"Curvature" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of the forty-second parallel of latitude. That line, and the country from the Arkansas to the Yellowstone, was explored and developed mainly by private enterprise, and it is by far the most practicable line crossing the continent —the shortest and quickest, of lightest curvature, and lowest grades and summits. It is not, in an engineering point of view, the true line from the Atlantic to the Pacific, but in a commercial ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman
... road so shut up, that it was necessary that a man should go ahead with a sword to cut away the creepers. The forest abounded with beautiful objects; among which the tree ferns, though not large, were, from their bright green foliage, and the elegant curvature of their fronds, most worthy of admiration. In the evening it rained very heavily, and although the thermometer stood at 65 degs., I felt very cold. As soon as the rain ceased, it was curious to observe the extraordinary ...
— The Voyage of the Beagle • Charles Darwin
... than a vast assemblage of bats suspended, and asleep! They were hanging in all possible positions; some with their heads down, some by the claws upon either wing, and some by both, while a great many had merely hooked over the branch the little horny curvature of their tails. Some hung down along the trunk, suspended by a crack in the bark, while others were far out ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid
... had spent most of his life in hot-houses, the kitchen had always to have a big fire blazing in order that the old man might have the heat necessary for his comfort. It appeared that Mrs Budd's third daughter had died from curvature of the spine. The mother related with great pride how that, just before death, the girl's spine had formed the figure of a perfect "hess." Mavis was also informed that Mrs Budd could not think of knowing her next-door neighbour, because this person paid a penny a pound less for her suet ...
— Sparrows - The Story of an Unprotected Girl • Horace W. C. Newte
... course I'd followed last week. I was getting used to this narrow horizon, so I didn't feel so much like being cooped under a big bowl, but one does keep overestimating distances. Something four miles away looks eight when you're used to terrestrial curvature, and that makes you guess its size just four times too large. A little hill looks like a mountain until ...
— Valley of Dreams • Stanley Grauman Weinbaum
... hundred per cent success. Little Lady Petticoat is nobody's fool. She knows that a lucky punch is her only chance. A short, swift hook, straight from the shoulder. The pretty Warble is a perpetual promise of joy, yet she shows symptoms of curvature of the soul—and it is, so far, a toss-up whether she will have her passport vised or ...
— Ptomaine Street • Carolyn Wells
... stream the appearance of running through a deep and narrow dell. All beneath the fantastic limbs and ragged tree tops, which were, here and there, dimly painted against the starry zenith, lay alike in shadowed obscurity. Behind them, the curvature of the banks soon bounded the view by the same dark and wooded outline; but in front, and apparently at no great distance, the water seemed piled against the heavens, whence it tumbled into caverns, out of which issued those ...
— The Last of the Mohicans • James Fenimore Cooper
... parallelism of the limbs, the sound limb being abducted to the same extent as the affected limb is adducted. It is important to recognise the cause of this shortening, as it can be corrected by treatment. As a result of the obliquity of the pelvis, the patient, when erect, exhibits a lateral curvature of the spine with the dorso-lumbar convexity to the ...
— Manual of Surgery Volume Second: Extremities—Head—Neck. Sixth Edition. • Alexander Miles
... then cut, heated, and bent into the proper shape for knees, after which their centres are placed at equal distances upon the keel, and firmly tied with cords. The knees are retained in their proper curvature by cords around the ends. After a sufficient number of them have been placed upon the keel, two poles of suitable dimensions are heated, bent around the ends for a gunwale, and firmly lashed to each knee. Smaller willows are then interwoven, so as ...
— The Prairie Traveler - A Hand-book for Overland Expeditions • Randolph Marcy
... highly-polished and regularly-curved surface with the previous glass reflector, the superiority of the former seems to be immense: indeed, its influence extends to the horizon formed by the height of the lighthouse-tower and the earth's curvature. The reflectors in general use measure over the tips twenty-one inches as applicable to stationary, and twenty-live inches for ...
