"Semicircle" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... water-spaniel, strayed into Seven Islands from heaven knows where—weary, desolate, and bedraggled. All the dogs in the place attacked the homeless beggar. There was a howling fracas on the beach; and when Pichou arrived, the trembling cur was standing up to the neck in the water, facing a semicircle of snarling, snapping bullies who dared not venture out any farther. Pichou had no fear of the water. He swam out to the stranger, paid the smelling salute as well as possible under the circumstances, encouraged the poor creature to come ashore, warned off the other dogs, and trotted by the wanderer's ...
— The Ruling Passion • Henry van Dyke
... morning Rebekah, led forward from a semicircle of courtiers by a backing Silver Stick, approached within four feet of the Throne, and after the protracted humiliation of her curtsey, said ruefully: "Our party have failed, my Lord King, to obtain audience for our humble petition ...
— The Lord of the Sea • M. P. Shiel
... a mason's cellar going to rack and ruin. On the window of the door, besmeared with whitewash, there appeared in mockery, as it were, a large beaming sun, roughly drawn with thumb-strokes, and ornamented in the centre with a face, the mouth of which, describing a semicircle, seemed likely to ...
— His Masterpiece • Emile Zola
... dry stub that some gale had snapped off a few feet above the snow. While Mooka scurried about, collecting birch bark and armfuls of dry branches, Noel took off his snow-shoes and began with one of them to shovel away the snow in a semicircle around the base of the stub. In a short half-hour he had a deep hole there, with the snow banked up around it to the height of his head. Next with his knife he cut a lot of light poles and scrub spruces and, sticking the butts in his snowbank, ...
— Northern Trails, Book I. • William J. Long
... cart drives the pedestrian into shop or alley; two vehicles (but perhaps the thing never happened) would with difficulty pass each other. As in all towns of Southern Italy, the number of hair-dressers is astonishing, and they hang out the barber's basin—the very basin (of shining brass and with a semicircle cut out of the rim) which the Knight of La Mancha took as substitute for his damaged helmet. Through the gloom of high balconied houses, one climbs to a sunny piazza, where there are several fine buildings; beyond it lies the public garden, a lovely ...
— By the Ionian Sea - Notes of a Ramble in Southern Italy • George Gissing
... movement was a peaceful signal, and an invitation to a parley. Immediately about a dozen of the principal warriors, separating from the rest, descended to the edge of the river, lighted a fire, seated themselves in a semicircle round it, and, displaying the calumet, invited the party to land. Mr. Hunt now called a council of the partners on board of his boat. The question was, whether to trust to the amicable overtures of these ferocious people? It was determined in the affirmative; for, otherwise, there was no alternative ...
— Astoria - Or, Anecdotes Of An Enterprise Beyond The Rocky Mountains • Washington Irving
... light from four big electric street lamps came streaming in the window, lighting the room from corner to corner and making it as bright as if the lamps were in the room itself. And what a sight was there! Hundreds of dogs and cats were there sitting on benches arranged in a semicircle and graduated like the seats in a theater. For this room had been used as a lecture room to give instructions to sailors and soldiers before going overseas, and the benches and platform were just ...
— Billy Whiskers' Adventures • Frances Trego Montgomery
... a semicircle, while each girl gave her little performance, and, at the conclusion, was applauded enthusiastically. Nora had a real talent for mimicry; she convulsed her audience with imitations of some of the High School teachers. When it came Miriam's turn she sat ...
— Grace Harlowe's Plebe Year at High School - The Merry Doings of the Oakdale Freshmen Girls • Jessie Graham Flower
... hundreds of slaves had filled up the cavernous holes in the roadway with innumerable barrel loads of sawdust, in honour of the Sultan's arrival. Surrounded by multitudes of welcoming citizens, the procession wound its way at length out on the far side of the city. There, amid a semicircle of low hills, clothed with chestnut woods, the imperial encampment of hundreds and thousands of silken tents ...
— A Book of Quaker Saints • Lucy Violet Hodgkin
... masses heaped one upon another in a stupendous manner, and covered with snow, offer a variety of lights and shades from indented forms and the immensity of their projections. This prospect, which contains a semicircle of a hundred miles in diameter, has an oceanic vastness in which the eye loses itself; an almost boundless scene of cultivation; an animated but confused mass of infinitely varied parts, melting gradually into the distant obscure, from which emerges the amazing frame of the Pyrenees, rearing ...
— In the Heart of the Vosges - And Other Sketches by a "Devious Traveller" • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... "You see, I'll be talking to her so hard that she won't notice what's going on around her much—that is, if you are careful. Then you come in, one by one, on your tip-toes and sit in a semicircle behind her." ...
— Lucile Triumphant • Elizabeth M. Duffield
... hour, his mind in that state of hopeless blank that supervenes on overmuch unsatisfactory thinking, when suddenly the tom-toms started up again with a terrific rattle, and the scarlet curtain was somewhat spasmodically jerked up, displaying a semicircle of girls seated on European chairs facing the tin lamps. Two of the seven were African girls, with the woolly hair and jet black skin of their race; they were seated one at each end of the semicircle, dressed in short scarlet skirts, standing ...
— Six Women • Victoria Cross
... the usual retreat. A few miles away, its gray houses blotched against the mountains which guard southern Thessaly, was the town, and in the valley, drawing in toward it, the Greeks, with the enemy on their rear and flanks enclosing them in a narrowing semicircle of fire. Before me stretched the road, a white band across the undulating green of the plain. In that road, a mile away, I saw the rear-guard as it retired swiftly but steadily, facing again and again to deliver ...
— David Malcolm • Nelson Lloyd
... we reached Vladivostock, anchoring in a semicircle in front of the town. Scarce had our anchor left the bows when another of our young lads, William McGill, was suddenly ushered into that unknown world that lies beyond. Whilst uncovering the mizen gaff, he lost his hold, fell, and was so shattered that he died ...
— In Eastern Seas - The Commission of H.M.S. 'Iron Duke,' flag-ship in China, 1878-83 • J. J. Smith
... away, so I sat down on one of the long seats that were ranged around the wall. My companions did the same. There must have been fifty easels, all ranged in a semicircle around the old man who posed as a model. Several of the easels had been upset, and there was ...
— The Mintage • Elbert Hubbard
... the Doctor, drawing his chair closer to the fire, and looking mildly but firmly at the semicircle of flaxen heads around him, "I want it distinctly understood before I begin my story, that I am not to be interrupted by any ridiculous questions. At the first one I shall stop. At the second, I shall feel it my duty to administer ...
