come together with all sorts of things behind them; where standards have at first no organized sanction. Financially Burlingame was honest enough, his defects being associated with those ancient sources of misconduct, wine and women—and in his case the morphia habit ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... says: "Certainly never was country more obliged to a man than New England to Archbishop Laud, who by his cruel and arbitrary proceedings drove thousands of families out of the kingdom, and thereby stocked the Plantations with inhabitants, in the compass of a very few years, which otherwise could not have been done in an age." This was the sense of some of the greatest men in Parliament in their speeches in 1641. Mr. Tienns (afterwards Lord Hollis) said that "a certain number of ceremonies in the judgment of some ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 1 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Egerton Ryerson
... remote distance by vast reddish cliffs, which reminded him of those he had seen in some picture; but what the picture was Mr. Wace was unable to ascertain. These cliffs passed north and south—he could tell the points of the compass by the stars that were visible of a night—receding in an almost illimitable perspective and fading into the mists of the distance before they met. He was nearer the eastern set of cliffs, on the occasion of his first vision the sun was rising over them, and black against ...
— Tales of Space and Time • Herbert George Wells
... me worthy of being presented to the Eye of the Public, with all the Lustre that it was in my Power to give them. It is one thing to observe, and another to reason upon Observations, and it very rarely happens that both can be taken into the Compass of one Man's Life. We ought therefore to consider it as a very lucky Incident, when the Observations of another Man, upon whom we can depend, fall into our Hands, and enable us to add natural Experience to the Notions derived to us ...
— The Shepherd of Banbury's Rules to Judge of the Changes of the Weather, Grounded on Forty Years' Experience • John Claridge
... feme sole, and has certain capacities and rights, 'in order that the king whose continual care and study is for the public, should not be troubled and disquieted on account of his wife's domestic affairs.' And the law, which out of respect to the king makes it high treason to compass or imagine the death of his wife, when she becomes a widow ceases to surround her with this protection. It is the king alone, his dignity and his comfort, which the law regards, and the privileges and pre-eminences of his family are conferred or ...
— The Greville Memoirs (Second Part) - A Journal of the Reign of Queen Victoria from 1837 to 1852 - (Volume 1 of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... Mary's absence with greater equanimity than he had thought possible, he was always glad to receive her letters, with their delicate aroma of the English country; and it pleased him to think that his future was comfortably settled. The engagement was a sort of ballast, and he felt that he could compass his journey without fear and without disturbance. James did not ask himself whether his passion was very ardent, for his whole education had led him to believe that passion was hardly moral. The proper and decent basis of marriage was similarity of station, and the good, solid qualities which ...
— The Hero • William Somerset Maugham
... Africa the cloud is perhaps the thickest. The European settlers there are doing their utmost to deprive the Indian settlers of practically every right they have hitherto possessed. An attempt is being made to compass their ruin both by legislative ...
— Freedom's Battle - Being a Comprehensive Collection of Writings and Speeches on the Present Situation • Mahatma Gandhi
... road, with houses close on every side, one could see absolutely nothing in any direction, one could hear no sound but the storm. Every landmark vanished, and it was no more possible to guess the points of the compass than in mid-ocean. It was easy to conceive of being bewildered and overwhelmed within a rod of one's own door. The tempest lasted only an hour; but if it had lasted a week, we should have had such a storm as occurred on the steppes of Kirgheez in Siberia, in 1827, destroying two ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 52, February, 1862 • Various
... about Dermot's health, and his sister's strength and spirits, but he wanted to hear what Harold thought of the place and of the tone of the country; and, after our meal, when he grew more confidential, he elicited short plain answers full of information in short compass, and not very palatable. The estate was "not going on well." "Did Harold think well of the agent?" "He had been spoilt." "How?" "By calls for supplies." "Were the people attached to Dermot?" "To ...
— My Young Alcides - A Faded Photograph • Charlotte M. Yonge
... man and drove him to an accomplishment beside his purpose and outside his thought, it was when Henry Hudson—having headed his ship upon an ordered course northeastward—directly traversed his orders by fetching that compass to the southwestward which ended by bringing him into what now is Hudson's River, and which led on quickly to the founding of ...
— Henry Hudson - A Brief Statement Of His Aims And His Achievements • Thomas A. Janvier
... in America who could pick it up and pass it on to Berlin. You see, she thought you an easy mark. She got hold of a fan which Montani informs me is the exact counterpart of that one you hold. She reduced her data to the smallest possible compass, concealed it in her fan, and watched for a chance to exchange with you. The astute Montani found the Japanese artisan who had done the tinkering for her and surmised that you were to be made the unconscious bearer of the incriminating papers. Montani ...
— Lady Larkspur • Meredith Nicholson
... Remember that, if thou fall short of this, each time thou utterest in prayer the words, "Hallowed be Thy name, Thy kingdom come," thou dost most fearfully condemn thyself, for is it not a mockery to ask for that thou wilt not seek to promote even unto the uttermost, within the narrow compass of thine ...
