"Middle" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... and its endless rows of fine trees, seemed to have been expressly designed as an arena for their disputations. When they reached the Esplanade, the wrangling became so violent that they stopped in the middle of that large open space. Beside himself, Claude called Jory a numskull; was it not better to destroy one's work than to launch a mediocre performance upon the world? Truckling to trade was really disgusting. Mahoudeau and Sandoz, on their side, shouted both together at the same time. Some passers-by, ...
— His Masterpiece • Emile Zola
... has been our Sacrifice and the propitiation of our sins, but He is the Lamb 'in the midst of the throne,' wielding therefore all divine power, and standing—not as the rendering in our Bible leads an English reader to suppose, on the throne, but—in the middle point between it and the ring of worshippers, and so the Communicator to the outer circumference of all the blessings that dwell in the divine centre. He shall be their Shepherd, not coercing, not driving by violence, but leading to the fountains of the waters of life, gently ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... read—many of you surely have—La Motte Fouque's Romance of Sintram? It embodies all that I would say. It is the spiritual drama of that early middle age; very sad, morbid if you will, but true to fact. The Lady Verena ought not, perhaps, to desert her husband, and shut herself up in a cloister. But so she would have done in those old days. And who shall judge ...
— Lectures Delivered in America in 1874 • Charles Kingsley
... hope of paying off his private liabilities, which were heavy beyond all opinion. As for Mr. Henry, it appears he said little enough at first; his part came later on. It took the three a whole day's disputation before they agreed to steer a middle course, one son going forth to strike a blow for King James, my lord and the other staying at home to keep in favour with King George. Doubtless this was my lord's decision; and, as is well known, it was ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition, Vol. XII (of 25) - The Master of Ballantrae • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Tongs for attaching cable hangers, q.v. They have long handles so as to be worked from the ground at the middle of a span. ...
— The Standard Electrical Dictionary - A Popular Dictionary of Words and Terms Used in the Practice - of Electrical Engineering • T. O'Conor Slone
... is n't travelled much, except by the loggers in the fall and spring. A man was riding along this road, one afternoon in summer, when he suddenly came across a monstrous black bear. As soon as the bear saw him, he squat down on his haunches, right in the middle of the road, and began to show his teeth. The man didn't dare to drive by him, and his horse was so frightened that it was as much as he could do to hold him in. He had a loaded revolver with him, but he knew there was n't much hope of killing the bear with ...
— Oscar - The Boy Who Had His Own Way • Walter Aimwell
... alarm clock that was lying on its side in the middle of the mantelpiece until its dial showed a quarter to twelve and then laid it once more on ...
— A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man • James Joyce
... pieces of burial fabrics of the classes mentioned in the preceding extracts, and somewhat detailed descriptions of these will sufficiently illustrate the art as practiced by the early inhabitants of the middle portions of the country. ...
— Prehistoric Textile Art of Eastern United States • William Henry Holmes
... star, planet, or satellite by the interposition of a nearer body of greater angular magnitude. OPPOSITION. A superior planet is in opposition when the sun, earth, and the planet are in a line, the earth being in the middle. ORBIT, the path of a planet, comet, or meteor around the sun, or of a satellite around a primary; inclination of, 106; earth's, seen from the stars, 70. OUTLINE FOR STUDENTS, 276. PARALLAX, the difference of direction of a heavenly body as seen from two points, as the centre of the earth ...
— Recreations in Astronomy - With Directions for Practical Experiments and Telescopic Work • Henry Warren
... truth, in spite of the total absence of religious character. There is no more interesting or remarkable chapter in history than that which records the manias that have spread like epidemics at different periods (especially during the middle ages) over Europe. They are cases of hysteria upon a great scale; and that these should take a religious form as well as any other is no way impossible. It has happened a hundred times before, and will happen ...
— Parish Papers • Norman Macleod
... up about midnight. An old chap, with a retrospective look in his left eye peering back through eighty midnight suns and noonday nights, set the ball a-rolling by raising his hands above his head and hopping about in the middle-distance. His wife, a gay old girl of twice his age, lilted a song, and the guests joined in the chorus; line by line in a minor key the wedding song was sung, the air being confined to three notes. After each line came ...
— The New North • Agnes Deans Cameron
... say it is suffrage after all; which it will be, because the others won't train under our leadership. No, no; Mrs. Dickinson herself must be the chief cook of this broth and appoint her own lieutenants, one of whom, with name far down in the middle of the list, I shall be most happy to be, and do all I possibly can to help, but always in the name of the president of ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 2 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... left the laboratory and watched the colonists as they milled around in front of the Administration Building. Vidac's jet car was in the middle of the group of men and Strong saw him jump up on top of the car and begin addressing them. He couldn't hear the lieutenant governor's words, but he knew the men were being urged to hunt the cadets ...
