"Asphalt" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... raucous with them, sped home for luncheon through streets that already smelled of sun on asphalt. She had never really noticed them before. That little fat girl with the braids. How pretty to loop them up that way behind each ear with bright red bows. She pressed against the little warm life at her bosom. She felt throaty with laughter, ...
— Star-Dust • Fannie Hurst
... was built out in a square into the Alster. A low stone parapet surrounded it on three sides, the fourth—that toward the pathway—being formed by an iron paling with a locked gate in it. One corner of the terrace, which was otherwise paved with asphalt, was laid out in a round flower bed, in which the primroses and violets were just beginning to come up. Near the balustrade at the waterside, under a large tentlike umbrella, stood a garden table and a few chairs. Here Malvine and Wilhelm seated themselves, while Willy played ...
— The Malady of the Century • Max Nordau
... table for a moment. In the silence they heard the long rumble of a cable-car passing the house, and the persistent jangling of its bell as it approached the street crossing. A grocery wagon went up the side street, the horses' hoofs making a cadenced clapping sound upon the asphalt. ...
— Vandover and the Brute • Frank Norris
... didn't belong to the wonderful, war-time Paris which was rushing and roaring around me. Military motors, and huge camions and ambulances were tearing up and down, over the gray-satin surface of asphalt which used to be sacred to private autos and gay little taxis bound for theatres and operas and balls. For every girl, or woman, or child, who passed, there were at least ten soldiers: French soldiers in bleu horizon, Serbians in gray, Britishers ...
— Everyman's Land • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... and ugly and new, and her fresh fire made the asphalt paint on her fire-box and front-end stink in that peculiar and familiar way given to recently rebuilt engines; but it smelt better to me than all ...
— Danger Signals • John A. Hill and Jasper Ewing Brady
... a warm, balmy twilight, is upon your spirit. Look through the arch southward now. There is still plenty of light left in the sky, but the great, springing, Roman masonry is dusky. It frames the sweeping curve of the asphalt around the fountain, and beyond that the Judson Memorial tower, graceful, Italian, bearing its electric cross against the failing day like a cluster of timid evening stars. It is a tower from the plains of Lombardy, or from an island in ...
— Penguin Persons & Peppermints • Walter Prichard Eaton
... was hedged with two long rows of gas-lamps which converged far away to the south. Sounds of the street floated up to him—the clatter of hoofs on the asphalt, disjointed conversations from wheelmen, juvenile calls and whistles. Harvey looked down at the strolling crowds on the sidewalk, and felt lonely. He turned away from the window, and took a cigar from the hospitable box on the mantel. ...
— The Short Line War • Merwin-Webster
... know that this spirit does not rule in our society we need but watch the lives of men of all classes. Ask different people, of very unlike surroundings, this question: What do you need to live? You will see how they respond. Nothing is more instructive. For some aboriginals of the Parisian asphalt, there is no life possible outside a region bounded by certain boulevards. There one finds the respirable air, the illuminating light, normal heat, classic cookery, and, in moderation, so many other things without which it ...
— The Simple Life • Charles Wagner
... its light shut out by the adjoining extensions, prevented it; so did the glimpse of hard asphalt covering the scrap of a yard, its four melancholy posts hung about with wire clothes-lines; and so did the clean-shaven, smug-faced butler, who invariably conducted his master's guests to their chairs with the movement of an undertaker, and who had never been known ...
— Peter - A Novel of Which He is Not the Hero • F. Hopkinson Smith
... years of age had filled the prisons to overflowing. Many foreigners who had suffered in consequence resorted to measures of self-defense—among them representatives of certain American and British asphalt companies which were working concessions granted by Castro's predecessors. Though familiar with what commonly happens to those who handle pitch, they had not scrupled to aid some of Castro's enemies. Castro forthwith imposed on them enormous fines which amounted practically to a confiscation ...
— The Hispanic Nations of the New World - Volume 50 in The Chronicles Of America Series • William R. Shepherd
... the asphalt paving on to a roadway of yellow-red gravel, and up ahead, Mary Louise could see a stretch of open country and beyond, a ridge of misty blue hills. There was a double line of young maples on either side of the boulevard and the fresh young leaves were rustling vigorously in the ...
— Stubble • George Looms
... No wind can stir waves in it: no fish or sea-birds can live there. The sluggish water supports whatever is thrown on to it, as if its surface were solid, while those who cannot swim float on it as easily as those who can. Every year at the same time the lake yields asphalt. As with other arts, it is experience which shows how to collect it. It is a black liquid which, when congealed with a sprinkling of vinegar, floats on the surface of the water. The men who collect it take it in this state ...
— Tacitus: The Histories, Volumes I and II • Caius Cornelius Tacitus
... grosgrain carpet lay over the asphalt to the edge of the sidewalk. Bridesmaids were patting one another's sashes awry and speaking of the Bride's freckles. Coachmen tied white ribbons on their whips and bewailed the space of time between drinks. The minister was musing over his possible fee, essaying ...
— The Voice of the City • O. Henry
... however, was a suggestive sight. For not merely were all the benches filled with sleeping men, but the steps of the City Hall, the grass, and even the hard asphalt pavement were besprinkled with a dirty, ragged, hungry-looking lot of men, unlike those usually seen in the streets of New York. When the regiment marched into the square, a few of the stragglers rose from their recumbent attitudes, ...
— The Honorable Peter Stirling and What People Thought of Him • Paul Leicester Ford
... Mellock's the pastry- cook's, gay with its gas, rich with its famous saffron buns, its still more famous ginger-bread cake, and, most famous of all, its lemon biscuits. Even as the Ronders' cab paused for a moment before it turned to pass under the dark Arden Gate on to the asphalt of the Precincts, the great Mrs. Mellock herself, round and rubicund, came to the door and looked about her at the weather. An errand-boy passed, whistling, down the hill, a stiff military-looking gentleman with ...