— Mrs. Skaggs's Husbands and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... it seemed as if the tune had become a visible spirit, and that the garland was a floating accompaniment to its graceful motions. Sometimes it was held aloft by the right hand, sometimes by the left; sometimes it was a whirling semicircle behind her; and sometimes it rested on her shoulders, mingling its white orange buds and blossoms with her shower of black curls and crimson fuchsias. Now it was twined round her head in a flowery crown, and then it gracefully unwound itself, as if it were ...
— A Romance of the Republic • Lydia Maria Francis Child
... friend of the Ottawa chief, is not here," said the governor, as he glanced his eye along the semicircle of Indians. "How is this? Is his voice still sick, that he cannot come; or has the great chief of the ...
— Wacousta: A Tale of the Pontiac Conspiracy (Complete) • John Richardson
... difficulty, which I overcame by a very simple mechanical contrivance. I entered the pulpit, which exactly fitted the beadle and myself, and then face to face we executed a rotary movement to the extent of a semicircle, when the beadle finding himself next the door of the pulpit was enabled to descend, and I remained master of ...
— The Parish Clerk (1907) • Peter Hampson Ditchfield
... 25th, General Merritt himself with a third force, which brought the number of Americans up to somewhat more than 10,000. The Spaniards had about 13,000 men guarding the rather antiquated fortifications of old Manila and a semicircle of blockhouses and trenches thrown about the city, which contained ...
— The Path of Empire - A Chronicle of the United States as a World Power, Volume - 46 in The Chronicles of America Series • Carl Russell Fish
... beyond which they ended in a projection semicircular within, but rectangular when seen from the outside, the walls being thickened at the corners. These aisles were divided from the presbytery not by open arcading but by solid walls. The presbytery itself terminated in a semicircle projecting beyond the ends of the aisles. This extended as far as the centre ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Saint Albans - With an Account of the Fabric & a Short History of the Abbey • Thomas Perkins
... early twilight of Thanksgiving Eve came Laurence, and Clara, and Charley, and little Alice, hand in hand, and stood in a semicircle round Grandfather's chair. They had been joyous throughout that day of festivity, mingling together in all kinds of play, so that the house had echoed with ...
— Grandfather's Chair • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... fine—that even a midge's tiny tread Had caused them trickle down. Funereal yews Notch'd with the growth of centuries, stretching round Dismal in aspect, and grotesque in shape, Pair after pair, were ranged: where ended these, Girdling an open semicircle, tower'd A row of rifted plane-trees, inky-leaved With cinnamon-colour'd barks; and, in the midst, Hidden almost by their entwining boughs, An unshut gateway, musty and forlorn; Its old supporting pillars roughly rich With ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 349, November, 1844 • Various
... Ciguaia. The chief of all the caciques inhabiting the mountain region is called Maiobanexios, who lived at a place called Capronus. These mountains are rugged, lofty, inaccessible, and rise from the sea in a semicircle. Between the two extremities of the chain, there lies a beautiful plain, watered by numerous rivers which rise in these mountains. The natives are ferocious and warlike, and it is thought they are of the same race as ...
— De Orbe Novo, Volume 1 (of 2) - The Eight Decades of Peter Martyr D'Anghera • Trans. by Francis Augustus MacNutt
... he groaned and opened his eyes, for the moment not knowing where he was nor how he had come to be there. He saw strange torture instruments and tall monstrosities with pumpkin-shaped heads surrounding him closely in a semicircle, and staring at him out of ...
— The Red Hell of Jupiter • Paul Ernst
... the Lodge forms a circle or semicircle. The Master and other officers of the Lodge take their position at the head of the grave; the Tyler behind the Master, and the mourners at the foot. The religious burial service of the church (if there be any) should be first ...
— Masonic Monitor of the Degrees of Entered Apprentice, Fellow Craft and Master Mason • George Thornburgh
... had a couple of setters, and the five canines formed a wistful semicircle around the ...
— The Trumpeter Swan • Temple Bailey
... rule, the Senators and their desks spread out in a semicircle round the raised dais on which is the Speaker's chair, and they take up pretty much the ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 19, March 18, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... is the frescoes on the four walls of this room which are Raphael's greatest triumphs—the most perfect pieces of monumental decoration in the world. On the two longer walls, nearly unbroken lunettes of something over a semicircle, he painted the two great compositions of Theology and Philosophy known as the "Disputa" and the "School of Athens." The "Disputa" (Pl. 13), the earlier of the two, has the more connection with the art of the past. The use of gilded relief in the ...
— Artist and Public - And Other Essays On Art Subjects • Kenyon Cox
... the library and found that the boys had arranged the chairs in a semicircle around the fire and were already opening ...
— Billie Bradley on Lighthouse Island - The Mystery of the Wreck • Janet D. Wheeler
... his inability to stop her, she banged through the swinging door and commenced the descent of a long flight of steps. Below her was the stage, and between the wings she could see the girls arranged in a semicircle. Dick, with a big staff in hand, stood in front of the footlights directing the movements of a procession which was being formed; the piano tinkled ...
— A Mummer's Wife • George Moore
... them on the heights which overlooked my camp, extending in a semicircle from Krotzka as far as Dedina. The Mussulmans formed the most beautiful amphitheatre imaginable, very agreeable to look at, excellent for a painter, but hateful to a general. Enclosed between this army and a fortress which had thirty ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, v. 13 • Various
... them would act in their behalf, and rake the enemy from the front and from every side, until the fire on that trench was silenced, or turned upon some other point. The trenches stretched for over half a mile in a semicircle, and the little hills over which they ran lay at so many different angles, and rose to such different heights, that sometimes the men in one trench fired directly over the heads of their own men. From many trenches in the first line it was impossible ...
— Notes of a War Correspondent • Richard Harding Davis
... after sundown to the village. The serpent, made of hide, is about twelve feet long and eighteen inches through the thickest part of the body. The abdomen is painted white, the back black, covered with white stars, which are represented by a kind of semicircle, an entirely conventional design. The neck rests through a finely decorated kind of altar carried by the two Soot-[i]ke. The tail end of the fetich is held by the priest of the K[o]-l[o]-oo-w[)i]t-si, who constantly blows through a large ...
— The Religious Life of the Zuni Child - Bureau of American Ethnology • (Mrs.) Tilly E. (Matilda Coxe Evans) Stevenson
... of New Orleans is built upon land about four feet below the level of the Mississippi River at high-water mark, and, running along the great bend in the river, forms a semicircle; and it is from this peculiar site it has gained the appellation of "Crescent City." The buildings stretch back to the borders of Lake Pontchartrain, which empties its waters into the Gulf of Mexico. All the drainage ...