— Smeaton and Lighthouses - A Popular Biography, with an Historical Introduction and Sequel • John Smeaton
... engineers have freely availed themselves, is curvature. More power is required to draw a train of cars around a curved track than upon a straight line. In England the radius of curvature is limited to half a mile, or thereabouts. The English railway-carriage is placed on three axles, all of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II., November, 1858., No. XIII. • Various
... the fires before which arises a smoke that contributes, with the slight haze of the atmosphere, to envelope the tops of the tall trees in a veil of blue vapour, rendering them almost invisible. Between these wigwams and the extreme verge of the thickly wooded banks, which sweeping in bold curvature for an extent of many miles, brings into view the eastern extremity of Turkey Island, situated midway between Amherstburg and Detroit, are to be seen, containing the accumulated Indian dead of many years, tumuli, rudely executed it is true, but picturesquely ...
— The Canadian Brothers - or The Prophecy Fulfilled • John Richardson
... cells are of a pyramidal form, with a wide base, and a long contracted top. These cells hang perpendicularly in the hive, the point downwards, from which position the royal worm can be supported in the cell, only when the curvature of the posterior part forms two points of support; and that it cannot obtain this support without resting on the lower part, or towards the extremity. Therefore if it attempted to stretch out and spin towards the wide end of the cell, it could ...
— New observations on the natural history of bees • Francis Huber
... on astronomy said that the substance of the nebulosity and the tail is of almost inconceivable tenuity. He said this and then death came to his relief. Another writer says of the comet and its tail that "the curvature of the latter and the acceleration of the periodic time in the case of Encke's comet indicate their being affected by a resisting medium which has never been observed to have the slightest influence on ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye
... head at the rear. If the forehead needed still more change, the line of implantation could be altered by removing hairs with tweezers; and the same painful but possible means must be used to affect the curvature of the eyebrows. By removing hairs from the tops of the ends, and from the bottom of the middle, he would be able to raise the arch of each eyebrow noticeably. This removal, along with the clearing of hair from the forehead, and thinning the eyelashes by plucking out, would ...
— The Mystery of Murray Davenport - A Story of New York at the Present Day • Robert Neilson Stephens
... gateway, standing under which was a man corresponding to the description given me of Coleridge whom I shall presently describe. In height he seemed to be five feet eight inches, (he was in reality about an inch and a half taller,) though in the latter part of life, from a lateral curvature in the spine, he shortened gradually from two to three inches. His person was broad and full, and tended even to corpulence; his complexion was fair, though not what painters technically style fair, because it was associated with black ...
— The Life of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - 1838 • James Gillman
... briefly to mention some points. Commencing with the skull, Cuvier has admitted[57] that in form the differences are "plus fortes que celles d'aucunes especes sauvages d'un meme genre naturel." The proportions of the different bones; the curvature of the lower jaw, the position of the condyles with respect to the plane of the teeth (on which F. Cuvier founded his classification), and in mastiffs the shape of its posterior branch; the shape of the zygomatic arch, and of the temporal fossae; the position ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Vol. I. • Charles Darwin
... internal umbonal teeth small; basal internal marginal rim very prominent, furrowed within; basal margin short, (only equalling half the length of terga), owing to the great curvature of the lower part of the carino-tergal margin; hence, the outline of the scuta is almost pointed oval. I saw no appearance of inequality in the ...
— A Monograph on the Sub-class Cirripedia (Volume 1 of 2) - The Lepadidae; or, Pedunculated Cirripedes • Charles Darwin
... "Quaternary man is always man in every acceptation of the word. In every case in which the bones collected have enabled us to judge, he has ever been found to have the hand and foot proper to our species, and that double curvature of the spinal column has been made out, so characteristic that Serres made it the distinctive attribute of his human kingdom. In every case with him, as with us, the skull is more fully developed than the face. In the Neanderthal ...
— Manners and Monuments of Prehistoric Peoples • The Marquis de Nadaillac
... triangle of chest over which the horizontal bones lay like the bars of a gridiron, a mature specimen of a type that Ellen had met in her school-days. There had been several girls at John Thompson's, usually bleached and ill-favoured victims of anaemia or spinal curvature, who had seemed to be compelled by something within themselves to spend their whole energies in trying, by extravagances of hair-ribbon and sidecombs and patent leather belts, the collection of actresses' ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West
... or so already, the most palpable engagement rings I think I ever saw. One of them had visible on its inner curvature the four letters MIZP—. He looked at them, saw the posy, and then, glancing at me, laughed affably. "I meant to tell you yesterday, George—I will take these," to the shopman. And we emerged with a superficial amiability; the case of rings in my uncle's pocket. The thing was rather a shock ...