— The Cathedral • Hugh Walpole
... on to rain and beneath the street lights the asphalt shone like a river. The storm had driven most people indoors, but as the Westerner drew near the drugstore Clay saw with relief a taxicab draw up outside. Its driver, crouched in his seat behind the waterproof apron as far back as possible from the rain, promptly ...
— The Big-Town Round-Up • William MacLeod Raine
... Eden sat tracing patterns on the asphalt with the end of her parasol. "Is it any fun? I got up feeling I'd like to do something different today. It's the first Sunday I've not had to sing in church. I had that engagement for breakfast at the Brevoort, but it wasn't very exciting. ...
— Youth and the Bright Medusa • Willa Cather
... picturesqueness of Vienna and Berlin. There were wide gravel paths and long avenues of lofty chestnuts and lindens, iron benches, fountains and winding flower beds. The park, the palaces, and the Continental Hotel enclosed a public square, paved with asphalt, called the Hohenstaufenplatz, in the center of which rose a large marble fountain of several streams, guarded by huge bronze wolves. Here, too, were iron benches which were, for the most part, the meeting-place of the nursemaids. Carriages were allowed to make the circuit, but not to ...
— The Puppet Crown • Harold MacGrath
... down together in the elevator, and three minutes later we had hailed a taxi and were speeding eastward toward the Avenue. It had started to drizzle, and the asphalt shone like a black mirror, dancing with the lights along either side. The streets were almost empty, for the theatre-crowd had passed, and as we reached the Avenue and turned down-town, the driver pushed up his spark, ...
— The Mystery Of The Boule Cabinet - A Detective Story • Burton Egbert Stevenson
... a violent ring at the bell, a jarring of wheels on the asphalt. The door flew open and the prettiest little woman imaginable, all fluffy ends and scarlet flowers and orris scent, rushed ...
— In The Valley Of The Shadow • Josephine Daskam
... town, at a distance of some six miles or so, Madame Durend owned a little old-fashioned cottage, picturesquely planted in a large garden and wood. It was a favourite resort of the family in summer-time, and Max and Dale had had their full share of its pleasures. For one thing, there was an asphalt tennis-court there which had claimed a large part of their spare time, not to mention that of ...
— Two Daring Young Patriots - or, Outwitting the Huns • W. P. Shervill
... flanked by rows of offices and dressing rooms, and lively with the passing of many people. He drew a long breath and became calculating. He must see everything and see it methodically. He even went now along the asphalt walk to the corner of the office building from which he had issued for the privilege of looking back at the gate through which he had so often yearningly stared from ...
— Merton of the Movies • Harry Leon Wilson
... pall upon the whole exceedingly ugly landscape. The hedges, blackened with smuts from the colliery on the other side of the slope, were dripping also with raindrops. The road, flinty and light grey in colour, was greasy with repellent-looking mud—there were puddles even in the asphalt-covered pathway which he trod. On either side of him stretched the shrunken, unpastoral-looking fields of an industrial neighbourhood. The town-village which stretched up the hillside before him presented scarcely a single redeeming ...
— The Cinema Murder • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... assuming the moral attitude; and in this case the certainty that my sentiments would be lost on Strickland made it peculiarly embarrassing to utter them. Only the poet or the saint can water an asphalt pavement in the confident anticipation that lilies will reward ...
— The Moon and Sixpence • W. Somerset Maugham
... the Book of Genesis. There we read how Chedor-laomer, the king of Elam, with the three vassal princes, Arioch of Ellasar, Amraphel of Shinar, and Tidal of Goyyim invaded Canaan, and how the kings of the vale of Siddim with its pits of asphalt became their tributaries. For thirteen years they remained submissive and then rebelled. Thereupon the Babylonian army again marched to the west. Bashan and the eastern bank of the Jordan were subjugated, the Horites in Mount Seir were smitten, and ...
— Patriarchal Palestine • Archibald Henry Sayce
... under way, the traffic ahead of them swerving wildly to right and left at the insistent clamour of the bell. They rushed forward by leaps and bounds, an occasional stretch of asphalt giving them an instant's respite from the dreadful shaking of the cobblestones. They spoke but little, excitement keeping them quiet, but the Englishman suffered keenly in spirit at the thought of what the delicate girl, shut ...
— His Lordship's Leopard - A Truthful Narration of Some Impossible Facts • David Dwight Wells
... bricks—ornamented or otherwise, as preferred—on a line just above the ground. Another plan of effecting the same object is to dispense with the area wall and in building the brick work to cover the whole of the work on the outside with a thick layer of bituminous asphalt. The plaster on the inside is in this case often rendered in ...
— Burroughs' Encyclopaedia of Astounding Facts and Useful Information, 1889 • Barkham Burroughs
... location near Lake Tiberias -200 m highest point: Natural resources: petroleum, phosphates, chrome and manganese ores, asphalt, iron ore, rock salt, marble, ...
— The 2002 CIA World Factbook • US Government
... itself on the very day whereon these preparations are made. The undersurface, originally a bright red, turns brown and runs in every direction into a mass of dark stalactites. Soon, the flesh of the cap is attacked and, in a few days, becomes a gruel similar to liquid asphalt. It is almost as fluid as water. In this broth the maggots wallow, wriggling their bodies and, from time to time, sticking the breathing holes in their sterns above the water. It is an exact repetition of what the liquefiers of meat, the grubs of the grey flesh ...
— The Life of the Fly - With Which are Interspersed Some Chapters of Autobiography • J. Henri Fabre
... slate-colored skin somewhere above the shoulder, there was a singular black circle of some substance which looked like asphalt. None of us could suggest what it meant, though Summerlee was of opinion that he had seen something similar upon one of the young ones two days before. Challenger said nothing, but looked pompous and puffy, as ...
— The Lost World • Arthur Conan Doyle
... of the upper city may be paved with gold; it will not enter into controversy about it; but it is certain the streets down here are paved with poor asphalt and trodden ...
