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More "Speck" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... was low, though it was possible, as Raoul perceived, to detect the speck that was still swinging at the Minerva's fore-yard-arm; a circumstance to which the young man, with considerate feeling, refrained from adverting. The Proserpine had been some time in motion, standing out of the fleet under a cloud of canvas, but with ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper
... wrong. She stood for a long time at the edge of the fish pond, gazing into the vague depths. Then she walked, exalted, overcome by the mystery of things. She seemed to walk upon air, the world was a-thrill with spiritual significances, all was symbol and exaltation. Her past life shrank to a tiny speck, and she knew that she had been happy only since she had been in the convent. Ah, that little chapel, haunted by prayers! it breathed prayer, in that chapel contemplation was never far off. She had prayed there as she had never prayed ...
— Evelyn Innes • George Moore
... to sounds like some one hitting a board with a mallet. Ran outside. One found the aeroplane from the little clouds of shrapnel, for it was flying very high, and was like a speck. Clouds of smoke were rolling from one quarter of the town, and we thought that a big fire was beginning, but it was extinguished. Another aeroplane came later. The guns began long before it could be seen. It dropped two bombs over the powder factory, and ...
— The Luck of Thirteen - Wanderings and Flight through Montenegro and Serbia • Jan Gordon
... transfigured, his raiment white and glistening, and his face like the light, so are there hours when our whole mortal life stands forth in a celestial radiance. From our daily lot falls off every weed of care,—from our heart-friends every speck and stain of earthly infirmity. Our horizon widens, and blue, and amethyst, and gold touch every object. Absent friends and friends gone on the last long journey stand once more together, bright with an immortal glow, and, like the disciples who saw their Master ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... Fairy herself! but, alas! her blue eyes Still a pupil did ruefully lack; And who shall describe the terrifick surprise That seized the Paint-King, when, behold, he descries Not a speck on ...
— Translations of German Poetry in American Magazines 1741-1810 • Edward Ziegler Davis
... objects moved away to the shore, no longer careful, but making a huge, splashing noise. No more strange flies appeared; and the gold light of full day stole down to the depths of the pool. Soon, flies which the master well knew, with no fine threads attached to them, began to speck the surface over him, and he fed, in ...
— The Watchers of the Trails - A Book of Animal Life • Charles G. D. Roberts
... with a bonnet on its head, A pretty purple bonnet with a bow of blue and red; And here comes a bottle with a collar 'round its neck, A handsome linen collar, too, without a spot or speck; Next comes a meat-saw, his job is biting beef, And according to the cleaver he has gold in all his teeth; And last of all there comes along, amid the ringing cheers, A princely Indian corn-stalk with rings ...
— The Peter Patter Book of Nursery Rhymes • Leroy F. Jackson
... cried Edestone, seeming to forget for the moment where he was, as a small speck which represented the approaching airship disclosed itself. "This time in the upper right-hand corner of the picture. See! I am on board, and I am driving her at one hundred and ten miles." And he ...
— L. P. M. - The End of the Great War • J. Stewart Barney
... not long before, and the sky was glowing in the clear, light night. I had to stand still for a minute. In the midst of all this beauty, man was doing the work of a beast of prey! At this moment I saw to the north a dark speck move down the height where the mate and Hansen ought to be. It divided into two, and the one moved east, just to the windward of the animals I was to stalk. They would get the scent immediately and be off. There was nothing for it but to hurry on, while I rained anything but ...
— Farthest North - Being the Record of a Voyage of Exploration of the Ship 'Fram' 1893-1896 • Fridtjof Nansen
... was sitting in her favorite seat by the window. Her face was scarcely at all paler than it had been a week ago. She sat then by the window, looking out at her trouble, which showed like a speck in the blue sky. The shadow which enveloped her whole life was coming closer now, enveloping her like a thick fog. Still she was bearing up. Her eyes were gazing out on the garden—on the flowers which she ...
— A Girl in Ten Thousand • L. T. Meade
... that feeling a thousand times intensified, that and a black horror swept across my thoughts in a torrent. Then the two doctors, the naked body with its cut side, the little room, swept away from under me and vanished, as a speck of ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... the little board building that made a home for the McIntyres, set down on the treeless prairie with only a little wooden paling to defend it from the waste that gaped at it from every side. The contrast between this bare speck of human habitation and the cosy homes of his native Province, set each within its sheltering nest of orchard and garden, could hardly, have been more complete. But as his eyes ran down the slope of the prairie and up over the hills to the jagged line of peaks at the horizon, he was conscious ...
— The Prospector - A Tale of the Crow's Nest Pass • Ralph Connor
... excess. Such excess was in that age regarded, even by grave men, as the most venial of all peccadilloes, and was so far from being a mark of ill-breeding that it was almost essential to the character of a fine gentleman. But the smallest speck is seen on a white ground; and almost all the biographers of Addison have said something about this failing. Of any other statesman or writer of Queen Anne's reign, we should no more think of saying that he sometimes ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... my eye was attracted to a snow speck on the mountainside some two thousand feet above us and slightly westward that somehow looked to me different from other snow specks. For nearly a minute I stared at it through my glasses. At last the speck moved. The game ...
— The Killer • Stewart Edward White
... to grasp the land and drag it back into the lurid sea of blood; altogether a cruel, weird-looking scene, fantastic, unreal, and bizarre as one of Dore's marvellous conceptions. Suddenly on the red waters there appeared a black speck, rising and falling with the restless waves, and ever drawing nearer and nearer to the gloomy cliffs and sandy beach. When within a quarter of a mile of the shore, the speck resolved itself into a boat, a mere shallop, painted a dingy white, and ...
— Madame Midas • Fergus Hume
... twilight the ship went a-flutter over a grisly incident that brought us close up to the war. We were gathered in the dusk looking at a sailing ship far over to the south—a mere speck on the horizon's edge. Signals began to twinkle from her and we felt our ship give a lurch and turn north zigzagging at full speed. The signals of the sailing ship were distress signals, but we sped away from her as fast as our engines would take us, for, though her signals may have been genuine, ...
— The Martial Adventures of Henry and Me • William Allen White
... An Earthman? You were an Earthman! Now you're a grubby little specimen of the genus tsith! You're a miserable, whining little speck of matter wriggling toward the final transfixation! In another year you won't even be that. You'll be dead and forgotten. Don't come crawling to me talking about Earthmen!" The voice scraped across Latham's naked nerve-ends. Penger's eyes ...
— One Purple Hope! • Henry Hasse
... island. The district of Kau is a rich, luxuriant spot, surrounded by desolate fields of scoriae, which renders it difficult of access. We are situated six miles from the sea, sufficiently elevated to give us a commanding view of its vast expanse of waters. We can occasionally spy a sail floating like a speck on its surface. From the shore, the country gradually rises into a range of verdant mountains, whose summits appear to touch the clouds. Proceeding northward toward Hilo, there is a gradual rise, until you ...
— Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, March 1844 - Volume 23, Number 3 • Various
... giant smiles, And twirls the spotty globe to find it;— This little speck the British Isles? 'Tis but a freckle,—never mind it! He laughs, and all his prairies roll, Each gurgling cataract roars and chuckles, And ridges stretched from pole to pole Heave till they crack their ...
— The Ontario Readers: Fourth Book • Various
... midst of an animated discussion on their future prospects, the signal was given, that the steamer was in sight, and had already rounded the point. How audibly to herself did Flora's heart beat, as a small, black speck in the distance gradually increased to a black cloud; and not a doubt remained, that this was the ...
— Flora Lyndsay - or, Passages in an Eventful Life • Susan Moodie
... blessings we enjoy, one of the greatest blessings a people can enjoy, is liberty. But every good in this life has its allay of evil. Licentiousness is the allay of liberty. It is an ebullition, an excrescence; it is a speck upon the eye of the political body, which I can never touch but with a gentle, with a trembling hand; lest I destroy the body, lest I injure the eye, upon which it is apt to appear. If the stage becomes at any time licentious, if a play appears to be a libel upon the government, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... Si! Say what you please, now you've done it! I shan't stop you. You've taken the one spot—the one SPECK—off you that was ever there, and ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... is sinking; All grows dim, and dies; See, the waves are drinking Glories of the skies. Day's last lustre playeth On that current dark; Yet no speck betrayeth His long looked-for bark. 'Tis the hour of meeting! Nay, the hour is past; Swift the time is fleeting! Fleeteth hope as fast. Still the Gitanilla By the stream doth linger, In the hope that night ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth
... morning when Hadow raised the island, a fleecy speck of cloud against the sky line, and he shortened sail at once and lingered out the day so as to bring him up to it by dark. After supper every light on board was doused, and the great hull, gliding through the glass-smooth ...
— Wild Justice: Stories of the South Seas • Lloyd Osbourne
... storm, which did not last for more than twenty minutes, had abated and the horizon was in some degree cleared, I looked to sea anxiously, in the hope of descrying Shelley's boat amongst the many small craft scattered about. I watched every speck that loomed on the horizon, thinking that they would have borne up on their return to the port, as all the other boats that had gone out in the same direction ...
— Stories of Authors, British and American • Edwin Watts Chubb
... river bed as Wee Willie Winkie left the cantonment and British India behind him. Bowed, forward and still flogging, Wee Willie Winkie shot into Afghan territory, and could just see Miss Allardyce a black speck, flickering across the stony plain. The reason of her wandering was simple enough. Coppy, in a tone of too-hastily-assumed authority, had told her over night that she must not ride out by the river. And she had gone to prove her own spirit ...
— Kipling Stories and Poems Every Child Should Know, Book II • Rudyard Kipling
... enlarged thoughts would easily pass to the stout carved ships in the river beyond, intrepidly setting sail for the Indies, or for savage America. Yes, he too had travelled, and not only in thought. He knew how many strange nations and false religions lodged in this round earth, itself but a speck in the universe. There were few ingenious authors that he had not perused, or philosophical instruments that he had not, as far as possible, examined and tested; and no man better than he could understand and prize the recent discoveries of "the ...
— Some Turns of Thought in Modern Philosophy - Five Essays • George Santayana
... unreasonable as he who insists that everything has been divinely revealed to us. I know nothing more unbearable than the complacent type of scientist who knows very exactly all that he does know, but has not imagination enough to understand what a speck his little accumulation of doubtful erudition is when compared with the immensity of our ignorance. He is the person who thinks that the universe can be explained by laws, as if a law did not require construction as well ...
— The Stark Munro Letters • J. Stark Munro
... and put his hand over the rose on her heart, that had ceased to beat. Suddenly it seemed to him that his hand had been stung, and he drew it away quickly, his eyes on the golden rose. And where she had left it just incomplete at his coming, he saw a jet-black speck. A light broke over him swiftly, and one by one he broke the strands at the rose's heart, and under it revealed a small black snake; and as the rose had been done from her own gold locks, so the snake had been done from the one black lock in ...
— Martin Pippin in the Apple Orchard • Eleanor Farjeon
... Many, many miles away, a speck on the dusty carpet of the desert, something moved! Hours must elapse before that tiny figure, provided it were approaching, could reach the solitary palm. Delightedly, Rita contemplated the infinity of time. Even if the figure moved ever so slowly, ...
— Dope • Sax Rohmer
... the depths of the argument as to the origin of species and the genesis of man; with the astronomers, to leave the narrow bounds of earth, and explore the illimitable spaces of the universe, in which our solar system is but a speck; with the mathematicians, to quit the uncertain realm of speculation and assumption, and plant our feet firmly on the rock of exact science:—to come back anon to lighter themes, and to revel in the grotesque humor of Dickens, the philosophic page ...
— A Book for All Readers • Ainsworth Rand Spofford
... is also destructive to game. It emits a shrill musical whistle which can sometimes be heard when the bird is so high as to appear a mere speck against the sky. This ...
— Birds of the Indian Hills • Douglas Dewar
... road, with arms uplifted, and holding deadly weapons, as if ready and determined to strike with well-aimed precision. But, strange to say, they all remained as motionless as statues, until we had gone on so far as to leave them a mere speck on the descending horizon. ...
— Purgatory • Mary Anne Madden Sadlier
... black speck became less ambiguous. George beheld a white stern heaving up and down. He ran forward as if to accelerate her return, crying out ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... I watched a tremulous fading rose Rise on the wind to court a butterfly. "One speck of pollen, ere my petals close, Bring me one touch of love ...
— Last Poems • Laurence Hope
... sweet, papa!" Miss Mildred whispered, her small, rather sickly face quite radiant; "and its eyes are the image of yours. He's asleep now, you know, and you can't see them. And look at the dear, darling little hands and fingers and feet, and the speck of a nose and the dot of a mouth! Oh papa! isn't it splendid to have a baby in ...
— The Baronet's Bride • May Agnes Fleming
... how there appears to be a cosmic hostility to human life which sobers indeed those who are intelligent enough to perceive it. It is only the fool or the brute or the sentimentalist who is unterrified by nature. The man of reflection and imagination sees his race crawling ant-like over its tiny speck of slowly cooling earth and surrounded by titanic and ruthless forces which threaten at any moment to engulf it. The religious man knows that he is infinitely greater than the beasts of the field or the clods of the highway. Yet Vesuvius belches forth its liquid ...
— Preaching and Paganism • Albert Parker Fitch
... had become a mere speck on the coast-line, before they felt the tide under them relax, and knew they ...
— Follow My leader - The Boys of Templeton • Talbot Baines Reed
... it. After a time, a slow thick shower of burning fragments, from some upper portion of the prison which was blazing nigh, began to fall before his door. Remembering that it opened outwards, he knew that every spark which fell upon the heap, and in the act lost its bright life, and died an ugly speck of dust and rubbish, helped to entomb him in a living grave. Still, though the jail resounded with shrieks and cries for help,—though the fire bounded up as if each separate flame had had a tiger's life, and roared as though, in every one, there were a hungry ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... they are not at Cranford. What could they do if they were there? The surgeon has his round of thirty miles, and sleeps at Cranford; but every man cannot be a surgeon. For keeping the trim gardens full of choice flowers without a weed to speck them; for frightening away little boys who look wistfully at the said flowers through the railings; for rushing out at the geese that occasionally venture in to the gardens if the gates are left open; for deciding all questions of literature and politics without troubling ...
— Cranford • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... carried through the great undertaking. Thus at last a grand catalogue of nebulae and clusters was produced. Never before was there so majestic an inventory. If we remember that each of the nebulae is an object so vast, that the whole of the solar system would form an inconsiderable speck by comparison, what are we to think of a collection in which these objects are enumerated in thousands? In this great catalogue we find arranged in systematic order all the nebulae and all the clusters which had been revealed by the diligence ...
— Great Astronomers • R. S. Ball
... steamer ober dar, an' I speck de Yankee gumboat's gwine in dar to look arter dat steamer," said Uncle Job, chuckling as though he enjoyed the prospect of such an event. "Say, Massa Ossifer, is ...
— Stand By The Union - SERIES: The Blue and the Gray—Afloat • Oliver Optic
... pick it up, but the others could not see it, and went back to breakfast. Trask soon followed, observing that Shope was in the fore crosstrees studying the distant speck with ...
— Isle o' Dreams • Frederick F. Moore
... stack of some steamer. I watched this closely, until convinced the craft was bound down stream and moving swiftly. The smudge became a mere whisp and finally vanished entirely. I waited some time for the vessel to appear at the lower end of the bend, but it was then only a speck, scarcely distinguishable. I felt no doubt but what this was the stolen ...
— The Devil's Own - A Romance of the Black Hawk War • Randall Parrish
... what he does with it. You pick up every single speck," ordered the girl; and the boy scraped the floor with his sharp finger-nails, and crammed the candy and dust into a small paper bag. The girl stood watchfully over him; not the smallest particle escaped her eyes. "There's some more over there," said she, sharply, when the boy was about ...
— The Debtor - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... way, 30 Or mounts sublime, and gilds the vault of day. Silent with upturn'd eyes unbreathing crowds Pursue the floating wonder to the clouds; And, flush'd with transport or benumb'd with fear, Watch, as it rises, the diminish'd sphere. 35 —Now less and less!—and now a speck is seen!— And now the fleeting rack obtrudes between!— With bended knees, raised arms, and suppliant brow To every shrine with mingled cries they vow.— "Save Him, ye Saints! who o'er the good preside; 40 "Bear Him, ye Winds! ye Stars benignant! ...
— The Botanic Garden. Part II. - Containing The Loves of the Plants. A Poem. - With Philosophical Notes. • Erasmus Darwin
... a knock at the door, and a ruddy old face looked in. It is the Cavaliere Trenta, in his official blue coat and gold buttons, nankeen inexpressibles, a broad-brimmed white hat and a gold-headed cane in his hand. Whatever speck of dust might have had the audacity to venture to settle itself upon any part of the cavaliere's official blue coat, must at once have hidden its diminished head after peeping at the cavaliere's beaming countenance, so scrubbed and shiny, the white hair so symmetrically arranged upon ...
— The Italians • Frances Elliot
... times her eyes had lifted to sweep the snow field for any sign of the hunters' return. Now, looking out of the window without much expectation of seeing them, her glance fell on a traveler, a speck of black on a sea of white. Her heart began to beat a drum of excitement. She waited, eyes riveted, expecting to see a second figure and a dog-team top the ...
— Man Size • William MacLeod Raine
... wonder at, for nature is not bounded by the laws of human reason, which aims only at man's true benefit and preservation; her limits are infinitely wider, and have reference to the eternal order of nature, wherein man is but a speck; it is by the necessity of this alone that all individuals are conditioned for living and acting in a particular way. (21) If anything, therefore, in nature seems to us ridiculous, absurd, or evil, it is because we only know in part, and are almost entirely ignorant of the order ...
— A Theologico-Political Treatise [Part IV] • Benedict de Spinoza
... it's high time I was dead; and that all this is nonsense. It's the truth I'm telling you. I do value my idea and my work awfully; but in reality only consider this: all this world of ours is nothing but a speck of mildew, which has grown up on a tiny planet. And for us to suppose we can have something great—ideas, work—it's ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy
... of both parties, that their friendship appears to have been founded on mutual respect. In July, 1783, the Albemarle was paid off; and Nelson having finished the war, as he expresses it in a letter to his friend Mr Ross, without a fortune, but without a speck on his character, remained nine months on half-pay. But as he determined to make use of his spare time in mastering the French—a feat which he afterwards accomplished without a grammar—he resolved to go to France with his friend Captain ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 350, December 1844 • Various
... speck presented by the reefed top-sail of the corvette had sunk beneath the horizon, in the southern board, and that ship was seen no longer. Several islands had been passed, looking tranquil and smiling amid the fury of the tempest; but it was impossible to haul up for any one ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... suppose, to hunt for gold! And you've been hunting for it for fifteen years, you've trod along thousands and thousands of miles and never found a speck ...
— The Great Sioux Trail - A Story of Mountain and Plain • Joseph Altsheler
... reticulated into the semblance of polygonal, or, in some instances, egg-shaped meshes, and which remind one of pieces of ill woven lace. When first laid open, these meshes are filled each with a carbonaceous speck; and, from their supposed resemblance, in the aggregated form, to the eggs of the frog in their albuminous envelop, the quarriers term them "puddock [frog] spawn." The slabs in which they occur, thickly covered over with their vegetable impressions, did certainly ...
— The Testimony of the Rocks - or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed • Hugh Miller
... the able and daring generals who had served him in so many fields. But Stuart, the gay and brilliant, the medieval knight who had such a strong place in the commander-in-chief's affections, was there. Nor was his plumage one bit less splendid. The yellow feather stood in his hat. There was no speck or stain on the broad yellow sash and his undimmed ...
— The Shades of the Wilderness • Joseph A. Altsheler
... Governor hummed one of his favorite ballads as he slipped out of his coat and picked a speck from his snowy waistcoat. Then he produced a tiny phial from his pocket and touched his upper lip with a ...
— Blacksheep! Blacksheep! • Meredith Nicholson
... lessened not their importance; and while any Mount Pitt birds (such being the name given them) were to be had, they were eagerly sought. The knots of the pine tree, split and made into small bundles, afforded the miserable occupiers of a small speck in the ocean sufficient light to guide them through the woods, in search of what was to serve them for next day's meal. They were also fortunate enough to lose but a few casks of the provisions brought ...
— An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 1 • David Collins
... When she first appeared on the scene (I mean Valentina Ignatievna) I was just turned nineteen years of age; and the instant that my eyes fell upon her form I realised that in her alone lay my fate, and my heart almost stopped beating, and my vitality stretched out towards her as a speck of dust flies towards a fire. Yet all this I had to conceal as best I might; with the result that in the company's presence I felt like a sentry doing guard duty in the presence of his commanding officer. But at last, though I strove to pull ...
— Through Russia • Maxim Gorky
... in the ship was watching the speck on the watery waste, which the glass had revealed to be a dismasted, and perhaps sinking ship. The incident created an intense interest, and was calculated to bring out the finer feelings of the students. They were full of sympathy for her people, and the cultivation of noble and unselfish sentiments, ...
— Outward Bound - Or, Young America Afloat • Oliver Optic
... sauce deep. Well could she carry a morsel, and well keep, That no droppe ne fell upon her breast. In courtesy was set full much her lest*. *pleasure Her over-lippe wiped she so clean, That in her cup there was no farthing* seen *speck Of grease, when she drunken had her draught; Full seemely after her meat she raught*: *reached out her hand And *sickerly she was of great disport*, *surely she was of a lively And full pleasant, and amiable of port, disposition* And ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer
... rims and legs of tables, and the backs and legs of chairs and sofas, should be rubbed vigorously daily; if there is a book-case, every corner of every pane and ledge requires to be carefully wiped, so that not a speck of dust can ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... in use a machine so delicately adjusted that it can give the accurate weight of a speck of dust, whilst the same machine will also weigh metal up to four hundred pounds. A postage stamp placed on this scale will swing an indicator on a semi-circle ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various
... had yet left us, a sail had been discerned from the fore-top-mast-head, at a great distance, probably three leagues or more. At first it was a mere speck, altogether out of sight from the deck. By the force of attraction, or something else equally inscrutable, two ships in a calm, and equally affected by the currents, will always approximate, more or less. ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville
... Societies and demand redress of grievances. He concludes thus: "You may as well look for chastity and mercy in the Empress of Russia, honour and consistency from the King of Prussia, wisdom and plain dealing from the Emperor of Germany, as a single speck of ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... more than usual care should be taken in following up any other small prick or dark spot that may show itself upon the white surface of the cleaned sole. In any case, a suspicious-looking speck should be followed up with the searcher until it is either cut out or is traced to the ...
— Diseases of the Horse's Foot • Harry Caulton Reeks
... dawn-light revealed a black spot on the low horizon. A speck that grew larger, with twinkling, fin-like flashes along each side, and in due time it proved to be a galley like their own bearing down straight for them. Nobody stopped to ask any questions. That was not sea-style then. But just as naturally as two ...
— The Iron Star - And what It saw on Its Journey through the Ages • John Preston True
... in black turned aside and covered her face with her hands. A perceptible shiver of emotion, a fluttering sigh such as steals over a pine-wood toward dawn ran through all ranks. Far to the south-east a speck of light now showed, which grew in intensity as it came swiftly nearer, and seemed presently to be a ball of vivid fire surrounded by a shroud of lit vapour. Again, as by a common consent, the crowd parted, stood ranked, with an open ...