— Daily Strength for Daily Needs • Mary W. Tileston
... none of them could discover anything. Dermot, descending from the ship, then climbed with difficulty up the face of the cliff, while the others made fast their ship among the rocks. But Dermot having arrived at the top saw no habitation of man, and could compass no way of helping his companions to mount. He went therefore boldly forward into the unknown land, hoping to obtain some help, if any friendly and hospitable folk could ...
— The High Deeds of Finn and other Bardic Romances of Ancient Ireland • T. W. Rolleston
... two swiftest runners (kukini) were Keakealani and Kuhelemoana. They were so fleet that they could compass Oahu six times in a forenoon, or twelve times in a whole day. These two were sent to call together all the men of the King's domain. The men of Waianae came that same day and stood in review on the sandy plains of Puuloa. But among them all was not one who bore the marks sought for. Then came ...
— Hawaiian Folk Tales - A Collection of Native Legends • Various
... and applicability to the respective chapters as were all, none bore traces of that clearly defined individuality of style betrayed by all great and accomplished practitioners of verse, in even so small a compass as these headings. Some of them possess the great distinctive technical mark of poetry,—condensation; but this very condensation is compassed not in an original and individual method, but in the method of some pre-existent model; and it ...
— George Eliot; A Critical Study of Her Life, Writings & Philosophy • George Willis Cooke
... progressed rapidly and by the time the trunks and valises arrived the mattresses were all in position, the food and cooking utensils were stored away in the narrowest compass of space that could be arranged for them and a large pile of resinous ...
— Campfire Girls in the Allegheny Mountains - or, A Christmas Success against Odds • Stella M. Francis
... slightly beaten road straight toward the southeast. Wellesly asked Haney if he were sure they were going in the right direction, and Haney assured him that it was all right and chaffed him a little that he so easily lost the points of the compass. In the distance, a mile or so ahead of them, they saw a man on horseback leading another horse which carried a pack. When Wellesly again said that he did not understand how he could be so entirely at sea, Haney suggested that they overtake this traveler and get his assurance ...
— With Hoops of Steel • Florence Finch Kelly
... a strange compound of incongruous qualities—at once enthusiast and philosopher, statesman and intriguer, a model of chivalrous courage, and a profound dissembler. We cannot compass his character by adopting the wayward estimate given of him by Anthony a Wood, who tells us that his common nickname was Sir Humorous Vanity, and who dismisses him as "a hotchpotch of religion," "an inventor of whimseys in religion, and ...
— The Life of Edward Earl of Clarendon V2 • Henry Craik
... around," put in Tom. "Easiest thing in the world to get lost out there on that ice without a compass and in such a whirlwind of snow. Ruth's right. Let's ...
— Ruth Fielding on Cliff Island - The Old Hunter's Treasure Box • Alice Emerson
... amusements, it only remains for me to speak of a few juvenile employments of a mixed nature. Of these I shall treat very briefly, as they are a branch of the subject which does not necessarily come within the compass of my present plan. They are exercises, too, which should more properly come under the head ...
— The Young Mother - Management of Children in Regard to Health • William A. Alcott
... examination, a vacuum was recently described as "an empty space without anything in it;" and a compass, at the same time, was explained as "a tripod with a round or circular box surmounting it, ...
— Children's Rhymes, Children's Games, Children's Songs, Children's Stories - A Book for Bairns and Big Folk • Robert Ford
... below. Extra lengths of screw, freshly oiled; levers covered with felt; all the complete upper works of a heavy press—constructed with infernal ingenuity so as to join the fixtures below, and when taken to pieces again to go into the smallest possible compass—were next discovered and pulled out on the floor. After some little difficulty the subprefect succeeded in putting the machinery together, and, leaving his men to work it, descended with me to the bedroom. The smothering canopy was then lowered, but ...
— Stories By English Authors: France • Various
... make seven miles to-day," said Tom, as he came forward with immense strides, carrying a compass and Jacob's-staff. Behind him the axemen slashed along, striking white slivers from the pink and scaly columns of red pines that shot up a hundred and twenty feet without a branch. If any underbrush grew there, it was beneath the eight-feet-deep February snow, so that one could see far away ...
— Old Man Savarin and Other Stories • Edward William Thomson
... despatch Lord Glenelg wrote,—I was then at the Board of Control, and can attest the fact,—with his own hand. One paragraph, the sixty-second, is of the highest moment. I know that paragraph so well that I could repeat it word for word. It contains in short compass an entire code of regulations for the guidance of British functionaries in matters relating to the idolatry of India. The orders of the Home Government were express, that the arrangements of the temples should be left entirely to the natives. A certain discretion was of course left to ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 4 (of 4) - Lord Macaulay's Speeches • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... so much out of my usual sense, so subdued by the present power of a new one, that, between far and desire, I lay utter passive, till the piercing pain rouzed and made me cry out. But it was too late: he was too firm fixed in the saddle for me to compass flinging him, with all the struggles I could use, some of which only served to further his point, and at length an irresistible thrust murdered at once my maidenhead, and almost me. I now lay a bleeding witness of the ...