— Why I Preach the Second Coming • Isaac Massey Haldeman
... the door to admit her mistress the two children and the one pair of skates had whisked away to the foot of the block; this time, however, keeping well to the asphalt in the centre of the Avenue, where they would not be apt to collide with anything smaller than a horse and wagon, which would be better able to resist their onslaught than ...
— Divided Skates • Evelyn Raymond
... Grovebury. We used to live at Birkshaw. Yes, I'm fairly keen on hockey, though I like tennis better. Have you asphalt courts here, and do you play in the winter? I adore dancing, but I hate gym. I'm learning the violin, and I'm to start ...
— A Popular Schoolgirl • Angela Brazil
... the clapping of hands died down, the whisper of a woman's dress, upon the asphalt of the verandah just behind him, caught his ear, and Damaris ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... she sat back in her carriage, remembrance came rapping like an unwelcome, unadmitted visitant. She tried to put it away by chattering smartly; the theatre-wagon rolled along to the clicking of hoofs on the asphalt; but through it all the troublous knocking persistently recurred. For this was one of the few times when she had lingered upon a thought of that first romance of hers; and now, coupled with her hardening criticism of Willoughby, it brought forth ...
— Stories from Everybody's Magazine • 1910 issues of Everybody's Magazine
... New York can show such in late November. A gale from the northeast was driving before it a heavy sleet that froze as it fell, coating the overhead wires and glazing the asphalt and sidewalks. ...
— Flamsted quarries • Mary E. Waller
... West Indies. The infiltration of American capital into the region served to ally economic with political interest, for like European investors, our capitalists have taken a part in the exploitation of South American sugar, fruit, coffee, oil and asphalt. With the islands and shores of the Caribbean Sea alone, American trade doubled in the decade after 1903. Orderly government south of the United States became accordingly essential to the welfare of our outlying possessions, ...
— The United States Since The Civil War • Charles Ramsdell Lingley
... in neat Portland cement (fig. 8), the joints being well lapped. A course or two of Staffordshire blue bricks in cement is excellent where heavy weights have to be considered. Glazed stoneware perforated slabs about 2 in. thick are specially made for use as damp-proof courses. Asphalt (fig. 9) recently has come into great favour with architects; a layer 1/2 or 3/4 in. thick is a good protection against damp, and not likely to crack should a settlement occur, but in hot weather it is liable to squeeze out at the joints under heavy weights. Felt covered with bitumen is an ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various
... made him out. There was to be seen an elderly man, roughly dressed, possibly the same man whose proximity Trencher had felt rather than observed just before Sonntag made the gun play, and this man was half-squatted out on the asphalt with his back to where the rest circled and swirled about the body. Moreover, this person was staring directly in Trencher's direction. As Trencher passed within the revolving door he saw the man pivot on his heels and start at an angle toward the policeman just as the ...
— From Place to Place • Irvin S. Cobb
... years past, they had tried to gain Georgie's serious attention, without any result, and lately they had turned to Colonel Boucher. There was Mrs Antrobus there, too, with her ham-like face and her ear-trumpet, and Mrs Weston was being pushed round and round the asphalt path below the elms in her bath-chair. She hated going slow, and her gardener and his boy took turns with her during her hour's carriage exercise, and propelled her, amid streams of perspiration, at a steady four miles an hour. As she passed Mrs Antrobus she shouted something ...
— Queen Lucia • E. F. Benson
... barracks where Will was promenading the area on what Mr. Werrick called "one of his perennial punishment tours." She went, of course; but the distant sight of poor Will, duly equipped as a sentry, dismally tramping up and down the asphalt, added fuel to the inward fire that consumed her. The mother's heart, too, yearned over her boy,—a victim to cruel regulations and crueler task-masters. "What was the use of the government's enticing ...
— Starlight Ranch - and Other Stories of Army Life on the Frontier • Charles King
... underground circuit and the induction coils connected therewith, these are protected against all external influence, and are at the same time insulated very economically by covering them with a coat of very fine silicious sand mixed with asphalt. ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 455, September 20, 1884 • Various
... times overtaken, submerged, by a third presence, stronger even than the other two; a presence that entered upon the heels of the night; the ceaseless murmur of the streets; the purring of rubber tires upon asphalt; a girl's laugh, high, careless, reckless. Life went on. Never for a moment ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1920 • Various
... found include thick beds of copper at Bembe, and deposits on the M'Brije and the Cuvo and in various places in the southern part of the province; iron at Ociras (on the Lucalla affluent of the Kwanza) and in Bailundo; petroleum and asphalt in Dande and Quinzao; gold in Lombije and Cassinga; and mineral salt in Quissama. The native blacksmiths are held ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 2, Part 1, Slice 1 • Various
... to? Even the weather had gone wrong. Outside, an unseasonable cold rain, lashed by a northeast gale, was driving against the panes of the French windows, and the sizzling effulgence of an arc-lamp revealed pools of water lying on the asphalt of ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... contrived that peradventure no palace comparable to it was to be found in the whole world. The terraces referred to were those raised over the great chapel, and were formed of stone, bedded in asphalt and laid on a staging of stout oak joists; the view from the terraces was unparalleled for ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 3 • Various
... olfactories of Mr. Coulson came other unmistakable, characteristic, copyrighted smells of spring that belong to the-big-city-above-the-Subway, alone. The smells of hot asphalt, underground caverns, gasoline, patchouli, orange peel, sewer gas, Albany grabs, Egyptian cigarettes, mortar and the undried ink on newspapers. The inblowing air was sweet and mild. Sparrows wrangled happily everywhere outdoors. Never ...