— Lore of Proserpine • Maurice Hewlett
... tiny bird, A shining speck at sleepy dawn, Forgets the ant-hill so absurd, This self-important Buffalo. Descending twenty miles away He bathes his wings at break ...
— The Advance of English Poetry in the Twentieth Century • William Lyon Phelps
... suh; hit used to be 'bout twenty-five mile, but ev'ything's gone up so I speck hit's 'bout ...
— More Toasts • Marion Dix Mosher
... remember to have seen elsewhere. For instance, the tiger-lilies in the garden here must be above ten feet high, every bloom faultless, and, what strikes me as peculiar, every leaf on the stalk from bottom to top as perfect as if no insect existed to spoil them by a notch or speck. . . . ...
— Life and Letters of Robert Browning • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... behind him, on either hand, the forest of houses stretched away almost to infinity. The thought of it was as crushing as that of interstellar distances, of the pathless void into which God threw a handful of dust and then quietly ordained that each speck should be a sun and the pivot ...
— The Devil's Garden • W. B. Maxwell
... "There isn't a speck of privacy in the house!" flared Rosemary. "I think I might buy something once in a while that the whole family didn't have to see. And no one has to come straight home from school, except me. If I'm an hour late, Aunt Trudy always wants ...
— Rosemary • Josephine Lawrence
... misery till the end of time.' And of a sudden from out her shoulders grew black, shadowy wings, and, with a piercing scream, she swirled upward, until the awe-stricken Dedannans saw nought save a black speck vanish among the lowering clouds. And as a demon of the air do Eva's black wings swirl her through space ...
— Celtic Tales - Told to the Children • Louey Chisholm
... clothed in "this muddy vesture of decay," is in the eye of God and reason, a purer essence than the brightest sun that lights the depths of heaven. The organized human eye, instinct with life and soul, which, gazing through the telescope, travels up to the cloudy speck in the handle of Orion's sword, and bids it blaze forth into a galaxy as vast as ours, stands higher in the order of being than all that host of luminaries. The intellect of Newton which discovered the law that holds the revolving worlds together, is a nobler work ...
— The Uses of Astronomy - An Oration Delivered at Albany on the 28th of July, 1856 • Edward Everett
... obtaining a meridional altitude; and after getting the very best result he could under the very difficult conditions prevailing, he casually lowered the telescope and swept it round the horizon. Suddenly a speck seemed to flash by, and a vehement hope as suddenly arose. Then he brought the telescope slowly back, and there it was again, and accompanied this [Page 128] time by two smaller specks on either side of it. Without a shadow of doubt it was the depot ...
— The Voyages of Captain Scott - Retold from 'The Voyage of the "Discovery"' and 'Scott's - Last Expedition' • Charles Turley
... no salvation on either side. No glory awaits the Southern Confederacy, even if it does achieve its independence; it will be a mere speck in the world, with no weight or authority. The North confesses itself lost without us, and has paid an unheard-of ransom to regain us. On the other hand, conquered, what hope is there in this world for us? Broken in health and fortune, reviled, contemned, abused by ...
— A Confederate Girl's Diary • Sarah Morgan Dawson
... nor handling the Word of God deceitfully; but by manifestation of the truth commending ourselves to every man's conscience in the sight of God' (2 Cor 4:2). All these sentences are chiefly to be applied to doctrine, and so are, as it were, an offer to any, if they can, to find a speck, or a spot, or a wrinkle, or any such thing in this river of ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... stood open, as it had been flung by the shock, and I was now able to locate the sounds of the screaming. They came from the cabin beyond, which I knew to be Mademoiselle's. I guided myself as well as I could to the door giving access to the corridor and unlocked it. As I did so a speck of light gleamed in the darkness and arrested me. It enlarged and emerged upon me till it took the shape of a candle, and underneath it I beheld the capable face of the French ...
— Hurricane Island • H. B. Marriott Watson
... soon as his head appeared above the water, and he began to swim as tranquilly as if he had been bathing in the lake of the old castle. Happily the moon was rising. Yvon saw, at a little distance, a black speck among the silvery waves—it was land. He approached it, not without difficulty, and finally succeeded in gaining a foothold. Dripping wet, exhausted with fatigue, and out of breath, he dragged himself on the sand, then, without ...
— Laboulaye's Fairy Book • Various
... under him. There was a water-hole a little to the east of the way we had come, and toward that I tried to head. One of the mules gave out, and staggered and groaned, and tried to get up again. I remember hearing him squeal, once; it was horrible. He lay there, a little black speck on the desert. Whitney and I didn't speak to each other at all, but I thought of those two kegs of water he had upset. Have you ever been thirsty—mortally thirsty, until you feel your tongue black in your mouth? It's queer what it does to you. Do you remember ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1915 - And the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... a Mediterranean steamer, looking at a town in Algeria or Tunis. And beyond, under the low-hanging stars, was the Mexican desert—a blank page, with only here and there the obscurity of a garden, or a hacienda, or a mere speck which would be a lonely casa built ...
— Children of the Desert • Louis Dodge
... forget, never, I know! Twenty-five years are over and gone to-night, and the close, unrivalled companionship of them, and I am alone from now on—but you'll not forget!) and then they turned to each other and I was no more than a speck on the evening water. "Put your back into it, man; get along, can't you?" I growled to Caliban. We shot ahead and left them to each other, alone under the heavy, yellow moon and ...
— Margarita's Soul - The Romantic Recollections of a Man of Fifty • Ingraham Lovell
... window open; I could see the folk running and dancing over the ice; I could see the gay-colored flags, I could hear the boys shout 'Hurra!' and the girls and lads a-singing. All were so merry; and all the time the white cloud with its black speck rose higher and higher! I screamed as loud as I could; but no one heard me, I was too far off. Soon would the storm break loose, the ice would break in pieces, and all that crowd would sink and drown. Hear me they could not; get out to them I could not; what was to be done? Then our Lord sent ...
— Bible Stories and Religious Classics • Philip P. Wells
... exclamations, murmured at intervals, and followed by chest-drawn sighs, expressed a deep preoccupation. With regard to his boots, he need have had no anxiety. They were of the shiniest patent leather, much too tight, and without a speck of dust upon them. But his nervousness infected me with a cruel dread. All those eyes were going to watch how we comported ourselves in jumping from the landing-steps into the boat! If this operation, ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... present aspect of our affairs, that may change from moment to moment during the course of your session or after you shall have separated. Our duty is, therefore, to act upon things as they are and to make a reasonable provision for whatever they may be. Were armies to be raised whenever a speck of war is visible in our horizon, we never should have been without them. Our resources would have been exhausted on dangers which have never happened, instead of being reserved for what is really to take place. A steady, perhaps a quickened, pace in preparations for the defense of our seaport ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 3 (of 4) of Volume 1: Thomas Jefferson • Edited by James D. Richardson
... spot, n. speck, speckle, mark, blot, discoloration, fleck, dapple, blotch, smutch; stain, reproach, blemish, flaw; place, locality; areola, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... what a speck thou art in comparison with the Universe?—-That is, with respect to the body; since with respect to Reason, thou art not inferior to the Gods, nor less than they. For the greatness of Reason is not measured by length or height, but ...
— The Golden Sayings of Epictetus • Epictetus
... species was suspended over the water, its rapidly vibrating wings showing like a mere film, a speck shot down the valley, swift as an arrow, as white as a snowflake, and stopping suddenly over the pool, startled the emerald-throat, and frightened it up amongst the overhanging branches. The intruder was the white-cap (Microchera parvirostris, ...
— The Naturalist in Nicaragua • Thomas Belt
... after the thought of death the most familiar thought is the decay of the bodily vesture. The first grey hair may seem to us an amusing accident, but very few years will pass before another and yet another appear, and if these do not succeed in reminding us that decay has begun, a black speck on a tooth cannot fail to do so; and when we go to the dentist to have it stopped we have begun to repair artificially the falling structure. The activity of youth soon passes, and its slenderness. I remember still the shock I felt on hearing an athlete say that he could no longer run races of ...
— Memoirs of My Dead Life • George Moore
... she is hungry, and said that if I continued to go about "like a snail in a dream" whenever she fetched me to carry her things on these short expeditions, she would leave me in the hotel to mend her clothes; whereupon I became actually servile in my ministrations. I brushed a microscopic speck of dust off her gown; I pushed in a hairpin; I tucked up a flying end of veil; I straightened her toque, and made myself altogether indispensable; for the bare idea of being left behind was a box ...
— The Motor Maid • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson
... created circular, misty auras about the deck-lights. The tarpaulined donkey-engine beneath the after-cargo booms rattled as the Vandalia's stern sank into a hollow, and the beat of the engines was muffled and deeper. A speck of white froth glinted on the black surface and ...
— Peter the Brazen - A Mystery Story of Modern China • George F. Worts
... ships," said Nathanael. "See what numbers of them—numbers, yet how few they seem!—are moving up and down on this highway of all nations. Look, Agatha, at that one, a mere speck, dipping ...
— Agatha's Husband - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik (AKA: Dinah Maria Mulock)
... ask why. He was engrossed in brushing a speck of mud from his sleeve, and she was not sure that he ...
— The Way of an Eagle • Ethel M. Dell
... that are to take life and grow, shoot up into ears, and give more corn again; so it is throughout all the earth where corn is sown. Palestine, America, the valleys of Norway itself—a great wide world, and here is Isak, a tiny speck in the midst of it all, a sower. Little showers of corn flung out fanwise from his hand; a kindly clouded sky, with a promise of the ...
— Growth of the Soil • Knut Hamsun
... deficient in colour at all times, but feebler than common in the rich sunshine, and more like the coat of a sandy tortoise-shell cat; with long nails, nicely pared and sharpened; with a natural antipathy to any speck of dirt, which made him pause sometimes and watch the falling motes of dust, and rub them off his smooth white hand or glossy linen: Mr Carker the Manager, sly of manner, sharp of tooth, soft of foot, watchful of eye, oily of tongue, cruel ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... by the reverence of his manner, and I felt myself in the presence of my Maker,—a mere speck amid his vast creations. An ineffaceable impression was made on my mind, young as I was. My father died many years ago, while I was still a child, but the lesson of that hour has ...
— The Nest in the Honeysuckles, and other Stories • Various
... extending to the east as far as the eye could reach. Soon after the morning sun began to flood that ocean of waving flowers with its rays, the keen eye of Carson discerned in the extreme east, a small speck, like the sail of a ship at sea. He watched it, it moved. Slowly it increased in size. It soon developed itself into the front of a numerous band of warriors. His anxiety was great. It was not wise to attempt flight over the ...
— Christopher Carson • John S. C. Abbott
... half-a-dozen voices. "Yes," continued he; "Aunt Winny teld me I is to hab de prettiest yaller gal in town, and dat I is to be free." All eyes were immediately turned toward Sally Johnson, who was seated near Sarn. "I speck I see somebody blush at dat remark," said Alfred. "Pass dem pancakes and molasses up dis way, Mr. Alf, and none of your insinawaysion here," rejoined Sam. "Dat reminds me," said Currer, "dat Doreas Simpson is gwine to git married." ...
— Clotel; or, The President's Daughter • William Wells Brown
... accord, ran out through the engineers' quarters to the open. It was now dark. Little fires dotted the hillsides. A dull red speck, like an ember, showed over the roof, darkened, and disappeared. Then a streak of fire shot out from the black slope and sped ...
— The U.P. Trail • Zane Grey
... unable to understand his being, much less the unity of all life, felt himself absolutely dependent on blind, hidden forces ever ready to mock and taunt him. Out of that attitude grew the religious concepts of man as a mere speck of dust dependent on superior powers on high, who can only be appeased by complete surrender. All the early sagas rest on that idea, which continues to be the LEIT-MOTIF of the biblical tales dealing with the relation of man to God, ...
— Anarchism and Other Essays • Emma Goldman
... Allston's picture of Elijah in the Wilderness, where a good deal of research at last enables us to guess at the prophet absconded like a conundrum in the landscape where the very ravens could scarce have found him out, except by divine commission. The figure of Milton becomes but a speck on the enormous canvas crowded with the scenery through which he may by any possibility be conjectured to have passed. I will cite a single example of the desperate straits to which Mr. Masson is reduced in order to hitch Milton on to his own biography. He devotes the first chapter ...
— Among My Books • James Russell Lowell
... time by attempting to weld dirty or wet lead surfaces, because time cannot be saved by doing so, and you run the risk of being injured if hot lead is thrown into your face. Remove absolutely every speck of dirt—you will soon learn that it is the only way to ...
— The Automobile Storage Battery - Its Care And Repair • O. A. Witte
... previous description. He was as clean and refreshing looking as a madrono-tree in the dust-blown forest. An odor of scented soap and freshly ironed linen was wafted from him; there was scarcely a crease in his white waistcoat, nor a speck upon his varnished shoes. He might have been an auditor of the previous conversation, so quickly and completely did he seem to take in the whole situation at a glance. Perhaps there was an extra tilt to his black-ribboned Panama hat, and a certain ...
— The Three Partners • Bret Harte
... singing a second song, something happened. A light speck was seen moving through the air. It came nearer and nearer. At last it circled round the pen, where the grain was scattered. Then it flew slowly to the ground. It was ...
— Five Little Friends • Sherred Willcox Adams
... excitement grew in her pulse by pulse, as the excitement grows in a man waiting for a friend at a station; he sees first the faint smoke like a cloud on the skyline, and then a black speck beneath the smoke, and next the engine draws up on him with a humming of the rails which grows ...
— Riders of the Silences • Max Brand
... located. A serious discussion was held on the train about going to the front and the dangers were depicted quite vividly. We stopped at Chagny, after passing a very old church dating back to the Tenth century. We saw, as we passed along, droves of beautiful white cows, with not a speck of color. ...
— A Journey Through France in War Time • Joseph G. Butler, Jr.
... as he flicked a speck of dust from his sleeve. "I think you will take the easier way. None of these scum will betray you, thinking that you are one of themselves—as I happen to know, some of the best families in Russia are associated ...
— The Book of All-Power • Edgar Wallace
... between the molecules. If a microscope be employed to magnify a minute drop of water it still shows the same lack of structure as that looked at with the unaided eye. If the magnifying power be the highest it may reveal a speck as small as the hundred-thousandth part of an inch, yet the speck looks no different in character. We know that water is composed of two different kinds of atoms, hydrogen and oxygen, for they can ...
— The Machinery of the Universe - Mechanical Conceptions of Physical Phenomena • Amos Emerson Dolbear
... they were not observed by the lookouts. In all probability no signals were given. The little craft was to be at a certain place at a certain hour,—and she was there! The men who jumped knew that she would be there. A black, tiny speck on the broad expanse of water, sheltered by a night of almost stygian darkness, she lay outside the narrow radius to which visual observation was confined, patiently waiting for the Doraine to pass a designated point. There was to be no miscalculation on the ...
— West Wind Drift • George Barr McCutcheon
... suppose you will have seen how England is flooded, and you will like to hear that this tiny speck has escaped. The Lodden is over the park, and turns the beautiful water meadows down to Strathfieldsaye into a no less beautiful lake, two or three times a week; but then it subsides as quickly as it rises, so there is none of the lying under water which ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields
... when we were in Geneva, you know, and we used to call him 'our mountain boy,' saying that he had brought a speck of the mountain skies away ...
— Tell England - A Study in a Generation • Ernest Raymond
... to the Dents de Loup wound upward like a single filament flung round the mountains by some giant spider. The miniature train, edging its way along the track, appeared no more than a mere speck as it crept tortuously up towards the top. At its rear puffed a small engine, built in a curious tilted fashion, so that as it laboured industriously behind the coaches of the train it reminded one ridiculously of a baby elephant on ...
— The Vision of Desire • Margaret Pedler
... and goes out. Day is breaking; but Captain Boyton is not discernable yet. Over the gray waters one sees through a good glass, the white fringe of surf breaking on the sandy beach, which is lined by a black mass of people behind whom is burning a large bonfire. A speck is at length made out to the right of the boat, 'three points off,' as the white haired old salt on board remarks. The sky gets lighter, the sea deep blue. We can now plainly see the dauntless Captain paddling actively away toward us, riding buoyantly over the swelling ...
— The Story of Paul Boyton - Voyages on All the Great Rivers of the World • Paul Boyton
... Stanley," cried Granville; "look! follow that high-flown hawk—that black speck in the clouds. Now! now! right over the heron; and now she will canceleer—turn on her wing, Miss Stanley, as she comes down, whirl round, and balance herself—chanceler. ...
— Helen • Maria Edgeworth
... about, and clomb Ev'n to the highest he could climb, and saw, Straining his eyes beneath an arch of hand, Or thought he saw, the speck ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 5 • Charles Sylvester
... on. The Eagle was now a mere blot on the surface of the ocean—a speck of blackness amid a swirl of foam, caused by the waves breaking over the ship and the reef. The wind continued too high to risk raising the sail with which each boat was provided, and it was ...
— Bob the Castaway • Frank V. Webster
... he heard them not) Hath been greeted with honied words, And his cheeks have been fondled to win a smile By the Privy Council Lords. Will he trust the "charmer" in after years, And deem he is more than man? Or will he feel that he's but a speck In creation's mighty plan? Let us hope the best, and rattle our bell, And shout and laugh, and sing as well— Roo-too-tooit! Shallabella! Life to the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, November 13, 1841 • Various
... malaria, we should find in each of these examples an evidence of the degree to which nature, in some few instances, concentrates powerful qualities in minute or subtile forms of matter. But if a man comes to me with a pestle and mortar in his hand, and tells me that he will take a little speck of some substance which nobody ever thought to have any smell at all, as, for instance, a grain of chalk or of charcoal, and that he will, after an hour or two of rubbing and scraping, develop in a portion of it an ...
— Medical Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... the shore a heron flew, And from a speck on high, That hovered in the deepening blue, We heard the ...
— The Great War As I Saw It • Frederick George Scott
... face and stooped over to flick an imaginary particle of dust from his trousers' leg. There was but one object in their going and he had not dreamed of being asked what it was. He could not be employed forever in brushing away that speck, and yet he could not, to save his life, construct an answer to Veath's question. In the midst of his despair a sudden resolution came, and he looked up, his ...
— Nedra • George Barr McCutcheon
... a distance above it of from ten to twelve feet. Huge rocks would be covered six or eight inches deep with them. Occasionally they would light upon a tree, and in a few moments the tree or bush would be absolutely covered, every speck of foliage hidden. It was difficult to breathe without inhaling them, and we were kept busy brushing them from our faces and clothes. They were all traveling in one direction—down stream. I believe that they had been into the canyons laying their eggs, and were returning to the valleys. All afternoon ...
— Out of Doors—California and Oregon • J. A. Graves
... up, and, making our way to a clear space on the very summit of the hill, looked abroad at the scene. Seaward, the ocean stretched away, a vast plain of delicate blue, to the horizon, and some twenty miles in the offing we made out a speck of white, gleaming in the brilliant morning sun, which we decided must be the schooner. Then, turning our backs upon the sea, we had the hilly foreground of the island before us, sloping away to right and left and in front of us down to the smooth, placid waters of the ...
— The Log of a Privateersman • Harry Collingwood
... said Nathanael. "See what numbers of them—numbers, yet how few they seem!—are moving up and down on this highway of all nations. Look, Agatha, at that one, a mere speck, dipping in ...
— Agatha's Husband - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik (AKA: Dinah Maria Mulock)
... of me! I've hed too much. I ain't a speck thankful! I'm mightily t'other thing, whatever 'tis. Write to her yourself, if you're a mind tu. You can make a better fist at it, anyways. Comes as nateral to women to lie as sap to run. I'll be etarnally blessed ef I touch paper for to do it." And he flung out of ...
— The Wit of Women - Fourth Edition • Kate Sanborn
... again at the water in bewilderment, as if her senses were the victim of some sleight of hand. Not a speck or spot resembling a man's head or face showed anywhere. By this time she was alarmed, and her alarm intensified when she perceived a little beyond the scene of her husband's bathing a small area of water, the quality of whose surface differed ...
— Victorian Short Stories, - Stories Of Successful Marriages • Elizabeth Gaskell, et al.
... could see, way up in the middle of the sky, and right on a line with his eye, Ole Robber Hawk himself, or else one of his relatives or friends. He was brown, of course, but against the blue of the sky he looked like a little black speck with a couple of ...
— Half-Past Seven Stories • Robert Gordon Anderson
... resting on its edge. The night was dark throughout the forest, and overhead; the little circle of light within which I stood, seemed like a magician's ring, sacred and safe from evil spirits that filled the air around. It was as the speck of Time amid the ocean of Eternity — as Hope, bright and solitary in the midst of unfathomable darkness. There I felt safe and secure — but without — who might tell what spirits roamed abroad, melancholy and malignant? Peering into that dark boundary of forest, the eye vainly endeavoured to pierce ...
— The Bushman - Life in a New Country • Edward Wilson Landor
... along, Borrow's eyes, which were as long-sighted as a gypsy's, perceived a white speck in a twisted old hawthorn bush some distance off. He stopped and said: "At first I thought that white speck in the bush was a piece of paper, but it's a magpie," next to the water- wagtail the gypsies' most famous bird. On going up to the bush they discovered a magpie crouched among the leaves. As ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... solitary progress, watching the small boat as it glided towards the open ocean, nor did he remember to order the head-sheets of the Alacrity drawn, in order to put the vessel again in motion, until the dark speck was lost in the strong glare that fell obliquely across the ...
— The Pilot • J. Fenimore Cooper
... down again close to him, her face brimming with a humorous enthusiasm. Humour in Riseholme was apt to be a little unkind; if you mentioned the absurdities of your friends, there was just a speck of malice in your wit. But with her there was none of that, she gave an imitation of Mrs Weston with the most ruthless fidelity, and yet it was kindly to the bottom. She liked her for talking in that emphatic voice and being so particular ...
— Queen Lucia • E. F. Benson
... first time Wilhelm heard the boy's lips utter his father's exclamation. Some great emotion must have stirred his heart, and in truth he was not mistaken; the speck piercing the air, which his keen eye had discovered, was no longer a mere spot, but an oblong something—a ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... boat flotilla that accompanied us during the last two days was made up mostly of American and British destroyers, though there were two French boats among them. They made a lively scene, and surely gave us great protection. If a speck would appear on the horizon, two boats would be off to investigate it, and would return later to join the fleet. We were also accompanied on the last day of the voyage by two airplanes as a further ...
— In the Flash Ranging Service - Observations of an American Soldier During His Service - With the A.E.F. in France • Edward Alva Trueblood
... orphans sank to sleep All on the freezing deck; Close huddled side to side—each arm Clasp'd round the other's neck. With heads bent down, they dream'd the earth Was fading to a speck. ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, July, 1850. • Various
... arms upwards and his hands were immediately filled with the fruit. At another time this magician left his overcoat by mistake in a railway carriage, and only remembered it when the train was a mere speck upon the horizon; but, on the utterance of certain words, the coat immediately flew through the air back ...