— The Space Pioneers • Carey Rockwell
... Before the middle of June it was evident that such a Civil War was not to be feared. Richard himself had been quite inert in Whitehall, and his abdication was a signal to all his partisans to give up the cause. Even after that there were efforts or protests in his behalf ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson
... a defect in my conception; for if we break one of our strips of wood in the middle we have one half entirely red, and the other entirely green, and with these it would be impossible to imitate the action of our broken magnet. How, then, must we modify our conception? We must evidently suppose each molecule of the wood painted ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... five-and-twenty years afterwards she haunted us at intervals; and so singularly and secretly conducted were all her movements, that had she lived in the days of the Inquisition, Miss Jerningham might have proved one of its most valuable agents and coadjutors. She was a thin, middle-aged personage, or, more correctly speaking, of uncertain age, and without anything remarkable in her exterior, which was decidedly lady-like, if we except a pair of the very smallest and most restless brown eyes that were ever set in mortal's ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 420, New Series, Jan. 17, 1852 • Various
... on, by finding suddenly that somebody was in the middle of a song. Markham was the singer, and he sang 'When the heart of a man is depressed with care'. He said, when he had sung it, he would give us 'Woman!' I took objection to that, and I couldn't allow it. I said it was ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... It was time long ago. When she sends for me, if it be in the middle of the night, I shall be ...
— The Seaboard Parish Vol. 3 • George MacDonald
... her auburn hair and secured by a gold clasp, the outer side of which was ornamented by a superb opal, which, amid the changing lights peculiar to that gem, displayed a slight tinge of red, like a spark of fire. The figure of this young person was rather under the middle size, but perfectly well formed; the eastern dress, with the wide trousers gathered round the ankles, made visible the smallest and most beautiful feet which had ever been seen, while hands and arms of the most perfect symmetry were partly seen from under ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume XIII, No. 370, Saturday, May 16, 1829. • Various
... the lessons of the past unheeded lie, Thou that lookst aloft, yet lackest power to win thy goal on high, Thinkest thou to reach Es Suha,[FN149] O deluded one, although Even the moon's too far to come at, shining in the middle sky? How then dar'st thou hope my favours and aspire to twinned delight And my spear-straight shape and slender in thine arms to girdle sigh? Leave this purpose, lest mine anger fall on thee some day of wrath, Such as e'en the parting-places shall ...
— The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume II • Anonymous
... Von Bloom reflected, the more was he convinced of this. There they were, in the middle of a black naked plain, that without a green spot extended beyond the limits of vision. How much farther he could not guess; but he knew that the devastations of the migratory locust sometimes cover an area of thousands of ...
— The Bush Boys - History and Adventures of a Cape Farmer and his Family • Captain Mayne Reid
... prose 'Satyricon' ascribed to Petronius, whom Nero called his Arbiter of Elegance. The tale was known in the Middle Ages from the stories of the 'Seven Wise Masters.' She went down into the vault with her husband's corpse, resolved to weep to death or die of famine; but was tempted to share the supper of a soldier ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... of Harley was attracted presently by one of the strangers, a smallish man of middle age, with a weak jaw and a look curiously compounded of ...
— The Candidate - A Political Romance • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... ennobles our material part, and which differs from cold, abstract, intellectual enjoyment, as the flaming diamond of the Orient differs from the icicle of the North. Those finer senses, which occupy a middle ground between our animal and intellectual appetites, were suddenly developed to a pitch beyond what I had ever dreamed, and being thus at one and the same time gratified to the fullest extent of their ...
— The Lands of the Saracen - Pictures of Palestine, Asia Minor, Sicily, and Spain • Bayard Taylor
... sight of me, I had no proper time for i-dentification—no time for i-den-ti-fi-cation, Mr. Landale, sir. So I say, sir, it's a mercy I did not hit him either, now I can think of it. Ah, slow and sure, that's my motter! I takes my man on his boat, in the very middle of his laces and his brandy and his silk—I takes him, sir, in the very act of illegality, red-handed, so to speak, and then, if he shows fight, or if he runs away, then I shoots, sir, and then if I hits, why it's a good job too—but none of this promiscuous work ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... best, to both lust and maternity. This consciousness, grown so dim that it is scarcely perceptible, yet still alive, is not extinguished with youth, but lingers hopeless of satisfaction through the incongruous years of middle age. There is never a man, gifted to any degree with imagination, but eternally searches for an ultimate loveliness not disappearing in the circle of his embrace—the instinctively Platonic gesture toward the only immortality ...
— Domnei • James Branch Cabell et al
... here until it is very shallow," said Wabi. "I don't believe that it is more than four feet deep out there in the middle. What do you say—" He paused as he saw Mukoki slip back to the dead stub again, then went on, "What do you say to making a trip to the canoe after grub for ...
— The Gold Hunters - A Story of Life and Adventure in the Hudson Bay Wilds • James Oliver Curwood
... the habit of drinking a cup of coco in the middle of the night. Could the strychnine ...
— The Mysterious Affair at Styles • Agatha Christie
... giver. It is seen to have been a usage running through three ethnic conditions of the Indian race, becoming stronger as the means of subsistence increased in variety and amount, and attaining its highest development among the Village Indians in the Middle Status of barbarism. It was an active, well-established custom of Indian society, practiced among themselves and among strangers from other tribes, and very naturally extended to Europeans when they made their first appearance among them. Considering ...
— Houses and House-Life of the American Aborigines • Lewis H. Morgan
... home?" asked he, glancing around the damp, unwholesome apartment, and shivering even in the middle of the month of August. "Have you no husband, and do you depend upon what you sell daily from this ...
— The Elm Tree Tales • F. Irene Burge Smith
... hundred in number, from the Sisseton reservation were on the war path and were headed their way. Mrs. Orton and another woman, being alone with the children, say that they had a flat bottomed boat which they had planned to get in and get out into the middle of the lake and that if overtaken by the Indians, rather than be tortured as they had seen other people near New Ulm and other towns, would drown themselves and children, but luckily it ...