— Whirligigs • O. Henry
... left to sink without a sigh. He had tried Kaffrath, Videra, and Bailey, but they were adamant. Thus cogitating, Stackpole put on his wide-brimmed straw hat and went out. It was nearly ninety-six in the shade. The granite and asphalt pavements of the down-town district reflected a dry, Turkish-bath-room heat. There was no air to speak of. The sky was a burning, milky blue, with the sun gleaming feverishly upon the upper walls of the ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser
... wanted to play 'Hide-and-Seek' and that's too stupid. Let's play 'Tag' and see how hard we can run. You can make ever so much noise if you stamp your feet when you run on the asphalt. ...
— Princess Polly's Playmates • Amy Brooks
... images in him, inflame him to reproduce them in all their weight and gianthood and mass, their blackness and luridness and power. The most vulgar things and events excite him. The traffic, the restlessness of crowds, the noise of vehicles, of the clatter of horses on the asphalt, of human cries and calls sounding above the street-bass, a couple of organ grinders trying to outplay each other, a brass band coming down the avenue, the thunder of a railway train hurling itself over leagues of steel, the sirens of steamboats and locomotives, the overtones ...
— Musical Portraits - Interpretations of Twenty Modern Composers • Paul Rosenfeld
... rest saunter here and there or enjoy beach-chairs at a stipulated rental. The elderly French gentleman, a dapper and interesting, specimen rarely paralleled at home, strolls about contentedly on the asphalt promenade back from the beach, smoking a cigar and fingering a light bamboo. Younger men, also well-dressed, pass in couples, or walk with a mother and daughter,—never with the daughter alone. Boatmen and candy-peddlers ramble ...
— A Midsummer Drive Through The Pyrenees • Edwin Asa Dix
... fell to the ground.... The roof was on, and a massive compo cornice was put up at top, as well as dressings to the upper windows. The roof is formed by girders and 4-1/2-brick arches in cement, covered with asphalt to form a flat. The failure is attributed to the quantity of rain which has fallen. Others suppose that some of the girders were defective, and gave way, carrying the walls with them."—Builder, for January 29th, 1853. The rest of this volume might be filled with such notices, ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume II (of 3) • John Ruskin
... filled with admiration, mingled with desire, but subdued by deep respect. When an Englishwoman attempts this step, she looks like a grenadier marching forward to attack a redoubt. The women of Paris have a genius for walking. The municipality really owed them asphalt footwalks. ...
— Another Study of Woman • Honore de Balzac
... me, but I rode into Big Basin with you last summer. I know you can drive, and it doesn't matter a lot whether it's asphalt or cow ...
— Cabin Fever • B. M. Bower
... candles under their red shades; and gently as though they rose from afar, and not only from across the top of the high wall before the house, came the rumble of the omnibuses passing farther into the suburbs, and the occasional quick rush of a hansom over the smooth asphalt. It was a most delightful choice of people, gathered at short notice and to do honor to no one in particular, but to give each a chance to say good-by before he or she met the yacht at Southampton or took the club train to Homburg. They all knew each other ...
— Van Bibber and Others • Richard Harding Davis
... will collapse. All the mischief, too, will have been concealed until the last moment. A wooden beam will look to be quite sound when really its whole heart has been eaten out by the termites. Nowadays the whole area on which a house is to be raised is covered with cement or with asphalt, and care taken that no timber joists are allowed to touch the earth and thus give entry to the termites. Fortunately, these destructive insects cannot burrow through ...
— Peeps At Many Lands: Australia • Frank Fox
... only those places where eating was studied and elevated to an art. These visits were much more vivid in their detail than any he had ever before made to these same resorts. They invariably began in a carriage, which carried him swiftly over smooth asphalt. One route brought him across a great and beautiful square, radiating with rows and rows of flickering lights; two fountains splashed in the centre of the square, and six women of stone guarded its approaches. One of the women was hung with wreaths of ...
— The Lion and the Unicorn and Other Stories • Richard Harding Davis
... defined the shore, and now she could hear the tide lapping ceaselessly amid the supporting ironwork of the pier. She at once descried the figure of Sarah Gailey in the gloom. The woman was moving towards the faintly white edge of the sea. Hilda started to run after her, first across smooth asphalt, and then over some sails stretched out to dry; and then her feet sank at each step into descending ridges of loose shingle, and she nearly fell. At length she came to firm sand, ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett
... well, begun September 10, 1827, was the first oil well in America. Collective State exhibits of oynx marble, paint earths, polished earths, sands, silicious earths, road materials, fluorspars, barite calcite, cement materials, salt, lithograph stone, lime, potash, marl, asphalt rock, etc., were also to be found in Kentucky's general ...
— Final Report of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission • Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission
... found his clothes, those he had been wearing at the time of the accident. Somebody had been thoughtful enough to have them cleaned and pressed; from which he argued that the plunging fall on the wet asphalt had been demoralizing in more ways than one. Continuing the experimental venture, he walked back and forth and up and down until he could do it without clutching at the bed-rails to save himself from falling. Then he reshot the ...
— The Honorable Senator Sage-Brush • Francis Lynde
... the young man stared at him unresponsively he gave a grasp to the hand he held, and turning, found his way out alone. He stumbled down the dark steps of the third-rate apartment-house and into his brougham, and as the rubber tires bowled him over the asphalt he communed ...
— The Militants - Stories of Some Parsons, Soldiers, and Other Fighters in the World • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews
... brick-making, are found in the district of Scotland, so called from a fancied resemblance to the Highlands of North Britain. The only other mineral product is manjak, a species of asphalt, also found in this district ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 3 - "Banks" to "Bassoon" • Various
... right. I got so I was crazy to hear the roar of an L train, and the sound of a crossing policeman's whistle. I got to thinking how Michigan Avenue looks, downtown, with the lights shining down on the asphalt, and all those people eating in the swell hotels, and the autos, and the theater crowds and the windows, and—well, I'm back. Glad I went? You said it. Because it made me so darned glad to get back. I've found out one thing, and it's a great little ...