— The Treasury of Ancient Egypt - Miscellaneous Chapters on Ancient Egyptian History and Archaeology • Arthur E. P. B. Weigall
... should have started triumphantly: but to lie here, two hours and more in the damp fog, neither staying at home nor going abroad, is letting one gradually down into the very depths of dulness and low spirits. A speck in the mist, at last! That's something. It is the boat we wait for! That's more to the purpose. The captain appears on the paddle-box with his speaking trumpet; the officers take their stations; all hands are on the alert; the flagging hopes of the passengers revive; the ...
— American Notes for General Circulation • Charles Dickens
... size of vessels and their swifter trips under steam, have had the effect of depopulating the ocean, even in established trade routes. In the old days of ocean travel the meeting of a ship at sea was an event long to be remembered. The faint speck on the horizon, discernible only through the captain's glass, was hours in taking on the form of a ship. If a full-rigged ship, no handiwork of man could equal her impressiveness as she bore down before the wind, sail ...
— American Merchant Ships and Sailors • Willis J. Abbot
... the newly-blossomed flowers with the same message retold and the same assurance renewed that death eternally dies, that the waves of turmoil are on the surface, and that the sea of tranquillity is fathomless. The curtain of night is drawn aside and truth emerges without a speck of dust on its garment, without a furrow of age on ...
— Sadhana - The Realisation of Life • Rabindranath Tagore
... threateningly out as if to grasp the land and drag it back into the lurid sea of blood; altogether a cruel, weird-looking scene, fantastic, unreal, and bizarre as one of Dore's marvellous conceptions. Suddenly on the red waters there appeared a black speck, rising and falling with the restless waves, and ever drawing nearer and nearer to the gloomy cliffs and sandy beach. When within a quarter of a mile of the shore, the speck resolved itself into a boat, a mere shallop, painted a dingy white, and much battered by the waves as it tossed ...
— Madame Midas • Fergus Hume
... that support it; for he only knows the secret of their machinery. He has left the place for the night. He lives three miles and a half away, at a little village yonder, which looks only a black speck in the distance, and he will not return till some time ...
— Run to Earth - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... fail to find in Shakspeare some allusion to these connected images in the old tongue; no speck of beauty could exist and escape ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 193, July 9, 1853 • Various
... was a satisfaction to know that thus far the gloomy forebodings of the Seer had not been fulfilled. On looking out through a six-inch rose-window, I saw joyous daylight dancing over the boundless, placid waters,—not a speck of land in sight. We must have started long since; but my eyes, fast sealed under the opiate rays of the Luminary, had hitherto refused to ope their lids to the garish beams of his rival. Soon I heard beneath a rustling snap, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... yet left us, a sail had been discerned from the fore-top-mast-head, at a great distance, probably three leagues or more. At first it was a mere speck, altogether out of sight from the deck. By the force of attraction, or something else equally inscrutable, two ships in a calm, and equally affected by the currents, will always approximate, more or less. Though there was not a breath of wind, it was ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville
... you, had been saved from the heat of the season by a breeze which blew from the water and once or twice even reached the velocity of a storm wind. A hundred times I had looked out my office window and a hundred times I had seen that not one speck of cloud showed in the sky. Yet all day long, while I tried to work, only to find myself all on edge with expectancy, I could hear the flap and rustle of the American flag on the Custom-House roof, which was straining at its cords and lashing ...
— The Blue Wall - A Story of Strangeness and Struggle • Richard Washburn Child
... that dot, that speck of land— It goes not from your portion. If you win The game, what matters it to you ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... laugh. "You talk sometimes like one's grandfather. I suppose that is because you became a student of philosophy at a tender age. Yes, your master has found me again; but after all, what is a woman? Just a speck of dust on top of ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke
... baseness, I have long deferred what I am now shameless enough to do,—moved thereto most of all by the duty of fidelity which I acknowledge that I owe to your most Reverend Fatherhood in Christ. Meanwhile, therefore, may your Highness deign to cast an eye upon one speck of dust, and for the sake of your pontifical ...
— Works of Martin Luther - With Introductions and Notes (Volume I) • Martin Luther
... cliff; I hear the sound Of dashing waves; I gaze intent around; I mark the gray cope, and the hollowness Of heaven, and the great sun, that comes to bless The isles again; but my long-straining eye, No speck, no shadow can, far off, descry, That I might weep tears of delight, and say, It is the bark that bore my child away! Sun, that returnest bright, beneath whose eye The worlds unknown, and out-stretched waters lie, 10 Dost thou behold him now! On some rude shore, Around whose crags the cheerless ...
— The Poetical Works of William Lisle Bowles, Vol. 1 • William Lisle Bowles
... west, though unseen to those upon the raft, the far-piercing gaze of the albatross detects another unusual object upon the surface of the sea. At this distance it appears only a speck not larger than the bird itself, though in reality it is a small boat,—a ship's gig,—in which six men are seated. There has been no attempt to hoist a sail; there is none in the gig. There are oars, but ...
— The Ocean Waifs - A Story of Adventure on Land and Sea • Mayne Reid
... far." Helen still concentrated her attention upon the dusky speck against the blue. "I have no reason for disliking Mr. Thurston; indeed, I do not dislike him and my feeling may be mere jealousy. You give—him—most of your confidences now, and I should hate anybody who divided you ...
— Thurston of Orchard Valley • Harold Bindloss
... ruthless, towards its agents, and yet commonly some discontent had been shown as excuse; but, in this case, no cause was guessed for Holleben's disgrace except the Kaiser's wish to have a personal representative at Washington. Breaking down all precedent, he sent Speck von Sternburg ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams
... "I speck I better be gittin' 'long. Nex' time I see Lucindy, I'm gwine tell 'er w'at Miss Becky say 'bout de queen er spades—dat I is. Ef dat don't tickle 'er, dey ain't no nigger ...
— Free Joe and Other Georgian Sketches • Joel Chandler Harris
... up to her, whinnying softly and looking at her with large expressive eyes. "I haven't anything to give you, poor old boy," she said regretfully, kissing his muzzle and then pushing him away from her. She looked up again into the sky, a dark speck sailed overhead, the slow heavy flight of a vulture. In a few hours he might be picking her bones! Merciful Heavens! Why did such thoughts come into her head? Had she nothing left of the courage that had once been second nature? If she let her nerves get the upper hand she might as well make ...
— The Sheik - A Novel • E. M. Hull
... Ida[32], there was a white Bull, which was the Glory of the Farmer to whom he belonged. This Bull had a beautiful black Speck between his Horns, all the rest of his Body being as white as Milk. With him the Gnossian and Cydonian Heifers were all in love, and eagerly longed to be embraced by him in the tenderest manner in which Bulls embrace the Fair Sex of Cows. Pasiphae, I am very sorry to say it, conceived ...
— The Lovers Assistant, or, New Art of Love • Henry Fielding
... threat of vengeance he brought his stick down on the floor with so vigorous a thump that it had a certain profane effect; then having from under his bushy gray eyebrows gazed at the diminishing group till it was but a dim speck in the distance, he went in muttering, banging the door as if to shut out and reject the sight. His objection might have been intensified had he known that the days were at hand when legislative wisdom would still further reduce this engine of the law, making ...
— The Mystery of Witch-Face Mountain and Other Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock
... with high cheek bones, which were covered with rouge, and her black hair, which was always covered with pomatum, curled onto her forehead. Her eyes would have been handsome, if the right one had not had a speck in it. Her Roman nose came down over a square jaw, where two false upper teeth contrasted strangely with the bad color ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume II (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... sorry,—be sure of that; for he wants his dear 'Whitewash' restored again to the bosom of society, lest the walls of his reputation should by chance suffer from fly-speck." ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various
... of a moment of truce in the midst of war; and this, a spot of beauty in the midst of a sterile desert, was scarce less dear to the imagination. It was a scene which, perhaps, would elsewhere have deserved little notice; but as the single speck, in a boundless horizon, which promised the refreshment of shade and living water, these blessings, held cheap where they are common, rendered the fountain and its neighbourhood a little paradise. Some generous or charitable hand, ere yet ...
— The Talisman • Sir Walter Scott
... "for I was just about stepping down to call you. See that lugger, yonder?" He jerked his thumb over his shoulder at a speck in the grey from which the Van der Werf was now running at something ...
— The White Wolf and Other Fireside Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... nearing the submarine-zone and it was time for the convoying destroyers to arrive. Everybody was peering out ahead, and at last a cry ran along the decks: "There they are!" Jimmie made out a speck of smoke upon the horizon, and saw it turn into a group of swiftly-flying vessels. He marvelled at the skill whereby they had been able to find the transports on this vast and trackless sea; he marvelled ...
— Jimmie Higgins • Upton Sinclair
... and her mother listened with great attention. Then Sarah jumped up, saying she must not let the grass grow under her feet, for she had plenty to do. The whole house was to be got ready; and she would not have a thing out of its place, nor a speck of dust to be found, ...
— The Doll and Her Friends - or Memoirs of the Lady Seraphina • Unknown
... like some one hitting a board with a mallet. Ran outside. One found the aeroplane from the little clouds of shrapnel, for it was flying very high, and was like a speck. Clouds of smoke were rolling from one quarter of the town, and we thought that a big fire was beginning, but it was extinguished. Another aeroplane came later. The guns began long before it could be seen. It dropped ...
— The Luck of Thirteen - Wanderings and Flight through Montenegro and Serbia • Jan Gordon
... would take several trips to transfer us and our baggage. I supposed of course that this would include me, and stood leaning on the rail, watching the first boat with Mr. Shaw, Captain Magnus and the cook, fade to a dark speck on the water, when Mr. Vane ...
— Spanish Doubloons • Camilla Kenyon
... over the railing, a small quiet speck in the moonlight. Marion kept turning her head in her direction. "Our poor little Flossy would not understand much about this experience, I suppose," she said at last; "she is such a child, and yet, I don't know—sometimes I have fancied that she thinks more than we give ...
— Four Girls at Chautauqua • Pansy
... was outer darkness; and whatsoever we do know or shall know of Egyptian Thebes will now be recovered as if from the unswathing of a mummy. Not until a flight of three thousand years has left Thebes the Hekatompylos a dusky speck in the far distance, have we even begun to read her annals, or to understand ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 348 • Various
... and his comrades arrived at the mouth of the Greygoose River and beheld the aspect of the sea, a cry of mingled surprise and disappointment escaped them, but when they had landed and discovered the canoe of the fugitives far away like a speck among the ice-floes, the cry was transmuted into a howl ...
— The Walrus Hunters - A Romance of the Realms of Ice • R.M. Ballantyne
... decay," is in the eye of God and reason, a purer essence than the brightest sun that lights the depths of heaven. The organized human eye, instinct with life and soul, which, gazing through the telescope, travels up to the cloudy speck in the handle of Orion's sword, and bids it blaze forth into a galaxy as vast as ours, stands higher in the order of being than all that host of luminaries. The intellect of Newton which discovered the law ...
— The Uses of Astronomy - An Oration Delivered at Albany on the 28th of July, 1856 • Edward Everett
... on the high hill and did not look away when the bowstrings twanged a third time. As before, he heard the arrows whistle by him, and the shiver came into his blood, but his will did not let it extend to his body. He kept his eyes fixed upon the hill, and suddenly a speck appeared before them. No, it was not a speck, and, incredible as it seemed, Dick was sure that he saw a horseman come around the base of the hill and stop there, gazing into the valley upon the great village and the people thronging about ...
— The Last of the Chiefs - A Story of the Great Sioux War • Joseph Altsheler
... here, and let him graze, while I go over to that camp"—indicating a white speck between the trees—"and then I may inquire if any one has seen a girl like Tavia ...
— Dorothy Dale's Camping Days • Margaret Penrose
... me, who was on my first voyage. What most amazed me was the sight of the great ocean itself, for we were out of sight of land. All round us, on both sides of the ship, ahead and astern, nothing was to be seen but water-water—water; not a single glimpse of green shore, not the smallest island, or speck of moss any where. Never did I realize till now what the ocean was: how grand and majestic, how solitary, and boundless, and beautiful and blue; for that day it gave no tokens of squalls or hurricanes, such ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville
... nations with Adam Smith and Stuart Mill; with the naturalists, to sound the depths of the argument as to the origin of species and the genesis of man; with the astronomers, to leave the narrow bounds of earth, and explore the illimitable spaces of the universe, in which our solar system is but a speck; with the mathematicians, to quit the uncertain realm of speculation and assumption, and plant our feet firmly on the rock of exact science:—to come back anon to lighter themes, and to revel in the grotesque humor of Dickens, the philosophic ...
— A Book for All Readers • Ainsworth Rand Spofford
... they know a great deal," said the doctor, shortly, as he busied himself pressing the sides of a little speck of a wound which pierced the boy's skin, now with one nail, now with both at the same time, and making ...
— Dead Man's Land - Being the Voyage to Zimbambangwe of certain and uncertain • George Manville Fenn
... onward into the black shadow of the hills, within which the town and pier lay invisible, save where a twinkling light gave token of some lonely fisher's wife, watching the weary night through for the boat which would return with dawn. Here and there upon the sea, a black speck marked a herring-boat, drifting with its line of nets; and right off the mouth of the glen, Amyas saw, with a beating heart, a large two-masted vessel lying-to—that must be the "Portugal"! Eagerly he looked up the glen, and ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... the doctor again bid her good-bye and started on his way, while Heidi remained looking after him and waving her hand as long as a speck of him could be seen. As the doctor turned for the last time and looked back at the waving Heidi and the sunny mountain, he said to himself, "It is good to be up there, good for body and soul, and a man might learn how to be happy ...
— Heidi • Johanna Spyri
... speed, it took us two days, Earth time, to come close enough to Hydrot so that we could locate the unfortunate Kabit. She had landed on a level plain near the shore of the new continent, where she lay, just a tiny bright speck, even under the maximum ...
— The Terror from the Depths • Sewell Peaslee Wright
... and git so hungry I could stan it no longer. Den I goes out to find someting to eat. Den somebody sees me, and dey follow me wid de dogs. I done kill two of dem dogs, and I kill de rest, but I hear de men coming, and I run for de lake. I speck, when I git in de water, to frow de dogs off de scent, but dey git so near dey see and hear me. Dem's mighty fine nigger dogs, or dey never follor me into de water. I done gib it all up when I hear dem ...
— Watch and Wait - or The Young Fugitives • Oliver Optic
... fugitive it was his intention, as an earnest or token of his displeasure, to eat that Injun's liver raw. Some versions say he mentioned liver rare, but the commonly accepted legend has it that the word used was raw. With this he put the spur to his steed's flank and was soon but a mere moving speck ...
— One Third Off • Irvin S. Cobb
... never been to but two or three real dancing-parties in my life. Why, I've only just outgrown children's parties. I may get tired of it all, after two or three seasons, but as yet it's such a novelty to me that I enjoy every speck ...
— Patty's Summer Days • Carolyn Wells
... Then there was a speck of white cloudiness in the late afternoon sky. It grew swiftly in size, and a winking blue-white light appeared in its center. That light grew brighter—and the noise managed somehow to increase—and presently the ruddy sunlight ...
— The Pirates of Ersatz • Murray Leinster
... and floated in tangled wreaths upon the face of the sea. Only that line of sand seemed still clear-cut and distinct, and as she glanced along it her eyes were held by something approaching, something which seemed at first nothing but a black, moving speck, then gradually resolved itself into the semblance of a man on horseback, galloping furiously. She watched him as he drew nearer and nearer, the sand flying from his horse's hoofs, his figure motionless, his eyes apparently fixed upon some distant spot. It was not until he had come within fifty ...
— The Zeppelin's Passenger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... see, Marcia—" he bit his lip, reddened and came to a full stop, searching my face with a quick glance, but he found me elaborately removing a speck of ...
— Paradise Garden - The Satirical Narrative of a Great Experiment • George Gibbs
... back as if to prevent himself from pitching forward on his face. The three walked slowly along, sometimes sitting down by the wayside to rest, and all the while straining their eyes to catch the first glimpse of the rider. As soon as he appeared, looking like a black speck on the white road, they waved their handkerchiefs, and he at once put his horse at a gallop, and came up like a whirlwind, frightening his mother and Aunt Lison, and making his grandfather exclaim, "Bravo!" in the admiration of impotent ...
— The works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 5 (of 8) - Une Vie and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant 1850-1893
... Don't let's pretend about that even.... Let's go on watching him. (I don't see why her writing shouldn't be better. Indeed I don't.) See! There he goes down along the Embankment to Westminster just like a real man, for all that he's smaller than a grain of dust. What is running round inside that speck of a head of his? Look at him going past the Policemen, specks too—selected large ones from the country. I think he's going to dinner with the Speaker—some old thing like that. Is his face harder or commoner or stronger?—I can't quite see.... And now ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells
... trifles, and would have been unworthy of notice had they not resembled the small cloudy speck, which, though scarcely visible in the distant horizon, approaches, and swells, and bursts over the head in a storm. The beginning contest between the Earl and the Mowbray family, the interest which the worthy Mr. Glibly had thought proper to take in me and my affairs, ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... they arrived at the little Highland station. As he stepped out of the carriage with jingling spurs he was greeted by Grey Bob, who stood impatiently pawing the platform. Flicking a speck of dust from his favourite's glossy neck, Ralph leaped lightly into the saddle and cantered out of ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, September 9, 1914 • Various
... mass of long-winded ceremonial nothingnesses, and intricate Belleisle cobwebberies, we seize this one poor speck of human foolery in the native state, as almost the memorablest in that stupendous business. Stupendous indeed; with which all Germany has been in travail these sixteen months, on such terms! And in verity has got the thing called "German ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... as Mont Blanc knows that he is going to be climbed by a party below. He sees a speck or two in ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... and dimmer, and, one by one, disappeared. Finally, a yellow rind, haloed in mist, was thrust above the level of the prairie. As Dallas greeted it, the distant ridge of a snow-drift, rose-tinged like the sky, hid the crawling speck that was ...
— The Plow-Woman • Eleanor Gates
... long as the wind's blowin' as 'tis now, an' I guess it allers does blow that way, round this speck of an island. It must be all o' five mile to that land either side, an' in their rickety canoes the Feweegins never venture fur out in anythin' o' a rough sea. I calculate, Captain, we needn't trouble ourselves much about 'em—leastways, ...
— The Land of Fire - A Tale of Adventure • Mayne Reid
... chemical atom is so infinitesimally small that it requires a group of not less than a billion to make the group barely visible under the most powerful microscope, and a thousand such groups would have to be put together in order to make it just visible to the naked eye as a mere speck ...
— Communism and Christianism - Analyzed and Contrasted from the Marxian and Darwinian Points of View • William Montgomery Brown
... heat, Fell burning where the waves had beat With restless motion, against the shore, And music like unto that of yore, When a tiny speck in the clouds she saw, Moving and nearing the pleasant land Quietly, swiftly, as by a law. Screening her brown eyes with her hand, She saw it strike the pebbled sand, And heard a glad shout cleave the air, And saw a noble, manly form, With ...
— The Poets and Poetry of Cecil County, Maryland • Various
... again, how his father saw him a long way off. Well, she was just like that when she'd heard that he was landed in England; she did nought but sit over the bent of the hill yonder, peering along the road to Botfield; and one evening at sundown she saw something, little more than a speck upon the turf, and she'd a feeling come over her that it was he, and she fainted for real joy. After all, we weren't much happier when we were settled down like. Grandfather had learned to tend sheep out yonder, and I worked at Botfield; but we never laid by money to ...
— Fern's Hollow • Hesba Stretton
... the onlookers to see the distance increase between the giant ship and that bobbing, lonely speck far out in the ...
— Baseball Joe Around the World - Pitching on a Grand Tour • Lester Chadwick
... one in the face with a cold, steady gaze amounting to a positive prohibition—no, the thing was impossible! I saw plainly that a good, old-fashioned squirt of tobacco-juice would ruin such a country as this, where every room in every house was inimical to the habit, and every speck of ground throughout the length and breadth of the land adapted to some useful or ornamental purpose. Why, sir, I assure you that in the little duchy of Nassau—where it is said the grand-duke is ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne
... after they pass. Often they disappear from view, not because they have passed a horizon line, but simply because they have passed out of the range of my vision-? becoming smaller and smaller, until they seem no bigger than a tiny bird, so small that if I take my eyes off the speck in the sky I cannot find it again. It is awe-compelling to remember how these cars in the air change all military tactics. It will be almost impossible to make any big movement that may not ...
— A Hilltop on the Marne • Mildred Aldrich
... the incident in his pocket-book and was about to resume his beat when he was joined by his inspector. The latter agreed that the conclusion arrived at by the constable was probably the right one and they were about to pass on when the inspector noticed a small speck of light shining through the lower part of the painted window, where a small piece of the paint had either been scratched or had shelled off the glass. He knelt down and found that it was possible to get a view of the interior of the office, and as he peered through he gave a low exclamation. ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell
... in that age regarded, even by grave men, as the most venial of all peccadilloes, and was so far from being a mark of ill-breeding that it was almost essential to the character of a fine gentleman. But the smallest speck is seen on a white ground; and almost all the biographers of Addison have said something about this failing. Of any other statesman or writer of Queen Anne's reign, we should no more think of saying that he sometimes took too much wine, than that he wore a long wig ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... life. The first plantation I visited was about five or six miles from Eufaula, and I should think that the improvement in some of the cabins was not very much in advance of what it was in Slavery. The cabins are made with doors, but not, to my recollection, a single window pane or speck of plastering; and yet even in some of those lowly homes I met with hospitality. A room to myself is a luxury that I do not always enjoy. Still I live through it, and find life rather interesting. The people have much to learn. The condition of the women is not very enviable in some cases. They ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still
... for a long time, but saw nothing else come in sight; and finally he got angry and thought that what had been told him was a lie, and he got up to mount his horse and ride back. Just then he saw, away down, far off on the prairie, a small black speck, but he did not think it was moving, it was so far off,—barely to be seen. He thought maybe it was a rock. He lay down again and took sight on the speck by a straw of grass in front of him, and looked ...
— Blackfoot Lodge Tales • George Bird Grinnell
... this my father's town of Clonbrony?" thought Lord Colambre. "Is this Ireland? No, it is not Ireland. Let me not, like most of those who forsake their native country, traduce it. Let me not, even to my own mind, commit the injustice of taking a speck for the whole. What I have just seen is the picture only of that to which an Irish estate and Irish tenantry may be degraded in the absence of those whose duty and interest it is to reside in Ireland, ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. 6 • Maria Edgeworth
... D'Arcy," he exclaimed at length, in an animated tone, pointing to a white speck just seen above the horizon, which I made out to be a ship's royal. "I knew that Captain Poynder would be up to his time. Now we can depend on help from without, if we can but ...
— Salt Water - The Sea Life and Adventures of Neil D'Arcy the Midshipman • W. H. G. Kingston
... the face and stooped over to flick an imaginary particle of dust from his trousers' leg. There was but one object in their going and he had not dreamed of being asked what it was. He could not be employed forever in brushing away that speck, and yet he could not, to save his life, construct an answer to Veath's question. In the midst of his despair a sudden resolution came, and he looked up, his lips ...