— Old Rail Fence Corners - The A. B. C's. of Minnesota History • Various
... green-houses where mushrooms and early vegetables strove to outwit the seasons, and before the brown cottage in which Cavendish had begun a successful career. The black roof-tree of the cottage sagged in the middle, and the weather-boarding was dingy with the streaky dinginess of old paint that has never had enough oil. The fences, too, were unpainted and rudely patched. Nevertheless a second glance told one that there were no ...
— Stories of a Western Town • Octave Thanet
... through the water, and I concluded that we had passed the swiftest part of the current. Washburn informed me that the stern of the steamer was inside of the cut, and I felt that the battle was won. Still I kept my eyes fixed on the flagpole forward, in order to hold the vessel in the middle of the gap. ...
— Up the River - or, Yachting on the Mississippi • Oliver Optic
... merit of having by his zealous opposition to it obtained at last its complete abolition, on the appearance of his Semiramis. How could they have ventured to make a change of scene in presence of such an unpoetical chorus as this, totally unconnected with the piece, and yet thrust into the very middle of the representation? In the Cid, the scene of the action manifestly changes several times in the course of the same act, and yet in the representation the material scene was never changed. In the English and Spanish plays of the same date the case was generally the same; ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel
... the brow to his eye-roots Piercing, he push'd the pupil from its seat, And through his eye and through his poll the spear Urged furious. He down-sitting on the earth 595 Both hands extended; but, his glittering blade Forth-drawn, Peneleus through his middle neck Enforced it; head and helmet to the ground He lopp'd together, with the lance infixt Still in his eye; then like a poppy's head 600 The crimson trophy lifting, in the ears He vaunted loud of Ilium's host, and cried. ...
— The Iliad of Homer - Translated into English Blank Verse • Homer
... string for my fiddle, And call to the neighbours to come, And partners shall dance down the middle Until the old pewter-wares hum: And we'll sip the mead, cyder, ...
— Moments of Vision • Thomas Hardy
... cheerily; sometimes he would pat her head, and I saw that his heart warmed toward her. But all the time he talked with us he seemed to act as if he feared he was being watched, and he left us abruptly—sometimes breaking away in the middle of a sentence as if he was afraid he might say something he ought not to say. At last, however, I learned that his name was Blossom, and that Mrs. Blossom and he lived alone in a fine house up yonder in ...
— Second Book of Tales • Eugene Field
... was born in Glasgow in 1806. On completing the usual course of study at the Universities of Glasgow and Edinburgh, he became a licentiate of the Established Church. He assisted in the Middle Church, Greenock, and in the parish of Kilmalcolm, Renfrewshire, and was, in 1839, ordained minister of Levern Chapel, near Paisley. In 1842, he was translated to the full charge of Kilmalcolm, where he continued to minister with much acceptance till his death, which took place suddenly ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume IV. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... persons who had formerly been most instrumental in defeating the claims of Joanna, and securing the succession to her rival; that Ferdinand was connected by blood with the most powerful families of Castile; that the great body of the people, the middle as well as the lower classes, were fully penetrated not only with a conviction of the legality of Isabella's title, but with a deep attachment to her person; while, on the other hand, their proverbial hatred ...
— History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella V1 • William H. Prescott
... abounds in salt. Patients who have previously suffered much from rheumatism about the body and limbs have found themselves entirely free from any such pains or trouble whilst taking the extract of Fucus Vesiculosus (Bladderwrack). This Sea Weed is in perfection only during early and middle summer. For fresh sprains and bruises a hot decoction of the Bladderwrack should be used at first as a fomentation; and, afterwards, a cold essence of the weed should be rubbed in, or applied on wet lint beneath light thin ...
— Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure • William Thomas Fernie
... the point about their doings, the pantomime of signs, the bad Arabic, was quite absurd.' Then one by one the other slave-dealers surrendered, and though Suleiman still gave him much trouble, and was to give more, yet on the whole things had gone much better than he had feared, and by the middle of October he arrived at Khartoum, and after a week's hard work took a steamer and went down the river to Berber and Dongola. In March he very unwillingly continued his journey to Cairo, at the ...
— The Red Book of Heroes • Leonora Blanche Lang
... he sent to inquire after the health of his protegee and was answered by a request that he would pay her a visit. When he entered the room he found her alone. She was dressed somewhat in the Oriental style, and he was not a little surprised at her extreme beauty. Her stature was rather above the middle size: she was exquisitely formed; and her hands, ankles, and feet, were models of perfection. She was indeed one of the most exquisite specimens of the Jewish nation, and that is quite sufficient for her portrait. She rose as he entered, and coloured deeply as ...
— The Poacher - Joseph Rushbrook • Frederick Marryat
... said Mr Welbourn. "Harry, get one of your rockets ready, and pitch it into the middle of them directly after we fire ...
— Adventures in Africa - By an African Trader • W.H.G. Kingston
... a middle-aged Scotch half-breed with a house full of sons and daughters ranging from the age of four to twenty. How could they all be housed in three small rooms was almost the first dubious query which presented itself to Thompson. His mind, to his ...
— Burned Bridges • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... passed out of the mouth of our stream, and round the bushes on the point, there lay the schooner a couple of hundred yards away, anchored in the middle, with her long raking masts tapering in the sunshine, and the great spars glistening and bright as ...