— Buttered Side Down • Edna Ferber
... (f.o.b., 1996 est.) commodities: asphalt, metals and metallic ores, electricity, crude oil, vegetables, fruits, tobacco partners: ...
— The 1998 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... The small fire flickered and fluttered in the grate with a sound like the windy beating of wings. The steady rain sloped against the closed windows of The Gulls, and dropped patteringly on the asphalt pavements of Marine Crescent outside, and the ...
— Dangerous Ages • Rose Macaulay
... white skirt and blouse and a brown neck all peeling with the heat! They must go there, then, because to go on the pier is all part and parcel of the seaside habit—and an English seaside, anyway, is one big bunch of habits, from the three-mile promenade of unsympathetic asphalt, with its backing of houses in the Graeco-Surbiton style, to the railway station at the back of the town, where antiquated "flies" won't take anybody anywhere under half-a-crown. It belongs, I suppose, to that ...
— Over the Fireside with Silent Friends • Richard King
... of brain is represented there. Bohemia is a microcosm. If the Czar would buy Bohemia for a score of millions and set its population down in Odessa—always supposing that they consented to leave the asphalt of the boulevards—Odessa would be Paris with the year. In Bohemia, you find the flower doomed to wither and come to nothing; the flower of the wonderful young manhood of France, so sought after by Napoleon and Louis XIV., so neglected for the last thirty years by the modern Gerontocracy ...
— A Prince of Bohemia • Honore de Balzac
... could see absolutely nothing. And if that increased or accentuated his sense of hearing, it helped little—the roar of the racing car beat upon his eardrums the more heavily, that was all. He could tell, of course, the nature of the roadbed. They were running on an asphalt road, that was obvious enough; but city streets and suburban streets and hundreds of miles of country road around New ...
— The Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... lumber wagon turned at the farm-yard, and rumbled down a country road, bound hard as asphalt in the fall frosts. The air cut sharply at the ears of the man in the box, as he held the lines in either hand alternately, swinging its mate with vigor. The sun was just peeping from the broad lap of the prairie, casting the beauty of color and of sparkle over all things. Ahead of the wagon ...
— A Breath of Prairie and other stories • Will Lillibridge
... on without break. Now, too, we entered the main road, the one road to Verdun, the road that had been built by the French army against just such an attack as was now in progress. The road was as wide as Fifth Avenue, as smooth as asphalt—a road that, when peace comes, if it ever does, will delight the motorist. Despite the traffic it had to bear, it was in perfect repair, and soldiers in uniform sat by the side breaking stone and preparing metal to ...
— They Shall Not Pass • Frank H. Simonds
... landscape glowed with yellow daffodils, pink peach blossoms, and the bright green of new wheat; the fields were alive with the frisky joyousness of spring lambs and colts, turned out to pasture. It was with a keen feeling of reluctance that I faced the prospect of New York's brick and stone and asphalt. My work was calling, but I lazily postponed my departure from day ...
— The Four Pools Mystery • Jean Webster
... on asphalt ways. All the time Valentine was watching Julian with a fixed and narrow scrutiny, which Julian failed to notice. The rows of dull houses seemed endless, and ...
— Flames • Robert Smythe Hichens
... seemed the neat, maple-shaded asphalt street, the rows of parked cars and farm wagons, the telephone office and drug store and bank, of the Kansas town ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, December 1930 • Various
... was as delightful as ever. It was now the last of April, and the trees were all green with fresh leaves, and the numerous little parks scattered over the city were looking their very best. The asphalt pavements looked clean and elegant when Archie thought of some other streets he had seen, and the tall office buildings lifted their ornate domes and cupolas into a sky of clear blue. "Surely," he thought to himself, ...
— The Adventures of a Boy Reporter • Harry Steele Morrison
... greater part of the world's product comes from two "pitch lakes"—one in Bermudez, Venezuela, the other in the island of Trinidad, off the Venezuelan coast. The former is the larger and produces a superior quality. Small deposits occur near Los Angeles, Cal., and in Utah. The output of the Venezuelan asphalt is used almost wholly ...
— Commercial Geography - A Book for High Schools, Commercial Courses, and Business Colleges • Jacques W. Redway
... should be avenged. Once I saw two truck-horses maltreated; it was in a Catholic country, in France. The driver sat high in his seat and swung his enormous whip; it was of no use, the horses slipped and could not budge the heavy load, even though they, so to speak, dug their hoofs into the asphalt. The driver got down; he turned his whip around and used the handle; he beat the horses across their backs; they tried again, stumbled and fell, got up and made another effort. The driver became more and more enraged as people gathered ...
— Shallow Soil • Knut Hamsun
... along merry too, when all of a sudden a fruit faker's wagon looms up out of a side street unexpected, there's a bump and a crash, and there we are, with a spokeless wooden wheel draped jaunty over one mud guard, the asphalt strewed with oranges, and int'rested spectators gatherin' gleeful from ...
— On With Torchy • Sewell Ford
... Chinatown, slipping, within ten feet, through an invisible wall, from the glitter of the gin palace and the pawn-shop to the sinister shadows of irregular streets and blind alleys, where yellow men pad swiftly along greasy asphalt beneath windows glinting with ivory, bronze and lacquer; through which float the scents of aloes and of incense and all the ...
— Tutt and Mr. Tutt • Arthur Train
... makes a desperate rush and grabs the handrail; his foot slips on the asphalt or wood, which is like oil, he slides, his hat totters; happily he recovers himself and gets in. In the block the 'bus is stayed a moment, and somehow we follow, and are landed—"somehow" advisedly. For how do we get into a 'bus? After the pavement, even this ...
— The Open Air • Richard Jefferies
... Street cuts quite a caper, deploying out into Union Square, an island of park, beginning to be succulent at the first false feint of spring, rising as it were from a sea of asphalt. Across this park Miss Slayback worked her rather frenzied way, breaking into a run when the derby threatened to sink into the confusion of a hundred others, and finally learning to keep its course by the faint but distinguishing fact of a slight dent ...