— Four Months in a Sneak-Box • Nathaniel H. Bishop
... them—came quicker and heavier. Now, Soult was driven from Monte Notte. Now, the great advance post of Monte Faccio was stormed and carried. Now, the double eagle was floating from San Tecla, a fort within cannon shot of Genoa. A vast semicircle of bivouac fires stretched from the Apennines to the sea, and their reflected glare from the sky lit up the battlements and ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, July, 1851 • Various
... it with my glasses; and so rapid was its descent that, before I could count a hundred, it had dipped beneath the water-line—become a flaming semicircle—then only a glowing rim—and disappeared. It left a few minutes' afterglow, with the sky every shade from crimson at the horizon to ...
— Tell England - A Study in a Generation • Ernest Raymond
... machines and went eastward into the advancing twilight of evening. The levels of the landscape were repeated in flat strips of floating cloud and the last colors of day clung to the circle of the horizon. Receding farther and farther behind them was the semicircle of the last hills; and it was quite suddenly that they saw afar off the dim line of the sea. It was not a strip of bright blue as they had seen it from the sunny veranda, but of a sinister and smoky violet, a tint that seemed ominous and dark. Here ...
— The Man Who Knew Too Much • G.K. Chesterton
... most of them young, uprose and with a great clanking and jangling of spurs and spur-chains strode over to him. They grouped before him in a semicircle, trying bashfully to wedge their shoulders, one behind another's, their faces a-grin and apologetic, and at the same time expressing a casual and unconscious democraticness. In truth, to them Hardman Pool was more than mere chief. He was elder ...
— On the Makaloa Mat/Island Tales • Jack London
... evidently believing that the boy was going aloft to be safe. He looked up at him once, as Jack Penny settled himself at the masthead, but turned his attention fiercely towards us as the captain arranged his men as if for a rush, forming them into a semicircle. ...
— Bunyip Land - A Story of Adventure in New Guinea • George Manville Fenn
... considerable interest, and thought how much I should like also to get to the top of his pate. The harbour is small, and the entrance is defended by heavy batteries. As we sailed in, with the pretty little town before us, and the finger-like mountains rising in a semicircle behind it, we had on our right the mountain of Morne Fortunee, where is the signal station at which the famous ship-seer, who could see ships nearly a hundred miles off, was stationed. He saw them, it was supposed, reflected in the ...
— My First Voyage to Southern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston
... scene was a wild one, with the flying clouds and the foaming waves silvered by the moonlight; but the rarest sight was, just as half the moon's great disk was above the horizon, a ship of war stood against it, exactly framed in the semicircle of light as if drawn in black on the silver surface. The plan was an interesting one and would probably have succeeded in favorable weather, but the winter storm forbade. [Footnote: Official Records, vol. xlvii. pt. ii. ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V2 • Jacob Dolson Cox
... flower, though I looked carefully along the shelter of the stone walls, and in all spots apparently propitious. I ascended the hill, and had a wide prospect of a swollen river, extending around me in a semicircle of three or four miles, and rendering the view much finer than in summer, had there only been foliage. It seemed like the formation of a new world; for islands were everywhere emerging, and capes extending forth into the flood; and these tracts, which were thus won from the watery ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 108, October, 1866 • Various
... one of the loveliest seclusions in the world. It terminates in a semicircle of rocks of stupendous height, that seem to have been hewn down perpendicularly. At the head and centre of the vast amphitheatre, and at the foot of one of its enormous rocks, there is a cavern of proportional size, hollowed out by the hand of ...
— The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch • Petrarch
... the whole beach like day, throwing up the long lines of troops in brilliant relief. Next instant there was a crash of musketry, and rifles spat fire and lead from a long semicircle behind the spot from which ...
— On Land And Sea At The Dardanelles • Thomas Charles Bridges
... Sophy and her father separated different ways, the former taking the basket to commit it to Miss de Staff; and the doctor being obliged to go to his place in the performance, left his charge where he might. But nobody minded his neighbour now; Faith did not; the boys were drawn up in a large semicircle, and the doctor taking his place in front of them, all in full view of the assembled townsmen of Pattaquasset, proceeded to ...
— Say and Seal, Volume I • Susan Warner
... and impressive scene. They stood on the top of a lofty range of hill, and, underneath them lay a vast semicircle, miles in extent, of gleaming white sand, that had in bygone ages been washed in by the Atlantic. Into this vast plain of silver whiteness the sea, entering by a somewhat narrow portal, stretched in long arms of a pale blue. Elsewhere, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - April, 1873, Vol. XI, No. 25. • Various
... not hold a fort so far from the town, the commander withdrew the garrison from it, and Turenne seized it, and placed a strong force there. Enghien then threw up strong lines in a semicircle round the town to protect the army in case any large force of the enemy should endeavour to relieve it. This occupied four days, and in the meantime the boats had arrived with cannon, ammunition, and provisions. A bridge was thrown across the river in twenty-four hours, and a force was sent over; ...
— Won by the Sword - A Story of the Thirty Years' War • G.A. Henty
... ease,—one laughing, black-haired houri was amusing herself with a tame bird which flew to and from her uplifted finger,—another in a half-sitting posture, played cup-and-ball with much active and graceful dexterity,—some were working at gold and silver embroidery,—others, clustered in a semicircle round a large osier basket filled with myrtle, were busy weaving garlands of the fragrant leaves,—and one maiden, seemingly younger than the rest, and of lighter and more delicate complexion, leaned somewhat pensively against an ebony-framed ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... suddenly into an atmosphere of merriment within a few yards of the men posted at the periscopes along the sandbagged parapet. The electric lights were burning, and a blue haze of tobacco smoke obscured the air from a semicircle of listeners, sitting on packing-cases and forms round the piano on the platform, and the chorus of "Gilbert the Filbert," sung with a will, greeted them as they descended ...
— With Haig on the Somme • D. H. Parry
... Galeria is the Grand Cassis de Giargione, 1163 ft., and about 2 m. farther the summit of Col Capronale, 4495 ft. A little way beyond, at the Capo Guagnerola, is a beautiful semicircle of reddish rocks covered with trees at the base. Farther E. by the Golo this forest road joins the forest road No. ...