— Mass' George - A Boy's Adventures in the Old Savannah • George Manville Fenn
... temperament also. "She seemed to me like a Joan of Arc. Just think of her going away from all her family, to a station on the Congo River! She told me all about it—how wretched the people are, and what the women suffer. She woke up in the middle of the night, and a voice told her to go—told her the name of the place. And she'd never heard it before, and hadn't had the least ...
— Love's Pilgrimage • Upton Sinclair
... preferred by Mr. Plunket against Mr. Thorpe, the High Sheriff of Dublin, for having caused the bill of indictment against the rioters at the Dublin Theatre to be ignored. Debate followed debate on this subject, till the House adjourned about the middle of May. But the subject was resumed on the 23rd and on subsequent days, when a fierce attack was made by Opposition members on the conduct of Orangemen and on the system they supported. On the 26th, the motion was rejected in a small House by a majority ...
— Memoirs of the Court of George IV. 1820-1830 (Vol 1) - From the Original Family Documents • Duke of Buckingham and Chandos
... he could bark the rider's leg, he seemed to be better contented. The last time I rode him was upon the day of Mr. Johnson's wedding. I had on my best suit, and on the way to the festival there was a creek to be forded. When the horse got into the middle of it, he took a drink, and then looked around at the scenery. Then he took another drink, and gazed again at the prospect. Then he suddenly felt tired and lay down in the water. By the time he was sufficiently rested I ...
— Elbow-Room - A Novel Without a Plot • Charles Heber Clark (AKA Max Adeler)
... you sure de middle door's shut. Let me git out o' dis place quick as possible, for since ole Peggy left, de ole boy hisself has taken up his abode here. 'Pears as if I never ...
— Aunt Phillis's Cabin - Or, Southern Life As It Is • Mary H. Eastman
... mine's the middle view, And looks on all creation as the work Of God All-wise, most kind and mighty too. This frees my mind from all vain thoughts which lurk In its recesses, dissipates the murk Of idol worship and religious pride, And makes me proof 'gainst ...
— The Emigrant Mechanic and Other Tales In Verse - Together With Numerous Songs Upon Canadian Subjects • Thomas Cowherd
... northwest of Djokjakarta, standing in the middle of a fertile plain which stretches away to the lower slopes of slumbering Merapi, are the ruins of Boro-Boedor, of all the Hindu temples of Java the largest and the most magnificent and one of the architectural marvels of the world. They can be reached from Djokjakarta by motor in an hour. ...
— Where the Strange Trails Go Down • E. Alexander Powell
... playing a waltz on the piano came up from the drawing-room. Mr. Prohack started to dance all by himself in the middle of the ...
— Mr. Prohack • E. Arnold Bennett
... chair with the speed of utter desperation. He feinted, and drove a vicious uppercut to the jaw of Dr. Friedrich von Stein. The doctor reeled but he did not go down. His fists swung. Parker found him no boxer, and beat a tattoo upon his middle. Von Stein ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, November, 1930 • Various
... mood," he confessed. "I can never hear the frogs trilling in the night without being reminded of the marshlands around my native town in the Middle West. Every night, all summer long, I could hear that symphony through the open windows of my room, and because I was then in the adventurous and romantic period of youth, the recurrence of the sound brings back an echo of old emotions. I feel as if I were being called upon to go out into ...
— The Mayor of Warwick • Herbert M. Hopkins
... Mount Sinai" (Koran xxiii. 20); and Mohammed would use no other, because it prevents decay and scents the mouth. Hence Koran, chaps. xcv. 1. The "Miswak" is held with the unused end between the ring-finger and minimus, the two others grasp the middle and the thumb is pressed against the back close to the lips. These articles have long been sold at the Medical Hall near the "Egyptian Hall," Piccadilly. They are better than our unclean tooth-brushes because each tooth gets ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... grew a bullock, Fat the ox they reared in Suomi, Not a large one, not a small one, But a calf of middle stature. 20 While he switched his tail in Hame Stooped his head to Kemi's river, Long his horns one hundred fathoms, Muzzle broad as half a hundred, For a week there ran an ermine All along the yoke he carried, All day long there flew a swallow 'Twixt the ...
— Kalevala, Volume I (of 2) - The Land of the Heroes • Anonymous
... feet high, six feet long, and two and a half feet deep, the front consisting of three doors, opening outward. In each end is a seat, with holes through which the ropes can be passed in securing the mediums. In the upper part of the middle door is a lozenge-shaped aperture, curtained on the inside with black muslin or oilcloth. The bolts are on the ...
— The Humbugs of the World • P. T. Barnum
... tomb-house, elaborately decorated by Wolsey. Wolsey's fixtures were sold by the thrifty patriots of Cromwell's Parliament, and bought in by the republican governor of the castle as "old brass." George was able, too, to add another story to the stature of the round tower or keep that marks the middle ward of the castle and looks down, on the rare occasion of a sufficiently clear atmosphere, on prosperous and no longer disloyal London. This same keep has quite a list of royal prisoners; John of France and David II. and James I. of Scotland enjoyed a prolonged view of its interior; so did ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - February, 1876, Vol. XVII, No. 98. • Various
... Jim got back. You will note the rows of dots. They stand for footsteps. The first was Jim's; then Shanks came and pulled the punt back into the channel—I saw the mark of the rollers, leading up and down. It is plain he wanted to leave Jim on the middle sand when ...
