"Curve" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... fashions change! In "the French figure" or straight-front corset now in vogue the pelvis is tilted forward, producing a sinking in of the abdomen and a marked prominence of the hips and sacrum, necessitating a compensatory curve of the spine which increases the curvature forward at the small of the back— a deformity which, a few years ago, women were going to orthopedic surgeons to have corrected. In this attitude the line passing through the centre of gravity strikes the heels, the knees are hyper-extended, and the ...
— The Four Epochs of Woman's Life • Anna M. Galbraith
... the sorceress' directions with beating hearts, while she began spinning round on her toes with dizzy rapidity; her curls flew out, and the magic wand in her extended hand described a large and beautiful curve. Suddenly, and as if stricken by terror, she stopped her whirl, and at the same instant the lamps went out and the only light was from the stars and the twinkling coals under the cauldrons. The low music died away, and a fresh strong perfume welled ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... the direction of this valley, descending gradually from the door of the convent, some thirty feet to the level of the lake. This we skirted by the regular path, rock smoothed by the hoof of horse and foot of man, until we came near the last curve of the oval formation. Here was the site of a temple erected by the Romans in honour of Jupiter of the Snows, this passage of the Alps having been frequented from the most remote antiquity. We looked at the spot with blind reverence, for the remains might ...
— A Residence in France - With An Excursion Up The Rhine, And A Second Visit To Switzerland • J. Fenimore Cooper
... sandy beach stretching for more than seventy miles in an unbroken, melancholy line, without cove, curve, or indentation to break its cruel monotony, and with the wild waves of the German Ocean, lashed by a wintry storm, breaking into white foam as far as the eye could reach, appalled the fugitive criminal. With the certainty of an ignominious death behind him, he shrank abjectly from the terrors of ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... had lingered long enough at Arlington, and, descending, he made a great curve around the earthworks, coming to the river north of Arlington. His next problem was the passage of the Potomac. He did not dare to try Long Bridge, which he knew would be guarded strictly, but he thought ...
— The Guns of Bull Run - A Story of the Civil War's Eve • Joseph A. Altsheler
... place sheltered from the moisture of the soil. The arbour rises in the centre of this first platform. Boughs vertically arranged are interlaced at the base with those of the floor. The birds arrange them in two rows facing each other; they then curve together the upper extremities of these sticks, and fix them so as to obtain a vault. All the prominences in the materials employed are turned towards the outside, so that the interior of the room may be smooth and the birds may not catch their plumage in it. This done, the little ...
— The Industries of Animals • Frederic Houssay
... first to show that every trace of roughness and rattle could be obviated by imparting to the reed tongue exactly the right curve. ...
— The Recent Revolution in Organ Building - Being an Account of Modern Developments • George Laing Miller
... models, he found that, while the little cars would remain upright and run along a straight rail, they left the track at the first curve. The gyroscope governed their direction as well as their equilibrium. It was the first check in the evolution of the perfect machine. It was over ten years before he found the answer to the problem—ten years of making experimental ...
— How To Write Special Feature Articles • Willard Grosvenor Bleyer
... for us in Slip E of the topmost stage. The great curve of her back shines frostily under the lights, and some minute alteration of trim makes her rock a ...
— With The Night Mail - A Story of 2000 A.D. (Together with extracts from the - comtemporary magazine in which it appeared) • Rudyard Kipling
... had condescended to tread awhile this work-day earth in living flesh and blood. The forehead was very lofty and smooth, the eyebrows thin and greatly arched (the envious gallants whispered that something at least of their curve was due to art, as was also the exceeding smoothness of those delicate cheeks). The face was somewhat long and thin; the nose aquiline; and the languid mouth showed, perhaps, too much of the ivory upper teeth; but the most striking point ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... came to the first rapid, "The Mountain"—Watchikwe Powistic—so called from a peak at its head, which towered to a great height above the neighbouring banks. The rapid extends diagonally across the river in a low cascade, with a curve inward towards the left shore. It was decided to unload and make the portage, and a very ticklish one it was. The boats, of course, had to be hauled up stream by the trackers, and grasping their line I got safely over, and was ...
— Through the Mackenzie Basin - A Narrative of the Athabasca and Peace River Treaty Expedition of 1899 • Charles Mair
... chisel Had been tooling night and day for twenty years, and tooled too well, In its rendering of crease where curve was, where was raven, grizzle - Pits, ...
— Time's Laughingstocks and Other Verses • Thomas Hardy
... only a half-dozen of the heat-ray projectors, no long range weapons, a few side arms, and some old-fashioned, practically antiquated weapons of explosives, plus hand projectors with the new Benson curve light. ...
— Brigands of the Moon • Ray Cummings
... structure of charming possibilities. Its lines curve as well as any other feature. Its proportions should be always light and graceful. It adds much to almost any garden or home grounds when carefully used. Its open work overhead typifies the freedom of the outdoors. It also recalls the vine and its growth to ...
— Trees, Fruits and Flowers of Minnesota, 1916 • Various
... received his advice in silence. Not a feature of the piquant, yet proud, arresting face, not a curve of the slim figure, did ...