— Nedra • George Barr McCutcheon
... transcending the bounds of the visible and tangible universe, in the desires and cravings of this same human heart; this little human heart beating blindly beneath a waistcoat or a blouse. Its owner is little bigger than a beetle or an ant, and the habitat of that owner is a speck in space; a pygmy in comparison with Sirius or Arcturus, and invisible from ...
— Hints for Lovers • Arnold Haultain
... in a dry gulch near the river bank. We made our camp at this spot and had plenty of wood, water and grass. We found there was something to be learned in the art of gold mining. We had no tools nor money, and had never seen a speck of native gold and did not know how to separate it from the dirt nor where to search for it. We were poor, ignorant emigrants. There were two or three men camped here. One of them was more social than the rest and we soon ...
— Death Valley in '49 • William Lewis Manly
... odorless, rubber-tired battle. So far as we were concerned it consisted of rings of shrapnel smoke floating over a mountain pass many miles distant. So many miles distant that when, with a glass, you could see a speck of fire twinkle in the sun like a heliograph, you could not tell whether it was the flash from the gun or the flame from the shell. Neither could you tell whether the cigarette rings issued from the lips of the Japanese guns or from those of the Russians. The only thing ...
— Notes of a War Correspondent • Richard Harding Davis
... that stretches blue to the eastward there appears a distant canoe, a mere speck, no bigger than a bird far ...
— Indian Child Life • Charles A. Eastman
... and the chill that had begun during the past days to creep about her heart tightened and grew cold, as if it were changing to an icy band, which would freeze her pulses in its tightening clasp. She looked out through the sunshine, watching the light boat till it became a mere speck in the distance, and finally disappeared among the windings of the long curve of land which stretched out ...
— A Noble Woman • Ann S. Stephens
... Senses. In man certain special organs are set apart the particular duty of which is to give information of the nature of the relations which he sustains to the great world of things, and of which he is but a mere speck. The special senses are the avenues by which we obtain this information as to our bodily condition, the world around us, and the manner in ...
— A Practical Physiology • Albert F. Blaisdell
... deep and soundless Came a faint metallic humming; In the sunshine clear and heavy Came a speck, a speck of shadow— Shepherd lift your head and listen, ...
— Georgian Poetry 1916-17 • Various
... captain said, bending over the table and pointing to a black speck in the midst of the white blankness of the chart. "And here, in between, is another island. Why ...
— South Sea Tales • Jack London
... enjoyed hers immensely, and it acted as if it knew who owned it, for it came tumbling down head first when least expected, caught on trees, nearly pitched into the river, and finally darted away to such a height that it looked a mere speck ...
— Little Men - Life at Plumfield With Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott
... or curl. COLOUR—Should be "whole-coloured," the most preferable being bright red, red, wheaten, or yellow red. White sometimes appears on chest and feet; it is more objectionable on the latter than on the chest, as a speck of white on chest is frequently to be seen in all self-coloured breeds. SIZE AND SYMMETRY—The most desirable weight in show condition is, for a dog 24 lb., and for a bitch 22 lb. The dog must present an active, lively, lithe, and wiry appearance; ...
— Dogs and All About Them • Robert Leighton
... commending ourselves to every man's conscience in the sight of God' (2 Cor 4:2). All these sentences are chiefly to be applied to doctrine, and so are, as it were, an offer to any, if they can, to find a speck, or a spot, or a wrinkle, or any such thing in this river of water ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... standing up and looking, 'and that little black speck seems to be Carlo; but surely those can't be Reggie and ...
— The Adventure League • Hilda T. Skae
... "I did see a speck of red through the crack," he confessed after a minute, as if he were unburdening his ...
— The Miller Of Old Church • Ellen Glasgow
... one else will take us in." Margaret helped him anchor, furl the sails, and then they went ashore, pulling the tender far up on the shingle beech beside the lobster-pots. They crossed the field—it was nearly dark and the Swallow was a speck on the dark water beneath—and knocked at ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)
... conscious that he would probably go to heaven if he granted it, and yet not quite able to grant it. Far away though he stands to the left of the good host, he has yet something in common with that third person discernible on the right—that speck yonder, which I believe to be Lucullus. Nothing that we know of Lucullus suggests that he was less inhuman than the churl of Arden. It does not appear that he had a single friend, nor that he wished for one. His lavishness ...
— And Even Now - Essays • Max Beerbohm
... A speck of dust far to the northwest suddenly attracted his attention. Stallings halted his pony, and, sitting in his saddle almost motionless, gazed intently at the tiny point that had come within range of ...
— The Pony Rider Boys in Texas - Or, The Veiled Riddle of the Plains • Frank Gee Patchin
... into the habit of taking him of a morning, walking him about in her arms, crooning sweet nothings over him in her soothing voice. He was old enough to miss her, and to-day was not satisfied at being put off with only nurse. He had, besides, a new tooth coming—a tiny pearly thing, peeping like a speck of ivory from a bed of coral. Very pretty to look at, certainly, but doubtless extremely painful; at least Master Baby felt it so, for he fretted and cried in a way which set poor Perry's nerves all on edge, and made her think ...
— Two Little Travellers - A Story for Girls • Frances Browne Arthur
... the great ships come with their strange men from other ports of the world. I saw them unfurl their snowy sails and speed over the blue waters bound for the shores of other climes. I watched them until they were but a speck of white down on the blue horizon, and I longed to be on board—to feel the ship roll upon the billows and hear the wind whistling through the rigging, to climb aloft and view the limitless expanse of ocean and feel that I was a part of these ...
— Where Strongest Tide Winds Blew • Robert McReynolds
... hours, and though I knew we were getting into dangerous parts again, I hoped we might work through all right. Of course I thought first about my errand, and my mind was on every turn of the road and every speck in the landscape, but all the same there was one corner of it—or of something—that didn't forget that red-headed girl—not an instant. I kept wondering if I'd ever see her again, and I was mighty clear that I would, if there was enough left of me by the time I could get off duty ...
— The Militants - Stories of Some Parsons, Soldiers, and Other Fighters in the World • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews
... him? sure the happy Amelia would not be so selfish to envy me that pleasure. No; not if she was as much the fondest as she is the happiest of women." "Good heavens! madam," said he, "do you call my poor Amelia the happiest of women?" "Indeed I do," answered she briskly. "O Mr. Booth! there is a speck of white in her fortune, which, when it falls to the lot of a sensible woman, makes her full amends for all the crosses which can attend her. Perhaps she may not be sensible of it; but if it had been my blest fate—O Mr. Booth! could I have thought, when we ...
— Amelia (Complete) • Henry Fielding
... kissed the pages of his book and looked up. Far over the flat lay the kopje, a mere speck; the sheep wandered quietly from bush to bush; the stillness of the early Sunday rested everywhere, and ...
— The Story of an African Farm • (AKA Ralph Iron) Olive Schreiner
... more than two years at the farm. I, the pale city lad, had grown brown under the sun's warm kisses. I fancy I was not rosy, but the bright eyes and the clear complexion, free from speck or blemish, gave the certain indications of health. I had tasted of the actual farm work. I had planted beans, potatoes and melons. I had hoed corn, and on my knees weeded, in the broiling sun, ...
— Brook Farm • John Thomas Codman
... this solitary point paid little attention to the rain that ran off the peak of his sailor's cap or to the gusts of wind that blew about his bushy gray beard. He was still following, with an eye accustomed to pick out objects far at sea, one speck of purple that was now fading into the gray mist of the rain; and the longer he looked the less it became, until the mingled sea and sky showed only the smoke that the great steamer left in its wake. As ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 11, No. 24, March, 1873 • Various
... a little speck, And then it seemed a mist; 150 It moved and moved, and took at last ...
— Coleridge's Ancient Mariner and Select Poems • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... right side of the heart, flow through into the upper chamber, then through another door or valve into the lower, where it is pumped out into the lungs. If these lungs are, as they should be, full of pure air, each corpuscle is so charged with oxygen, that the last speck of impurity is burned up, and it goes dancing and bounding on its way. That is what health means: perfect food made into perfect blood, and giving that sense of strength and exhilaration that we none of us know half as much ...
— The Easiest Way in Housekeeping and Cooking - Adapted to Domestic Use or Study in Classes • Helen Campbell
... into invalid habits, and made no effort to rally. If his father urged him to go out—nay, once or twice he gulped down his pride, and asked Osborne to accompany him—Osborne would go to the window and find out some flaw or speck in the wind or weather, and make that an excuse for stopping in the house over his books. He would saunter out on the sunny side of the house in a manner that the squire considered as both indolent and unmanly. Yet ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... on the bridge. Captain Wilson told her that she might safely go to bed again till seven or eight. But she stayed where she was. Mr. Phillips fetched a cup of tea for her at six and another at seven. She drank both and ate a good deal of bread and butter. When at last the island appeared, a dim speck on a clear horizon line, she danced with excitement, and sent Mr. Phillips below to fetch her father. Mr. Donovan was at breakfast, attended by Smith, and flatly refused to stir. Captain Wilson, satisfied that the island lay just where he expected it, left the bridge and joined Mr. Donovan. ...
— The Island Mystery • George A. Birmingham
... their lives, the happiness, expressed in songs or merry gambols or mazy dances, which He has poured into their hearts. The whole earth is full of the glory of God's infinite benignity and good will. Insignificant as I—a speck on earth, and earth itself but a speck in creation—seem to myself when, standing below the starry vault, I look up into the heavens, yet, apart from the thought that I am a sinner, I cannot say, What is man, that thou art mindful of him? How can I, when I see Him mindful of the brood that ...
— The Angels' Song • Thomas Guthrie
... with you! There is no God upon the eternal throne Of stars begemming the bewildering blue Unless one has the eyes to see him. Think How we two stand upon the brink Of nothing! Here's a globe, whereto we trust, No larger than the smallest speck of dust Or mote in the sunbeam is to that sun's self, And we are like dead leaves in autumn's whil ...
— Household Gods • Aleister Crowley
... under the nose of the raccoon. Quick as a flash a little black, hand-like paw was thrust into the water and the big frog was flipped out upon the bank. Having secured it, Ringtail returned to the tip of his log where he proceeded to dip the body of the frog into the water again and again until every speck of leaf mold and dirt was washed away. Then he dispatched it ...
— Followers of the Trail • Zoe Meyer
... sun is sinking; All grows dim, and dies; See, the waves are drinking Glories of the skies. Day's last lustre playeth On that current dark; Yet no speck betrayeth His long looked-for bark. 'Tis the hour of meeting! Nay, the hour is past; Swift the time is fleeting! Fleeteth hope as fast. Still the Gitanilla By the stream doth linger, In the hope that night Will ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth
... road in the gloom moved a dark speck. It couldn't be Father, for he had gone in the machine—the nice, comfortable little car that Stephen had made them get before he went away to college, because he said that Father needed to have things easier ...
— The Witness • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz
... sea and islands shining in the early sunlight, Mr. White and his daughter were down by the shore, walking along the white sands, and chatting idly as they went. From time to time they looked across the fair summer seas to the distant cliffs of Bourg; and each time they looked a certain small white speck seemed coming nearer. That was the Umpire; and Keith Macleod was on board of her. He had started at an unknown hour of the night to bring the yacht over from her anchorage. He would not have his beautiful Fionaghal, who had come as a stranger to these far lands, go back to Dare in a common ...
— Macleod of Dare • William Black
... Just then a tiny speck appears far away on the plain. It is a man travelling towards the water at a swinging trot. Going into the hut, Owen returns with a pair of field-glasses, and through them scrutinises the figure ...
— The Wizard • H. Rider Haggard
... known by our acquired habits or catenated trains of ideas and muscular motions; and perhaps, when we compare infancy with old age, in those alone can our identity be supposed to exist. For what else is there of similitude between the first speck of living entity and the mature man?—every deduction of reasoning, every sentiment or passion, with every fibre of the corporeal part of our system, has been subject almost to annual mutation; while some catenations alone ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. I - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... Mlle. Fanny in the Rue Montmartre, climbed a very steep, narrow staircase, and reached a two-roomed dwelling on the fifth floor. Everything was as neat as a new ducat. I did not see a speck of dust on the furniture in the first room, where Mlle. Fanny was sitting. Mlle. Fanny herself was a young Parisian girl, quietly dressed, with a delicate fresh face, and a winning look. The arrangement of her neatly brushed chestnut hair in a double curve on her forehead lent a refined ...
— Gobseck • Honore de Balzac
... personally, so that we can avoid quibbles about Oliver's legal position, he being a rebel confessed, and the day after he is inlawed I will in my turn convey the property in both kinds to him. When the restitution has been fully and legally made, without speck or flaw in title, and passed as such by my lawyers, the letter will be returned to you sealed as now, and of course I shall be rigidly silent on the matter. Your lordships," he ended coldly, "may start for London at once to see to ...
— The Yeoman Adventurer • George W. Gough
... far as the crest of the hill with Marget, and watched her on the way to the post office till she was only a speck upon the road. ...
— Beside the Bonnie Brier Bush • Ian Maclaren
... speckled mirrors. These had delighted her at first, but in her heart she preferred the battered, makeshift furniture of Cardigan Street. A few licks with the duster and her work was done; but here the least speck of dust showed on the polished surface. Jonah, too, had got into a nasty habit of writing insulting words on the ...
— Jonah • Louis Stone
... of blue above me I perceived a speck, no larger than a mote of dust. The aasvogel on watch up there far out of the range of man's vision had seen the deed, and, by sinking downwards, signalled it to his companions that were quartering the sky for fifty miles round; for these birds prey by sight, not by smell. Down he came and down, ...
— Marie - An Episode in The Life of the late Allan Quatermain • H. Rider Haggard
... which he was placed, Roswell, aided by the glass, had no difficulty in making her out, and in recognising her rig, form, and character. Stimson also examined her, and knew her to be the schooner. On that vast and desolate sea, she resembled a speck, but the art of man had enabled those she held to guide her safely through the tempest, and bring her up to her goal, in a time that really seemed miraculous for ...
— The Sea Lions - The Lost Sealers • James Fenimore Cooper
... quiet, cheerless station, white and solitary in the steppe, with its walls baking in the sun, without a speck of shade, and, it seems, without a human being. The train goes on after leaving one here; the sound of it is scarcely audible and dies away at last. Outside the station it is a desert, and there are no horses ...
— The Duel and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... Edestone, seeming to forget for the moment where he was, as a small speck which represented the approaching airship disclosed itself. "This time in the upper right-hand corner of the picture. See! I am on board, and I am driving her at one hundred and ten miles." And he followed with his pointer the swift course ...
— L. P. M. - The End of the Great War • J. Stewart Barney
... soon to follow it! [He gazes over the Channel.] There's not a speck of an enemy upon that shiny water yet; but the Brest fleet is zaid to have put to sea, to act in concert with the army crossing from Boulogne; and if so the French will soon be here; when God save us all! I've took to drinking neat, for, say I, one may as well have innerds burnt out as ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy
... retained as a relic of an older home. It is quite possible that this home may have been in the neighboring wild and mountainous land of SHUSHAN (Susiana on the maps), whose first known population was also Turanian. These guesses take us into a past, where not a speck of positive fact can be discerned. Yet even that must have been only a station in this race's migration from a far more northern centre. Their written language, even after they had lived for centuries in an almost tropical country, where palms grew in vast groves, ...
— Chaldea - From the Earliest Times to the Rise of Assyria • Znade A. Ragozin
... with our faith. Its ideal perfection would be that it should be unbroken, undashed by any speck of doubt. But the reality is far different. It is no full-orbed completeness, but, at the best, a growing segment of reflected light, with many a rough place in its jagged outline, prophetic of increase; with many a deep pit of blackness on its silver surface; ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Mark • Alexander Maclaren
... disciples on the Mount of Transfiguration. It came not to lift Him on its soft folds to the heavens, but in order that, first, He might be plainly seen till the moment that He ceased to be seen, and might not dwindle into a speck by reason of distance; and secondly, that it might teach the truth, that, as His body was received into the cloud, so He entered into the glory which He 'had with the Father before the world was.' Such was ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... struck and lifted up the stern, so as to enable the seamen to disengage the tackle. The boat being thus dexterously cleared from the ship, was seen after a while from the poop, battling with the billows,—now raised, in its progress to the brig, like a speck on their summit, and then disappearing for several seconds, as if engulfed "in the horrid vale" ...
— The Loss of the Kent, East Indiaman, in the Bay of Biscay - Narrated in a Letter to a Friend • Duncan McGregor
... thrice in a week, no bigger than half your nail, till it has all dissolved in your mouth, and then spit out. This has fortified my teeth, that they are as strong as the pen of Junius.(1061) I learned it of Mrs. Grosvenor, who had not a speck in her teeth to her death. For your other complaints, I revert to my old sermon, temperance. If you will live in a hermitage, methinks it is no great addition to live like a hermit. Look in Sadeler's prints, they had ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... jelly with some power of slightly varying its actions in accordance with slightly varying circumstances and desires—given such a jelly-speck with a power of assimilating other matter, and thus of reproducing itself, given also that it should be possessed of a memory and a reproductive system, and we can show how the whole animal world can have descended it may be from an amoeba without interference from without, ...
— Selections from Previous Works - and Remarks on Romanes' Mental Evolution in Animals • Samuel Butler
... and the destruction they had caused, made his way to the scene of the ruins. He could find no trace of the Godfreys and was returning by the border of the lake to his log cabin, when he saw the sloop far in the distance like a speck on the frozen surface of the lake. He hastened out to where she lay. To his surprise and joy he found out, when nearing the little craft, signs of life on board. Sparks were issuing from the cabin. Very soon he was on board. He was met at the companion-way by the Captain who ...
— Young Lion of the Woods - A Story of Early Colonial Days • Thomas Barlow Smith
... even.... Let's go on watching him. (I don't see why her writing shouldn't be better. Indeed I don't.) See! There he goes down along the Embankment to Westminster just like a real man, for all that he's smaller than a grain of dust. What is running round inside that speck of a head of his? Look at him going past the Policemen, specks too—selected large ones from the country. I think he's going to dinner with the Speaker—some old thing like that. Is his face harder or commoner or stronger?—I can't quite see.... And now he's up and speaking in the House. ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells
... course it was the truth! The attraction of man and woman for each other is fundamental. The whole world of matter, from the speck of dust upwards, is ranged on its side. And yet men would keep it hidden away out of sight, behind a tissue of words; and with home-made sanctions and prohibitions make of it a domestic utensil. Why, it's as absurd as melting down the solar system to make ...
— The Home and the World • Rabindranath Tagore
... quitted the near view, and let his eye run along the edge of the horizon, until it rested upon a small speck, which he knew to be the lofty spire of Saint Paul's Cathedral. If, as he supposed, the Fair Geraldine was in attendance upon Anne Boleyn, at the palace at Bridewell, she must be under the shadow of ...
— Windsor Castle • William Harrison Ainsworth
... it, but that is again looking through another window. We are now considering relativity. If we cut off the very end of the point of the finest needle, we get so minute a particle of steel that it is hardly visible to the naked eye, and yet we know that that small speck contains not only millions but millions of millions of what are called atoms, all in intense motion and never touching each other. Try and conceive how small each of these atoms must be, and then try and grasp the fact, only lately proved by the discovery of Radio-activity, that each of ...
— Science and the Infinite - or Through a Window in the Blank Wall • Sydney T. Klein
... eye than a dog, or a fox, or than any of the wild creatures; but not so sharp an ear or nose. But in the birds he finds his match. How quickly the old turkey discovers the hawk, a mere speck against the sky, and how quickly the hawk discovers you if you happen to be secreted in the bushes, or behind the fence near which he alights! One advantage the bird surely has; and that is, owing to the form, structure, ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... Systems'. The shining belt on the central portion is the 'Mississippi River'. The rough ridge to the right is 'the Allegheny System' of mountains." Then I indicated the location of our larger cities. As I pointed to New York, I saw a mere speck moving. I was convinced that it was one of our large steamships, and as I so explained the astronomer looked at me ...
— Life in a Thousand Worlds • William Shuler Harris
... it was just, but granting justice; granting that it was the method of procedure in warfare, what comfort could that give to those who loved the boy? Peggy was greatly downcast in spirits when, as Harriet's figure became a mere speck on the farther shore, she and her father resumed their journey ...
— Peggy Owen and Liberty • Lucy Foster Madison
... sugar beets and sugar potatoes. There were also orchards of sugar plums and sugar apples and vineyards of sugar grapes. All the trees were sugar, and even the grass was sugar, while sugar grasshoppers hopped about in it. Indeed, Chubbins decided that not a speck of anything beneath the dome of Sugar-Loaf Mountain was anything but pure sugar—unless the inside of the frosted man proved to be ...
— Twinkle and Chubbins - Their Astonishing Adventures in Nature-Fairyland • L. Frank (Lyman Frank) Baum
... which the crew executed immediately. Then the vessel resumed its course, still escorted by the little cutter, which sailed side by side with it, menacing it with the mouths of its six cannon. The boat followed in the wake of the ship, a speck ...
— The Three Musketeers • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... out over the lake now, and awful high, and going fast before the wind, and the doctor was only a speck. And as I stared at that speck away up in the sky I thought this was a mean world to live in. Fur there was the only real friend I ever had, and no way fur me to help him. He had learnt me to read, and bought me good clothes, and made me know ...
— Danny's Own Story • Don Marquis
... exclaimed Holden. "I reckon all that man can endure as not to be compared with the crown of glory that awaits him who shall gain entrance into the Kingdom. What is this speck we call life? Mark," he continued, taking up a pebble and dropping it into the water, "it is like the bubble that rises to burst, or the sound of my voice that dies as soon away. Thereon waste I not a thought, except to prepare me for the coming ...
— The Lost Hunter - A Tale of Early Times • John Turvill Adams
... and he had a fine taste in painting, prints, architecture, and gardening. With such a fund of knowledge, his conversation must have been equally instructing and entertaining; but he was also a good man, a man of virtue and humanity. There is no character without some speck, some imperfection; and I think the greatest defect in his was an affectation in delicacy, or rather effeminacy, and a visible fastidiousness, or contempt and disdain of his inferiours in science. He also had, in some degree, that ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes - Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II • Samuel Johnson
... scene were sombre—the brown of the earth, the faded yellow of the dead stubble, the grey of the myriad of undulating backs. Only on the far side of the herd, erect, motionless—a single note of black, a speck, a dot—the shepherd stood, leaning upon an empty water-trough, solitary, ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris
... the speck presented by the reefed top-sail of the corvette had sunk beneath the horizon, in the southern board, and that ship was seen no longer. Several islands had been passed, looking tranquil and smiling amid the fury of the tempest; but it was impossible to haul up for any one among them. ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... leaned over the railing, a small quiet speck in the moonlight. Marion kept turning her head in her direction. "Our poor little Flossy would not understand much about this experience, I suppose," she said at last; "she is such a child, and yet, I don't know—sometimes I have fancied that she thinks ...
— Four Girls at Chautauqua • Pansy
... of your behavior that morning, aren't you?" she continued. "Not a bit ashamed; not one speck regretful!" ...