— Select Conversations with an Uncle • H. G. Wells
... "A curvature of the spine, I suppose," Josephine continued, without interest. She had her eyes on the ribbon of sand now, and guessed nothing as to her companion's disturbance, until his voice came in a burst of ...
— Heart of the Blue Ridge • Waldron Baily
... design with modification in the position of the median figure, and a slight curvature ...
— Archeological Expedition to Arizona in 1895 • Jesse Walter Fewkes
... careful forethought and provision for every contingency which had distinguished the engineer's procedure in the course of the work, he had made frequent experiments to ascertain the actual power which would be required to raise the main chains to their proper curvature. A valley lay convenient for the purpose, a little to the west of the bridge on the Anglesea side. Fifty-seven of the intended vertical suspending rods, each nearly ten feet long and an inch square, ...
— The Life of Thomas Telford by Smiles • Samuel Smiles
... into the open sea finally—a broad, empty expanse, with a mirrorlike surface. The curvature of the planet was even more apparent now; it seemed almost as though the water should be sliding back downhill over ...
— The Fire People • Ray Cummings
... have curved jaws so made as to straighten out while passing through the bronchoscope and to spring back into their original shape on up from the lower jaw emerging from the distal end of the bronchoscopic tube, the radius of curvature being regulated by the extent of emergence permitted. They are made in extra-light pattern, 40 cm. long, and the regular model 45 cm. long. The full-curved model, giving 180 degrees and reaching up into the ascending ...
— Bronchoscopy and Esophagoscopy - A Manual of Peroral Endoscopy and Laryngeal Surgery • Chevalier Jackson
... as well here to remark, that if such distortion is timely noticed, it is capable of correction, even after evident curvature has taken place. It is to be remedied by using those means that shall invigorate the frame, and promote the child's general health (a daily plunge into the cold bath, or sponging with cold salt water, will be found signally efficacious), and by avoiding ...
— The Maternal Management of Children, in Health and Disease. • Thomas Bull, M.D.
... not positively forbidding, at least distant and repulsive. The noble outline of face in Edward Effingham had got to be cold severity in that of John; the aquiline nose of the latter, seeming to possess an eagle-like and hostile curvature,—his compressed lip, sarcastic and cold expression, and the fine classical chin, a feature in which so many of the Saxon race fail, a haughty scorn that caused strangers usually to avoid him. Eve drew with great facility and truth, and she had an eye, as her cousin had rightly said, ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... had ever had a grand uncle with curvature of the spine or a cousin with swelled ankles, the two doctors retired to the bathroom and sat on the edge of the bath tub for their consultation. I ate an apple, and gazed first at my finger and ...
— Sixes and Sevens • O. Henry
... the cliffs, the sea shoals very gradually far outwards; and the bottom, for a space of some miles, everywhere consists of gravel. I carefully examined the bed of the sea off the Santa Cruz, and found that its inclination was exactly the same, both in amount and in its peculiar curvature, with that of the 355 feet plain at this same place. If, therefore, the coast, with the bed of the adjoining sea, were now suddenly elevated one or two hundred feet, an inland line of cliffs, that is an escarpment, would be formed, with ...
— South American Geology - also: - Title: Geological Observations On South America • Charles Darwin
... and more especially in the case of the growing girl, is not a thing to be accepted as readily as the weakness of the biceps and the forearm muscles. Various observers find a proportion of between 85 per cent. and 90 per cent. of those suffering from lateral curvature of the spine to be girls, the great majority of these cases occurring between the ages of ten and fifteen. Everywhere it is our duty to prevent such cases, and everywhere physical training will find only ...
— Woman and Womanhood - A Search for Principles • C. W. Saleeby
... earth's surface makes it impossible for the sides of townships to be truly north and south and at the same time six miles square. The excesses and the deficiencies due to the convergency of meridians and the curvature of the earth are by law added to or deducted from the western and northern ranges of sections and half sections of the townships. While the above has been the rule in laying out public lands for more than a century, there are many exceptions, due ...
— The Young Farmer: Some Things He Should Know • Thomas Forsyth Hunt
... are too low there will result an undue strain on the shoulder and the backbone; if too high, the feet have no proper support, the thighs may be bent by the weight of the feet and legs, and there is a prolonged strain on the hips and back. Curvature of the spine and round shoulders often result from long-continued positions at school in seats and at desks which are not adapted to the physical ...