— Itinerary through Corsica - by its Rail, Carriage & Forest Roads • Charles Bertram Black
... in a semicircle and the drivers came out of their vehicles for lastminute preparations. A final check was made of gas, oil, and the positions of the wirecutters. Maps, showing the location of each house now covered by the grass, were studied and compasspoints ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... man—his hairs were white, But his veteran arm was full of might: So gallantly bore he the brunt of the fray, The dead before him, on that day, In a semicircle lay; Still he combated unwounded, Though retreating, unsurrounded. Many a scar of former fight Lurked beneath his corselet bright; But of every wound his body bore, Each and all had been ta'en before: Though aged, he was so iron of limb, Few of our youth could cope with him, And ...
— Lyra Heroica - A Book of Verse for Boys • Various
... engineering and economic difficulties abound. Moreover, the river makes a huge semicircular sweep northward, and a railway following its northern bank to Vladivostok must make the same detour. If, on the contrary, the road could be carried south of the river along the diameter of the semicircle, it would be a straight, and therefore a shorter, line, technically easier and economically better. To follow this diameter, however, would involve passing through Chinese territory, namely, Manchuria, ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... the managers were equally unproductive of result. Gathered about him in a semicircle in his office, they were grim and determined men, some of them even resentful of the President's attempt to suggest a settlement of any kind to prevent the strike. I shall never forget his last appeal to them. I sat ...
— Woodrow Wilson as I Know Him • Joseph P. Tumulty
... most expert spearmen; with whom, if you want any fun, you must station yourself, taking care to remain concealed. All the juveniles of the party then start off, and make a circuit of many miles in extent, shouting and hallooing the whole time. They form a semicircle, and drive all the kangaroos before them down the valley, to the spot where the old hunters are placed. Then comes the tug of war, the crashing of bushes, the flying of spears, and the thump, thump of the kangaroos, as they come tearing along, sometimes in hundreds, from the old grey grandfather ...
— The Bushman - Life in a New Country • Edward Wilson Landor
... lured in spite of themselves. The residences are set back along the high bank which faces the bay. In front of them is a public promenade, newly planted shade-trees arch over it, and royal palms reach up to it from the very waters of the harbor. At one end of this semicircle are the barracks of the Soudanese soldiers, and at the other is the official palace of the governor. Everything in the settlement is new, and everything is built on the scale of a city, and with the idea of accommodating ...
— The Congo and Coasts of Africa • Richard Harding Davis
... to some distance: They immediately complied, and I then landed with the Captain of the Swallow, and several of the officers: The marines were drawn up, and the boats were brought to a grappling near the shore. I then made signs to the natives to come near, and directed them to sit down in a semicircle, which they did with great order and cheerfulness. When this was done, I distributed among them several knives, scissars, buttons, beads, combs, and other toys, particularly some ribbands to the women, which they received with a very becoming mixture of pleasure and respect. Having ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 12 • Robert Kerr
... contradiction. Spinoza, moreover, sought a metaphysical necessity in events. He did not think that God was determined by his goodness and by his perfection (which this author treated as chimeras in relation to the universe), but by the necessity of his nature; just as the semicircle is bound to enclose only right angles, without either knowing or willing this. For Euclid demonstrated that all angles enclosed between two straight lines drawn from the extremities of the diameter towards a point on the circumference ...
— Theodicy - Essays on the Goodness of God, the Freedom of Man and the Origin of Evil • G. W. Leibniz
... great dense semicircle the young men disposed themselves around her. Those who were in front squatted down on the gravel; those who were behind knelt; the rest stood. Young Oxford! Here, in this mass of boyish faces, all fused and obliterated, was the realisation of that phrase. Two or three thousands ...
— Zuleika Dobson - or, An Oxford Love Story • Max Beerbohm
... liveries. And now they were in the Park; and now they were in sight of the Towers, and silence fell upon the carriage-full of ladies, only broken by one faint remark from Mrs. Goodenough's niece, a stranger to the town, as they drew up before the double semicircle flight of steps which led to the door ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... and the eight men set to work; and ten minutes later the grave was dug, greatly to the astonishment of the whole army, which had gathered in a semicircle on the rising slopes of the two hills which bordered the road, standing as if on the steps of ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - VANINKA • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... leaping from rank to rank, from breast to breast, from earth to heaven. With one accord the startled captains made to the entrance of the tent, and there they saw, in the broad space before them, inclosed by the tents which were grouped in a wide semicircle,—for the mass of the hardy rebel army slept in the open air, and the tents were but for leaders,—they saw, we say, in that broad space, a multitude kneeling, and in the midst, upon his good steed Saladin, bending graciously down, the martial countenance, ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... who had been our guide for some days past had opened a Monte bank with the dollars we had given him, and was sitting on the ground solemnly dealing cards one by one from the bottom of a dirty pack, a crowd of gamblers standing or sitting in a semicircle before him, silently watching the cards and keeping a vigilant eye upon their stakes which lay on the ground before the banker. Other parties were busy at the same game in other parts of the open space ...
— Anahuac • Edward Burnett Tylor
... regretfully, as the one with the stocking, whose hair had been clutched from behind by another Amazon, was whirled about in a dizzy semicircle. ...
— The Valley of the Moon • Jack London
... among its tawdry, abandoned glories. It had a half-rotted pier of its own, upon which, in Victorian days, the penny steam-boats had discharged many thousands of crowds of pleasure-seekers. The gardens occupied the semicircle of an old quarry, on which the decorative landscape gardener had fallen to work with gusto, planting it with conifers and stucco statues in winding walks that landed you straight from the sightless wisdom of Socrates and Milton, or the equally sightless allurement ...
— Foe-Farrell • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... spread a little semicircle of shells in front of him. At the command of the two, without reloading, ...
— Blazed Trail Stories - and Stories of the Wild Life • Stewart Edward White
... it Camp Wish-no-more—was nestled in the hills with the tiny lake at its front door and a dense woodland at its back. Sleeping tents were built in a semicircle about the central building, in which were the living-rooms. On a grassy level stretch close to the water was the out-of-door gymnasium and beyond that the boathouse and dock to which several gaily-painted canoes ...
— Keineth • Jane D. Abbott
... service. Happily, Brigham Young had returned the night before from St. Joseph, where he had sojourned with the "faithful." The Tabernacle is an enormous building which, we were told, can hold fourteen thousand people. It was filled to overflowing. The seating for the members was arranged in a semicircle of tiers, the minor elders sitting in the lowest seats. As the tiers mounted there were fewer seats and therefore fewer elders, and so on, until the highest point was reached, where the high priest—Brigham Young—sat alone in his glory. On the opposite side was the magnificent ...