— Partners of the Out-Trail • Harold Bindloss
... himself,—he suddenly relapsed into silence, sinking his head on his hand, and never lifting his glass to his lips;—but this was nothing new; so we let him alone, and went on with our jollification, till, suddenly raising his head, he interrupted us in the middle of a roar of laughter by exclaiming,—'Gentlemen, where is all this to end?—Will you just tell me that now?—Where is it all ...
— The Tenant of Wildfell Hall • Anne Bronte
... a telephone wire, tapped it, got Sabin on the line, told him of his failure and that he was returning to Tucson. About the middle of the afternoon the dispirited posse reached ...
— Bucky O'Connor • William MacLeod Raine
... that all great European art is rooted in the thirteenth century; and it seems to me that there is a kind of central year about which we may consider the energy of the middle ages to be gathered; a kind of focus of time which, by what is to my mind a most touching and impressive Divine appointment, has been marked for us by the greatest writer of the middle ages, in the ...
— Stones of Venice [introductions] • John Ruskin
... British rule before the middle of the nineteenth century, but it is only since January, 1886, that England has controlled Northern Burma. King Thebaw's downfall was caused by his numerous cruel acts to foreigners, which compelled the British to take steps to check him. His headquarters were at ...
— Travels in the Far East • Ellen Mary Hayes Peck
... lie, Peter, but I love you for saying it. It makes me want to hug you, and it makes me want to pirouette, if I wasn't on horseback. It makes my heart sing. But it's only the singing of one lonely little chickadee in the middle of a terribly big pile of ruins. For that's all my life can be now, just a hopeless smash-up. And you're cut out for something better than a wrecking-car for the rest ...
— The Prairie Child • Arthur Stringer
... quite unprepared to find John Beaton standing in the middle of the room, with his eyes fixed on the door. They stood for a moment looking at one another, and then their hands met, but not a word of greeting passed between them. Then Allison sat down, and John took a turn ...
— Allison Bain - By a Way she knew not • Margaret Murray Robertson
... through the skin in the middle line about 2 cm. in length, midway between the lower end of ...
— The Elements of Bacteriological Technique • John William Henry Eyre
... in July, about the middle of the season, when about half of your fish had been caught, you wanted supplies: would you generally be allowed in the fish-merchant's shop to get any quantity of ...
— Second Shetland Truck System Report • William Guthrie
... least ten minutes before the beginning and after the end of the eclipse. I measured the uneclipsed part of the moon with one of Ramsden's sextants, several times before, at, and after the middle of the eclipse; but did not get the middle so near as might have been effected by this method. Indeed, these observations were made only as an experiment, without aiming at much nicety. I also measured mostly one way; whereas I ought ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 16 • Robert Kerr
... Middle Ages, as it flourished in the North, the barbarian soul, apprenticed to monkish masters, appeared in all its childlike trust, originality, and humour. There was something touching and grotesque about it. We seem to see a child playing with the toys of age, his green ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... on it as no disgrace to a gent to say so.' "'Ants shorely do sound poignant,' admits Dan, 'speshully them big black an' red ants that has stingers like hornets an' pinchers like bugs. Sech insecks, armed to the teeth as they be, an' laid out to fight both ways from the middle, is likewise too many for me. I would ...
— Wolfville Days • Alfred Henry Lewis
... by the shortest Highway: there are two bad Highways, one by Pilsen southerly, one by Karlsbad northerly,—with their bridges all broken, infested by Hussars:—we strike into a middle combination of country roads, intricate parish lanes; and march zigzag across these frozen wildernesses: we must dodge these Festititz Hussar swarms; and cross the rivers near their springs. Forward! Perhaps some readers, for the high Belleisle's sake, will look out ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIV. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... to relieve the tension it was too horrible to be thought of, but they willingly carried the helpless. Then we mounted up at once into the high, cold region Urungu, south of Tanganyika, and into the middle of the rainy season, with well-grown grass and everything oppressively green; rain so often that no observations could be made, except at wide intervals. I could form no opinion as to our longitude, and but little of our latitudes. Three of the Baurungu chiefs, one ...
— The Personal Life Of David Livingstone • William Garden Blaikie
... the air, while the clammy energy from the body flew away to the left hand, and seemed dark and cold. And so, the first little master was dead and done for, and instead of his little living body there was a speck of dust in the middle, which became the earth, and on the right hand was a brightness which became the sun, rampaging with all the energy that had come out of the dead little master, and on the left hand a darkness which felt like an unrisen moon. And that was how the Lord ...
— Fantasia of the Unconscious • D. H. Lawrence
... of Muttra said to me that {220} there practically no rain falls from the middle of January to the middle of June. "In the latter part of the drought," he said, "the fields assume the appearance of deserts; only the dull green of the tree-leaves varies the vast, monotonous graybrown of the far-stretching plains. The streams are dried up; the cattle hunt the parched fields ...
— Where Half The World Is Waking Up • Clarence Poe
... with white, there being a white stripe near the end of the coat-tail, a big, fine, V-shaped white place under his chin that had something the look of a necktie, and a bar of white reaching nearly across the middle of each wing. ...