— Winnie Childs - The Shop Girl • C. N. Williamson
... on fire, the wand is swung to and fro, and the impetus thus communicated to the disc is augmented by dashing the rod sharply against a sloping board. The burning disc is thus thrown off, and mounting high into the air, describes a long fiery curve before it reaches the ground. A single lad may fling up forty or fifty of these discs, one after the other. The object is to throw them as high as possible. The wand by which they are hurled must, at least in some parts of Swabia, be of hazel. Sometimes the lads also leap ...
— Balder The Beautiful, Vol. I. • Sir James George Frazer
... conscience, an almost morbid sense of its duty. It more than clothed her, it covered her up as if she had been a guilty secret; there was concealment and disguise in every crease of the awful garment. In its imperishable prudery it refused to define her by ever so innocent a curve; all its folds were implicated in a conspiracy against her sex. The effect, though striking, was obviously unstudied and inevitable, and he argued charitably that Miss Tancred was attired, not after her own mysterious and perverse fancy, but according ...
— The Return of the Prodigal • May Sinclair
... and above his other glories, he had me to crown all. The graceful curve of my chain on his waistcoat gave that garment quite a distinguished appearance, and the consciousness of a silver watch in his pocket made him hold his head even higher ...
— The Adventures of a Three-Guinea Watch • Talbot Baines Reed
... do our business on the square, Mr. Throckmorton," returned Jack, with a proud curve of the lips that was almost a smile, and illumined his face. "If any thing is not exactly as represented, we shall make it good; but we try never to have occasion to do that. We should be glad to have you test our ...
— Hope Mills - or Between Friend and Sweetheart • Amanda M. Douglas
... error five times. He judges the flight of the ball some 10 feet away, and never really sees it again until he has hit it (if he does). A slight deflection caused by the wind or a small misjudgment of curve will certainly mean error. Remembering the 85 percent errors in tennis, I again ask you if it is worth while to take ...
— The Art of Lawn Tennis • William T. Tilden, 2D
... fire, and his hands involuntarily became clenched until the finger nails indented the palms. Soon his look softened, the fire left his eyes, and they appeared as gentle as twin lakes in lovely Switzerland. The proud lines in his lips gave place to a curve like a Cupid's bow and a smile lighted up his face. Looking out over the wintry landscape, he said to himself: "It is worth the danger of an attack like this to receive such a note from Viola LeMonde. How kind ...
— The Kentucky Ranger • Edward T. Curnick
... river. The outlines of the mud houses were sharply defined on this pale background. The Dervish riflemen crouched in the shelter trench that ran round the village. Their cavalry, perhaps a hundred strong, were falling in hurriedly on the sandy ground to the south near the ragged rocks. The curve of the hills, crowned with the dark line of the troops, completed and framed the picture. Within this small amphitheatre one of the minor dramas of war was now ...
— The River War • Winston S. Churchill
... consisted of about thirty vessels, and lay in the form of a crescent facing the entrance to Cape Clear river, the centre being just out of range of the heavy guns mounted on Fort Fisher, the horns, as it were, gradually approaching the shore on each side; the whole line or curve covered about ...
— Sketches From My Life - By The Late Admiral Hobart Pasha • Hobart Pasha
... through the waves like the blade of a knife, the broken water churning along the sides. West clung to his perch, peering out through the open port, watching the fast disappearing shore line in the giant curve from the Municipal Pier northward to Lincoln Park. In spite of the brightness overhead, there must have been fog in the air, for that distant view quickly became obscure and then as suddenly vanished altogether. There ...
— The Case and The Girl • Randall Parrish
... undreamed of by army or police or populace. There had I lingered, soothed at noon by the hum of the bee, at night by that spirit that scatters the dew, by the tranquillity and charm of the place, ever rested by her presence, the repose of her manner, the curve of her dropping eyelid, so that looking on her face alone gave ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various
... had been so red-stained and fierce during the long ride after Canby was now bright and gentle. At every turn she pricked her small sharp ears as if she expected home and friends on the other side of the curve. And now and again she tossed her head and glanced back at the master for a moment and then whinnied ...
— Riders of the Silences • John Frederick
... chief engineer of the East Coast job as office and domicile, too. While Fat Joe laid on the whip a man came hurtling past the outflung door, sprang to his feet and, running low to the ground, disappeared into the blackness of the brush. Joe swung the horses up in a galloping curve and with one catlike leap, incredibly light for a man of his chunky build, was down from the seat and crashing through the bushes on the trail of that fugitive whose noisy flight had already become a ...
— Then I'll Come Back to You • Larry Evans
... church registers, and interviewing family physicians. Well, let them. Since I learned to write, some figures have been changed in the old Family Bible, and, thank goodness! old Doctor Perry is dead. The keenest detective won't find much difference between 1830 and 1850. It only requires that the curve of the three should be rubbed out, and a dash sharpened to a point added. If they look for eighteen hundred and thirty there, I can tell them it isn't to be found. Let ...
— Phemie Frost's Experiences • Ann S. Stephens
... and suddenly plunged in the flooded river. Jerry saw the splashed water glitter in the sunshine and then, indistinctly, a head reappear and remain in sight for some few minutes as its owner floated or swam. Then a curve of the river hid it from his sight, and he recovered his power of action again. Climbing the rail, he scrambled down the side of the raised roadway, reached the bank, ...