— Bred of the Desert - A Horse and a Romance • Marcus Horton
... Suddenly a speck of light shone out far ahead in the darkness. It flickered for a second and then disappeared. In a moment or two it appeared again, and then disappeared in the same way. I drew my lady's ...
— Tales From Scottish Ballads • Elizabeth W. Grierson
... moment, watching with fascinated eyes the speck of scarlet that still trembled in the sunshine. It fluttered from sight at last, and with ...
— The Keeper of the Door • Ethel M. Dell
... looking for a speck of dust on the mantelpiece, not for its own intrinsic value, but for the sake of Mary's future. She had apparently no observation of value to offer upon the ...
— The Grey Lady • Henry Seton Merriman
... he paced his deck, And peered through darkness. Ah, that night. Of all dark nights! And then a speck— A light! A light! At last a light! It grew, a starlit flag unfurled! It grew to be Time's burst of dawn. He gained a world; he gave that world Its grandest lesson: "On! ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes
... "Have you found a speck, Arthur?" asked Langdon. "If I hadn't seen you risk your life fifteen or twenty thousand times ...
— The Star of Gettysburg - A Story of Southern High Tide • Joseph A. Altsheler
... with a scornful laugh. "I spoke, sir, of the mission of that small speck on the earth's broad surface, of which you think so much, and ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope
... see me 'way down here," said Helen, shaking her head. "They wouldn't notice such a speck on the lake." ...
— Ruth Fielding and the Gypsies - The Missing Pearl Necklace • Alice B. Emerson
... know, Whom Providence does not assign A parent excellent as mine! That faith beyond, above mistrust, That gratitude, so wholly just, Each several, crowding claim forgot, Whose source was light, without a blot; No moment of unkindness shrouding, No speck of anger overclouding: An awful and a sweet controul, A rainbow arching o'er the soul; A soothing, tender thrill, which clung Around the heart, while, all unstrung, The thought was still, ...
— The Lay of Marie • Matilda Betham
... I watched her with my wild-beast eyes. If I had seen one paltering with duty—if I had witnessed one flickering shadow of untruth in word or action—if, more than all things, my woman's instinct had ever been conscious of the faintest speck of impurity in thought, or word, or look, my old hate would have flamed out with the flame of hell! my contempt would have turned to loathing disgust, instead of my being full of pity, and the stirrings ...
— Ruth • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... recently. But close by, behind the horizontal branch of the great oak, was a tangled patch of undergrowth and brambles, broken and pressed down in places, as though it had been entered by a human being. As Colwyn was looking at this place, his eye was attracted by a yellow speck in the background of green. It was a tiny fragment of khaki, caught on one of ...
— The Hand in the Dark • Arthur J. Rees
... Abe. We are a good deal above the present bed of the stream, and should probably have to sink a considerable distance before we got down to paying ground; that young fellow said they have hardly found a speck of gold. It would be a risky thing to do; still, we can think it over, ...
— Captain Bayley's Heir: - A Tale of the Gold Fields of California • G. A. Henty
... was limited, as on Earth. A great star winked into view in the east. It was as bright as Venus seen from Earth. It had a just-perceptible disk. Close to it, infinitely small, there was a speck of light which seemed somehow like a star. Cochrane squinted at it. He thought of the great gas-giant world he'd seen out a port on the way here. It had an attendant moon-world which itself had icecaps and seas and continents. He ...
— Operation: Outer Space • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... universal chaos, no more than a speck of helpless dust amid the whirling wheels of Nature's inexplicable machinery, and clung the tighter to the simple fundamental facts of which his heart was sure—behind and above all this was God, who held all these things in His hand. And over ...
— A Maid of the Silver Sea • John Oxenham
... (though even this is of a mystical and indirect kind), there is ample evidence that Fielding probably thought that it was better to be Tom Jones than to be an utter coward and sneak. There is simply not one rag or thread or speck of evidence to show that Fielding thought that it was better to be Tom Jones than to be a good man. All that he is concerned with is the description of a definite and very real type of young man; the young man whose passions and whose selfish necessities sometimes seemed to be stronger ...
— All Things Considered • G. K. Chesterton
... object to that term, foliated— granite, being formed of the same materials as granite, namely, feldspar, quartz, and mica. In the specimen in Figure 622, the white layers consist almost exclusively of granular feldspar, with here and there a speck of mica and grain of quartz. The dark layers are composed of grey quartz and black mica, with occasionally a grain of feldspar intermixed. The rock splits most easily in the plane of these darker layers, and the surface thus exposed is almost entirely covered ...
— The Student's Elements of Geology • Sir Charles Lyell
... tremor takes the last long plunge as Curtius may have done when the gulf was open in the Forum and he rode down the Aventine and spurred out into thin air to fulfil the omens of the augurs and save the perilled life of Rome,—he was just feeling and saying this, when a dark speck appeared at the very edge of the green. It was a log, perhaps fifteen or twenty feet in length, over the Fall!—a mere log, nothing in another place, but everything in the place it for that moment occupied. For one instant he saw it hang trembling on the verge, then for another its dark outlines ...
— Shoulder-Straps - A Novel of New York and the Army, 1862 • Henry Morford
... with coming daylight as he rode plashing across the stream and up the opposite bank. She watched hint, rubbing the blinding mist from her eyes, until horse and man became a mere dark speck, finally fading away completely into the dull plain ...
— Keith of the Border • Randall Parrish
... were motionless, their majestic billows glowing in the sun. She saw a Mexican eagle swoop over the cloud, sailing on slow wing high above it, and growing so distant in her vision that he became a mere speck moving in the limitless ...
— 'Drag' Harlan • Charles Alden Seltzer
... to the shore, and looked out to sea. They could still see the ship, but it was already becoming a speck ...
— Brave and Bold • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... unable to detect a diminution of his store ...."—after reading this, to see the men of science still maintaining their theory of "a hot globe cooling," one may be excused for feeling surprised at such inconsistency. Verily is that great physicist right in viewing the sun itself as "a speck in infinite extension—a mere drop in the Universal sea;" and saying that, "to Nature nothing can be added; from Nature nothing can be taken away; the sum of her energy is constant, and the utmost man ...
— Five Years Of Theosophy • Various
... of the able and daring generals who had served him in so many fields. But Stuart, the gay and brilliant, the medieval knight who had such a strong place in the commander-in-chief's affections, was there. Nor was his plumage one bit less splendid. The yellow feather stood in his hat. There was no speck or stain on the broad yellow sash and his undimmed ...
— The Shades of the Wilderness • Joseph A. Altsheler
... at Venning, and the boy noticed that the pupils of the eyes had a white speck, which gave to ...
— In Search of the Okapi - A Story of Adventure in Central Africa • Ernest Glanville
... city should be saved because of its ten just men, than for society, if society were to depend on ten who were not snobs. All this arose from the keenness of his vision into that which was really mean. But that keenness became so aggravated by the intenseness of his search that the slightest speck of dust became to his eyes as a foul stain. Public[o]la, as we saw, damned one poor man to a wretched immortality, and another was called pitilessly over the coals, because he had mixed a grain of flattery with a bushel ...
— Thackeray • Anthony Trollope
... this would give him about a mile or more start of me. I hurried on, but failed to overtake him. At the end of an hour I rode to the top of a hill which commanded a view of the course he should have taken. Not a moving speck was to be seen. I knew then that he had gone astray. But in ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke
... them until they had shrunk to a mere moving speck against the sky, then he crossed the sand creek and climbed the hill. When he reached the gate the front of the house was dark, but a light was shining from the side windows. The pigs were squealing in the hog corral, and Nils could see a tall ...
— The Troll Garden and Selected Stories • Willa Cather
... superior gentleman who introduced them to him had a slightly dimmed and tarnished appearance as he sat beside his friends. There was an immaculate finish and newness about all their appointments—not a speck upon their linen, nor a grain of dust upon their broadcloth and polished boots. If the theory be true that character is shown in dress, these men, outwardly so spotless, must be worthy of the confidence with which they had inspired their new acquaintance. They ...
— A Knight Of The Nineteenth Century • E. P. Roe
... truly warned so I might make preparation. I determined on the morrow to seize the ship and retain it for my own use. All owners of boats had long since fled the land. The next morning when I awoke the ship was a distant speck upon the growing ocean. It seemed the gods of some few others ...
— Chit-Chat; Nirvana; The Searchlight • Mathew Joseph Holt
... Captain Boyton is not discernable yet. Over the gray waters one sees through a good glass, the white fringe of surf breaking on the sandy beach, which is lined by a black mass of people behind whom is burning a large bonfire. A speck is at length made out to the right of the boat, 'three points off,' as the white haired old salt on board remarks. The sky gets lighter, the sea deep blue. We can now plainly see the dauntless Captain paddling actively away toward us, riding buoyantly over the swelling waves, and making good ...
— The Story of Paul Boyton - Voyages on All the Great Rivers of the World • Paul Boyton
... smells—and the toys, too!" Ann said. "Sort of queer and yet sweet, like mother's glove case. I think she said it was sandal-wood. That set must have been a darling when it was new, but there's only just a speck of blue left and the gilt is every bit gone. These must be Aunt Jane's toys that she had ...
— The Wonderful Bed • Gertrude Knevels
... chasing the Wild Goose will do the Incognitans all the good in the galaxy, it will take their minds off controversies over interhemispherical trade and put them on to the quest of the Unobtainable; they will get to know something of the Universe outside their own little speck. Mr. Yardo has seen a good deal of the Universe in the course of advising on how to recondition space-packed meat and he found it ...
— The Lost Kafoozalum • Pauline Ashwell
... many miles away, a speck on the dusty carpet of the desert, something moved! Hours must elapse before that tiny figure, provided it were approaching, could reach the solitary palm. Delightedly, Rita contemplated the infinity of time. Even if the figure moved ever so ...
— Dope • Sax Rohmer
... this labyrinth that I don't know when I would have found my way out if I had not heard a little animal—I don't know what it was —scurrying away in front of me. I followed it, and eventually saw a little speck of light. That proved to be the hole through which ...
— The Vizier of the Two-Horned Alexander • Frank R. Stockton
... then. We would walk for hours together, walk in complete silence and understanding. My strength seemed to be returning more day by day. We went far afield in search of material for her thesis. She would track down the most minute speck of hearsay, to ...
— Each Man Kills • Victoria Glad
... there are some doves." No wild beast haunt the environs; they cannot get at the water. The people keep a few sheep, goats, and fowls. There are also a dozen or so of camels. It is remarkable that the soil of this speck of vegetable existence is entirely sandy, and all the water comes out of the sand. But in places, indeed, on the coast of Barbary, the finest and most vigorous vegetation often bursts forth out of a purely sandy soil. By the time all the ghafalah had taken their ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... its ears erect, and he followed its gaze to see on the plain's trail, far over near where it melted into the foothills, a moving speck crawling toward him. ...
— The Range Boss • Charles Alden Seltzer
... deceived by the applause that the public gave to an acquisition so beautiful and so unique. This diamond was called the "Regent." It is of the size of a greengage plum, nearly round, of a thickness which corresponds with its volume, perfectly white, free from all spot, speck, or blemish, of admirable water, and weighs more than 500 grains. I much applauded myself for having induced the Regent to make so ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... small patch of cultivated ground, hemmed in on every side by dense and lofty woods, which spread their waving shadows for miles and miles away to the north and south, to the east and west, with only here and there, at wide intervals, a similar clearing, or a natural glade to speck ...
— The Red Moccasins - A Story • Morrison Heady
... stop to speak to him. And then, when our pilgrim looked up, he saw a gentleman standing beside him to whom he was ashamed to speak. For the gentleman had no burden on his back, and he did not go over the plain laboriously. There was not a spot or a speck, a rent or a wrinkle on all his fine raiment. He could not have been better appointed if he had just stepped out of the gate at the head of the way; they can wear no cleaner garments than his in the Celestial City itself. 'How now, good fellow? Whither away ...
— Bunyan Characters - First Series • Alexander Whyte
... how the blind develop an unusually keen sense of hearing; for there, in the blackness, which (at first) was entirely unrelieved by any speck of light, I became aware of the fact, by dint of tense listening, that Smith was retiring by means of some gateway at the upper end of the little garden, and I became aware of the fact that a lane or court, with which this gateway communicated, gave ...
— The Hand Of Fu-Manchu - Being a New Phase in the Activities of Fu-Manchu, the Devil Doctor • Sax Rohmer
... halted, and the scouts who were watching them report that they remained absolutely stationary for the next half hour. The Martian who had been overthrown crawled tediously out of his hood, a small brown figure, oddly suggestive from that distance of a speck of blight, and apparently engaged in the repair of his support. About nine he had finished, for his cowl was then seen ...
— The War of the Worlds • H. G. Wells
... craftiness, nor handling the Word of God deceitfully; but by manifestation of the truth commending ourselves to every man's conscience in the sight of God' (2 Cor 4:2). All these sentences are chiefly to be applied to doctrine, and so are, as it were, an offer to any, if they can, to find a speck, or a spot, or a wrinkle, or any such thing in this river ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... I'd have died of lonesomeness long before this. You know how I hate this life, this homestead business. You know I'm only waiting until you've finished and we can be married and go away where there is something worth while. Now be reasonable. You work too hard, so that every little speck looks like a mountain. And it's making you narrow, too, or will if you don't watch out. I have to kill time somehow till we can be married and so you ought not to find fault with my doing it. Run along over and talk to Imo in her cabin now, Lee; that's a good boy. I didn't get back home ...
— The Iron Furrow • George C. Shedd
... they stopped coming past and then I got up and went along the bank and looked for him. I could see, way across the river, a little white speck, shining through the trees, which ...
— W. A. G.'s Tale • Margaret Turnbull
... creep about her heart tightened and grew cold, as if it were changing to an icy band, which would freeze her pulses in its tightening clasp. She looked out through the sunshine, watching the light boat till it became a mere speck in the distance, and finally disappeared among the windings of the long curve of land which stretched out into ...
— A Noble Woman • Ann S. Stephens
... sublime, and gilds the vault of day. Silent with upturn'd eyes unbreathing crowds Pursue the floating wonder to the clouds; And, flush'd with transport or benumb'd with fear, Watch, as it rises, the diminish'd sphere. 35 —Now less and less!—and now a speck is seen!— And now the fleeting rack obtrudes between!— With bended knees, raised arms, and suppliant brow To every shrine with mingled cries they vow.— "Save Him, ye Saints! who o'er the good preside; 40 "Bear ...
— The Botanic Garden. Part II. - Containing The Loves of the Plants. A Poem. - With Philosophical Notes. • Erasmus Darwin
... sunset, it was now twilight on the mountain top and dusky evening over all the country round about. But Pegasus flew so high that he overtook the departed day, and was bathed in the upper radiance of the sun. Ascending higher and higher, he looked like a bright speck, and at last could no longer be seen in the hollow waste of the sky. And Bellerophon was afraid that he should never behold him more. But while he was lamenting his own folly the bright speck reappeared, and drew nearer and nearer until it ...
— Journeys Through Bookland V2 • Charles H. Sylvester
... blemish, disfigurement, deformity; adactylism[obs3]; flaw, defect &c. (imperfection) 651 ; injury &c. (deterioration) 659; spots on the sun|!; eyesore. stain, blot; spot, spottiness; speck, speckle, blur. tarnish, smudge; dirt &c. 653. [blemish on a person's skin: list] freckle, mole, macula[Anat], patch, blotch, birthmark; blobber lip[obs3], blubber lip; blain[obs3], maculation, ; scar, wem|; pustule; whelk; excrescence, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... spoke the words which follow, And in terms like these expressed her: "What's this speck upon the ocean, What this blue upon the billows? If it be a flock of wild geese, Or of other beauteous birdies, Let them on their rushing pinions Soar aloft amid the ...
— Kalevala, Volume I (of 2) - The Land of the Heroes • Anonymous
... overspread Anthony Sieberer's face, but it disappeared quickly when he happened to turn his eyes to the neighboring mountains. He looked keenly and searchingly toward the mountain-path leading to Mittewald. He saw there a small black speck which was advancing with great rapidity. Was it a bird? No, the speck had already become larger; he saw it was a human being—a woman speeding along the mountain-path. Now she was so close to them that he could distinguish ...
— Andreas Hofer • Lousia Muhlbach
... a name, Learning but a yearning emptiness, and whither leadeth Ambition? Man is a mote dancing in a sun-ray—the world, a speck hanging in space. All things vanish and pass utterly away save only True-love, and that abideth everlastingly; 'tis sweeter than Life, and stronger than Death, and reacheth up beyond the stars; and thus it is I pray you tell ...
— The Broad Highway • Jeffery Farnol
... schooner stood on. No eye on board was turned towards us. We must have presented, indeed, but a small speck on the wide ocean. Tim now waved violently, but all our shouting and waving was of no avail. Uncle Paul then kept the boat away, to obtain another chance of being seen; though, of course, there was no hope ...
— The Wanderers - Adventures in the Wilds of Trinidad and Orinoco • W.H.G. Kingston
... food scarcest, Cuddy hatched a new plot. Right across the feeding-ground, almost the only good one now in the Stormy Moon, he set a row of snares. A cottontail rabbit, an old friend, cut several of these with his sharp teeth, but some remained, and Redruff, watching a far-off speck that might turn out a hawk, trod right in one of them, and in an instant was jerked into the air to dangle ...
— Wild Animals I Have Known • Ernest Thompson Seton
... responsible for this confused memory, but it seemed to be associated, too, with the story of Crombie the gardener—and with Antony Ferrara. He felt that somewhere in the darkness surrounding him there was a speck of light, if he could but turn in the right direction to see it. So, whilst Robert Cairn walked restlessly about the big room, the doctor sat with his chin resting in the palm of his hand, seeking to concentrate his mind upon that vague memory, ...
— Brood of the Witch-Queen • Sax Rohmer
... chairs; the wallpaper was like the inside of the bath, but alas, without the water; of the two pictures, the one over the mantelpiece was a steel-engraving of the Good Shepherd and the one over the sideboard was an oleograph of the Sacred Heart. Mark knew every fly speck on their glasses, every discoloration of their margins. While he was sighing over the sterility of the room, he heard the door of his father's study open, and his father and Mr. Astill do down the ...
— The Altar Steps • Compton MacKenzie
... brushing an invisible speck of dust from the sleeve of his checked coat, strolled rather casually into the ...
— The Air Trust • George Allan England
... without beholding a star, nor could star be beheld from which the Gods' hall, with all its vastness, would not have been utterly invisible. Elenko leaned over the battlements, and watched the racing meteors. Prometheus stood by her, and pointed out in the immeasurable distance the little speck of shining dust from ...
— The Twilight of the Gods, and Other Tales • Richard Garnett
... the old woman and the young man stood looking off over the rolling meadows of blue grass. Cutting the lush green pasture lands was the white limestone turnpike. Far off in the distance a blue speck appeared on the white road. In a twinkling it grew into a car and then went whizzing by, leaving a cloud of white dust in its wake. Jeff smiled and, glancing down at his old cousin, caught an answering smile on ...
— The Comings of Cousin Ann • Emma Speed Sampson
... the sign of putrefaction, until hardly anything remains; and even then the brown hue is often absent. As a rule, the look of live flesh is preserved until the final pellet, formed of the skin, the sole residue, makes its appearance. This pellet is white, with not a speck of tainted matter, proving that life persists until the body is ...
— The Life of the Fly - With Which are Interspersed Some Chapters of Autobiography • J. Henri Fabre
... pen. "I do like to kip things handy," he said; "nobody do knaw what'll 'appen." Then, turning to Ikey Trethewy, he said, "You do knaw of a young woman who do live up to Pennington—a young woman jist come there, called Penryn, I speck, Ikey, my deear?" ...
— The Birthright • Joseph Hocking
... we skirted this miserable coast, upon which not a green speck relieved the eye; at length we sighted the minaret which marked the position of Larnaca, the port or roadstead to which the mail was bound; and in the town we distinguished three or four green trees. We cast anchor about half a mile ...
— Cyprus, as I Saw it in 1879 • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... was a poor chance that I had—and I was well aware of it. There was small prospect of fishing boats or the like coming out that evening; small likelihood of any coasting steamer sighting a bit of a speck like me. All the same, I was going to keep my chin up as long as possible, and the first thing to do was to take care of my strength. I made shift to divest myself of a heavy pea-jacket that I was wearing and of the unnecessary clothing beneath it; I got rid, too, ...
— Dead Men's Money • J. S. Fletcher
... the wind and the snow 50 All loathliest weeds began to grow, Whose coarse leaves were splashed with many a speck, Like the water-snake's belly ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... have not more than fifteen or twenty years the start of you to that eternity, and I am prepared to go. There is an eternity behind and an eternity before, and this little speck in the centre is but a minute. The difference between your time and mine is trifling, and I therefore tell you—be prepared. I am prepared—you have a heavy responsibility. It behooves you to prepare, and more than it ...
— The Battle of Principles - A Study of the Heroism and Eloquence of the Anti-Slavery Conflict • Newell Dwight Hillis
... seeming too, Arthur,' his friend went on. 'Really, the fighter need never be out of that "feste Burg." I was thinking just now, not only that work looks easy, but that it looks small. Individual effort, I mean; the utmost that any one man can do. It is a mere speck. The living waters that shall be "a river to swim in," are very shallow yet; and where the fishers are to stand and cast their nets, it is a waste of barrenness. You have never been on the shores of the Dead Sea, Arthur; you do not know how a little thread of green on ...
— The Gold of Chickaree • Susan Warner
... do, upon elements that have gone through the cycle of vegetable life. The secret of vegetable life, then, is in the green substance of the leaf where science is powerless to unlock it. Conjure with the elements as it may, it cannot produce the least speck of living matter. It can by synthesis produce many of the organic compounds, but only from matter that has already been through the organic cycle. It has lately produced rubber, but from other ...
— The Breath of Life • John Burroughs
... had a queer fad. He cultivated one of his finger-nails, that of the little finger of his left hand, with the greatest care. Just like a Chinese mandarin. At last the nail was fully a centimetre long, and made holes in all his gloves. Now, whenever a speck of dirt lodged in this nail, he was in the habit of removing it with his teeth. It wasn't exactly a nice thing to do; but, you see, he had a passion for that nail. I often said to him, 'My dear fellow, do keep your ...
— 'Jena' or 'Sedan'? • Franz Beyerlein
... smallpox, it could not have been more vigorously scrubbed, aired, and refreshed. Early as it was, every carpet was routed up, curtains pulled down, cushions banged, and glory holes turned out till not a speck of dust, a last year's fly, or stray straw could be found. Then they all sat down and rested in such an immaculate mansion that one hardly dared to move for fear of destroying the shining ...