— Bird Stories • Edith M. Patch
... rained like hail and shells shrieked and split the universe from end to end. We lay in our beds, trembling, while utter terror seized us as the fracas would subside a little and then roll nearer and nearer in a perfect deluge of horrible sounds. Suddenly in the middle of it all a terrific blast rent the air; the forts had entered into this hideous contest! Oh the joy of it! I hardly breathed between their shots which seemed centuries apart and in reality were only a few minutes, ...
— Lige on the Line of March - An American Girl's Experiences When the Germans Came Through Belgium • Glenna Lindsley Bigelow
... impossible for me to serve him. I could have stopped Mrs. Thrale with ease, and Mr. Seward with a hint, had either of them begun the subject; but, unfortunately, in the middle of dinner, it was begun by Dr. Johnson himself, to oppose whom, especially as he spoke with great anger, would ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 1 • Madame D'Arblay
... before daybreak, he set off in company with the Indian for the spot where the Inca's treasure was asserted to be concealed. Two mules had been loaded with provisions, a tent, cooking utensils, blankets, etcetera, and in the middle of the blankets had been concealed a couple of picks and the same number of shovels. Jim and the Indian each carried an ordinary army rifle slung over his shoulder, and had a bandolier of cartridges strapped ...
— Under the Chilian Flag - A Tale of War between Chili and Peru • Harry Collingwood
... only to darken into gray again. But the river—the river! The roar of it filled the woods. The frothing hem of it swished through the tops of the trees and through the underbrush, high on the mountain-side. Arched slightly in the middle, for the river was still rising, it leaped and surged, tossing tawny mane and fleck and foam as it thundered along—a mad, molten mass of yellow struck into gold by the light of the sun. And there the raft, no longer the awkward monster it was the day before, floated ...
— The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come • John Fox
... refer to Cotton's 'Ode upon Winter,' an admirable composition, though stained with some peculiarities of the age in which he lived, for a general illustration of the characteristics of Fancy. The middle part of this ode contains a most lively description of the entrance of Winter, with his retinue, as 'A palsied king,' and yet a military monarch,—advancing for conquest with his army; the several bodies of which, and their arms and equipments, are described with a rapidity of detail, ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... of fish in water. Time of its own power, cooks all entities within itself. No one, however, knows That in which Time, in its turn, is itself cooked.[961] That (of which I speak) does not occur above, or in the middle or below, or in transverse or in any other direction. That is no tangible entity; it is not to be found in any place.[962] All these worlds are within That. There is nothing in these worlds that exists out of that. Even if one goes on ceaselessly with the celerity ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... extent, tables are arranged, about sixteen inches high, ten feet long, and three feet wide, at each of which fifteen women are seated, having small piles of tobacco before them. The tables are set crosswise from the wall, leaving a space in the middle of the room free. The labor of a female produces about two hundred cigars a day; and the working hours are from 6 a.m., till 6 p.m., with a recess of two hours, from eleven till one o'clock. The whole establishment is kept very neat ...
— The Former Philippines thru Foreign Eyes • Fedor Jagor; Tomas de Comyn; Chas. Wilkes; Rudolf Virchow.
... lifted, and its commencement was at a spot, roughly speaking, about a mile and a half below Kurtz's station. We had just floundered and flopped round a bend, when I saw an islet, a mere grassy hummock of bright green, in the middle of the stream. It was the only thing of the kind; but as we opened the reach more, I perceived it was the head of a long sand-bank, or rather of a chain of shallow patches stretching down the middle of the river. They were discoloured, just awash, and the whole lot was seen just under the ...
— Heart of Darkness • Joseph Conrad
... regards Ala al-Din they carried him, together with the stolen goods, to the Divan where the Caliph still sat upon his throne. And behold, the King looked upon his effects and said, "Where did ye find them?" They replied, "In the very middle of the house belonging to Ala al-Din Abu al-Shamat;" whereat the Caliph was filled with wrath and took the things, but found not the lanthorn among them and said, "O Ala al-Din, where is the lanthorn?" He answered "I stole it not, I know naught of it; ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 4 • Richard F. Burton
... house stood in the middle of the town. It was an old-fashioned looking house, very broad and low, with an enormous chimney. There was a wide step in front of the door, shaded by a fig-tree and grape-vine, and morning-glories and scarlet beans clambered by the side of ...
— Lill's Travels in Santa Claus Land and other Stories • Ellis Towne, Sophie May and Ella Farman
... been hurled against them, persecuted and hunted like vermin during the Middle Ages, still they kept coming. Later on, laws more merciful than in former times have taken a more humane view of them and been contented by classing them as "vagrants and scoundrels"—still they came. Magistrates, ministers, doctors, and lawyers have spit their spite ...
— Gipsy Life - being an account of our Gipsies and their children • George Smith
... of a very small round white spot, around which there was a slight equally circular redness. It was situated nearly in the middle of the body, just below the meeting of the ribs on the chest, about a broad hand's breadth above the waistband—in such a position, in short, as to be very nearly at the point where the neck-opening of the ...
— A Siren • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... hundred years that the processes of oil painting have been in existence—simply because they are peculiar to the use of pigments ground in oil as a vehicle, and the oil medium was not invented until the middle ...
— The Painter in Oil - A complete treatise on the principles and technique - necessary to the painting of pictures in oil colors • Daniel Burleigh Parkhurst
... and 1864 I lived in Glasgow, and worked very hard, taking the first prize in middle Greek and a prize in senior Latin, as well as a prize for private work in Greek, and another for the same kind of work in Latin. This last I was specially proud of, as in it I beat the two best fellows in the Latin class. Next session (1864-65) I took a prize in senior Greek. I got nothing in the ...