— Memoirs Of Fanny Hill - A New and Genuine Edition from the Original Text (London, 1749) • John Cleland
... were all home I started around to the church to troop meeting and I met Pee-wee Harris coming scout pace down through Terrace Street. He's one of the raving Ravens. He was all dolled up like a Christmas tree, with his belt axe hanging to his belt and his scout knife dangling around his neck and his compass on his wrist ...
— Roy Blakeley's Camp on Wheels • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... hid but for a moment, his whole system was on a wide sea without chart or compass. The gentlemen, his particular friends, who, with the names of various departments of ministry, were admitted to seem as if they acted a part under him, with a modesty that becomes all men, and with a confidence in him which was justified even in its extravagance by his superior abilities, had ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. II. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... scarcely let his eyes rest once upon the girl in the chimney-corner. He dreaded the sight of that beautiful face which gave him such a shock of pity and admiration and horror. Jim Otis's mind could not compass this new revelation of a woman, but he would not betray her even for her own pleading if he went down perjured to his grave. So valiant was he in her defence that he withstood her against her ...
— Madelon - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... age of the Homeric poems. [Footnote: Homer, pp. 151, 154.] The earliest Cyclic poems, dating from about 776 B.C., presuppose the Iliad, being planned to introduce or continue it.... It would appear, then, that the Iliad must have existed in something like its present compass as early as 800 B.C.; indeed a considerably earlier date will seem probable, if due time is allowed for the poem to have grown into such fame as would incite the effort to continue it ...
— Homer and His Age • Andrew Lang
... Machynleth, if that is to be our destination. But, if the gentleman's journey lies further, I could show him another way which fetches a compass about ...
— Walladmor: - And Now Freely Translated from the German into English. - In Two Volumes. Vol. I. • Thomas De Quincey
... door-ways; when encircling the whole ruin were sweet scents, and sights of fresh green growth, and ever-renewing life, that I had never dreamed of, - I say, when I passed into such clouded perception of these things as my dark soul could compass, what did I know then ...
— George Silverman's Explanation • Charles Dickens
... mills and its great hotel. It seemed as if the news of our arrival must surely have travelled thirty miles by this time. All day we watched every smoke that rose among the wooded hills, and consulted the compass and the map, to see if that sign announced the doom of our expected home. At the very last moment of the tide, just in time to cross the bar that day, the missing vessel arrived; all anxieties vanished; I transferred ...
— Army Life in a Black Regiment • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... investigations and explanations only add to my amazement. The design and formation of that little seed is even more wonderful and incomprehensible than the full-grown orange tree. Within its tiny compass, it not only contains all the complicated miraculous processes which convert earth and air and water into fragrant blossoms, juicy pulp and golden oranges, but it contains in addition to that, other miraculous powers which enable it to develop and transform itself into a special ...
— Heart and Soul • Victor Mapes (AKA Maveric Post)
... home the Rio Grande in a seven-days' gale, Seven days and seven nights, the same as JONAH'S whale, Standard compass gone to bits, steering all adrift, Courses split and mainmast sprung, cargo on the shift ... Not a chart in all the ship left to steer her by, Not a glimpse of star or sun in the bloomin' sky ... Two men at the jury wheel, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Jan. 15, 1919 • Various
... combination of symbols which can be carried out with surprising accuracy? What human ingenuity could have ever contrived such a marvelous series of events, and described them under such appropriate symbols? Finally, let me ask, Where in the whole compass of universal history can be found another series of events so perfectly meeting every requirement of the symbols? In this we must ...
— The Revelation Explained • F. Smith
... trace of road) ran snakily through a dense miniature forest of dwarfed, gnarled pines, of a peculiarly sombre green, ever and again in some scant clearing losing itself in a web of similar paths that converged from all points of the compass; so that the wayfarer was fain to steer by the sun—and at one time found himself abruptly on the brink of a ravine that gashed the earth like a cruel wound. He worked his way to an elevation which showed him plainly that—unless by a debatable detour of several miles—there was ...
— Alias The Lone Wolf • Louis Joseph Vance
... as it may seem, proved, upon experiment, to be within the compass of my powers. The detail of my progress would be curious and instructive. What impediments, in the attainment of a darling purpose, human ingenuity and patience are able to surmount; how much may be done by strenuous and solitary efforts; how the mind, unassisted, ...
— Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown
... because it is a nearer approach to the spirit world. They bury on scaffolds and in trees that in some mute, sorrowful way they may still hold communion with their loved and their lost. At the grave they go to the four points of the compass and mourn, singing all the while a weird chant. They bury with their dead all of the belongings of the deceased, the playthings of the Indian child, for the Indian boy and girl have dolls and balls and baubles as does the ...
— The Vanishing Race • Dr. Joseph Kossuth Dixon |