— The Sunny Side of Diplomatic Life, 1875-1912 • Lillie DeHegermann-Lindencrone
... hostelries; why the entrees were always the same, only more or less badly cooked; why the traveling American always was supposed to demand turkey and cold cranberry sauce; why the pretty waiter-girl apparently shuffled your plates behind your back, and then dealt them over your shoulder in a semicircle, as if they were a hand at cards, and not always a good one? Why, having done this, she instantly retired to the nearest wall, and gazed at you scornfully, as one who would say, "Fair sir, though lowly, I am proud; if thou dost imagine that I would permit undue familiarity of speech, ...
— Drift from Two Shores • Bret Harte
... Friday, at five o'clock by the sun-dial, the large bow-window of Mrs. Jerome's parlour was open; and that lady herself was seated within its ample semicircle, having a table before her on which her best tea-tray, her best china, and her best urn-rug had already been standing in readiness for half an hour. Mrs. Jerome's best tea-service was of delicate white fluted china, with gold sprigs upon it—as pretty ...
— Scenes of Clerical Life • George Eliot
... They formed a semicircle about him—a wall of red bodies, whose pointed heads were craned forward, while an excited chatter in their broken, whistling speech filled the room with shrill clamor. Then one of them pointed above toward the open shaft that Rawson had drilled, the shaft up which the ...
— Two Thousand Miles Below • Charles Willard Diffin
... mused on these things, had once more turned his eyes toward the Mingott box. He saw that Mrs. Welland and her sister-in-law were facing their semicircle of critics with the Mingottian APLOMB which old Catherine had inculcated in all her tribe, and that only May Welland betrayed, by a heightened colour (perhaps due to the knowledge that he was watching ...
— The Age of Innocence • Edith Wharton
... to by the warder; and when the draw-bridge was slowly replaced and the portcullis heavily withdrawn, a knight followed by a squire, whose surcoat bore the Flander's lion, entered. The cap of the knight was of black velvet, and slight bars of steel, bent into the form of a semicircle, crossed each other at the top of his head and served at once for defence and for ornament. His boots of thick leather reaching almost to the knees bespoke him an inhabitant of a maritime country, having spurs formed of a single point of iron, long and obtuse, and these being gilt would have ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, - Issue 564, September 1, 1832 • Various
... was to display his works to an applauding public of private friends, Mr. Blyth's studio, thanks to Madonna's industry and attention, looked really in perfect order—as neat and clean as a room could be. A semicircle of all the available chairs in the house—drawing-room and bed-room chairs intermingled—ranged itself symmetrically in front of the pictures. That imaginative classical landscape, "The Golden Age," reposed grandly on its own easel; while "Columbus in Sight ...
— Hide and Seek • Wilkie Collins
... Little Thumb Butte a lengthening semicircle of fire flared through the night. John Wesley Pringle swung far out on the ...
— The Desire of the Moth; and The Come On • Eugene Manlove Rhodes
... our gunnery since Captain Rhodes's misfortune'—a misfortune due to the same cause. But, in spite of all such drawbacks on the British side, Louisbourg got much the worst of it. The French had to fire from the centre outwards, at a semicircle of batteries that fired back convergingly at them. Besides, it was almost as hard to hit the thin, irregular line of British batteries as it was to miss the deep, wide target of overcrowded Louisbourg. The walls were continually being smashed from without ...
— The Great Fortress - A Chronicle of Louisbourg 1720-1760 • William Wood
... at the awe-inspiring phenomena which surrounded him in the semicircle of the hospital theatre, he had slept during the operation. His simple heart had not worked out the lesson which sleep, the greatest mistress on earth, teaches. After the operation everything had been veiled ...
— Selected Polish Tales • Various
... but my attention was taken up then by a semicircle of little animals arranged about two feet ...
— Burr Junior • G. Manville Fenn
... their Majesties was erected on a stage in the shape of a semicircle, and covered with a bluff carpet studded with bees, and was reached by twenty-two steps. The throne, draped in red velvet, was also covered by a pavilion of the same color, the left wing of which extended over the Empress, the princesses, ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... eye-lids the smallest possible bit, so that any one looking at him would have failed to observe any motion in them. The little slit however, admitted the whole scene to the retina, and he perceived that ten of the most cut-throat-looking men conceivable were seated in a semicircle in the act of receiving portions from the big pot into tin plates. Most of them were clothed in hunters' leathern costume, wore long boots with spurs, and were more or ...
— Charlie to the Rescue • R.M. Ballantyne
... class outside the building. His children sit round him in a semicircle. He is sitting on an upturned box with his back against the lateral logs of the building. There is a pleasant shade here, also the pungent odor from the bright green bluff which faces him. The Indian children are very quiet, but they are ...
— The Watchers of the Plains - A Tale of the Western Prairies • Ridgewell Cullum
... in Big Tim's bed, presided. Beside him, with an expression of profound sorrow on his fine face, sat Whitewing, the prairie chief. Little Tim and his big son sat at his feet. The other Indians were ranged in a semicircle before him. ...
— The Prairie Chief • R.M. Ballantyne
... barbarians. In their faces was concentrated the ugliness of the hyena and the baboon. They tattooed their cheeks, to prevent the growth of their beards. They were short, thick-set, and with back bones curved almost into a semicircle. Herbs, roots and raw meat they devoured, tearing their food with their teeth or hewing it with their swords. To warm and soften their meat, they placed it under their saddles when riding. Nearly ...
— The Empire of Russia • John S. C. Abbott
... to 1900 centers around the receipts and shipments at the great primary grain markets situated on the Great Lakes and the rivers of the upper Mississippi Valley. In 1900 the chief surplus cereal area of the United States comprised a vast stretch of territory included in a semicircle described by a southern and western sweep of a compass moving on a radius extending from Duluth to Buffalo. Three-fourths of the 4,500,000,000 bushels of grain were raised in the twelve states embraced in this territory. ...
— Outline of the development of the internal commerce of the United States - 1789-1900 • T.W. van Mettre
... silent in the face of the evening's beauty. The great trees on the old estate were black against a silver sky. White statues shone like pale ghosts among them. Back of Richard and his host, in a semicircle of dark cedars, a marble Pan piped ...
— Mistress Anne • Temple Bailey
... darker shadow of bluffs beyond. The popping of those distant guns had ceased by the time they attained their new position, and they could distinguish the Indians—mere black dots against the brown slope—advancing in a semicircle toward the silent stage. Evidently they were puzzled, fearful of some trickery, for occasionally a gun would crack viciously, the brown smoke plainly visible, the advancing savages halting to observe the effect. Then a bright ...