— A Practical Physiology • Albert F. Blaisdell
... reins Only when someone's coming, and the mare Stops when she likes: I tell her when to go. I've spoiled Jemima in more ways than one. She's got so she turns in at every house As if she had some sort of curvature, No matter if I have no errand there. She thinks I'm sociable. I maybe am. It's seldom I get down except for meals, though. Folks entertain me from the kitchen doorstep, All in a family row down to the youngest." ...
— North of Boston • Robert Frost
... has been the facilities afforded for determining atmospheric absorption, the sun's zenith distance at noon being only 17 deg. 12' at New York. The retardation of the sun's rays in passing through a clear atmosphere obviously depends on the depth penetrated; hence—neglecting the curvature of the atmospheric limit—the retardation will be as the secants of the zenith distances. Accordingly, an observation of the temperature produced by solar radiation at a zenith distance whose secant is twice that of the secant of 17 deg. 12', viz., 61 deg. 28', determines the minimum atmospheric ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 458, October 11, 1884 • Various
... them, because they are the stepping stones to lead us on to better ones. In my early work Dr. Draper suggested a very excellent plan for testing a flat surface, which I briefly describe. It is a well known truth that, if an artificial star is placed in the exact center of curvature of a truly spherical mirror, and an eyepiece be used to examine the image close beside the source of light, the star will be sharply defined, and will bear very high magnification. If the eyepiece is now drawn toward the ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 484, April 11, 1885 • Various
... ends upon the columns of the framing by means of thin semicircular brasses, 4 inches deep, passing round the columns, and attached to the segment by two 3/8 inch bolts at each end, passing through projecting feathers upon the brasses and segment, three eighths of an inch in thickness. The curvature of the segment is such as to correspond with the arc swept from the centre of the trunnion to the centre of the valve lever pin when the valve is at half stroke as a radius; and the operation of the segment is to prevent the valve from being ...
— A Catechism of the Steam Engine • John Bourne
... the first patents of Horatio Phillips, whose work lay mainly in the direction of investigation into the curvature of plane surfaces, with a view to obtaining the greatest amount of support. Phillips was one of the first to treat the problem of curvature of planes as a matter for scientific experiment, and, great as has been the development of the driven ...
— A History of Aeronautics • E. Charles Vivian
... so employ it. Its virtue is the power of producing a perfectly delicate, equal, and decisive line with great rapidity; and the temptation allied with that virtue is the licentious haste, and chance-swept, instead of strictly-commanded, curvature. In the hands of very great painters it obtains, like the etching needle, qualities of exquisite charm in this free use; but all attempts at imitation of these confused and suggestive sketches must be absolutely denied to yourselves while students. You may fancy you have produced something like ...
— Lectures on Art - Delivered before the University of Oxford in Hilary term, 1870 • John Ruskin
... of high class. And another thing: It recalls the picture in the joggerfy that proved the earth was round because the hull of a ship disappears before the sails, as it would if the ship was going over a hill. You sweep your eye along where the sky and water meet, and it seems you can note the curvature of the earth. Maybe it is that, and maybe it is all in your own eye. I am ...
— Back Home • Eugene Wood
... is without taint or cross. Her ear was thin, sharply pointed, delicately curved, nearly black around the borders, and as tremulous as the leaves of an aspen. Her neck rose from the withers to the head in perfect curvature, hard, devoid of fat, and well cut up under the chops. Her nostrils were full, very full, and thin almost as parchment. The eyes, from which tears might fall or fire flash, were well brought out, soft as a gazelle's, almost human ...
— The Junior Classics Volume 8 - Animal and Nature Stories • Selected and arranged by William Patten
... exercises in cramped space, in ill-ventilated rooms, with tight belts and heavy shoes, are conceded to be pernicious. Formal exercises should never be given to any child without examination and prescription by a physician. Children with heart weakness, enlarged tonsils, adenoid growths, spinal curvature, uneven shoulders, are frequently seen doing exercises for which they are physically unfit, and which but serve to deplete further their already low vitality. Attention might be called to many a class engaged in breathing exercises ...
— Civics and Health • William H. Allen
... an old astronomy; it speaks of the perfect line of curvature of the earth in spite of mountains and abysses, and I have imagined a man three hundred thousand miles high picking up a ball like the earth and looking at it and holding it in his hand. It would be about like a billiard-ball to him, and he would turn it over in his hand and rub it with his thumb, ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... its curvature, has formed this little dent, on a coast possessing, and certainly at present requiring, few harbours, displays, perhaps, the least inviting of all prospects; offering to the view nothing but a shelving beach of dazzling white sand, backed with a few small hummocks beat up by the occasional ...