— Gaslight Sonatas • Fannie Hurst
... I, givin' him the partin' grip, "you've been a true friend of mine. When you hear me hit the asphalt, send out for a chocolate ice cream soda ...
— Torchy • Sewell Ford
... sauntered along the brief strip of asphalt which the villagers believe to be a promenade. He was not actually thinking of the legend; to be precise, he was thinking of Betty Lardner, but he was suddenly reminded of it by a boatman pressing ...
— Uncanny Tales • Various
... We don't figure it is necessary to be too particular about painting the wounds. Those wounds heal over very quickly. Use an asphalt ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Forty-Second Annual Meeting • Northern Nut Growers Association
... was digging in a mound known to the Arabs by the name of Abu-Habba, and had made his way into the apartments of a vast structure which he knew to be a temple. From room to room he passed until he came to a smaller chamber, paved with asphalt, which he at once surmised to be the archive-room of the temple. "Heretofore," says Mr. Rassam in his report, "all Assyrian and Babylonian structures were found to be paved generally either with stone or brick, consequently this novel discovery led me to have the asphalt ...
— Chaldea - From the Earliest Times to the Rise of Assyria • Znade A. Ragozin
... all this is the city tax on every chicken, every carrot, every egg brought into Paris. Every mouthful of food is taxed. This produces an enormous revenue, and this is why the streets are so clean; it is why the asphalt is as smooth as a ballroom floor; it is why the whole of Paris is as beautiful ...
— As Seen By Me • Lilian Bell
... to pass on the road; so much was gain. Except in the villages, and once or twice where a slow, rattling wagon was plodding along on the wet mirror-like asphalt, Rachael might make her own speed. The road lay straight, and was an exceptionally good road, even in this weather. She need hardly pause for signboards. The rain still fell in ...
— The Heart of Rachael • Kathleen Norris
... come here to do it, just as he would go to a German sanitarium to build up his nerves or his appetite. You have only to drink in the atmosphere and you are cured. I know no better antidote than Athens for a siege of cable-cars and muddy asphalt pavements and a course of Robert Elsmeres and the Heavenly Twins. Wait until you see the statues of the young athletes in the Museum," he cried, enthusiastically, "and get a glimpse of the blue sky back of Mount Hymettus, and the moonlight some evening on the Acropolis, and you'll be convinced ...
— The Princess Aline • Richard Harding Davis
... The asphalt mines and petroleum fountains are most abundant in that part of the country lying between the River Zulia and the River Catatumbo, and the Cordilleras. The wonderful sand-bank is about seven kilometers from the confluence ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 286 - June 25, 1881 • Various
... the Druses, upon the opposite side of the mountain; Rasheiya, the residence of the Emir; and Hasbeiya, where he paid a visit to the Greek Bishop of Szur or Szeida, to whom he carried letters of recommendation. The object which chiefly attracted his attention in this mountainous district, was an asphalt-mine, whose produce is there used to protect the vines ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part III. The Great Explorers of the Nineteenth Century • Jules Verne
... to go far. It ended at the paving of asphalt which led up to the gates of the Mapleton stables. As we approached, a groom ...
— Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... the total number of airports. The runway(s) may be paved (concrete or asphalt surfaces) or unpaved (grass, dirt, sand, or gravel surfaces), but must be usable. Not all airports have facilities for refueling, maintenance, ...
— The 2005 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... familiar in those quarters, and quickly my play was forgotten, and I stood at a sideboard mixing things, with cracked ice and glasses all about me. A breeze from the bay came in the windows not altogether blighted by the asphalt furnace over which it had passed. Hollis, whistling softly, turned over a late-arrived letter or two on his table, and drew around the ...
— Waifs and Strays - Part 1 • O. Henry
... Only the people who "take up the streets" detached more men than ever to spoil the pavement. For now a city election was approaching. And it might be that the pavers and ditchers and shovellers and curbstone men and asphalt makers should vote wrong. Dane and his settlement were well aware that after this election they would all have to move out from their comfortable quarters. But, while they were in, they determined to prepare for a fit Thanksgiving ...
— The Brick Moon, et. al. • Edward Everett Hale
... side of the North River, from Twenty-third Street down for a mile there stretches a deafening region of cobblestones and asphalt over which trucks by thousands go clattering each day. There are long lines of freight cars here and snorting locomotives. Along the shore side are many saloons, a few cheap decent little hotels and some that are far from decent. And along the water side is a solid ...
— The Harbor • Ernest Poole
... around to look at it, but he forgot to shift his footing. He staggered and went down on the pavement. The car's tires screeched on the hot asphalt. Hogey lay there for a moment, groaning. That one had hurt his hip. A car door slammed and a big man with a florid face got out and ...
— The Hoofer • Walter M. Miller
... together, and John went on to Westminster Abbey. He was very early and when he arrived at the entrance nominated on the Invitation Card he found that he was the first arrival. Ten minutes afterwards, a grubby-looking man in a slouch hat ambled up the asphalt path to the narrow door against which John was leaning. "Good morning!" John said, glancing at the slouch hat and the shabby reefer coat and the brown boots. "Have you come to do this ceremony, too?" ...
— The Foolish Lovers • St. John G. Ervine
... and Bixiou were at this moment walking from one end to the other of that sheet of asphalt on which, between the hours of one and three, it is difficult to avoid seeing some of the personages in honor of whom Fame puts one or the other of her trumpets to her lips. Formerly that locality was the Place Royale; next it was the Pont Neuf; in these days this privilege had been acquired ...