— Molly McDonald - A Tale of the Old Frontier • Randall Parrish
... these buildings touched directly upon the main house, but were connected with it by a roofed-over colonnade upon which the woodbine ran riot, as it did upon all the detached buildings, producing an effect charming beyond description. The colonnades described a semicircle from the north-west and south-west corners of the big house, and led from the kitchen to the big dining room, and from the office to the Admiral's study. All the buildings were constructed of rich red brick, brought from England generations ago, ...
— A Dixie School Girl • Gabrielle E. Jackson
... in single file and strung out across the plain. We left the road at once and headed diagonally toward them. For some strange reason, when a horse or car runs parallel with a herd of antelope, the animals will swing in a complete semicircle and cross in front of the pursuer. This is also true of some African species, whether they think they are being cut off from some more desirable means of escape I cannot say, but the fact remains that with the open plain ...
— Across Mongolian Plains - A Naturalist's Account of China's 'Great Northwest' • Roy Chapman Andrews
... most purely conventional representations are a linear semicircle, and an imitation of this semicircle formed by three straight lines. The illuminated part of the moon's disk is always turned directly towards the horizon, a position but ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 1. (of 7): Chaldaea • George Rawlinson
... to lie-to at a little distance off. They received me with great courtesy and politeness; and would retire back from the boat on my making the least motion with my hand. A man, whom I took to be a chief, seeing this, made them form a semicircle round the boat's bow, and beat such as attempted to break through this order. This man I loaded with presents, giving likewise to others, and asked by signs for fresh water, in hopes of seeing where they got it. The chief immediately sent a man for some, who ran to a house, and presently ...
— A Voyage Towards the South Pole and Round the World Volume 2 • James Cook
... both, and momently took its departure. The black-coated youth set up his cap before, brought his heavy brows over his deep dark eyes, put his hands in the pockets of his black plush breeches, and stepped a little farther into the semicircle, immediately on his brother's right hand, than he had ever ventured to do before. There he set himself firm on his legs, and, with a face as demure as death, seemed determined to keep his ground. He pretended to be following the ball with his eyes; but every moment they were glancing aside at George. ...
— The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner • James Hogg
... cover of a deal box, with a soap advertisement on it, made a very fair intrenching tool, and soon formidable snow-works could be seen rising rapidly on the slopes of the clothes' drying ground, making a semicircle about that corner which contained the big iron swing, erect on its two tall posts. Hugh John and Maid Margaret, the attacking party, were still invisible, probably concocting a plan. But Sweetheart and Sir Toady, laughing and jesting ...
— Red Cap Tales - Stolen from the Treasure Chest of the Wizard of the North • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... a case, and it was a little after half-past six when I found myself in Baker Street once more. As I approached the house I saw a tall man in a Scotch bonnet with a coat which was buttoned up to his chin waiting outside in the bright semicircle which was thrown from the fanlight. Just as I arrived the door was opened, and we were shown up together to ...
— The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... was on deck; George, Kuroki and Cap'n Abernethy stood about him in a little semicircle of anxiety; Lady Agatha was applying a cold compress to the bump upon his head. (He made nothing of his other scratches.) As for Elmer, who had not stirred from his seat on the oblong box, he moodily regarded, not Cleggett, but a slight young ...
— The Cruise of the Jasper B. • Don Marquis
... she couldn't seat even box-holders during a number. Sure enough, before they had fairly gotten into their places, the Glee Club girls began to come out and arrange themselves in a rainbow-tinted semicircle for the first number. They sang beautifully and looked so pretty that Tom gallantly declared they deserved to be encored on that account alone; and he led the applause so vigorously that everybody looked up at their box and laughed. ...
— Betty Wales Senior • Margaret Warde
... necessary heat might be maintained, other bees descended into the hole and proceeded solidly to attach the metal, and connect it with the walls of adjacent cells, by means of little waxen hooks which they distributed regularly over its surface. In the upper semicircle of the disc they then began to construct three or four cells, uniting these to the hooks. Each of these transition, or accommodation, cells was more or less deformed at the top, to allow of its being soldered ...
— The Life of the Bee • Maurice Maeterlinck
... the Pyrenees,—its coup de theatre,—is now before us. It is to Gavarnie, whose giant semicircle of precipices has been called "the end of the world." Luz and St. Sauveur constitute the most available headquarters for this trip, which is taken by every traveler to these mountains. "In the popular [French] ...
— A Midsummer Drive Through The Pyrenees • Edwin Asa Dix
... care for him as if he were my own, I thought of another sister far away, who, could she be present, would echo the request: "Take care of my dear brother." With waving handkerchiefs and repeated good-byes, we moved slowly from the wharf, and, steaming round in a great semicircle to where the Olga was lying, we were transferred to the little brig, which, for the next two months, was to ...
— Tent Life in Siberia • George Kennan
... however, we found to be of much greater extent, and of more varied character. It is one of three caves of the old coast line, known as the Doocot or Pigeon Caves, which open upon a piece of rocky beach, overhung by a rudely semicircular range of gloomy precipices. The points of the semicircle project on either side into deep water—into at least water so much deeper than the fall of ordinary neaps, that it is only during the ebb of stream tides that the place is accessible by land; and in each of these ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... return. White travellers, to their indescribable irritation, are (on his approach) waved from his path by his armed guards. He summons his dancers by the note of a bugle. He sits nightly at home before a semicircle of talking-men from many quarters of the islands, delivering and hearing those ornate and elegant orations in which the Samoan heart delights. About himself and all his surroundings there breathes a striking sense of order, tranquillity, and native plenty. He is of a tall ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 17 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... then up the Big Platte near the Lormic Mountains. We built a headquarters camp at The medicine bow and two offsets at Camp creek, near the Medicine Bow Reservation. Here we had the best systematized settings we had heretofore set. We had set a line of traps in a semicircle from camp to camp; And a stub line up each creek about four miles; then we set a high-line running in oposite directions. So you see we bagged everything that came through the country for several miles wide. Our traps served as does a wing-net catching on the sides and ...
— Black Beaver - The Trapper • James Campbell Lewis
... being merely apsided, is, in fact, a true semicircle, a sufficiently unusual arrangement in an early Gothic church to be remarked; and, in addition, is exceedingly narrow and lofty. The glass of the rose windows is of old and gorgeous quality, it having escaped destruction in Revolutionary times, whereas that of the lower range ...
— The Cathedrals of Northern France • Francis Miltoun
... clay-cliff barrier, looking under the sunset like a narrow black ribbon. In the hollow itself was the camp, giving impression in the background of a scattering of ghostly mules, a half-circle of wagons, ill-defined forms of recumbent vaqueros, and then in the foreground of Sam with his gleaming semicircle of utensils, and his pathetic little pile of fuel which would not be ...