— James Gilmour of Mongolia - His diaries, letters, and reports • James Gilmour
... believer in the "centre" theory. Briefly expressed the centre theory is to hit down the middle of the court and follow to the net, since the other player has the smallest angle to pass you. That is true, but remember that he has an equal angle on either side and, given good ground strokes, an equal chance to pass with only your guess ...
— The Art of Lawn Tennis • William T. Tilden, 2D
... like lightning Arthur leaped upon the knight, clasped him round the middle and threw him to the ground. But the knight was a powerful man, and throwing Arthur off he hurled him to the ground, struck off his helm and raised his ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 5 • Charles Sylvester
... that Polyphemus, that spins a cocoon not one fourth the size of Cecropia, moves the head a quarter of a million times in guiding the silk thread. When a thin webbing is spun and securely attached all around the edges it is pushed out in the middle and gummed all over the inside with a liquid glue that oozes through, coalesces and hardens in a waterproof covering. Then a big nest of crinkly silk threads averaging from three to four inches in length are spun, running from the top down ...
— Moths of the Limberlost • Gene Stratton-Porter
... terrific crack out in the middle of the pond, followed by a tremendous splash. An old beaver had seen Thor and with the flat side of his broad tail had given the surface of the water a warning slap that cut the still air like a rifle-shot. All at once there were splashings and divings in every ...
— The Grizzly King • James Oliver Curwood
... architecture of the fifteenth century in France, had reproduced there very cleverly the characteristics of a private house of the time of Louis XII. That house, begun in the middle of the Second Empire, had not been finished. The builder of so many castles died without being able to finish his own house. It was better thus. Conceived in a manner which had then its distinction ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... country is called in Persia, Hindustan, was conquered by the invading Aryans from the north-west—and this was quite 4000 years ago—the Hindus have been divided into castes. The differences between the different castes are greater than that between the barons and the serfs in Europe during the Middle Ages. The two highest castes were the Brahmins (or priests) and the warriors. Now there are a thousand castes, for every occupation constitutes an especial caste: all goldsmiths, for example, are of the same caste, all sandal-makers of another, ...
— From Pole to Pole - A Book for Young People • Sven Anders Hedin
... ready," said the housekeeper, holding herself stiffly behind her master. She was a woman of middle age, with a pinkish face, framed between two tiers ...
— Helbeck of Bannisdale, Vol. I. • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... revolutionary struggle against Protestant England—that taxes are not to be levied without the free consent of those who pay them? All these cardinal elements of free government date back to the good old Catholic times, in the middle ages—some three hundred years before the dawn of the Reformation! Our Catholic forefathers gave them ...
— Public School Education • Michael Mueller
... heard the modest virtues of the middle classes extolled, and it is from such surroundings that the novelist of to-day most frequently draws his feminine ideal. It is among the middle classes indeed that all the qualifications seem to unite at first. It is the intermediate condition, the most ...
— The Grip of Desire • Hector France
... now occurred to the duke. He had asked for crawfish for his breakfast on the following morning; he intended to pass the day in making a small gallows and hang one of the finest of these fish in the middle of his room—the red color evidently conveying an allusion to the cardinal—so that he might have the pleasure of hanging Mazarin in effigy without being accused of having hung anything more ...
— Twenty Years After • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... he could leave her, he went up town, straight to the German Theater. In the box-office sat a young man with hair precisely parted in the middle and sleeked down in two whirls ...
— The Fortune Hunter • David Graham Phillips
... to ascertain the cause; when, guided by our voices, she now joined our party, an uninvited and unwelcome guest. Indeed, we were hopelessly committed, for getting up and lighting our candles and fires in the middle of the ...
— Confessions of an Etonian • I. E. M.
... Major thought he'd come with me, just to give me an idea how it ought to be done. I say nothing of the result; but for reasons connected with Toby I hope he won't come again. For in the middle of a narrow street crowded with lorries, he jumped off his horse, flung (I think that's the expression)—flung me the reins and said, "Just wait here while I see ...
— The Sunny Side • A. A. Milne
... dark. You can stand here in the middle of the room and look at that bit of bare wall between the windows. I left that space clear for ...
— The Galaxy - Vol. 23, No. 1 • Various
... on the part of the Holy Father to be present, but a slight indisposition had rendered that not desirable. His holiness, however, had ordered a company of his halberdiers to attend, and the ground was kept by those wonderful guards in the dress of the middle ages—halberds and ruffs, and white plumes, and party-colored coats, a match for our beef-eaters. Carriages with scarlet umbrellas on the box, and each with three serving-men behind, denoted the presence of the cardinals in force. They were usually brilliant equipages, being sufficiently ...
— Lothair • Benjamin Disraeli
... hesitating, finally swing about and return to near the spot from which they were flushed. They are sometimes found associated with Snowflakes. The pinkish grey coloring is very beautiful, but in the Middle and Eastern States this bird is rarely seen in his spring garb, says an observer, and his winter plumage lacks the vivid contrasts ...
— Birds Illustrated by Colour Photography, Vol II. No. 4, October, 1897 • Various
... wide. "The first and the last," she said, "are comprehensible as travelling companions, but what about the middle one?" ...