— The Queen's Scarlet - The Adventures and Misadventures of Sir Richard Frayne • George Manville Fenn
... was miraculously real before him, every line and colour of her. He saw the moonlight shimmering in the chiffon of her skirts brightest on her crossed knee and the tip of her slipper; saw the blue curve of the characteristic shadow behind her, as she leaned back against the white step; saw the watery twinkling of sequins in the gauze wrap over her white shoulders as she moved, and the faint, symmetrical lights in her black hair—and not one alluring, exasperating twentieth-of-an-inch of her laughing ...
— The Magnificent Ambersons • Booth Tarkington
... fine highway that we were using. Broad, direct, smooth beyond all expectation, it lay like a clean-cut sash upon the countryside, rippling away into the distance as though it were indeed that long, long lane that hath no turning. Presently a curve would come to save the face of the proverb, but the bends were few in number, and, as a general rule, did little more than switch the road a point or two to east or west, as, the mood took them. There was little traffic, and the surface ...
— Jonah and Co. • Dornford Yates
... (inquisitive) sciama. Curious (strange) stranga. Curiosity kuriozajxo. Curl buklo. Currant ribo. Current fluo. Currier ledpretigisto. Curse malbeni. Curt mallonga. Curtail mallongigi. Curtain kurteno. Curve kurbigi. Curve kurbeco. Cushion kuseno. Custard flanajxo. Custom kutimo. Customary kutima. Customer kliento. Cut (with knife) trancxi. Cut (with scissors) tondi. Cut off detrancxi. Cutaneous hauxta. Cute ruza. Cutlass trancxilego. Cutlet kotleto. Cutter ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... themselves refined they questioned that quality which all recognize in him now, but which was then the inspired knowledge of the simple-hearted multitude. I went with him to see Longfellow, but I do not think Longfellow made much of him, and Lowell made less. He stopped as if with the long Semitic curve of Clemens's nose, which in the indulgence of his passion for finding every one more or less a Jew he pronounced unmistakably racial. It was two of my most fastidious Cambridge friends who accepted ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... range of high unpainted oak paling, well seasoned, well carpentered, innocent of chink or shrinkage, impervious to the human eye. Visible above it the domed heads of enormous elm trees steeped in sunshine, rising towards the ample curve of the summer sky. At intervals, with tumultuous rush and scurry, the thud of the hoofs of unseen horses, galloping for all they are worth over grass. The suck and rub of breeches against saddle-flaps, the rattle of a curb chain or the rings of a bit. A call, a challenge, ...
— The Far Horizon • Lucas Malet
... all in black, even to her hands, no trace of white or any colour showing but the fair curve of the cheek below her mask and the red of her lips. And if more evidence were needed, the intelligence with which she attacked the combination, the confident, business-like precision distinguishing her every action, proved her an apt ...
— The Lone Wolf - A Melodrama • Louis Joseph Vance
... into the stream. She might at once have been known as a South-Sea whaler by the height she was out of the water, and by the boats which hung from their davits around her, painted white, light though strongly-built, with their stems and sterns sharp alike, and with a slight curve in their keels—each from about twenty-six to nearly thirty feet in length. Although she had provisions enough on board—casks of beef, and pork, and bread, (meaning biscuit), and flour, and suet, and raisins, and rum, and lime-juice, and other antiscorbutics—to ...
— Old Jack • W.H.G. Kingston
... houses are rectilineal, the gardens are squares or oblongs; if by chance the land sprawls in billocks and hollows, nevertheless is it partitioned in rigid lines. The architecture is equally austere. The very curves demonstrate the theorem that a curve is made up of little straight lines, the arches are stiff and unbending, and wherever a public building demands an ornament, a fir-shaped cone of straight lines rises in stoic severity. In vain one seeks for a refuge from Euclid—for an odd turning or a crooked ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill
... and saw that she was looking towards the far end of the big drawing-room. Jenny was sitting there, under a shaded lamp. She had some work in her hands but her hands were still. Her head was turned away, but her attitude, the curve of her soft, long, white throat, the absolute immobility of her thin body betrayed the fact that ...
— Tongues of Conscience • Robert Smythe Hichens
... plunged down with a thunderous crash. The reel screamed. The line sang. The rod, which I had thought stiff as a tree, bent like a willow wand. The silver king came up far astern and sheered to the right in a long, wide curve, leaving behind a white wake. Then he sounded, while I watched the line with troubled eyes. But not long did he sulk. He began a series of magnificent tactics new in my experience. He stood on his tail, then on his head; he sailed like a bird; he shook himself so violently as to make ...
— Tales of Fishes • Zane Grey
... their empire, is situated in the north-western part of Illinois, on the east bank of the Mississippi, in latitude 40 degrees 33 minutes North; it is bounded on the north, south, and west by the river, which there forms a large curve, and is nearly two miles wide. Eastward of the city is a beautiful undulating prairie; it is distant ten miles from Fort Madison, in Iowa, and more than two hundred ...
— Travels and Adventures of Monsieur Violet • Captain Marryat
... the high and massive forehead, crowned with a mane of (then) iron-gray hair, the small and pale but piercing eyes behind the gold-rimmed spectacles, or the thin lipped mouth, depressed at the corners into a curve indicative of iron will, and set between bushy whiskers of the same dark gray as the hair. The most cursory observer could not but recognize power and character in the head; yet one would scarcely have guessed it to be the power of a poet, the character of a prophet. ...