— Rose in Bloom - A Sequel to "Eight Cousins" • Louisa May Alcott
... their parents took; but when they were shown into a large outer room, and were told it was the cow-stable, they had no words with which to express their astonishment. They would have said it was the show-room of the place. There was not a speck on the whitewashed walls; the pine ceiling was so clean it fairly glistened; there were crisp, white muslin curtains at the windows. The raised earthen floor was covered with pure white sand, arranged in fancy ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, Nov 1877-Nov 1878 - Scribner's Illustrated • Various
... National Assembly for enfranchising them. On his bleached worn face are ploughed the furrowings of one hundred and twenty years. He has heard dim patois-talk, of immortal Grand-Monarch victories; of a burnt Palatinate, as he toiled and moiled to make a little speck of this Earth greener; of Cevennes Dragoonings; of Marlborough going to the war. Four generations have bloomed out, and loved and hated, and rustled off: he was forty-six when Louis Fourteenth died. The Assembly, as one man, spontaneously rose, and did reverence to the Eldest of the World; ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... mate came floating through the blue sky that silhouetted the trees in the garden. She made a pretence of alighting upon the balcony railing, sheered off, coquetted among the treetops, came back again, retreated so far that she was merely a white speck against the blue vault, and then, true to her sex, having proved her liberty only to tire of it, with a flight so swift that the eye could scarcely follow her, she came back again and rested upon the farther end of the balcony, where she immediately began to preen herself ...
— The Turquoise Cup, and, The Desert • Arthur Cosslett Smith
... her face with a pink ribbon in a bow on top of her head. She loosened this ribbon, and shook her hair quite loose. She peeped out of the golden radiance of it at herself, then she shook it back. She was charming either way. She was undeveloped, but as yet not a speck of the mildew of earth had touched her. She was flawless, irreproachable, except for the knowledge of her beauty, through heredity, in her heart, which was older ...
— By the Light of the Soul - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... artificial light. And always that dragging of the general down to the particular, that circumscribing of everything by the personal, every rose a token, the moon something to kiss by, flowers prostituted into bouquets. She thought how happy she was this morning, feeling a little tiny speck of the miracle of life instead of trying to catch it like a wasp under the wine glass of some ...
— Balloons • Elizabeth Bibesco
... hurried symptoms of a man having fallen overboard. I made the people in the boat tug at their oars towards the spot; but though we pulled over and over the ship's wake twenty times, the water was everywhere unruffled and unmarked by any speck. At length I rowed on board, turned the hands up to muster, to ascertain who was gone, and found all present but our poor little Triton! It appeared that the lad, who was one of the sides-men, fatigued with the day's amusement, had stretched himself in the fore-part of ...
— The Lieutenant and Commander - Being Autobigraphical Sketches of His Own Career, from - Fragments of Voyages and Travels • Basil Hall
... the black speck became less ambiguous. George beheld a white stern heaving up and down. He ran forward as if to accelerate her return, crying ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... France and Spain, with a small portion of the northern part of the continent of Africa. Of individual edifices not a trace could be discovered, and the proudest cities of mankind had utterly faded away from the face of the earth. From the rock of Gibraltar, now dwindled into a dim speck, the dark Mediterranean sea, dotted with shining islands as the heaven is dotted with stars, spread itself out to the eastward as far as my vision extended, until its entire mass of waters seemed at length to tumble headlong over the abyss of the horizon, and I found myself listening on tiptoe ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 1 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... 9, 1804] 9th of October Tuesday 1804 a windey night Some rain, and the wind Continued So high & cold We could not Speck in Council with the Indians, we gave them Some Tobacco and informed them we would Speek tomorrow, all the grand Chiefs visited us to day also Mr Taboe, a trader from St. Louis- Many Canoes of a Single ...
— The Journals of Lewis and Clark • Meriwether Lewis et al
... into groups of twos and threes, and moving away, but Lucy Haines and Jerry stood motionless, their gaze following the vanishing speck which was the south-bound train. Then slowly Lucy's head turned. She had never been friendly with Jerry Morton. She had shared the disapproval of the community, intensified by her inherent inability to understand the temperament ...
— Peggy Raymond's Vacation - or Friendly Terrace Transplanted • Harriet L. (Harriet Lummis) Smith
... overmastering desire for possessions. She hides her wealth in inaccessible places and sets her jealous, invisible forces to guard and determinedly hold all possible avenues of approach to them. But this world was given to man to conquer and own and make much of; and the glitter of a speck of useful metal in a stray boulder in the lonely canon; or the chance outcropping of rock which to the practised eye denotes the nearness of the deposit of oil—these, or any of the thousand and one signs, ...
— Insights and Heresies Pertaining to the Evolution of the Soul • Anna Bishop Scofield
... en washin' cloze, he sorter lick he chops, en 'low dat some er dese odd-come-shorts he gwine ter call en pay he 'specks. De minnit he say dat, Brer Rabbit, he know sump'n' 'uz up, en he 'low ter hisse'f dat he 'speck he better whirl in en have some fun w'iles it gwine on. Bimeby Brer Fox up'n say ter Brer Rabbit dat he bleedzd ter be movin' 'long todes home, en wid dat ...
— Nights With Uncle Remus - Myths and Legends of the Old Plantation • Joel Chandler Harris
... courtyard clean, bringing in a barrel of water twice a day, splitting and dragging in wood for the kitchen and the house, keeping out strangers, and watching at night. And it must be said he did his duty zealously. In his courtyard there was never a shaving lying about, never a speck of dust; if sometimes, in the muddy season, the wretched nag, put under his charge for fetching water, got stuck in the road, he would simply give it a shove with his shoulder, and set not only the cart but the horse itself moving. If he set to ...
— The Torrents of Spring • Ivan Turgenev
... not a continent, nor even an island, visible beneath them. The watery expanse did not present a single speck of land, not a solid surface upon ...
— The Mysterious Island • Jules Verne
... planted it in a pot, and watered and tended the little plant carefully. And now the most extraordinary thing happened, for from this moment everything in the old man's house was changed. When he awoke in the morning he always found his room tidied and put into such beautiful order that not a speck of dust was to be found anywhere. When he came home at midday, he found a table laid out with the most dainty food, and he had only to sit down and enjoy himself to his heart's content. At first he was so surprised he didn't know what to think, but after a time he grew a little ...
— The Green Fairy Book • Various
... chilliness; the sea, bathed in silver, glistens in the moonlight; we sit under awnings and glide through the water. The loneliness of this great ocean I find very impressive—so different from the Atlantic pathway—we are so terribly alone, a speck in the universe; the sky seems to enclose us in a huge inverted bowl, and we are only groping about, as it were, to find a way out; it is equidistant all around us; nothing but clouds and water. But as we sail westward ...
— Round the World • Andrew Carnegie
... murmured, involuntarily; "steady, steady!" these last words were to his horse, who seemed to be moving under him, not from fear, but from impatience. What had been the red and gold paper of the cracker was now the scarlet and gold lace of his own cavalry uniform. He knocked a speck from his sleeve, and scanned the distant ridge, from which a thin line of smoke floated solemnly away, with keen, impatient eyes. Were they to stand inactive all ...
— The Brownies and Other Tales • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... trowsers and a gay cravat. "Our beloved Union must and shall be preserved. The fabric that our fathers reared for us must not be allowed to crumble. We will prop it with our mangled bodies," and he brushed a speck of dust from the fine ...
— Fort Lafayette or, Love and Secession • Benjamin Wood
... the dark heavens a tiny speck of red light glowed, lingered a moment and vanished. Then another, then a green ...
— Tam O' The Scoots • Edgar Wallace
... clouds came nearer, until a shell, whining as it whizzed past us, burst about a hundred yards behind our trench. A second shell followed, exploding almost at the same place. At the same time, we noticed a faint spinning noise above us. Soaring high above our position, looking like a speck in the firmament, flew a Russian aeroplane, watching the effect of the shells and presumably directing the fire of the Russian artillery. This explained its sudden accuracy. One of our aeroplanes rose, giving chase to the enemy, and simultaneously our batteries got into action. The Russians ...
— Four Weeks in the Trenches - The War Story of a Violinist • Fritz Kreisler
... that glints in heaven may be a lowin' sun, Though like a speck of light it seem amid the welkin dun; The humblest sodger on the field may win a warrior's crest: The birdie sure to sing is the gorbal of ...
— Chantry House • Charlotte M. Yonge
... will occasionally lift up his little pipe in a glee. He does not dance, but the honest fellow would give the world to do it; and he leaves his clogs in the passage, though it is a wonder he wears them, for in the muddiest weather he never has a speck on his foot. He was at St. John's College, Cambridge, and was rather gay for a term or two, he says. He is, in a word, full of the milk-and-water of human kindness, and his family lives ...
— Men's Wives • William Makepeace Thackeray
... speed; and, though it stopped repeatedly to question Kaffirs or country folk, and to communicate with the cyclists and other patrols who were scouring the country on the flanks, reached Chieveley, five miles from Colenso, by about three o'clock; and from here the Ladysmith balloon, a brown speck floating above and beyond the distant hills, ...
— London to Ladysmith via Pretoria • Winston Spencer Churchill
... wondered. He also was somewhere among the sea and the sunshine, white and playing like a bird, shining like a vivid, restless speck of sunlight. She struck the water, smiling, feeling along with him. They two were the owners of this morning, as a pair of wild, large ...
— The Trespasser • D.H. Lawrence
... was a speck of white cloudiness in the late afternoon sky. It grew swiftly in size, and a winking blue-white light appeared in its center. That light grew brighter—and the noise managed somehow to increase—and presently the ruddy sunlight was diluted by light ...
— The Pirates of Ersatz • Murray Leinster
... to have grown noble in another atmosphere, but with a ready bent to underhand and brooding vengeance. Insensible, it seemed, to gratitude. Proud with the unreasoning pride of an Oriental; cruel, and violently passionate. One soft and tender speck there was in this dark and sullen heart; it was an exceedingly great and forbearing love for ...
— Emily Bront • A. Mary F. (Agnes Mary Frances) Robinson
... half an hour, we chase in every direction, then fire again toward the shore. It is just four; a gray light is working up through the mist, and we catch the faintest glimpse of the Daylight, one of our fleet. A few minutes later, and we see a speck near the shore, which the spyglass shows to be the steamer we chased and fired after in the night. The surf beats about her; in her frantic efforts to escape, she in the darkness has been run ashore by our close ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 6, No. 1, July, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... in colour at all times, but feebler than common in the rich sunshine, and more like the coat of a sandy tortoise-shell cat; with long nails, nicely pared and sharpened; with a natural antipathy to any speck of dirt, which made him pause sometimes and watch the falling motes of dust, and rub them off his smooth white hand or glossy linen: Mr Carker the Manager, sly of manner, sharp of tooth, soft of ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... sputtering. Then, for the first time, she observed that Janus Grubb was nowhere in sight. Harriet got up and tip-toed softly to the edge of the cliff, where she lay down flat, peering over. At first she saw nothing of interest; then all at once she caught sight of a moving speck at the foot ...
— The Meadow-Brook Girls in the Hills - The Missing Pilot of the White Mountains • Janet Aldridge
... pervading gloom. My next-door neighbor perhaps has parted with her son. Now the ship in which he is, with a thousand brave comrades, is ploughing through the stormy midnight ocean. Presently (under the flag we know of) the thin red line in which her boy forms a speck, is winding its way through the vast Canadian snows. Another neighbor's boy is not gone, but is expecting orders to sail; and some one else, besides the circle at home maybe, is in prayer and terror, thinking of the summons which ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... fault, as the way is too. Some prepossession, such as starts amiss, by but a hair's-breadth at the shoulder-blade, the arm o' the feeler, dip he ne'er so brave; and so leads waveringly, lets fall wide o' the mark his finger meant to find, and fix truth at the bottom, that deceptive speck." ...
— Introduction to Robert Browning • Hiram Corson
... trust you with a real gun, how many men of your own company do you speck you can manage to ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 2 • Charles Farrar Browne
... forerunner of the calamity under which his heart now grieved so bitterly. Aphiz Adegah's life had been a bold one, he knew no fear. The air of his native hills was not freer than his own spirit and as he looked off once more at the tiny white speck in the distance that marked the spot where Komel was, his resolution was instantly made, and he swore to ...
— The Circassian Slave; or, The Sultan's Favorite - A Story of Constantinople and the Caucasus • Lieutenant Maturin Murray
... long bar, marble slabs, marble wainscoting, polished brass, polished silver, shining mirrors, on which there was not the smallest speck of dust, very many shining glasses, empty glasses, glasses with straws sticking in them, and glasses partially filled with bits of ice. Bar-keepers in spotless white linen prepared the famous American drinks, innumerable in variety, with a dexterity bordering on art and a stolidity out ...
— Atlantis • Gerhart Hauptmann
... courser he will pluck the locks, And burn them as a sacrifice to Him Who gives him power o'er Nature: next he limns With silver wand upon the smooth firm beach A mimic ship—look out, where ocean's verge Meets the blue sky, a whitening speck is seen, That nears and nears—her canvass spreads to heav'n; Fair blows the wind, and roaring through the waves, On comes the Demon ship, in which he sails To farthest Ind—but this adventure needs A sacrifice more potent—human marrow Scoop'd from the spine, and ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 492 - Vol. 17, No. 492. Saturday, June 4, 1831 • Various
... watched the little steamer, the only link that held one still bound to the world of men, weigh anchor and steam slowly down the green inlet, departing and leaving one behind it, as one watched it growing smaller, dwindling ever, till it was a mere speck, and then saw it vanish, leaving the green riband of water unbroken save for the passing bergs? How one would realise solitude when the boat had absolutely disappeared, and how that solitude would thrill through and through ...
— Five Nights • Victoria Cross
... to be the glacier," said Seppi, "and I'm glad goats are so sure-footed. We'd better start along, for it's getting later every minute, and I'm bound to reach that farm-house before dark." He pointed to a speck ...
— The Swiss Twins • Lucy Fitch Perkins
... The Frank girl is false; Stamboul is a large, large, beautiful place; not a little black speck. I can see it from my lattice. White houses and mosques in the sun, and the blue Golden Horn, with ...
— Little Lucy's Wonderful Globe • Charlotte M. Yonge
... of dress, especially to the chiefs and chiefesses, who are all remarkably tall and handsome, with a stately carriage and dignified manner. The Queen stood in front of the throne, on which were spread the royal robes, a long mantle of golden feathers, without speck or blemish. On each side stood two men, dressed in black, wearing frock-coats, and capes of red, black, and yellow feathers over their shoulders, and chimney-pot hats on their heads. In their hands they held two enormous kahilis of black oo ...
— A Voyage in the 'Sunbeam' • Annie Allnut Brassey
... Right across the feeding-ground, almost the only good one now in the Stormy Moon, he set a row of snares. A cottontail rabbit, an old friend, cut several of these with his sharp teeth, but some remained, and Redruff, watching a far-off speck that might turn out a hawk, trod right in one of them, and in an instant was jerked into the air to ...
— Wild Animals I Have Known • Ernest Thompson Seton
... they in their agony to let no murmuring word Against the good and gracious Lord, from out their lips be heard. But with their wildly gleaming eyes they gazed out o'er the main. Wave rolling after wave was all that answered back again. On the horizon's distant verge not even a speck was seen, But the cresting foam of breaking waves still shimmering between. And fiercer yet, as hour by hour went slowly creeping by, The famine wrung their tortured frames till it were bliss to die. And hopes of further aid ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 3 September 1848 • Various
... soulless gulfs; though the roar of the loom of time grow more audible and more deafening in our ears—yet through the night and through the darkness the divine light of our lives will only burn the clearer: and this speck of a world as it moves through the blank immensity will bear the light of all the worlds upon ...
— Is Life Worth Living? • William Hurrell Mallock
... what an infinitesimal speck I was in the general scheme of things, when I heard the footfall of another human speck, stumbling through the dark and carrying a dress-suit case. It was Jones himself, outward bound, and doing five knots an hour. I was after him in ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VI. (of X.) • Various
... a collision if some one only had to walk back home my way," said Tavia. "But to be put off a train at such a place! Why, I just made a bolt for the first black speck I could see with a light in it. It turned out to be a farmhouse, and I simply told the man he must hitch ...
— Dorothy Dale's Queer Holidays • Margaret Penrose
... shall meet. . . . We shall not separate till late. It will be his province to accompany me home. The airy expanse is without a speck. This breeze is usually steadfast, and its promise of a bland and cloudless evening may be trusted. The moon will rise at eleven, and at that hour we shall wind along this bank. Possibly that hour ...
— Stories by Modern American Authors • Julian Hawthorne
... persons assembled there were drawn towards the Grotto by an irresistible attraction, in which burning curiosity mingled with the thirst for mystery. All eyes converged, every mouth, hand, and body was borne towards the pale glitter of the candles and the white moving speck of the marble Virgin. And, in order that the large space reserved to the sick, in front of the railings, might not be invaded by the swelling mob, it had been necessary to inclose it with a stout rope which the bearers at intervals of two or three yards grasped with both hands. Their orders were ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... which appeared very small, and I thought that I could see my birds like dots upon the platform. It was a bright day and smooth water, I could clearly distinguish the other islands in the distance, and I thought that I saw something like a white speck close to them—perhaps it was a vessel. This made me melancholy, and I could not help asking myself whether I was to remain all my life upon the island, alone, or if there were any chance of my ever being taken off it. As I looked down upon the cabin, I was surprised at ...
— The Little Savage • Captain Marryat
... Is it possible to imagine a man near a brazier who is not warm? Can one imagine a workman who is working near a furnace, and who has neither a singed hair, nor blackened nails, nor a drop of sweat, nor a speck of ashes on his face? The first proof of charity in the priest, in the bishop ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... thin line of gum was on the back of the flap, in the darkness there glowed the same sort of brightness that we had seen in a speck here and there on Blanche Blaisdell's lips and in her mouth. The truth flashed over me. Some one had placed the stuff, whatever it was, on the flap of the envelope, knowing that she must touch her lips to it to seal it She had done ...
— The Dream Doctor • Arthur B. Reeve
... them. A certain expression of gratified parental pride stole over his face as he took note of the brave appearance presented by young Bob, who with his be-ribboned hat placed a little aslant on his curly locks, his Sunday suit brushed till not a speck of dust rested on its glossy surface, and his white staff held jauntily in his sunburnt hand, was indeed the picture of a comely young holiday-maker. When the father glanced at "our Tom," however, his face darkened. There was Tom with his ill-fastened shoelaces trailing, his smart bandsman's ...
— North, South and Over the Sea • M.E. Francis (Mrs. Francis Blundell)
... top of her head. She loosened this ribbon, and shook her hair quite loose. She peeped out of the golden radiance of it at herself, then she shook it back. She was charming either way. She was undeveloped, but as yet not a speck of the mildew of earth had touched her. She was flawless, irreproachable, except for the knowledge of her beauty, through heredity, in her heart, which was ...
— By the Light of the Soul - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... answered that I once could see very well, but that the many tears I had shed had now peradventure dimmed my eyes, he pointed to the Streckelberg, and said, "Do you then see nothing there?" Ego. "Naught save a black speck, which I cannot make out." Ille. "Know then that that is the pile whereon your daughter is to burn at ten o'clock to-morrow morning, and which the constables are now raising." When this hell-hound had thus spoken, I gave a loud ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V2 • William Mienhold
... cried Yvon, as soon as his head appeared above the water, and he began to swim as tranquilly as if he had been bathing in the lake of the old castle. Happily the moon was rising. Yvon saw, at a little distance, a black speck among the silvery waves—it was land. He approached it, not without difficulty, and finally succeeded in gaining a foothold. Dripping wet, exhausted with fatigue, and out of breath, he dragged himself on the sand, then, without more anxiety, said ...
— Laboulaye's Fairy Book • Various
... Now, look, even with all these conditions fulfilled, how diverse is life on this earth itself, the one place we really know—varying as much as from the oak to the cuttle-fish, from the palm to the tiger, from man to the fern, the sea-weed, or the jelly-speck. Every one of these creatures is a complex result of very complex conditions, among which you must never forget to reckon the previous existence and interaction of all the antecedent ones. Is it probable, then, even a priori, that if life or anything like it exists on ...
— The British Barbarians • Grant Allen
... which attacked us. Those on watch had, of course, to keep the deck. The rest of the officers lay down in their cabins, but I could not remain in mine. I was soon again out of it, and climbing up aloft eagerly to scan the horizon, in the hopes of finding a sail in sight. In vain I looked round; not a speck was to be seen above the horizon. At length the sun went down, and darkness came on, and there the ship lay becalmed, with her crew of starving men. Anxiously all that night passed away—the calm continued. We had indeed practical experience of how hard hunger and thirst ...
— Hurricane Hurry • W.H.G. Kingston
... dial-plate, and himself the only figure on it. With hair and whiskers deficient in colour at all times, but feebler than common in the rich sunshine, and more like the coat of a sandy tortoise-shell cat; with long nails, nicely pared and sharpened; with a natural antipathy to any speck of dirt, which made him pause sometimes and watch the falling motes of dust, and rub them off his smooth white hand or glossy linen: Mr Carker the Manager, sly of manner, sharp of tooth, soft of foot, watchful of eye, oily of tongue, cruel of heart, nice of habit, sat with a dainty ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... glands of the delicate skin of the infant, the result of which shows itself in the eruption on the body and face of a number of small dry pimples sometimes surrounded by a little redness, itching considerably, and when their top has been rubbed off by scratching having a little speck of dried blood ...
— The Mother's Manual of Children's Diseases • Charles West, M.D.
... but the mixing also must be thorough, for any pieces of white separated from the rest will toughen and taste leathery, besides failing in the special purpose of giving lightness to the mixture. After mixing lightly and perfectly all such preparations should be cooked at once. The white "speck" always should be removed from a broken egg, as it is easily distinguished after cooking, and in anything of a liquid nature, such as custards, sauces, etc., it would ...
— The Story of Crisco • Marion Harris Neil
... first light of dawn a speck appeared on the horizon. It slowly grew larger, sometimes seeming to recede, and often disappearing utterly, until at last the straining eyes that watched it discerned its outline. It was a ship under full sail! Everything ...
— Donald and Dorothy • Mary Mapes Dodge
... down a step or two. Beyond was inky darkness. If only a speck of light were down below! Why did I shut the door? Go on I could not. I turned my face upward, where the friendly light, packing up its robes of every hue for the journey of a night, looked kindly in. And so I went back, and sat in my usual seat, and watched the going day, as, one by one, she ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... poor to tell. And when she goes how lonely seems her way Through groves, through fields, through busy haunts of men; And as he climbs the hill and often stops To watch her lessening train until at length Her elephant seems but a moving speck, Proud Kantaka, pawing and neighing, asks As plain as men could ever ask in, words: "What makes my ...
— The Dawn and the Day • Henry Thayer Niles
... Godfreys had resided, having heard of the attack of the savages and the destruction they had caused, made his way to the scene of the ruins. He could find no trace of the Godfreys and was returning by the border of the lake to his log cabin, when he saw the sloop far in the distance like a speck on the frozen surface of the lake. He hastened out to where she lay. To his surprise and joy he found out, when nearing the little craft, signs of life on board. Sparks were issuing from the cabin. Very soon he was on board. He was met at the companion-way by the Captain ...
— Young Lion of the Woods - A Story of Early Colonial Days • Thomas Barlow Smith
... says Jacka, "for I was just about stepping down to call you. See that lugger, yonder?" He jerked his thumb over his shoulder at a speck in the grey from which the Van der Werf was now running at something like ...