— Unconscious Comedians • Honore de Balzac
... half-agricultural country. Then the great seam of coal had been opened. In a year Wiggiston appeared, a great mass of pinkish rows of thin, unreal dwellings of five rooms each. The streets were like visions of pure ugliness; a grey-black macadamized road, asphalt causeways, held in between a flat succession of wall, window, and door, a new-brick channel that began nowhere, and ended nowhere. Everything was amorphous, yet everything repeated itself endlessly. Only ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence
... wire.' I just had time to sidestep certain death. On each side of me the fires were burning fiercely. I finally got into the open space before the ferry. The ground was still shaking and gaping open in places. Women and children knelt on the cold asphalt and prayed God would be merciful to them. At last we got on the boat. Not a woman in that crowd had enough clothing to keep her warm, let alone the money for fare. I took off my hat, put a little money in it, and we got enough money right there ...
— Complete Story of the San Francisco Horror • Richard Linthicum
... substantially built, having all the conveniences of a modern city, with wide streets and wide sidewalks; has both gas and electricity for lights, and a good water system. Some of its streets are paved with preserved wooden blocks and some with asphalt. ...
— A Review of the Resources and Industries of the State of Washington, 1909 • Ithamar Howell
... suddenly become intolerably hot. As is the way with the Siren city when June is half-way through, the asphalt pavements radiated heat; the air was heavy, laden with strange, unpleasing odours; and even the trees, which form such delicious oases of greenery in the older quarters of the town ...
— The Chink in the Armour • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... possible for foreign capital to go in; and so he gradually built up a material progress which won him the name of "nation-builder." There were railroads and telegraphs; the cities were graced with beautiful edifices, with theaters and parks, with electricity and asphalt. There was the appearance of a civilization and progress, which, considering the time in which it was ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 21 - The Recent Days (1910-1914) • Charles F. Horne, Editor
... with his thoughts, past comfortable homes fronted with lawns and shaded by weeping willows. There is a peculiar melancholia about a May day; it had an effect on the young bankclerk. He walked by hedges beyond the end of Mt. Alban's asphalt out into the suburbs. Spring birds sang their thanks to Nature, and to the homesick heart a bird's singing is sadness. It is natural for such a heart to seek quiet. Evan had no desire for company. He ...
— A Canadian Bankclerk • J. P. Buschlen
... never wear them. It may be that they will have a surface like that of some cycle-racing tracks, though since they will be open to wind and weather, it is perhaps more probable they will be made of very good asphalt sloped to drain, and still more probable that they will be of some quite new substance altogether—whether hard or resilient is beyond my foretelling. They will have to be very wide—they will be just as wide ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells
... up the asphalt passage which leads from Dulwich station in the direction of the College, he came out into Acacia Road. There is something about Acacia Road which inevitably suggests furnished apartments. A child could tell at a glance that it was bristling ...
— Psmith in the City • P. G. Wodehouse
... is all deserted now: they have gone up to London. The green asphalt tennis-court is shining with rain, the blue pond brown with slime; the little statues and bowls are lying on their sides to keep the wind from putting them forcibly there; and all over the house are white draperies ...
— A Diary Without Dates • Enid Bagnold
... mainly along the sides of precipitous buttes, southeast of Medora, and, being old and little used, had almost lost the little semblance it might originally have had of a path where four-footed creatures might pick their way with reasonable security. A recent rain had made the clay as slippery as asphalt in a drizzle. ...
— Roosevelt in the Bad Lands • Hermann Hagedorn
... many adventures. Her great strength enabled her to work as a man in a gang of laborers who were paving the courtyard of Irkutsk prison with asphalt, and she continued this work for a year, until she became ill and forced to go ...
— A Treasury of Heroes and Heroines - A Record of High Endeavour and Strange Adventure from 500 B.C. to 1920 A.D. • Clayton Edwards
... consisted in walking the asphalt pavements of Central Park, varied with occasional visits to the roller-skating rink; but their social life began at the age of four or five. I remember these functions vividly, because they were so different ...
— The "Goldfish" • Arthur Train
... is striking three. The motors are whirling down the asphalt street. The brilliant lights of the boulevard windows are fading out. Here, as in the silent woods of Canada, night comes at last. The restless city of pleasure ...
— Behind the Beyond - and Other Contributions to Human Knowledge • Stephen Leacock
... gauntlet, presented every block with stuff rangin' in tensile strength from insults to asphalt pavements, and noise!—say, all the racket in the world was a whisper. I caught a glimpse of the old man leanin' out of the pilot house, where a window had been, his white hair bristly, and his nostrils h'isted, embellishin' the air with ...
— Pardners • Rex Beach
... On the way from one lively resort to a livelier he conceived the unique idea that he could "swap ends" with his touring car in much the same manner that he could turn a nimble cow pony, and he tried it. Happily, the asphalt was wet, and in consequence the maneuver was not a total failure, although it did result in a crumpled mud guard and a runaway. Milk-wagon horses in Dallas, it appeared, were not schooled to the ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach
... that winter, snow had fallen only twice, lasting but a day or two each time; street and avenue remained bone dry where the white-uniformed cleaning squads worked amid clouds of dust; and all day long the flinty asphalt echoed the rattling slap of horses' feet; all day long the big, shining motor-cars sped up town and down town, droning their distant warnings. It was an open winter in New York, and, financially, a prosperous ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers
... financiers were speeding down the asphalt of the avenue at a good round clip. Flint's gleaming car formed one unit of the never-ending procession of motors which, day and night, year in and year out, spin unceasingly along the great, hard, ...
— The Air Trust • George Allan England
... until Grant's administration. In 1861 it was comparatively a small city. Its population numbered only about 65,000. The magnificent modern residences had not been built. The houses were few, low, not handsome, with hideous spaces of unimproved land lying between. The streets were not paved with asphalt. Some were paved with cobble stones, and some consisted of plain aboriginal mud. The dome of the Capitol was but half finished when Lincoln saw it for the first time, and the huge derrick which surmounted ...