— Henrik Ibsen • Edmund Gosse
... a city boy taking his first trip into the country. He hung out of the window, and smoked and smoked. Whenever the train swept round a curve he could look into the rear carriages; and the heads sticking out of the thirds reminded him of chicken-crates. Never had he seen such green gardens, such orange and lemon groves, such forests of olives. Save that it was ...
— The Lure of the Mask • Harold MacGrath
... up, and look into the garden where the flowers ought to have been forget-me-nots, but were as usual mostly marigolds and zinnias. They crowded round tile-edged pools, and other flowers bloomed in pots on the coping of the garden-seats built up of thin tiles carved on their edges to an inward curve. It is strongly believed that there are several stories under the house, and the Marquis is going some day to dig them up or out to the last one where the original Jewish owner of the house is supposed to have hid his treasure. In the mean time we could look across ...
— Familiar Spanish Travels • W. D. Howells
... up her luggage so that it could be sent to her later, she started in a hired trap for the little town of Stourcastle, through which it was necessary to pass on her journey, now in a direction almost opposite to that of her first adventuring. On the curve of the nearest hill she looked back regretfully at Marlott and her father's house, although she had been so ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy
... different colony. Here, the Bembeces (A species of Digger-wasps.—Translator's Note.) were sweeping the threshold of their burrows, flinging a curve of dust behind them; the Languedocian Sphex was dragging her Ephippigera (A species of Green Grasshopper—Translator's Note.) by the antennae; a Stizus (A species of Hunting-wasp.—Translator's Note.) was ...
— The Wonders of Instinct • J. H. Fabre
... as falsehood, diamond-headed and cruel as pleasure, Coil by coil he lengthened and glided, straight to the fragrant curve of her throat: There in the print of the last of the kisses that still glowed red from the sweet long pressure, Fierce as famine and swift as lightning over the glittering lyre ...
— Collected Poems - Volume One (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... dismissed him as negligible, he saw her clearly, grimly. He looked at her. She was plump, but not too short, with a generous width between the hips; a broad full bosom, but firm; round arms and quick slim legs; a fine sturdy throat. The curve between arm and breast made a graceful gracious line ... Working in a bond office ... Working in a bond office ... There was nothing in the Bible about working in a bond office. Here was a woman built ...
— Gigolo • Edna Ferber
... mouth-key employed by Ebhardt. The rate of revolution in the drum was so adjusted to the normal range of excursion in the pneumographic pen as to give sharp definition to every change of direction in the curve, which hence allowed of exact measurements of temporal and intensive phases in the successive rhythm groups. These measurements were made to limits of 1.0 mm. in the latter direction and of ...
— Harvard Psychological Studies, Volume 1 • Various
... creeping across. The saplings bent under his weight and made a downward curve, so that when he attempted so ascend on the opposite side it was a climb up, but with the ropes made of woven prairie grass and sticks and boughs he easily ascended. He had carried his lantern with him, and he flashed its light across his bridge ...
— A Desperate Chance - The Wizard Tramp's Revelation, A Thrilling Narrative • Old Sleuth (Harlan P. Halsey)
... beautiful. We speak of the beautiful landscape, of the beautiful face. And wherever we meet it in life, we speak of love, of friendship, of peace, of harmony. The word harmony may even cover both nature and life. Wherever it happens that every line and every curve and every color and every movement in the landscape is so harmonious with all the others that every suggestion which one stirs up is satisfied by another, there it is perfect and we are completely happy in it. In the life relations of love and friendship and peace, there is again ...
— The Photoplay - A Psychological Study • Hugo Muensterberg
... all Peggy could say at first. All the way up the avenue her heart had been beating high; at sight of the brown chimney-stacks of Fernley, it seemed to give a great jump up in her throat; and when the carriage swept round the curve, and she saw the whole front of the great house, and Margaret, her own Margaret, standing on the steps, with arms outstretched to welcome her, there was nothing for it but to cry out, with the full power of her healthy lungs. Almost before Bannan could stop the horses, ...
— Fernley House • Laura E. Richards
... flecked with black, shone with golden reflections round pupils that were brilliant and intense. Pierrette was made to be gay, but she was sad. Her lost gaiety was still to be seen in the vivacious forms of the eye, in the ingenuous grace of her brow, in the smooth curve of her chin. The long eyelashes lay upon the cheek-bones, made prominent by suffering. The paleness of her face, which was unnaturally white, made the lines and all the details infinitely pure. The ear alone was a little masterpiece of modelling,—in marble, ...
— The Celibates - Includes: Pierrette, The Vicar of Tours, and The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... vociferously in imitation of geese; for which, doubtless, many people unacquainted with our purpose would have taken us. At first our call seemed to make no impression on them; but gradually they bent into a curve, and, sweeping round in a long circle, came nearer to us, while we continued to shout at the top of our voices. How they ever mistook our bad imitation of the cry for the voices of real geese, I cannot tell—probably they thought we had colds or ...