— The White Wolf and Other Fireside Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... later on, although he disapproved of "gaping," as he called it, he taught Miriam so much of geometry as was sufficient to make her understand what he meant when he told her that a fixed star yielded no parallax, and that the earth was consequently the merest speck of dust in the universe. She found his simple trigonometry very, very hard, but to her husband it was easy, and with ...
— Miriam's Schooling and Other Papers - Gideon; Samuel; Saul; Miriam's Schooling; and Michael Trevanion • Mark Rutherford
... cane-brake till noon to-day, and git so hungry I could stan it no longer. Den I goes out to find someting to eat. Den somebody sees me, and dey follow me wid de dogs. I done kill two of dem dogs, and I kill de rest, but I hear de men coming, and I run for de lake. I speck, when I git in de water, to frow de dogs off de scent, but dey git so near dey see and hear me. Dem's mighty fine nigger dogs, or dey never follor me into de water. I done gib it all up when I hear dem in de water ...
— Watch and Wait - or The Young Fugitives • Oliver Optic
... James replied, carelessly flicking a speck from his overcoat sleeve. "The city supplied them for the committee what went to Moriarty's ...
— The Lever - A Novel • William Dana Orcutt
... tremble at a word? Merely say: 'We will not live.' Is not life a burden that we long to lay down? Why hesitate when it is merely a question of a little sooner or a little later? Matter is indestructible, and the physicists, we are told, grind to infinity the smallest speck of dust without being able to annihilate it. If matter is the property of chance, what harm can it do to change its form since it can not cease to be matter? Why should God care what form I have received and with what livery I invest ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... 'nigger-school-marm.' I knew that she was sick at your house when I was there, and so, putting the two together, I 'llowed that for once there might be some truth in a Horsford rumor. I reckon it must have been a lie, though; or else she 'kicked' you, which she wouldn't stand a speck about doing, even if you were the President, if you didn't come up to her notion. It's a mighty high notion, too, let me tell you; and the man that gits up to it'll have to climb. ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee
... thrilling buoyancy and the creepy melancholy which alternately mastered her father; but as a child she had become so inured to it that she was not surprised at the alternate pensive gaiety and the blazing exhilaration of the particular man whose coat she now dusted long after there remained a speck of dust upon it. This was the song ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... man who ran up the steps, a girl of eighteen walked swiftly and firmly over the drifting heaps on the sidewalk. Her eyes glanced upward at the sky. There are four immense clouds, of a very light gray, with silver edges, trying to meet over a speck of blue. They tumble and clamber, and press all for the same point; but whether the wind is too variable for them to gather in one mass, or for whatever meteorological reason, she does not guess, but she is attracted to the sky and gazes at it as ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 18, April, 1859 - [Date last updated: August 7, 2005] • Various
... also considered that the pace was altogether too slow for him, much as it pleased Josh and Herb. Far ahead they could see the Wireless looking like a speck on ...
— Motor Boat Boys Mississippi Cruise - or, The Dash for Dixie • Louis Arundel
... cannot tell, but as I think more than half divine—who will drive him back shattered and bleeding, the jest and ridicule of the observing world. She who, by the force of pure intellect, has out of this speck in the desert made a large empire, who has humbled Persia, and entered her capital in triumph, has defeated three Roman armies, and wrested more provinces than time will allow me to number, from the firm grasp of the self-styled ...
— Zenobia - or, The Fall of Palmyra • William Ware
... looking at a town in Algeria or Tunis. And beyond, under the low-hanging stars, was the Mexican desert—a blank page, with only here and there the obscurity of a garden, or a hacienda, or a mere speck which would be a ...
— Children of the Desert • Louis Dodge
... "A small speck of circumstance, which is near, obliterates much that is in the distance." He turned toward the door. "I shall ...
— A Breath of Prairie and other stories • Will Lillibridge
... looked around, thinking they might see the animal itself. There was a wide circle of snow around them, and its surface was smooth and level; but not a speck upon it betrayed the presence ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid
... against the mantelpiece. As Mike entered, he fumbled in his top left waistcoat pocket, produced an eyeglass attached to a cord, and fixed it in his right eye. With the help of this aid to vision he inspected Mike in silence for a while, then, having flicked an invisible speck of dust from the left sleeve of ...
— Mike • P. G. Wodehouse
... ought to be up here," said Rufus, considering the little distant brown speck; — "it would be worth twice ...
— Hills of the Shatemuc • Susan Warner
... monarchic doctrine of Prerogative, as a corrective for the slowness and want of immediate applicability of mere legal processes in cases of state emergency; and it is worth noticing again and again that in spite of the shriekings of reaction, the few atrocities of the Terror are an almost invisible speck compared with the atrocities of Christian churchmen and lawful kings, perpetrated in accordance with their notion of what constituted public safety. So far as Rousseau's intention goes, we find in his writings one of the strongest denunciations of the doctrine of public safety that is to be ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley
... vessels at anchor in the bay of Valparaiso, although no less than twenty-six geographical miles distant, could be distinguished clearly as little black streaks. A ship doubling the point under sail, appeared as a bright white speck. Anson expresses much surprise, in his voyage, at the distance at which his vessels were discovered from the coast; but he did not sufficiently allow for the height of the land, and the great transparency ...
— The Voyage of the Beagle • Charles Darwin
... line, and the filiform tail 1/50 of a line, in length. This life-atom, which can be discerned only with a powerful magnifying glass, is perfectly transparent, and moves about by executing a vibratile motion with its long appendage. Within this speck of matter are hidden the multifarious forces which, under certain favorable conditions, result in organization. Magnify this infinitesimal atom a thousand times, and no congeries of formative powers is perceived wherewith to work out the ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce
... incidentally at Baughl's (on the 4th of September), that these were produced by contact with fire. Applying a glowing coal (the end of a burning stick) to the edge of the flint, and blowing on it steadily, after a few seconds a speck of the mineral will fly off, leaving a groove or indentation proportionate in size to the coal used and to the length of time applied. Thus, an arrow-head may be indented in a very short time, which would ...
— Historical Introduction to Studies Among the Sedentary Indians of New Mexico; Report on the Ruins of the Pueblo of Pecos • Adolphus Bandelier
... The Allied fire was redoubled as per instructions. Buck, by this time far to the east, could now be seen making back towards the Allied front where Blaine was zigzagging to and fro waiting for what might come. Suddenly, behind Bangs, he saw the speck-like dots of Teuton planes emerging into the upper air and rapidly approaching. At the same time other planes in the west appeared, biplanes, scouts, and one or more heavy battle planes. Evidently the cards were being laid for a squadron air battle unless something ...
— Our Pilots in the Air • Captain William B. Perry
... soil so clean and orderly. Not surely her cousin Hepzibah's, who had no taste nor spirits for the lady-like employment of cultivating flowers, and—with her recluse habits, and tendency to shelter herself within the dismal shadow of the house—would hardly have come forth under the speck of open sky to weed and hoe among the fraternity ...
— The House of the Seven Gables • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... is going in that ship,' Mrs. Allen had said; and she had represented that nothing was simpler than to put the girl in her charge. When Mrs. Mavis had replied that that was all very well but that she didn't know the lady, Mrs. Allen had declared that that didn't make a speck of difference, for Mrs. Nettlepoint was kind enough for anything. It was easy enough to know her, if that was all the trouble. All Mrs. Mavis would have to do would be to go up to her the next morning when she took her daughter to the ship (she would see her there on ...
— A London Life; The Patagonia; The Liar; Mrs. Temperly • Henry James
... as it is termed, is a small white speck (often noticed on cigars), making its appearance on the leaves of the plant towards the latter part of its growth, and usually found on the top and middle leaves. It is usually found on the best, and more frequently on light than dark tobacco. Unlike the brown rust, the white does not fall ...
— Tobacco; Its History, Varieties, Culture, Manufacture and Commerce • E. R. Billings
... scope of our really pitifully meager world-experience cannot be—our finite minds cannot grasp that which may not exist in accordance with the conditions which obtain about us upon the outside of the insignificant grain of dust which wends its tiny way among the bowlders of the universe—the speck of moist dirt we ...
— At the Earth's Core • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... the Puma, nodding toward a hole high up like a speck on the five-hundred-foot cliff, close up under the great ceremonial Cave which was painted with the sign of the Morning and the Evening Star, and the round, bright House of the Sun Father. "But at first I slept in the kiva with Tse-tse-yote. Speaking of devils—there was no one who had ...
— The Trail Book • Mary Austin et al
... he said. "Whatever you say—you, behind those stars there, if you are a God. We Spurlocks take our medicine, standing. Pile it on! But if you can hear the voice of the mote, the speck, don't let her suffer for anything I've done. Be a sport, and pile it all ...
— The Ragged Edge • Harold MacGrath
... employed in the lure of dressing our persons; when we traversed the streets, with what attention did we not avoid every breath of wind which might discompose our hair; and with what caution did we not prevent the least speck of dirt from ...
— The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch • Petrarch
... answered, this time almost solemnly. "Other worlds have, as I say, been reduced to fire-mist. Some have been shattered to tiny fragments to make asteroids and meteorites—stars and worlds, in comparison with which this bit of a planet of ours is nothing more than a speck of sand, a mere atom of matter drifting over the wilderness of immensity. In fact, such a trifle is it in the organism of the Universe, that if some celestial body collided with it—say a comet with a sufficiently solid ...
— The World Peril of 1910 • George Griffith
... falling headlong which comes in nightmares, that feeling a thousand times intensified, that and a black horror swept across my thoughts in a torrent. Then the two doctors, the naked body with its cut side, the little room, swept away from under me and vanished, as a speck of ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... itself with tender cares for its brood. Then, there is gentleness along with the terribleness. The strong beak and claw, the gaze that can see so far, and the mighty spread of wings that can lift it till it is an invisible speck in the blue vault, go along with the instinct of paternity: and the fledglings in the nest look up at the fierce beak and bright eyes, and know no terror. The impression of this blending of power and gentleness ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... pre-existence of the soul, still he could not deny it entirely when he said: "The shaping forces which have made our bodies and our minds what they are may always have been psychical forces—from the first living slime-speck to the complex intelligences of to-day." "The old transmigrationist's view would thus possess a share of truth and the actual man would be the resultant not only of intermingling heredities on father's and mother's sides, but of intermingling ...
— Reincarnation • Swami Abhedananda
... proclaimed the universality of a definite and predicable order and succession of events, the workers in biology have not only accepted all these, but have added more startling theses of their own. For, as the astronomers discover in the earth no centre of the universe, but an eccentric [48] speck, so the naturalists find man to be no centre of the living world, but one amidst endless modifications of life; and as the astronomers observe the mark of practically endless time set upon the arrangements of the solar system ...
— Autobiography and Selected Essays • Thomas Henry Huxley
... thy living form I spied, Then a mere speck upon a distant sky; Yet my keen glance discerned its noble pride, And the full answer of that sun-filled eye; I knew it was the wing that must upbear My earthlier form into the realms ...
— At Home And Abroad - Or, Things And Thoughts In America and Europe • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... orderly within the poor little room. Not a speck of dust or a litter of any kind on the quaint little old-time high bureau, unless you might except a sheet of paper lying loose with something written on it. Titiche had evidently inherited his prying propensities, for the landlady turned it over ...
— The Goodness of St. Rocque and Other Stories • Alice Dunbar
... covered with an elegant stone structure, the basin into which the water flowed from the spring to be protected by a cover never to be left open, under pain of the town's destruction, the good people being that nate an' clane that they didn't want the laste speck av dust in the wather they drunk. So a decree was issued, by the head man of the town, that the cover be always closed by those resorting to the fountain for water, and that due heed might be taken, children, boys under age, and unmarried women, were forbidden under ...
— Irish Wonders • D. R. McAnally, Jr.
... ribbon and cried over it. She said it was the last relic she should ever have of her child; and that no other memorial of her could ever be so precious, because this one parted latest from the living body before the awful death came. Some said that now and then, in the cave, a far-away speck of light would glimmer, and then a glorious shout would burst forth and a score of men go trooping down the echoing aisle—and then a sickening disappointment always followed; the children were not there; it was only ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... he woke and could sleep no more. Dawn widened over sky and sea, but its vast beauty only mocked the castaway. All day long he wandered up and down and along and across his glittering prison, no tiniest speck of canvas, no faintest wreath of smoke, on any water's edge; the horror of his isolation growing-growing?-like the monsters of his dream, and his whole nature wild with a desire which was no longer a mere physical drought, but a passion of the soul, that gave the will an unnatural ...
— Strong Hearts • George W. Cable
... children did not care a fig about that kind of talk; so they walked off to a corner, and began to play with some funny things they found. One was an old man all made of black wadding, and another was a very fat old woman made of white wadding. The old woman hadn't the least speck of a foot to stand on; her body was just a great round roll of wadding, without legs; I never saw a real, live old woman without legs, did you? But this one must have come from no one knows where. You see, she and the black wadding man were left by Santa ...
— Little Mittens for The Little Darlings - Being the Second Book of the Series • Frances Elizabeth Barrow
... the other of us, she replaced her pearl-box in her bosom and hurried away. Standing at the window, I watched her walking briskly down the street, until the gray turban and white feather were but a speck in ...
— The Sign of the Four • Arthur Conan Doyle
... the chase be overtaken. Instead of failing, however, the wind increased, and the dhow's hull sunk beneath the horizon. At length only the upper portion of her sail could be seen; still, as long as a speck was in sight, Rhymer pursued her, and not until the sun set ...
— Ned Garth - Made Prisoner in Africa. A Tale of the Slave Trade • W. H. G. Kingston
... and shoulders—thrusting out his arms and twisting his features to a mass of wrinkles to emphasize the relief aquired. A quart or two of the beverage was then brought to table, at which all the new arrivals reseated themselves with wide-spread knees, their eyes meditatively seeking out any speck or knot in the board upon which the gaze might ...
— Under the Greenwood Tree • Thomas Hardy
... is!' I said. 'Why, Martin, what under heaven can have affected you in this manner? I told you that I had knocked a worm on your coat, and you did not appear to heed it any more than if it had been a speck of dust. It was only when I mentioned the shape it had assumed, that you behaved so unaccountably! What does it mean? Are you afraid of worms, or only of shoulder-straps?' And I laughed at the ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No 3, September, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... fragrance of the evergreens that surrounded the beautiful palace with its balustrades, dedicated to all the worst passions of the human race; with the sharp rocky outline of Turbia; with an almost invisible speck on the horizon which they said was Corsica; with everything, which, whether mirage or reality, lifted her out of herself, and plunged her into that state of excited happiness and indescribable sense of bodily comfort, which exterior impressions so easily produce ...
— Jacqueline, Complete • (Mme. Blanc) Th. Bentzon
... weather. The water was rough and crested with mimic waves, and they felt not disposed to launch the raft on so stormy a surface, but they stood looking out over the lake and admiring the changing foliage, when Hector pointed out to his cousin a dark speck dancing on the waters, between the two nearest islands. The wind, which blew very strong still from the north-east, brought the object nearer every minute. At first they thought it might be a pine-branch that was floating on the surface, when as it came ...
— Canadian Crusoes - A Tale of The Rice Lake Plains • Catharine Parr Traill
... little, of our composition it is, and how exquisitely fine that little is, that creates in us this consciousness of existence; and all beyond that is like the pulp of a peach, distinct and separate from the vegetative speck in the kernel. ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... her eyes had lifted to sweep the snow field for any sign of the hunters' return. Now, looking out of the window without much expectation of seeing them, her glance fell on a traveler, a speck of black on a sea of white. Her heart began to beat a drum of excitement. She waited, eyes riveted, expecting to see a second figure and a dog-team top the rise and show ...
— Man Size • William MacLeod Raine
... met them a little farther on, they would be cornered, as the cutting narrowed very much, leaving not more than twenty yards, and that was a generous estimate. At last, after what seemed an eternity, I reached the summit of the slope; the tiger was a mere speck along the line. I rushed after it as fast as I could go, stumbling, half falling, pulling myself together, and tearing on, and the faster I went the quicker moved the great white figure. A feeling of despair seized me; all my fondness for my wife became intensified ...
— Animal Ghosts - Or, Animal Hauntings and the Hereafter • Elliott O'Donnell
... Leonard. "Up in the morn hours before the sun, to mass like a choir of novices, to clean our own arms and the Knight's, like so many horse-boys, and if there be but a speck of rust, or a sword-belt half a finger's ...
— The Lances of Lynwood • Charlotte M. Yonge
... gold plane of von Herzmann was now a rapidly diminishing speck against the cloud bank toward la Chapelle, streaking for the Fatherland. The others, lacking a leader, and facing unequal chances with the timely and unexpected appearance of the French Spads, were withdrawing from the action with all the speed they could ...
— Aces Up • Covington Clarke
... and transfer there to another taking him direct to the course. At the Bridge he was thrust into a motley crowd, eager, expectant, full of joyous anticipation of assured good luck. He was but a tiny unit of this many-voiced throng; he drifted a speck on the bosom of the flood that poured into the waiting race train. He was tossed into a seat by the swirling tide, and as the train moved he looked at his fellow-passengers. There was a pleasant air of opulence all about ...
— Thoroughbreds • W. A. Fraser
... as man; you microscopical mixture of protoplasm and egotism; you atomical speck of ignorance and avarice; you who believe that the earth, moon, stars and all creation was manufactured for your special benefit; if you could only be shown your actual size in the universe as I was on that occasion, ...
— Born Again • Alfred Lawson
... from the sun, Ted looked for several minutes at the dark speck bobbing along in the distance, a mere shadow against the yellow surface ...
— Ted Strong in Montana - With Lariat and Spur • Edward C. Taylor
... of vengeance he brought his stick down on the floor with so vigorous a thump that it had a certain profane effect; then having from under his bushy gray eyebrows gazed at the diminishing group till it was but a dim speck in the distance, he went in muttering, banging the door as if to shut out and reject the sight. His objection might have been intensified had he known that the days were at hand when legislative wisdom would still further reduce this engine ...
— The Mystery of Witch-Face Mountain and Other Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock
... float of the Inchcape Bell was seen, A darker spot on the ocean green. Sir Ralph the Rover walked the deck, And he fix'd his eye on the darker speck. ...
— MacMillan's Reading Books - Book V • Anonymous
... sails were sheeted home, and the ship rushed forward after her prey, the boat she had lowered appearing like a small speck on the ocean, close to the dhow about to be boarded. The steamer was now in hot chase after the other two dhows, still considerably ahead of her, and making, apparently, for the shore, from which she was endeavouring to ...
— The Three Commanders • W.H.G. Kingston
... understood only when the reflection of great cosmic events is recognized in it. Otherwise its inner nature remains just as unintelligible as Raphael's Sistine Madonna would be for one who could see only a small blue speck, while the rest of ...
— An Outline of Occult Science • Rudolf Steiner
... as thus analytically reached, not easily corresponding with that which popular religion speaks of. Such feeble sentiments as mercy, benevolence and effusive love, scarcely find place in this conception of the source of universal order. In this cosmical dust-cloud we inhabit, whose each speck is a sun, man's destiny plays a microscopic part. The vexed question whether ours is the best possible or the worst possible world, drops into startling insignificance. Religion has taught the abnegation of self; science is first to teach the humiliation of the race. Not ...
— The Religious Sentiment - Its Source and Aim: A Contribution to the Science and - Philosophy of Religion • Daniel G. Brinton
... the last, writes: "On a more critical examination of P. caniceps it appears to me, judging from Hodgson's types of the species, that it has larger ears, and if this should prove to be a persistent character, then the grey head and the chestnut speck above and below the eye, and the bright chestnut tuft behind the ears, assume a specific importance which they would not otherwise have." But he adds that his observations are merely from preserved specimens, and that the question of the magnitude of the ...
— Natural History of the Mammalia of India and Ceylon • Robert A. Sterndale
... in a perfectly still white world. It had snowed heavily during the night, and the house was surrounded by a glistening white carpet which stretched away to the "sapinette" at the top of the lawn without a speck or flaw. There was no trace of path or road, or little low shrubs, and even the branches of the big lime-trees were heavy with snow. It was a bright, beautiful day—blue sky and a not too pale winter sun. Not a vehicle of ...
— Chateau and Country Life in France • Mary King Waddington
... front and the dangers were depicted quite vividly. We stopped at Chagny, after passing a very old church dating back to the Tenth century. We saw, as we passed along, droves of beautiful white cows, with not a speck of color. ...
— A Journey Through France in War Time • Joseph G. Butler, Jr.
... watching from the lake shore, had there been any one to watch in that solitude, the wild beast and his prey would have seemed but a speck of black on the gleaming waste. At the same hour, league upon league back in the depth of the ancient forest, a lonely ox was lowing in his stanchions, restless, refusing to eat, grieving for the absence of ...
— Earth's Enigmas - A Volume of Stories • Charles G. D. Roberts
... this manner till nearly noon, the company caught sight of a scarcely-perceptible object on the water, in the direction of the great inlet. And, although for some time it appeared like a speck, as seen against the low, green fringe of the opposite and far-distant shore, yet it at length so enlarged on the vision that the form of a canoe and the gleam of flashing oars became distinctly discernible. Soon a little variation in the line of approach ...
— Gaut Gurley • D. P. Thompson
... and cause his brimming cup of joy to overflow a tree stood upon the little speck of green land laden with white blossoms, which wafted a faint but fragrant promise to the enchanted scout ...
— Pee-Wee Harris Adrift • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... upturn'd eyes unbreathing crowds Pursue the floating wonder to the clouds; And, flush'd with transport or benumb'd with fear, Watch, as it rises, the diminish'd sphere. 35 —Now less and less!—and now a speck is seen!— And now the fleeting rack obtrudes between!— With bended knees, raised arms, and suppliant brow To every shrine with mingled cries they vow.— "Save Him, ye Saints! who o'er the good preside; ...
— The Botanic Garden. Part II. - Containing The Loves of the Plants. A Poem. - With Philosophical Notes. • Erasmus Darwin
... stern-boat lowered down, accompanied by all the hurried symptoms of a man having fallen overboard. I made the people in the boat tug at their oars towards the spot; but though we pulled over and over the ship's wake twenty times, the water was everywhere unruffled and unmarked by any speck. At length I rowed on board, turned the hands up to muster, to ascertain who was gone, and found all present but our poor little Triton! It appeared that the lad, who was one of the sides-men, fatigued with the day's amusement, had stretched himself ...
— The Lieutenant and Commander - Being Autobigraphical Sketches of His Own Career, from - Fragments of Voyages and Travels • Basil Hall
... the strained and peculiar condition of affairs in Atchison county. Archimedes Speck lived on the Stranger Creek, several miles below the residence of the writer. He was a man of magnificent physical development, and was a pronounced Free State man. His wife's people originally came from North ...
— Personal Recollections of Pardee Butler • Pardee Butler
... so vain of its beautiful plumage, that it will not let a speck of dirt stay on it; but is continually examining its feathers to see that they are perfectly clean. When wild, it always flies and sits facing the wind, lest its elegant plumes should ...
— Charley's Museum - A Story for Young People • Unknown
... on the cliffs, dotted about which lay Eilygugg, there was a white speck here and a blue speck there, and a little more intent gazing proved to the lad that there was another speck upon the edge of the farthest ...