— Blazed Trail Stories - and Stories of the Wild Life • Stewart Edward White
... and takes his easy-chair. "Cold and raw this morning, cold and raw!" Mr. Tulkinghorn warms before the bars, alternately, the palms and knuckles of his hands and looks (from behind that blind which is always down) at the trio sitting in a little semicircle before him. ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... drawing-room on the second floor of 13, Rue des Batailles, which is exactly described in "La Fille aux Yeux d'Or." The room was very luxurious, and the details had been thought out with much care.[*] One end of it had square corners, the other end was rounded, and the corners cut off to form the semicircle were connected by a narrow dark passage, and contained—one a camp bedstead, and the other a writing-table. A secret door led to this hiding-place, and here Balzac took refuge when pursued by emissaries from the Garde Nationale, creditors, or enraged ...
— Honore de Balzac, His Life and Writings • Mary F. Sandars
... bottom by weights, and the other side drawn towards the surface by corks or bladders. Thus when spread it stands erect like a wall in the water, enclosing a large space. As soon as it has been spread, the fishermen begin to draw it at both ends slowly and steadily towards the land. As the enclosed semicircle gradually diminishes, the captured fishes, having still room for motion, retire before the advancing prison wall, until they are at length confined within a very narrow space, and drawn into shallow water. There is then a violent flutter for a few moments, ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot
... lagoon and a narrow muddy channel from the east we saw seven new but deserted huts, which had been erected on our track, as if to watch our approach. On reaching them we found one large hut in the centre, and the others arranged in a semicircle round it, the whole being of a very substantial construction, and neatly thatched with dry grass ...
— Three Expeditions into the Interior of Eastern Australia, Vol 1 (of 2) • Thomas Mitchell
... seals of the book of mystery were broken by the Lamb in the presence of the great throne where was seated one who shone like jasper. The rainbow round about the throne was in sight like unto an emerald. Twenty-four thrones were in a semicircle around the great throne, and upon them twenty-four elders with white robes and crowns of gold. Four enormous animals, covered with eyes and each having six wings, seemed to be guarding the throne. The sounding of trumpets was greeting the breaking ...
— The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... and had been taken to a circus, gathered the camp together on the night of his return, and having given an account of the wonders he had seen, announced that he could make money. Satisfaction at such gift being tempered by doubt, the boy took his stand before the expectant semicircle, and having admirably mimicked a conjuror's patter, shouted—"Money!" A half-crown flashed in the air-to be deftly caught and exhibited ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... central platform where the chief of the house awaits him, unstrings his sword from his waist, hangs it upon any convenient hook, and sits down beside his host; while his men, following his example, seat themselves with the men of the house in a semicircle facing the two chiefs. The followers may greet, and even embrace, or grasp by the forearm, their personal friends; but the demeanour of the chief's is more formal. Neither one utters a word or glances at the ...
— The Pagan Tribes of Borneo • Charles Hose and William McDougall
... sinister as an inquisition chamber; a single large table in the center, holding a kerosene lamp, writing materials and a metal spheroid a shade larger than a one-pound shell; and around it a semicircle of silent, masked and cowled figures. There were twelve of them, eleven men and a woman. In the shadows, which grew denser at the far end of the room, was a squat, globular object, a massive, smooth-sided, ...
— Elusive Isabel • Jacques Futrelle
... 2. Fold the semicircle exactly in half to form a quadrant; make the crease 2, distinct by running the thumbnail along it, then open the filter out to ...
— The Elements of Bacteriological Technique • John William Henry Eyre
... was enacted, was weighty with symbolic significance, seemed to express a single leading motive. The mystery, if such in fact it was, centered indeed in the actions of one visible person, distinguished among the assistants, who stood ranged in semicircle around him, by the extreme fineness of his white vestments, and the pointed cap with the golden ornaments ...
— Marius the Epicurean, Volume Two • Walter Horatio Pater
... artillery could have resisted, yet nothing happened. 'It's a trap,' said Fowke darkly; 'he's luring us on.' Why should John lie doggo in this fashion? Nevertheless the airmen insisted that the Turks were there. So we dug ourselves in, in a semicircle facing the island, preliminary to attacking it. It was noon, hot and maddening with flies. The Leicestershires sent scouts out, who pushed up to Juber Island, and found that there were indeed five thousand there—five thousand ...
— The Leicestershires beyond Baghdad • Edward John Thompson
... arranged in a semicircular form, and extend near a quarter of a mile, and which, from the blazing fires within, have a brilliant transparency and vivid lustre, not easy either to imagine or to describe: the starry semicircle looks like an immense crescent of diamonds, on which the sun ...
— The History of Emily Montague • Frances Brooke
... safely reached the corral. The cattle were slowly milling about, not from any excitement, the exercise being merely voluntary and affording warmth. The boys fell to opening up the water, the cattle crowding around each opening and drinking to their contentment. An immense comb of snow hung in a semicircle around the bend, in places thirty feet high and perpendicular, while in others it concaved away into recesses and vaults as fantastic as frosting on a window. It was formed from the early, softer snow, frozen into place, while the present shifting frost poured over the comb into the sheltered ...
— Wells Brothers • Andy Adams
... all waiting for her, in what felt like a hideously quiet semicircle, in Allan's great dark room. Mrs. Harrington, deadly pale, and giving an impression of keeping herself alive only by force of that wonderful fighting vitality of hers, lay almost at length in her wheel-chair. There was a clergyman in vestments. There were the De Guenthers; ...
— The Rose Garden Husband • Margaret Widdemer
... had reached this point in his meditations when the coach suddenly stopped. The door opened, and as he peered into the semicircle of wavering lamp light he observed a tall young lady in a riding coat white with snowflakes. She had dismounted from her horse, and the beast's smoking nostrils were thawing the ice on her sleeve. She wore a mask, but she did not deceive ...
— The Path of the King • John Buchan
... were magnified in outline and intensified in colouring by the heavy, yellowish-red glare which fell on them, and the sun's rays shot out in long forks, piercing the dark blue of the sea at all points in the western semicircle of our view. The atmosphere had grown warm—very warm for ...
— Captain Mugford - Our Salt and Fresh Water Tutors • W.H.G. Kingston
... woman, his wife, touched him on the arm gently. The long parley outside the fort had lasted far into the day. It was now close upon twilight—the hour of the Angelus. Very solemnly, the red-headed brats rose from the floor and formed a semicircle. Namgay Doola laid his gun against the wall, lighted a little oil lamp, and set it before a recess in the wall. Pulling aside a curtain of dirty cloth he revealed a worn brass crucifix leaning against the helmet-badge ...