— Hudson Bay • R.M. Ballantyne
... feet of the marquise to two rings close together fixed to a board; then making her lie down, he fastened her wrists to two other rings in the wall, distant about three feet from each other. The head was at the same height as the feet, and the body, held up on a trestle, described a half-curve, as though lying over a wheel. To increase the stretch of the limbs, the man gave two turns to a crank, which pushed the feet, at first about twelve inches from the rings, to a distance of six inches. And here we may leave our narrative ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - THE MARQUISE DE BRINVILLIERS • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... gay; I would sit and sing the whole day long; I would fill my lungs with the strongest brine, And squirt it up in a spray of song, And soak my head in my liquid voice; I'd curl my tail in curves divine, And let each curve in a kink rejoice. I'd tackle the mermaids under the sea, And yank 'em around till they yanked me, Sportively, sportively; And then we would wiggle away, away, To the pea-green groves on the coast of ...
— The Complete Works • James Whitcomb Riley
... she studied his face she knew that she couldn't possibly have been afraid of that face anyway, unless, perhaps, she had ventured to disobey its owner's orders. He had a strong, firm chin, and his lips though kindly in their curve looked decided as though they were not to be trifled with. On the whole if this was a missionary then she must change her ideas of ...
— The Man of the Desert • Grace Livingston Hill
... side-posts of it are as important members as the lintel they carry; but the lintel is carved elaborately, and the side-posts left blank. Of the facing arch and shaft, it would be similarly difficult to say whether the sustaining vertical, or sustained curve, were the more important member of the construction; but the decorator now reverses the distribution of his care, adorns the vertical member with passionate elaboration, and runs a narrow band, of comparatively uninteresting ...
— Val d'Arno • John Ruskin
... was instantly aware that it was approaching him at an almost incredible speed. It gathered shape swiftly, and he watched it with a fascination which kept him rooted to the spot. Above the wind he could hear the throbbing of its engines. He saw it round a slight curve in the road, with two wheels in the air, and a skid which seemed for a moment as though it must mean destruction. Mud and small stones flew up around it. The driver was crouching forward over the wheel, tense and motionless. Duncombe moved to the side of the road to let it pass, ...
— A Maker of History • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... you write it. What would you say?" she demanded, a patch of pink standing out near the curve of the cheek bone. ...
— Brand Blotters • William MacLeod Raine
... voice, in her smile, something that stirred him strangely. He felt as though he had met her before—a long while ago. He recognised little characteristics, the way that she pushed back her hair when she was excited, the beautiful curve of her neck when she raised her eyes to his, the rise and fall of her bosom—it was all strangely, individually familiar, as though he had often watched her do the same things in the same way before, in ...
— The Wooden Horse • Hugh Walpole
... illumination exclusive. The doors, often of the full width of the shop, are thrown wide open, and the glory shines upon all passers-by. It is the apotheosis of ham and cheese, at which only the Hebraic nose, doing violence to its natural curve, turns up in scorn; while true Christians crowd around it to wonder and admire, and sometimes to venture in upon the almost enchanted ground. May it be long before this ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... have been submerged, had not the man who had frightened her, at my bidding, gone to drag her out. As it was, they looked anything but beautiful with their wet and muddy garments clinging tightly to their bodies, and betraying every curve of their not unbeautiful figures. One of the women, a comely damsel of some twenty summers, did not jump into the field, but lay flat on the ground behind some bushes, thereby hoping to get out of sight, ...
— Across China on Foot • Edwin Dingle
... consciousness to another. And if there has been a great 'Fall' or Lapse into conflict and disease and 'sin' and misery, occupying the major part of the Historical period hitherto, we see that this period is only brief, so to speak, in comparison with the whole curve of growth and expansion. We see also that, as I have said before, the belief in a state of salvation or deliverance has in the past ages never left itself quite without a witness in the creeds and rituals and poems and prophecies of mankind. Art, in some ...
— Pagan & Christian Creeds - Their Origin and Meaning • Edward Carpenter
... arm upraised, sits his iron horse at the lower corner of Union Square, forever signaling the Broadway cars to stop as they round the curve into Fourteenth Street. But the cars buzz on, heedless, as they do at the beck of a private citizen, and the great General must feel, unless his nerves are iron, that rapid transit ...
— The Voice of the City • O. Henry
... is enclosed a letter for Mrs. Stanfield, which, if you don't immediately and faithfully deliver, you will hear of in an unpleasant way from the station-house at the curve of ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 1 (of 3), 1833-1856 • Charles Dickens
... terminating in a precipitous cliff, loomed up out of a thin mist at a distance of only four miles. All was at once excitement. The topgallant sails were clewed up to reduce the vessel's speed, and her course was changed so that we swept round in a curve broadside to the coast, about three miles distant. The mountain peaks, by which we might have ascertained our position, were hidden by the clouds and fog, and it was no easy matter to ascertain exactly ...
— Tent Life in Siberia • George Kennan
... the girl. In the war-time parties, where the women wore last year's dresses, and the wit served for refreshment, her gentle beauty became, for a little while, the fashion. The smooth bands of her hair were copied, the curve of her eyelashes was made the subject of some verses which The Examiner printed and the English papers quoted later on. It was a bright and stately society that filled the capital that year; and on pleasant Sundays when Virginia walked from church, in her Leghorn bonnet and white ruffles ...
— The Battle Ground • Ellen Glasgow
... oldest lion of them all And he shall have first place, With a malignant growl, satirical, To curve in foliations prodigal Round and around his face, Extending till the echoes interlace With Pride and Prudence, ...