— The Life of Abraham Lincoln • Henry Ketcham
... pleasant room, with the simplest of furniture. The night-breeze ruffled the curtains at the windows, and filled the room with the cool odour of the woods—how different it was from the odour of dirty asphalt! But I was in no mood to linger there—I wanted an explanation of that strange light and of those two white-robed figures. So I paused only to open my grip, change into a lounging-coat, and brush off the dust of the journey. ...
— The Gloved Hand • Burton E. Stevenson
... Sodomites was like a paradise; but by reason of sin it was turned into a sea of asphalt; and those who have seen that country tell us that most beautiful apples grow there, but when they are cut open they are found to be filled with ashes and offensive odor. The reason for this is that the Sodomites did not acknowledge the gifts ...
— Commentary on Genesis, Vol. II - Luther on Sin and the Flood • Martin Luther
... that has taken us in is at the extreme end of the esplanade, where asphalt and iron railings lapse abruptly into sand and sea-grass. When I looked out of my window this morning I saw only the endless stretch of brown sand against the grey roll of the Northern Ocean and, on a crest of the dunes, ...
— Fighting France - From Dunkerque to Belport • Edith Wharton
... him to "get all there was in it" out of the public on its imaginative side, Murdock worked out his fortune in more practical necessities. St. Etienne was a western city, full of growth and therefore full of needs. There were miles and miles of asphalt to be laid; there were wooden sidewalks crying out to be replaced by stone; there were lighting and watering and park-making; and it was astonishing in how many companies, doing these things, Mr. Murdock had a share, and how frequently his companies secured the contracts ...
— Jewel Weed • Alice Ames Winter
... out and took the General, all in a bunched-up heap, and Judy alighted carefully after him, the precious coat parcel in her arms. And they walked up the asphalt hill to the gate leading to the officers' quarters ...
— Seven Little Australians • Ethel Sybil Turner
... produce an appalling combination of discords. The streets of New York are not more crowded than those of London, but the noise in London is subdued. It is more regular, less jarring and piercing. The muffled sounds in London are due partly to the wooden and asphalt pavements, which deaden the sounds. London must be soothing to the New Yorker, as the noise of New York is at first disconcerting ...
— Composition-Rhetoric • Stratton D. Brooks
... remarked that she was no doubt prejudiced, for she had once witnessed the noble procession in New York on St. Patrick's Day; and she added that they all seemed to have mouths like the Mammoth Cave of Kentucky and complexions like an asphalt pavement under repairs. My wife's power of detecting ...
— St. Cuthbert's • Robert E. Knowles
... sequence of city blocks whose sides are lined by massive and exquisitely proportioned buildings, every inch of whose facade was fashioned, not by stone-cutters and sculptors, but by goldsmiths, whose genius a Cellini might envy; picture to yourself a street paved with golden asphalt, and a sidewalk built from huge slabs of rolled silver, the curb and gutters being of burnished copper, and you'll gain some idea of the thoroughfare along which I passed. And oh, the music that the band gave forth to which the ...
— Olympian Nights • John Kendrick Bangs
... Easter, the General came puffing down the outside aisle of Old Market, with his colored man behind him with an enormous basket. The General's carriage was drawn up to the curbstone, and the gray horses were dancing little fancy dances over the asphalt street, when all at once Jimmy thrust a bunch of arbutus ...
— Our Holidays - Their Meaning and Spirit; retold from St. Nicholas • Various
... Baedeker. Some of the information seemed to her unnecessary, all of it was dull. Whereas Philip could never read "The view from the Rocca (small gratuity) is finest at sunset" without a catching at the heart. Restoring the book to its place, she went downstairs, and looked up and down the asphalt paths for her daughter. She saw her at last, two turnings away, vainly trying to shake off Mr. Abbott, Miss Caroline Abbott's father. Harriet was always unfortunate. At last she returned, hot, agitated, crackling with ...
— Where Angels Fear to Tread • E. M. Forster
... were conducted in the town market in a building which was called the warehouse. The entrance to the warehouse was in the yard, where it was always dark, and smelt of matting and where the dray-horses were always stamping their hoofs on the asphalt. A very humble-looking door, studded with iron, led from the yard into a room with walls discoloured by damp and scrawled over with charcoal, lighted up by a narrow window covered by an iron grating. Then ...
— The Darling and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... the Park and the car jolted them quickly now over the uneven asphalt to the palace of pleasure, where already the two advance guards were holding one of the best tables in a house crowded with all classes from ...
— Constance Dunlap • Arthur B. Reeve
... French feet—about 150 English. Think only—you who have been in Switzerland,—the Staubbach falls nine hundred! Nay, Dover cliff under the castle, just at the end of the Marine Parade, is twice as high; and the little cockneys parading to military polka on the asphalt below, think themselves about as tall as it, I suppose,—nay, what with their little lodgings and stodgings and podgings about it, they have managed to make it look no bigger than a moderate-sized limekiln. Yet it is twice ...
— Our Fathers Have Told Us - Part I. The Bible of Amiens • John Ruskin
... throngs of people moving to and fro, all is yet silence, save the cry of the gondolier, the confused echo of voices from the people who pass, and here and there the faint call of a bird. No whir and rush of electric cars and motors; no click of the horses' feet on the asphalt pavement—no pavement, indeed, and no horses, no twentieth-century rush of life. It is Venice, it is June, and the two combine to make an illuminated chapter. To live in Venice is like being domesticated in the heart of an opal. How wonderful it is to drift—a ...
— Italy, the Magic Land • Lilian Whiting
... unconscious, into the bottom of an automobile. The hands of the men who had dragged him there were sticky and red. Their pant legs were sodden from rubbing against the crumpled figure at their feet. Through the dark streets sped the three machines. The smooth asphalt became a rough road as the suburbs were reached. Then came a stretch of open country, with the Chehalis river bridge only a short distance ahead. The cars lurched over the uneven road with increasing speed, their headlights playing on each other ...
— The Centralia Conspiracy • Ralph Chaplin |