— The Pirate and The Three Cutters • Frederick Marryat
... base of the style bent? For the same reason. The result of the curvature is that the pistil is much more easily bent than would be the case if ...
— Wild Flowers, An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and - Their Insect Visitors - - Title: Nature's Garden • Neltje Blanchan
... discrepancies which it is impossible to reconcile. Entering Lake Michigan at its northern extremity through the Straits of Mackinac, they paddled down the eastern coast, passed the mouth of St. Joseph's River, rounded the southern curvature of the lake, and reached the mouth of the Chicago River on the 4th of January, 1682. The winter in that region was short, but very severe. The Chicago River presented a solid surface ...
— The Adventures of the Chevalier De La Salle and His Companions, in Their Explorations of the Prairies, Forests, Lakes, and Rivers, of the New World, and Their Interviews with the Savage Tribes, Two Hu • John S. C. Abbott
... superintended all these arrangements. The greatest care had been taken to preserve a due medium between the neat and graceful on the one hand, and the pittoresque, in the true sense of the Italian term, on the other. There were few straight, and no long uninterrupted lines. The same effect of curvature or of color appeared twice, usually, but not oftener, at any one point of view. Everywhere was variety in uniformity. It was a piece of "composition," in which the most fastidiously critical taste could ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... towards hats. He was to suggest trying on various types of hat and to show by his manner and bearing, but without any coarse flattery, the enhanced impression made by the hats he wished to sell. He had several mirrors, adapted by various subtleties of curvature and tint to different types of face and complexion, and much depended on the proper use ...
— Tales of Space and Time • Herbert George Wells
... still the same; obedience it refused. His time and labour constantly were lost; Vain proved each effort: mystick skill was crossed; The wind, or rain, or fog, or frost, or snow, Had no effect: still circular 'twould go. The more he tried, the ringlet less inclined To drop the curvature so closely twined. How's this? said Satan, never have I seen Such stubborn stuff wherever I have been; The shades below no demon can produce, That could divine what here would prove of use: 'Twould puzzle hell to break ...
— The Tales and Novels, Complete • Jean de La Fontaine
... These two lines follow very nearly the direction of the original canal and end in the place where it ended. One of these is often superposed as exactly as possible upon the former line, the other being drawn anew; but in this case the original line loses all the small irregularities and curvature that it may have originally possessed. But it also happens that both the lines may occupy opposite sides of the' former canal and be located upon entirely new ground. The distance between the two lines differs in different germinations and varies from 600 kilometers ...
— The Certainty of a Future Life in Mars • L. P. Gratacap
... graceful tree, rising in the forest to the height of seventy or eighty feet, with a straight trunk and a diameter of three feet or more at the base. On an open plain it throws out its branches, with a gentle double curvature, to a distance on every side, and forms a broad, round head of great beauty. The flowers of the ash are greenish white in color and appear with the leaves in loose clusters. 'The trunk of our largest ...
— Among the Trees at Elmridge • Ella Rodman Church
... of the exposed position in which I was lying. Whereas the field when I started across it had seemed perfectly flat, now it impressed me as being convex and I was further impressed with the belief that I was lying on the very uppermost and most exposed curvature of it. There is no doubt that the continued stream of machine gun lead that swept the field superinduced this belief. I got as close to the ground as a piece of paper on top of a table. I remember regretting sincerely that the war ...
— "And they thought we wouldn't fight" • Floyd Gibbons
... composition becomes an absolute essential in all cases of imperfect bone structure, such as rachitis, or rickets, constitutional disease of children, osteomalacia, tuberculosis of the bones, deformity of bone structure, such as curvature of the spine, etc. ...
— Valere Aude - Dare to Be Healthy, Or, The Light of Physical Regeneration • Louis Dechmann
... around fast over the curvature of Earth, was a tiny black worldlet, 998 miles above Earth. It might be an enormous meteor, but Dan felt he was right the first time. For it wasn't falling like a meteor but swinging parallel to Earth's surface on ...
— Shipwreck in the Sky • Eando Binder
... more and more pronounced, until the curved form of each ridge became apparent. Lord Avebury says that when the driver, walking on the near side, reached the end of each furrow, he found it easier to turn the team by pulling them round than by pushing them, thus accounting for the slight curvature. ...