— A Woman of Thirty • Marjorie Allen Seiffert
... so piquant did she seem to him in her dishabille. There is something indescribably alluring to the eye in a portion of flesh seen through an hiatus in the undergarment, more attractive far than when it rises gracefully above the circular curve of the velvet bodice, to the vanishing line of the prettiest swan's-neck that ever lover kissed before a ball. When the eye dwells on a woman in full dress making exhibition of her magnificent white shoulders, do we not fancy ...
— Bureaucracy • Honore de Balzac
... a very small blue boy. The pony's small red head was quite innocent of bridle; the bit was against his red breast, held there by small hands desperate on the reins; the torn headstall flapped rakishly about the red legs. Making the curve at sickening speed, balanced over everlasting nothingness for a moment of breathless ...
— Copper Streak Trail • Eugene Manlove Rhodes
... Anon, there was a blaze of sunlight revealing wooded spurs with zinc-roofed cottages and grey villages nestling on their slopes. Green valleys lay at the foot of frowning precipices, and round many a bend and curve were glimpses of tea gardens with the bushes laid out in serried rows; and cumbrous, zinc-roofed tea factories looking strangely incongruous in their ...
— Banked Fires • E. W. (Ethel Winifred) Savi
... broad curve in the straight seaboard of the Republic of Costaguana, the last spur of the coast range forms an insignificant cape whose name is Punta Mala. From the middle of the gulf the point of the land itself is not visible at all; but the shoulder of a steep hill at the back can be made ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... for the signal. The gong struck sharply, the conductor shouted, "All aboard," and raised his hand; the tired ticket-seller shut his window, and the train moved out of the station, gathered way as it cleared the outskirts of the town, rounded a curve, entered on an absolutely straight line, and, with one long whistle from the engine, settled down to its work. Through the night hours it sped on, past lonely ranches and infrequent stations, by and across shallow streams fringed with cottonwood trees, over the ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 6 • Various
... the foot-board of the bed was a spray of what might have passed for cauliflower, the tin boiler was encircled by a wreath of impressionistic roses, and on the window-pane a piece of exceedingly golden goldenrod bent in an obliging curve in order to cover ...
— Mrs. Wiggs of the Cabbage Patch • Alice Caldwell Hegan
... years hence, let us say, he will be a railway engineer. As such he must drive his engine at forty miles an hour through blinding storm, or in inky darkness, or through menacing and stifling tunnels, or over dizzy bridges, or around the curve on the edge of the precipice—and do this with no shadow of fear or hint of trepidation, but always with a keen eye, a cool head, and a steady hand. In his keeping are the lives of many persons, and any wavering or unsteadiness, on his part, may lead ...
— The Reconstructed School • Francis B. Pearson
... cloud or wave or hill, To match the curve which rounds her soft-flushed cheek? A colour, in the sky of morn or of even, To match that flush? Ah, let me now be still! If of her spirit I should strive to speak, I should come short, as ...
— Robert F. Murray - his poems with a memoir by Andrew Lang • Robert F. Murray
... themselves thankfully out, and drove away as fast as the fat pony could go. As they rounded the curve below the beech wood a plump figure came speeding over Mr. Andrews' pasture, waving to them excitedly. It was Catherine Andrews and she was so out of breath that she could hardly speak, but she thrust a couple of quarters into ...
— Anne Of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... on him!' And then, you wouldn't believe what followed. Why, darn my skin, when that 'reflex' met the current at the other end, it just swirled around again in what Captain Fairfax called the 'centrifugal curve,' and just went round and round the canyon like ez when yer washin' the dirt out o' a prospectin' pan—every now and then washin' some one of the boys that was in it, like ...
— Under the Redwoods • Bret Harte
... nor Mr. Manning nor Mr. Direck was interrupted or incommoded in the slightest degree by that report. Because it was too far off over the curve of this round world to be either heard or seen at Matching's Easy. Nevertheless it was a very loud report. It occurred at an open space by a river that ran through a cramped Oriental city, a city spiked with white minarets and girt about by bare hills under a blazing afternoon sky. It came from ...
— Mr. Britling Sees It Through • H. G. Wells
... was free of decoration. No pale blue fires shone at her white throat, and her hands were ringless. But the light, firm poise of her figure could not be changed; the mockery of her glance remained the same, half laughing and half wistful. The strong curve of her lips remained, and I recalled this arch of brow, the curve of neck and chin, the droop of the dark locks above her even forehead. Yes, it was she. It ...
— 54-40 or Fight • Emerson Hough
... 4 and 20 grains, that the greatest number of seeds were of the mean weight, viz. 12 grains, and that as we passed to either extreme at 4 and 20 the number became regularly less. The weight relation of such a collection of seeds can be expressed by the accompanying curve (Fig. 30). Now if we select for {161} sowing only that seed which weighs over 12 grains, we shall find that in the next generation the average weight of the seed is raised and the curve becomes somewhat shifted to the right as in the dotted line of Fig. 30. By continually ...