— The Mystery of a Turkish Bath • E.M. Gollan (AKA Rita)
... sending to Claude several anxious and indeed almost deplorable letters, pleading to be let off his bargain by telegram, arrived in Algiers in the middle of the following July, with a great deal of ...
— The Way of Ambition • Robert Hichens
... 'tartufferie'. 'Reynard' too, which with us is a duplicate for fox, while in the French 'renard' has quite excluded the older 'volpils', was originally not the name of a kind, but the proper name of the fox-hero, the vulpine Ulysses, in that famous beast-epic of the middle ages, Reineke Fuchs; the immense popularity of which we gather from many evidences, from none more clearly than from this. 'Chanticleer' is in like manner the proper name of the cock, and 'Bruin' of the bear in the same poem{100}. These have not made ...
— English Past and Present • Richard Chenevix Trench
... had been found greatly to simplify the business of attendance, and was also popular with the customers: who were thus enabled to vary the meal by varying the routine of dishes: beginning with soup-to-day, putting soup in the middle to-morrow, putting soup at the end the day after to-morrow, and ringing similar changes on meat and pudding. The rapidity with which every new-comer got served, was remarkable; and the dexterity with which the waitresses (quite new to the art a month before) ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens
... represent with some detail the active and energetic life, prosperous for a long while and afterwards so grievous and hazardous up to its very last day, of this great French merchant at the close of the middle ages, who was the first to extend afar in Europe, Africa, and Asia the commercial relations of France, and, after the example of the great Italian merchants, to make an attempt to combine politics with commerce, and to promote at one and the same time the material interests of his country ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume III. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... the Colosseum with Madam Dormandy, under the guidance of an abbot, whom they had secured as cicerone; and, while the reverend father entertained the young widow with a historical lecture, the princess seated herself at the foot of the cross that stands in the middle of the arena, and sought to sketch the view before her. But her success was poor; she was conscious of failure with every fresh attempt. Three times she began, and as often was forced to discard her work and start over again. The Colosseum ...
— Manasseh - A Romance of Transylvania • Maurus Jokai
... yeelde it selfe to oure moother tongue. For the onely or chiefest hardnesse whych seemeth is in the accente, whyche sometime gapeth, and as it were yawneth ilfauouredly, comming shorte of that it should, and sometime exceeding the measure of the number; as in carpenter, the middle sillable being vsed shorte in speache, when it shall be read long in verse, seemeth like a lame gosling, that draweth one legge after hir: and heauen, beeing vsed shorte as one sillable, when it is in verse, stretched out with a diastole, is like a lame dogge that holdes ...
— The Poetical Works of Edmund Spenser, Volume 5 • Edmund Spenser
... sea had brought the equator very near. At dinner on the previous evening—in honor of the owner's niece fashionable hours were observed for meals—Mr. Watts mentioned, by chance, that the Cross had been very distinct during the middle watch, or, in other words, between midnight and 4 a.m. Iris at once expressed a wish to see it, and ...
— The Stowaway Girl • Louis Tracy
... my hand under his arm and dragged me to where a set was forming, but on the way Lady Tilchester beckoned us to the middle. We took up our position at one of the sides of her set. Augustus was so flattered at this notice that he forgot to grumble further at ...
— The Reflections of Ambrosine - A Novel • Elinor Glyn
... they had enormous conversations around the open fire. Monsignor was growing a trifle stouter and his personality had expanded even with that, and Amory felt both rest and security in sinking into a squat, cushioned chair and joining him in the middle-aged ...
— This Side of Paradise • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... lies between Guam and the Philippines, and is one of the most important cable stations in the Pacific. The entire question of cable communications was reserved for a special conference which met at Washington in the autumn of 1920, but this conference adjourned about the middle of December without having reached any final conclusions, and the status of Yap became the subject of a very sharp correspondence between the American and Japanese governments. When Hughes became Secretary ...
— From Isolation to Leadership, Revised - A Review of American Foreign Policy • John Holladay Latane
... spread upon her breast. She wore a calico chemise reaching below her knees, and leggings, and moccasins. A heavy robe was thrown over the top of her head, falling on the sides and back to within a foot of the ground. In the middle background was a stream, with four Indians in a canoe. A tiny stone chapel stood on the ...
— The Road to Frontenac • Samuel Merwin
... Douglas's offense was that he had inveigled her into an engagement. (I am employing her own term descriptive of the transaction.) It was a crime of brief duration and swift penalty. The relation had endured just four weeks. Possibly its tenure of life might have been longer had not the young-middle-aged lawyer accepted, quite naturally, an invitation to join the cruise of the Pierce family and his fiancee. The lawyer's super-respectful attitude toward his principal client disgusted Esme. She ...
— The Clarion • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... should demand a programme of culture, drawn out, not for a single class alone, or for the parlors or lecture-rooms, but with an eye to practical life, the west, the working-men, the facts of farms and jack-planes and engineers, and of the broad range of the women also of the middle and working strata, and with reference to the perfect equality of women, and of a grand and powerful motherhood. I should demand of this programme or theory a scope generous enough to include the widest human area. It must have for ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... himself in the Middle-Temple; but making his first appearance in town, in a reign when wit and gaiety were the favourite distinctions, he relinguished the study of the law, and engaged in pursuits more agreeable to his own genius, and the gallant ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Vol. III • Theophilus Cibber |