— Grain and Chaff from an English Manor • Arthur H. Savory
... is about the same width proximally as distally. The curvature of the shaft is approximately alike on both sides. Distally the surface is rounded for articulation with the radiale and perhaps ...
— A New Order of Fishlike Amphibia From the Pennsylvanian of Kansas • Theodore H. Eaton
... Manning, had first generated the curvature field and overcome gravity, had left his grandson a fortune that approached the five-billion mark. But that had not been all. From his famous ancestor, Manning had inherited a keen, sharp, scientific mind. From his mother's ...
— Empire • Clifford Donald Simak
... The stream was not broad, but its numerous isles, willowy banks, and verdant meadows, formed a line for the eye to follow. Rouen in the distance, with its ebony towers, fantastic roofs, and straggling suburbs, lines its shores, at a curvature where the stream swept away west again, bearing craft of the sea on its bosom. These dark old towers have a sombre, mysterious air, which harmonizes admirably with the recollections that crowd the mind at such a moment! Scarce an isolated dwelling was to ...
— Recollections of Europe • J. Fenimore Cooper
... says Dr. Whitaker in his excellent book, The History and Antiquities of the Deanery of Craven, 'stands upon a beautiful curvature of the Wharf, on a level sufficiently elevated to protect it from inundations, and low enough for ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... accident in the abstract, we do not put the subject as though it were the first part of the definition, viz. the genus; but we give it the second place, which is that of the difference; thus we say that simitas is "a curvature of the nose." But if we take accidents in the concrete, the relation begins in the subject and terminates in the concrete, the relation begins in the subject and terminates at the accident: for "a white ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I-II (Pars Prima Secundae) - From the Complete American Edition • Saint Thomas Aquinas
... beside salt lakes on the plains a tendency to regular curvature was the chief feature: the relative situation with respect to the water and the wind was always the same; while in some cases, where grassy flats had once been lakes, crescent-shaped green mounds were still apparent on ...
— Three Expeditions into the Interior of Eastern Australia, Vol 2 (of 2) • Thomas Mitchell
... viewed with a microscope, and magnified; thus came the telescope revealing unheard of suns and galaxies. The first telescopes colored everything looked at, but by a hundred years of mathematical research, the proper curvature of objectives formed of two glasses was discovered, so that now we have perfect instruments. Great results followed; one can now peer into the profound solitudes of space, bringing to view millions of stars, requiring light 5,000 years to traverse their awful distance, and behold suns wheeling ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 288 - July 9, 1881 • Various
... Icarus. He wrought feathers together, beginning with the smallest and adding larger, so as to form an increasing surface. The larger ones he secured with thread and the smaller with wax, and gave the whole a gentle curvature like the wings of a bird. Icarus, the boy, stood and looked on, sometimes running to gather up the feathers which the wind had blown away, and then handling the wax and working it over with his fingers, ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch
... plasticity, capable of changing at will to nebulous approximations of the solid, liquid, gaseous, or tenuously unparticled states. The anthropomorphic patch of mold on the floor, the form of the yellowish vapor, and the curvature of the tree-roots in some of the old tales, all argued at least a remote and reminiscent connection with the human shape; but how representative or permanent that similarity might be, none could say with any ...
— The Shunned House • Howard Phillips Lovecraft
... nerves new-braced and spirits cheered, We tread the wilderness, whose well-rolled walks, With curvature of slow and easy sweep— Deception innocent—give ample space To narrow bounds. The grove receives us next; Between the upright shafts of whose tall elms We may discern the thresher at his task. Thump after thump ...
— The Task and Other Poems • William Cowper
... was clear and vivid only in the middle of the field. All about that centre the dead fibres and seeds were magnified and distorted by the curvature of the glass. But we could see enough! One after another all down the sunlit slope these miraculous little brown bodies burst and gaped apart, like seed-pods, like the husks of fruits; opened eager mouths. that drank in the heat ...
— The First Men In The Moon • H. G. Wells
... band and leading the parade, heavily laden with a false dignity which had completely eradicated his spinal curvature, there appeared the rag-head Hindoo who had escaped with the Wildcat from the carload of undesirable aliens on the night of the train robbers' fiesta ...
— Lady Luck • Hugh Wiley |