— Mendelism - Third Edition • Reginald Crundall Punnett
... line of Tennyson reminiscent of the days when Bakkus had guided his reading came into his head. Something about a man's own angry pride being cap and bells for a fool. He tried to find repose against the edge of the sharp double curve that divided the carriage side into two portions. The trivial discomfort irritated him. The German compartment might be a symbol of victory, but it was also a symbol of the end of the war, the end of the only intense life full of meaning which ...
— The Mountebank • William J. Locke
... three, four blocks. Yes, it will pay; I'll do it." On he went, struck the track presently, and moved rapidly along the iron walk. An unusual sight suddenly presented itself to his eyes, that of a carriage and two powerful horses coming around the curve, and making a carriage drive of the railway track. It took but a moment of time to discover three things, viz: that it was the Hastings' carriage, that the coachman was beyond a doubt too much intoxicated to know what he was about, and that the Buffalo Express ...
— Three People • Pansy
... by a certain curve in the corner of his wife's mouth that she longed to tell him what it was. For himself, he could not discover. He studied the room searchingly and was unable to determine why, attractive as it really was, it certainly did, upon this cool May evening, ...
— The Indifference of Juliet • Grace S. Richmond
... sailing in circles,—or rather in a spiral curve, that was constantly contracting downward and inward. The centre of that curve was the ...
— The Boy Hunters • Captain Mayne Reid
... accumulation of innumerable and, for the most part, exceedingly slight divergencies from the parent stock. But whence and why these divergencies? It cannot be without a cause that even one more feather than the parent possessed appears in the offspring's wing, or a novel tint on its coat, or that the curve of beak or talons is not precisely the same in each. What then is the cause? Unphilosophic people will most likely call it 'all chance,' getting sneered at for their pains, and justly too, as using words without meaning. But are not philosophers themselves ...
— Old-Fashioned Ethics and Common-Sense Metaphysics - With Some of Their Applications • William Thomas Thornton
... share in the action. Another too joined in the rescue—Procles, from Halisarna and Teuthrania, a descendant of Damaratus. By this time Xenophon and his men were being sore pressed by the arrows and slingstones, though they marched in a curve so as to keep their shields facing the missiles, and even so, barely crossed the river Carcasus, nearly half of them wounded. Here it was that Agasias the Stymphalian, the captain, received his wound, while keeping up a steady unflagging fight against the ...
— Anabasis • Xenophon
... tremors and shocks to which it was exposed—by night and by day—was not all it had to bear. In certain directions of the wind it was intermittently enveloped in clouds of mingled soot and steam, and, being situated at a curve on the line where signalling became imminently needful, it was exposed to all the varied horrors of the whistle from the sharp screech of interrogation to the successive bursts of exasperation, or the prolonged and deadly yell of intimidation, with all the intermediate modulations—so that, what ...
— The Iron Horse • R.M. Ballantyne
... they reached the track. Kitty looked,—there were no cars coming as far as she could see. To be sure there was a curve in the road just behind her, (round which the eye couldn't look,) but she wasn't afraid. Just then Jowler dropped the basket and spilt her huckleberries. Kitty was so sorry,—but she stooped down to gather them up, when a train of cars whisked like lightning round the curve on the ...
— Little Ferns For Fanny's Little Friends • Fanny Fern
... result of this investigation of the state of religion among the upper classes seems to me to be this: the curve of intensity of religious feeling which conjecture leads us to draw through the spiritual life of the ancients as a whole, that same curve, but more distinct and sharply accentuated, is found again in the ...
— Atheism in Pagan Antiquity • A. B. Drachmann
... curve, take the bolts out of the tie-plates connecting to sections of the outside rail, and scoop away the gravel, cinders, or dirt for a few feet on each side ...
— Simple Sabotage Field Manual • Strategic Services
... moving in upon him quickly, groping, yet moving rapidly. It was like playing blind man's buff with everyone blindfolded except one. "Get hold of him!" cried one. He found himself in the arc of a loose curve of pursuers. He felt suddenly he must ...
— The Door in the Wall And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... before we have become accustomed to the level expanses of the sea a strip of land appears to starboard. This is Ruegen, the largest island of Germany, lifting its white chalk cliffs steeply from the sea, like surf congealed into stone. The ferry-boat swings round in a beautiful curve towards the land, and in the harbour of Sassnitz its rails are fitted in exactly to the railway track on German soil. We hasten to take our seats in the carriages, for in a few minutes the German engine comes up and draws the train on ...
— From Pole to Pole - A Book for Young People • Sven Anders Hedin
... two hours on the platform at the rear of the train, never tired of watching the wonderful scenery that continually receded from my gaze,—sometimes the track suddenly disappearing as we rounded a curve; and then looking ahead, I would find that an entirely new prospect was opening ...
— A Boy's Voyage Round the World • The Son of Samuel Smiles
... eye turned in the direction indicated, and he beheld Bourassin's horse stopped by the hairy forehead of a buffalo-bull, while Bourassin himself was in the act of describing a magnificent parabolic curve over the buffalo's back. He alighted on his back, fortunately on a low bush, a yard or two ...
— The Buffalo Runners - A Tale of the Red River Plains • R.M. Ballantyne
... the vertebrates have disappeared, and the highest wonder of animal life is represented by giant crustaceans, which in turn give way to a lower form. We have a vision of an involution that shall succeed the highest curve of development; of life ending where it began in the depths of the sea, as the initial energy of the solar system is dissipated and the material of it returns to rest at the temperature of the absolute zero. And ...