— The Kipling Reader - Selections from the Books of Rudyard Kipling • Rudyard Kipling
... in harmony. And inside the arched pavilion of the house of Good Fortune were green rustlings of silk, green shimmerings of satin as three hundred ladies of the Court, all veiled with green veils, took their seats in a semicircle. Three hundred ladies in green all dressed alike! Which was Queen Humeeda? That, it was the part of a child of four to tell, a child who had not seen his mother for ...
— The Adventures of Akbar • Flora Annie Steel
... away to make room for the scarlet geraniums that are to occupy these two beds in the summer and flare in the sun as much as they like. I love an occasional mass of fiery colour, and these two will make the lilies look even whiter and more breathless that are to stand sentinel round the semicircle containing the ...
— The Solitary Summer • Elizabeth von Arnim
... down to a book by the kitchen fire; but, as Leeby became communicative, I read less and less. While she spoke she was baking bannocks with all the might of her, and Jess, leaning forward in her chair, was arranging them in a semicircle round the fire. ...
— A Window in Thrums • J. M. Barrie
... quick, peculiar gesture from left to right, and in instant response his clustered bunch of warriors spread out in regulated intervals, assuming positions not unlike the sticks of a fan such as the Creoles use, until they formed a complete semicircle, their flanks close in against the cliff, and their centre well back upon the bank of the stream. It was a pretty movement, executed with the precision of long discipline, and De Noyan brought his hand down applauding ...
— Prisoners of Chance - The Story of What Befell Geoffrey Benteen, Borderman, - through His Love for a Lady of France • Randall Parrish
... reached the copse, the peasants had disappeared within it. The marquess marshalled his men in a semicircle round the trees, and sent on a detachment to the rear, to cut off every egress from the wood. This done the troop dashed within. For the first few yards the space was more open than they had anticipated: but the ground soon grew uneven, rugged, and almost precipitous, and the soil, and the ...
— Leila or, The Siege of Granada, Book II. • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... the boat, Miss Graye?' he said, looking over his shoulder. 'Look at our track on the water—a great semicircle, preceded by a series of zigzags as far as we ...
— Desperate Remedies • Thomas Hardy
... asked for wisdom, in order that he might be a worthy king; not to know the number of the motors here on high, or if necesse with a contingent ever made necesse;[1] non si est dare primum motum esse,[2] or if in the semicircle a triangle can be made so that it should not have one right angle.[3] Wherefore if thou notest this and what I said, a kingly prudence is that peerless seeing, on which the arrow of ray intention strikes.[4] And if thou directest clear eyes ...
— The Divine Comedy, Volume 3, Paradise [Paradiso] • Dante Alighieri
... Mouse Hole, and when they came in sight of Penzance again, the bay and the semicircle of houses and St. Michael's Mount were all a pale gray in the twilight. As they drove quietly along they heard the voices of people from time to time: the occupants of the cottages had come out for their evening stroll and chat. Suddenly, as they were passing certain huge masses of rock ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 87, March, 1875 • Various
... of number and geometry, to more concrete phenomena such as physics. The formula for refraction which Ptolemy helped to shape, is geometrical in form. With him, as with the discoverer of the right angle in a semicircle, the mind was working to find a general ideal statement under which all similar occurrences might be grouped. Observation, the collection of similar instances, measurement, are all involved, and the general statement, law or form, when arrived at, is found to link up other general truths ...
— Progress and History • Various
... appearing before them, they asked him what he knew of a bridge. He replied that he could readily describe his plan of the one they proposed to build, if they would be good enough to write down his figures. The span of the arch, 18 feet," said he, "being a semicircle, makes 27: the arch-stones must be a foot deep, which, if multiplied by 27, will be 486; and the basis will be 72 feet more. This for the arch; but it will require good backing, for which purpose there are proper stones in the old Roman wall at ...
— The Life of Thomas Telford by Smiles • Samuel Smiles
... me, far and wide. I saw near at hand the cumbrous gate of the stockade ajar, and at a little distance on the farther side Mr. Gulliver and his half-human servant standing. In front of them was an empty space—a narrow semicircle of which Gulliver was the centre. And beyond—wild-eyed, dishevelled, stretching their necks as if to see, inclining their heads as if to hearken, ranging in multitude almost to the sky's verge—stood assembled, it seemed to me, all the ...
— Henry Brocken - His Travels and Adventures in the Rich, Strange, Scarce-Imaginable Regions of Romance • Walter J. de la Mare
... attired, and carrying garlands of flowers, circled and leaped through a variety of figures. There was a raised platform, upon which a warrior and maiden represented Montezuma and his queen, and around these the girls danced and chanted. The ceremony ended by the dancers kneeling in front, in a grand semicircle. I saw that the occupants of the throne were Dacoma and Adele. I fancied that ...
— The Scalp Hunters • Mayne Reid
... on the east and west sides, and on part of the south. The latter court seems principally to have consisted of offices. The first entrance is under an arched gateway on the east side of the south court. The arch of this gateway being a semicircle, was probably erected subsequently to the rest of the building: hence the communication with the inner court is under an arched gateway in the middle of the north side of the south court. One half of this range of building seems originally to have been used as a hall, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 576 - Vol. 20 No. 576., Saturday, November 17, 1832 • Various
... advanced the farthest with Gaud on his arm, was the first to retreat before the spray. Behind, his wedding party had remained strewn about the rocks, in a semicircle; it seemed as if he had come to present his wife to the sea, which received her ...
— An Iceland Fisherman • Pierre Loti
... you later,' he cried, and was off, persuading the enormous beast under him to describe a semicircle in the narrow street backing, forcing forward, and backing again, to the accompaniment of the continuous fusillade. At length he got away, drew up within two feet of an electric tram that slid bumping down the main ...
— The Grim Smile of the Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... day, and how long also in returning, and now the spirit of wickedness lay hold of him; he would do likewise. He knew well where the house of Daniel Peyton stood, having been in it many times before the war, but he chose a course toward it that bent like the curve of a semicircle, and the innocent woman ...
— Before the Dawn - A Story of the Fall of Richmond • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... a thunderbolt, Colonel Washington and his troopers, flying their famous crimson flag, sweep down in a semicircle round the hill, and charge the ...
— Hero Stories from American History - For Elementary Schools • Albert F. Blaisdell |