— H. G. Wells • J. D. Beresford
... brilliancy. A woman must have recourse to clumsy contrivances of india-rubber and gutta-percha if her silken skirts shall not trail ignobly in the dust. The peacock at will rears his train in a graceful curve, and defies defilement. ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton
... later on, the same hand was placed on my right forearm—I saw a human hand, of natural color, and I felt with mine the back of a lukewarm hand, rough and nervous. The hand dissolved (I saw it with my own eyes) and retreated as if into Madame Paladino's body, describing a curve. If all the observed phenomena of these seven seances were to disappear from my memory, this one I ...
— The Shadow World • Hamlin Garland
... march. He advised that the party should divide; the one half march up the Licking on the opposite side, and crossing at the mouth of a small branch, called Elk creek, fall over upon the eastern curve of the ravine; while the other half should take a position favorable for yielding them prompt co-operation in case of an attack. He demonstrated, that in this way the advantage of position might be taken from the enemy, and turned in their favor. He was decided and ...
— The First White Man of the West • Timothy Flint
... shoulders gave a dip and a curve and his head came up in his shirt-collar. The Major's head came up in his shirt-collar as I hadn't seen it come up since Jemmy went ...
— Mrs. Lirriper's Lodgings • Charles Dickens
... in clay, and we still acclaim him after the lapse of some two thousand years. What of the woman who wearied and ached that his eyes might not fail to learn the least sweet curve of her? What of the patient craftsmen who hewed out the block of marble, whose eyes were inflamed, whose lungs were scarred by the white dust of it? They suffered for beauty's sake—not, as some might say, because ...
— Olive in Italy • Moray Dalton
... took and razed to the foundations the long walls which had been occupied by the Athenians; and Brasidas after the capture of Amphipolis marched with his allies against Acte, a promontory running out from the King's dike with an inward curve, and ending in Athos, a lofty mountain looking towards the Aegean Sea. In it are various towns, Sane, an Andrian colony, close to the canal, and facing the sea in the direction of Euboea; the others being Thyssus, Cleone, Acrothoi, ...
— The History of the Peloponnesian War • Thucydides
... journey. I saw it as something foolish, mad, fantastic. I was snatching at a flash of powder, when I could warm my hands at an open fire. I was deserting the one thing which counted and of which I was certain; the one thing I loved. And then the train turned a curve, the lamps of the station and the white ghostly figure were shut from me, and I entered the glaring car filled with close air and smoke and smelling lamps. I seated myself beside a window and leaned far out into the night, ...
— Captain Macklin • Richard Harding Davis
... the Rustlers kicked it off—a beautiful, long, arching curve. The ball came to quarter-back, who passed it ...
— Dave Darrin's Third Year at Annapolis - Leaders of the Second Class Midshipmen • H. Irving Hancock
... She was light as a leaf, and when I saw her set her foot in her brother's hand and spring across the empty space from the stair to the shelf, it seemed no less than if a wind had blown her. Soon we were all three crouching or kneeling on the stone, with our elbows in the curve of the great window, looking out on the prospect. A fair one it was, of fields and vineyards, with streams winding about, but very small. They spoke of rivers, but I saw none. It was the same with the hills, which Yvon bade me see here and there; ...
— Rosin the Beau • Laura Elizabeth Howe Richards
... ground, fortunately landing on his feet like a cat. The pail of water described a graceful curve and splashed on both Susan and the man. The cook, whose feet became tangled up in the falling ladder, slipped and fell, knocking Dent down, and there they were in a ...
— Bob the Castaway • Frank V. Webster
... then," said Linda. "Toe up even and I'll race YoU to the third curve where you see the ...
— Her Father's Daughter • Gene Stratton-Porter
... the horses far off on the opposite side of the track all running in a bunch, until they neared the half-mile flag, when two were seen to be well in advance of the others. As they swung round the curve we could see the red cap worn by Murphy flashing in the sun, and we knew that Emperor was leading. But another horse, a deep bay, the jockey dressed completely in blue, ...
— Montezuma's Castle and Other Weird Tales • Charles B. Cory
... flews skimmed the ground; her sensitive nostrils questioned almost every blade of grass, her brain automatically registering every particle of information so obtained, and guiding her feet accordingly. Her strong tail waved above and behind her in the curve of an Arab scimitar. She ceased to be the Lady Desdemona and became simply a bloodhound at work; an epitome of the whole complex science of tracking. Finn trotted admiringly beside her, his muzzle never passing her shoulder; and now and again when ...
— Jan - A Dog and a Romance • A. J. Dawson
... eyes fell upon was Parson Downs, lolling in a chair by the fireless hearth, for there was no call for fire that May night. His bulk of body swept in a vast curve from his triple chin to the floor, and his great rosy face was so exaggerated with merriment and good cheer that it looked like one seen in the shining swell of a silver tankard. When Nick Barry finished a roaring song, he stamped and clapped and shouted applause till it set off the others ...
— The Heart's Highway - A Romance of Virginia in the Seventeeth Century • Mary E. Wilkins
... again I curve and flow To join the brimming river; For men may come and men may go, But ...
— The Evolution of Expression Vol. I • Charles Wesley Emerson |