— The Lost Middy - Being the Secret of the Smugglers' Gap • George Manville Fenn
... lads go up the gangplank, each carrying a red handkerchief containing his worldly goods. As the good ship moved away we lifted a wild wail of woe that drowned the sobbing of the waves. Everybody cried—I wept, too—and as the great, black ship became but a speck on the Western horizon we embraced ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 1 of 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Good Men and Great • Elbert Hubbard
... Idun back to Asgard if the goddess Freyja would lend him her falcon guise. No sooner said than done; and with eager gaze the gods watched him as he flew away, becoming at last only a dark moving speck against ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 2 (of 12) • Various
... schoolmaster, and Master Clive laughs at him. It was only the other day after his return from his grandmamma's that I found a picture of Mrs. Newcome and Charles, too, and of both their spectacles, quite like. He has done me and Hannah, too. Mr. Speck, the artist, says he is a wonder ...
— Boys and girls from Thackeray • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... either discovering their mistake or else having been called up by wireless to attack more numerous forces, desisted from their present operations. Banking steeply the seaplane bore away rapidly in a south-easterly direction, and was soon a mere speck in the azure sky. ...
— Wilmshurst of the Frontier Force • Percy F. Westerman
... when they were within five miles of the ranch that Cordelia, looking far ahead, saw against the horizon a rapidly growing black speck. For some time she watched it in silence; then, suddenly, she became aware that, large as was the speck now, it had broken into other specks—bobbing, shifting specks that promptly became not specks at all, but ...
— The Sunbridge Girls at Six Star Ranch • Eleanor H. (Eleanor Hodgman) Porter
... which if I do not meet with, or at least something very near it, you and I shall, not be very well together. I shall dissect and analyze you with a microscope; so that I shall discover the least speck or blemish. This is fair warning; therefore take ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... dead, but flown afar, up hills of endless light, thru blazing corridors of suns, where worlds do swing of good and gentle men, of women strong and free—far from the cozenage, black hypocrisy and chaste prostitution of this shameful speck of dust! Turn again, O Lord, leave us not to perish ...
— The Book of American Negro Poetry • Edited by James Weldon Johnson
... the first invention; it is the unit of life,—a speck of protoplasm with a nucleus. To educate this cell till it could combine with its fellows and form the higher animals seems to have been the aim of the creative energy. First the cell, then combinations of cells, then combinations ...
— Time and Change • John Burroughs
... he quitted the near view, and let his eye run along the edge of the horizon, until it rested upon a small speck, which he knew to be the lofty spire of Saint Paul's Cathedral. If, as he supposed, the Fair Geraldine was in attendance upon Anne Boleyn, at the palace at Bridewell, she must be under the shadow of this very spire; and the supposition, whether correct or not, produced such quick ...
— Windsor Castle • William Harrison Ainsworth
... What did that mean, but a parcel of boys and girls without a speck of grace in their hearts, wantin' a good courtin'-place where their father's and mother's wouldn't see them. For his part, no child of his should ...
— 'Our guy' - or, The elder brother • Mrs. E. E. Boyd
... her favorite seat by the window. Her face was scarcely at all paler than it had been a week ago. She sat then by the window, looking out at her trouble, which showed like a speck in the blue sky. The shadow which enveloped her whole life was coming closer now, enveloping her like a thick fog. Still she was bearing up. Her eyes were gazing out on the garden—on the flowers which she and the doctor had tended and loved together. Some ...
— A Girl in Ten Thousand • L. T. Meade
... Of course. That's a fact." He turned his crested head upward, trying to think of a way, and saw a black speck moving ...
— Policeman Bluejay • L. Frank Baum
... his eyes rested upon a dark speck just beneath the overhanging fog. For a few minutes it made no impression upon his wandering mind. But slowly he began to realize that the object was in motion, and moving toward the steamer. Then he saw something dark being waved as if to attract attention. ...
— Glen of the High North • H. A. Cody
... mudbake. Not a sound breaks the stillness of the evening as we squat around the fire and eat our frugal supper—all about us is the oppressive silence and solitude of the desert Away off in the dim distance to the northeast can be seen a single speck of light—the camp-fire ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... simpered with pleasure and protested that her boy was too kind. "You haven't changed a single speck," she concluded proudly. ...
— The Valley of the Giants • Peter B. Kyne
... he kept his deck, And peered through darkness. Ah, that night Of all dark nights! And then a speck— A light! A light! A light! A light! It grew, a starlit flag unfurled! It grew to be Time's burst of dawn. He gained a world; he gave that world Its grandest ...
— A Brief History of the United States • John Bach McMaster
... Zoile, "Ned isn't sorry,—be sure of that; for he wants his dear 'Whitewash' restored again to the bosom of society, lest the walls of his reputation should by chance suffer from fly-speck." ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various
... me much information, and I thought to myself that my friend the skipper did not seem so much inclined for a chat as usual. I turned to look at the sea in search of more pieces of wreck, when I discovered in the distance a dark speck rising out of the water. I pointed it out to the skipper at once, who took his glass out of his pocket, and after looking through it ...
— Happy Days for Boys and Girls • Various
... perhaps a mean revenge of her for the innumerable black-holeings, bread-and-water dinners, summary chastisements, and impossible tasks she inflicted upon me for offences against her too solid possessions. You will see it at Woking. It is a light and graceful cross. It is a mere speck of white between the monstrous granite paperweights that oppress the dead on either side of her. Sometimes I am half sorry for that. When the end comes I shall not care to look her in the ...
— Certain Personal Matters • H. G. Wells
... could exchange an idea we might hold in common. I learned then fully to appreciate the value of the society and sympathy of my fellow-men. At length, one day as I sat at my usual occupation on the shore, my eyes fell on a white speck just rising above the horizon. Anxiously, intently did I watch it. Slowly it increased. First I made out the topgallant-sails; then the topsails; and at last the courses of a square-rigged schooner. She approached the island. Oh, how my heart beat within me for fear she might not come near the ...
— Old Jack • W.H.G. Kingston
... work afresh. Bilge-tank, upper tank, dorsal-tank, expansion-chamber, vacuum, main-return (as a liquid), and bilge-tank once more is the ordained cycle. Fleury's Ray sees to that; and the engineer with the tinted spectacles sees to Fleury's Ray. If a speck of oil, if even the natural grease of the human finger touch the hooded terminals, Fleury's Ray will wink and disappear and must be laboriously built up again. This means half a day's work for all hands and an expense of, one hundred and seventy-odd pounds to the G.P.O. ...
— Actions and Reactions • Rudyard Kipling
... to me that from that lofty altitude, chumming, as I was, with the forty centuries I have already alluded to, I could see two ways at once, that every glance could penetrate eternity; but I realize now that what I really got was only a bird's- eye view of the future. I didn't see that speck of a St. Helena. If I had, in the height of my power I should have despatched an expedition of sappers and ...
— Mr. Bonaparte of Corsica • John Kendrick Bangs
... more beneficial to his interest and injurious to his judgment, as it is the medium of his blind attachment to her father, whose secrets and views, past, present, or to come, he is and wishes to remain ignorant of. Nor can he see a speck in the character or conduct of Alston, for the best of all reasons with him, namely, that Alston has such ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton
... Awoke to sounds like some one hitting a board with a mallet. Ran outside. One found the aeroplane from the little clouds of shrapnel, for it was flying very high, and was like a speck. Clouds of smoke were rolling from one quarter of the town, and we thought that a big fire was beginning, but it was extinguished. Another aeroplane came later. The guns began long before it could be seen. It dropped two bombs over the powder factory, and two in the town. Mrs. Stobart ...
— The Luck of Thirteen - Wanderings and Flight through Montenegro and Serbia • Jan Gordon
... on the radiation and heat-screens. The Keegarkan ship was completely blacked out, but the radiations from her engines and the distinctive radiation-pattern of her contragravity-field showed clearly, and there was a speck that marked her position on the radar-screen. The same position was marked with a pin-point of light on the vision-screen—some device on the Sky-Spy, synchronized with the detectors, kept it focused there. The Company ships and contragravity ...
— Uller Uprising • Henry Beam Piper, John D. Clark and John F. Carr
... the paddles, and the fish rising to the surface for food. A circle on the surface meant that an insect had lain at its centre; a fish had risen and devoured it. Circles of this kind were continually being cut by the circumferences of other circles.... A dark speck moved down the stream. A turtle ...
— Child and Country - A Book of the Younger Generation • Will Levington Comfort
... had been using a small but powerful telescope, uttered an exclamation, and focussed the instrument on a speck that seemed moving ...
— Tom Swift Among The Diamond Makers - or The Secret of Phantom Mountain • Victor Appleton
... decided manner increasing. A Socrates, a Plato, or an Aristotle, however confessedly inferior in knowledge to the philosophers of the present day, do not appear to have been much below them in intellectual capacity. Intellect rises from a speck, continues in vigour only for a certain period, and will not perhaps admit while on earth of above a certain number of impressions. These impressions may, indeed, be infinitely modified, and from these various modifications, added probably to a difference in the susceptibility ...
— An Essay on the Principle of Population • Thomas Malthus
... danced out from beneath "Crow's Nest"; then she held a course to the westward, rolling indeed, but not enough to trouble Jenny who sat in the stern and kept a pair of strong Zeiss glasses fixed upon the cliffs and shore. They were soon reduced to a white speck under the misty weather; and after they had gone, Bendigo, in a sailor's pea-jacket and cap, lighted a pipe, took a big black-thorn stick, and set off beside Mark. The police car still stood on the road and, both entering it, they soon reached the gate ...
— The Red Redmaynes • Eden Phillpotts
... little rift within the lute That by and by will make the music mute, And ever widening slowly silence all. The little rift within the lover's lute, Or little pitted speck in garner'd fruit, That rotting inward slowly ...
— Leaves of Life - For Daily Inspiration • Margaret Bird Steinmetz
... away I sat lonely, thinking. As I thought, the world around me seemed to be illimitably great. The only little spot in which I was interested seemed like a tiny speck in the midst of a wilderness. Without and around it were darkness and unknown danger, pressing in from every side. And the central figure in our little oasis was one of sweetness and beauty. A figure one could love; could work for; ...
— The Jewel of Seven Stars • Bram Stoker
... the same fall, but a ball will reach the bottom of one that is steepest near the top in less time than on any other, because the maximum acceleration is at the start. We are all tired of being stuck to this cosmical speck, with its monotonous ocean, leaden sky, and single moon that is useless more than half the time, while its size is so microscopic compared with the universe that we can traverse its great circle in four days. Its ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds - A Romance of the Future • John Jacob Astor
... thoughtfulness, I'd have died of lonesomeness long before this. You know how I hate this life, this homestead business. You know I'm only waiting until you've finished and we can be married and go away where there is something worth while. Now be reasonable. You work too hard, so that every little speck looks like a mountain. And it's making you narrow, too, or will if you don't watch out. I have to kill time somehow till we can be married and so you ought not to find fault with my doing it. Run along over ...
— The Iron Furrow • George C. Shedd
... the woods that same afternoon by way of the bridge, in order to buy some provisions at the brick store. When he was still a long distance from the bars that divided the lane from the highroad, he espied a dark-clad little speck he knew to be Rodman leaning over the fence, waiting and longing as usual for his home-coming, and his heart warmed at the thought of the boyish welcome ...
— The Story Of Waitstill Baxter • By Kate Douglas Wiggin
... wife, sitting down before the blaze, pointed proudly to this heap of ashes, and the doctor said, "I brought Alice to this house a year ago, on the day of our wedding, and we kindled a fire here, on the bare hearth. Since then not a speck of ashes has been removed, except little bits from the front when the carpet was invaded. That pile of ashes is the witness ...
— Penguin Persons & Peppermints • Walter Prichard Eaton
... carried out as arranged. A second time Nairne's body was taken from the grave where it had been laid and its bearer began his long winter journey to Quebec. The sleigh with its sad burden, a moving dark speck on a white background, made its slow way along the wintry roads and by the shores of the ice bound St. Lawrence. We can picture the awed solemnity with which the French Canadian peasants heard the story of Nairne's fall as his body rested for the night in inn or farm yard. On January 20th, 1814, ...
— A Canadian Manor and Its Seigneurs - The Story of a Hundred Years, 1761-1861 • George M. Wrong
... that musk, the nut brown musk, e'er claims the highest price * Whilst for a load of whitest lime none more than dirham bids? And while white speck upon the eye deforms the loveliest youth, * Black eyes discharge the sharpest shafts in lashes from ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 4 • Richard F. Burton
... rubbed in, and the horses brushed until their coats shone. The hoofs were then blacked and polished, the mouths washed, and their teeth picked. It is related that after this grooming the master of the stables was accustomed to flick over their coats a clean muslin handkerchief, and if this revealed a speck of dust the ...
— Woman's Life in Colonial Days • Carl Holliday
... blue star with its attendant speck of white, which but a little while ago shone with great ...
— Pharaoh's Broker - Being the Very Remarkable Experiences in Another World of Isidor Werner • Ellsworth Douglass
... wind—driving up from the southwest like mad: threatening still heavier weather. We followed the skiff with my father's glass—saw her beat bravely on, reeling through the seas, smothered in spray—until she was but a black speck on the vast, angry waste, and, at last, vanished altogether in the spume and thickening fog. Then we went back to my father's house, prayerfully wishing the doctor safe voyage to Wreck Cove; and all that day, and all the next, while the gale still blew, my sister was nervous ...
— Doctor Luke of the Labrador • Norman Duncan
... life, and he never had any more; I never remember seeing him smile after that time. What gave him the best comfort was trying to keep things pretty and bright, as she liked to see them. He was neat as a woman, and he never allowed a speck of dust on the chairs, or a withered leaf on the geraniums. He never would let me touch her flowers, but I was set to polish the pewter and copper,—indeed, my mother had taught me that,—and he watched jealously lest any dimness come ...
— Rosin the Beau • Laura Elizabeth Howe Richards
... greeted with honied words, And his cheeks have been fondled to win a smile By the Privy Council Lords. Will he trust the "charmer" in after years, And deem he is more than man? Or will he feel that he's but a speck In creation's mighty plan? Let us hope the best, and rattle our bell, And shout and laugh, and sing as well— Roo-too-tooit! Shallabella! Life ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... is far too precious to risk by trying anew; he knows that if a bottle be so much as turned in its couch it must sleep again for years before it is really fit to drink; he knows how difficult it is to get the wine out of the bottle clear as ruby or yellow diamond; he knows that if so much as a speck of sediment gets into the decanter, to precisely the extent of the ...
— Two Thousand Miles On An Automobile • Arthur Jerome Eddy
... had longed to see the sun set behind a mountain with snow upon it, and to see a cowboy with dust on his shoulders, like the cowboys of the western drama, come riding out of the glow, a speck at first, and on, and on, until he arrived where she waited and flung himself from his panting horse, neckerchief awry, spurs tinkling, and swept off his broad hat in salute. Beyond that point she had not dared to go since marrying the miller, who had dust enough on his shoulders—unromantic ...
— Claim Number One • George W. (George Washington) Ogden
... elevation at which he was placed, Roswell, aided by the glass, had no difficulty in making her out, and in recognising her rig, form, and character. Stimson also examined her, and knew her to be the schooner. On that vast and desolate sea, she resembled a speck, but the art of man had enabled those she held to guide her safely through the tempest, and bring her up to her goal, in a time that really seemed miraculous ...
— The Sea Lions - The Lost Sealers • James Fenimore Cooper
... floating through the blue sky that silhouetted the trees in the garden. She made a pretence of alighting upon the balcony railing, sheered off, coquetted among the treetops, came back again, retreated so far that she was merely a white speck against the blue vault, and then, true to her sex, having proved her liberty only to tire of it, with a flight so swift that the eye could scarcely follow her, she came back again and rested upon the farther end of the balcony, where she immediately began to preen herself and to affect ...
— The Turquoise Cup, and, The Desert • Arthur Cosslett Smith
... within the poor little room. Not a speck of dust or a litter of any kind on the quaint little old-time high bureau, unless you might except a sheet of paper lying loose with something written on it. Titiche had evidently inherited his prying propensities for the landlady ...
— Violets and Other Tales • Alice Ruth Moore
... high Jebel Orbata, 1170 metres, now covered with snow, coming forward to meet you on the other side of the wide valley. From this point it is easy to realize, as did the commander of that French expedition, the significance of this speck of culture, its strategic value: Gafsa is a veritable key to the Sahara. I daresay the abundant water-supply of the town is due to these two chains of hills which almost touch each other and so force the water to rise ...
— Fountains In The Sand - Rambles Among The Oases Of Tunisia • Norman Douglas
... the distance a moving speck on the water caught his eye. For a few minutes he watched it in suspense, then gave ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... case. 'Sir Francis Bacon (who was always for moderate counsels), when one was speaking of such a reformation of the Church of England, as would in effect make it no church, said thus to him:—'Sir, the subject we talk of is the eye of England, and if there be a speck or two in the eye, we endeavour to take them off; but he were a strange oculist who would pull out the eye.' [And here is another writer who seems to be taking, on this point and others, very much the ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon
... faithless, which, for women ambitious in love, is the worst of infidelities. After a little conversation, the plotting lady suspected that poor Bertha was a maiden in matters of love, when she saw her eyes full of limpid water, no marks on the temples, no little black speck on the point of her little nose, white as snow, where usually the marks of the amusement are visible, no wrinkle on her brow; in short, no habit of pleasure apparent on her face—clear as the face of an innocent maiden. Then this traitress put certain women's questions to her, ...
— Droll Stories, Complete - Collected From The Abbeys Of Touraine • Honore de Balzac
... white of one egg, and measure just as much cold water; mix the two well, and stir stiff with confectioners' sugar; add a little flavoring, vanilla, or almond, or pistache, and, for some candies, color with a tiny speck of fruit paste. This is the beginning of all ...
— A Little Cook Book for a Little Girl • Caroline French Benton
... feint of dashing onward in a fury, yet dies away with a meek murmur and does but kiss the strand; now, after many such abortive efforts, it rears itself up in an unbroken line, heightening as it advances, without a speck of foam on its green crest. With how fierce a roar it flings itself forward and rushes ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... over. At some little distance from the land a small aperture had been made for the purpose of procuring water, and at this hole a pig was drinking. While looking toward the horizon, the lieutenant saw a mere speck or ball, as it were, rapidly moving along the ice: presently this took the form of a large wolf, which was making for the pig at top speed. Lieutenant Oldenburg now seized his gun, and ran to the assistance of the pig; but before ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 2, No. 12, May, 1851. • Various
... we chaps? And what's all this here? Nothing at all. All we can see is only a speck. When one speaks of the whole war, it's as if you said nothing at all—the words are strangled. We're here, and we look at ...
— High Adventure - A Narrative of Air Fighting in France • James Norman Hall
... between him and his surroundings, is not far to seek. The primitive man, unable to understand his being, much less the unity of all life, felt himself absolutely dependent on blind, hidden forces ever ready to mock and taunt him. Out of that attitude grew the religious concepts of man as a mere speck of dust dependent on superior powers on high, who can only be appeased by complete surrender. All the early sagas rest on that idea, which continues to be the LEIT-MOTIF of the biblical tales dealing with the relation of man to God, to the State, to society. Again and ...
— Anarchism and Other Essays • Emma Goldman
... gwine to keep Honest Moses fum de debil. Dat nigger's not got no religion to his name—not a speck. Didn't I tell Missus when she thought she cotched me and Ransom sellin' watermillions and sweet 'tatoes to de boys from Marietta, dat it ...
— A Dream of Empire - Or, The House of Blennerhassett • William Henry Venable
... the front there was a tiny patch close under her window, and there was a long strip at the back, but only a very few things had the courage to grow there, for the wind caught it, and the salt sea-spray came up over it, and blighted every speck of green that had the courage to put its head out. Lucy's garden and Lucy's kitchen both delighted her. She said the kitchen was more cheerful than hers, but it was really Lucy's presence that made it so. Lucy was always so pleased to see her, so ready to listen ...
— The Making of Mona • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... moment or two, that I saw a black dot there, but it was only my fancy creating what I expected my sight to behold. Let us look again all around the horizon, where it touches the water, following it as we would a line. Ah, I think I see a dark speck, just a black mote at this distance, and I am still unable to separate fancy from fact, but it may be fact. What do you ...
— The Masters of the Peaks - A Story of the Great North Woods • Joseph A. Altsheler
... discontent had been shown as excuse; but, in this case, no cause was guessed for Holleben's disgrace except the Kaiser's wish to have a personal representative at Washington. Breaking down all precedent, he sent Speck von Sternburg ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams
... boughs, revealing by its transparent light the green buds of spring, which variegated and cheered the scathed bark. It broke loose from their embrace—hovered irresolutely above them—then swept rapidly before the wind, rising till it became as a speck in ...
— A Love Story • A Bushman
... handling the Word of God deceitfully; but by manifestation of the truth commending ourselves to every man's conscience in the sight of God' (2 Cor 4:2). All these sentences are chiefly to be applied to doctrine, and so are, as it were, an offer to any, if they can, to find a speck, or a spot, or a wrinkle, or any such thing in this river of ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... the spirit of envy and jealousy and uncharitableness. Unawed, however, by censure or menace, she continues in her course, upward and onward, to the accomplishment of her high destinies. She is but a speck, a mere patch on the surface of America, hardly more than one four-hundredth part of the territory of the Republic, with a rugged soil and still more rugged clime. But on that little spot of the globe is a Common wealth where common consent is recognized ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... most providential wave suddenly struck and lifted up the stern, so as to enable the seamen to disengage the tackle. The boat being thus dexterously cleared from the ship, was seen after a while from the poop, battling with the billows,—now raised, in its progress to the brig, like a speck on their summit, and then disappearing for several seconds, as if engulfed "in the ...
— The Loss of the Kent, East Indiaman, in the Bay of Biscay - Narrated in a Letter to a Friend • Duncan McGregor
... follow the example of Joe, the Italian who puts out our ashes," laughed Evelyn. "Just grin when they try to argue and shrug our shoulders. 'Me no speck Ang-lish.'" ...
— Lucile Triumphant • Elizabeth M. Duffield
... his pocket-book and was about to resume his beat when he was joined by his inspector. The latter agreed that the conclusion arrived at by the constable was probably the right one and they were about to pass on when the inspector noticed a small speck of light shining through the lower part of the painted window, where a small piece of the paint had either been scratched or had shelled off the glass. He knelt down and found that it was possible to get a view of the interior of ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell
... blot, one heart in which are no envy, no failings—one obedience which never varied. He says of Himself, 'I do always those things which please Him,' and we, thinking of all the noblest examples of virtue that the world has ever seen, and seeing in them all some speck, turn to this whole and perfect chrysolite and say, Yes! 'a greater ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren
... hill, then strikes off toward a farmhouse half a mile away where I know bees are kept. Then we try another and another, and the third bee, much to our satisfaction, goes straight toward the woods. We can see the brown speck against the darker background for many yards. The regular bee-hunter professes to be able to tell a wild bee from a tame one by the color, the former, he says, being lighter. But there is no difference; they are alike ...
— The Writings of John Burroughs • John Burroughs
... one sea of lit cloud, foamy ridge upon ridge over all the heavens, and each wave was brimming with its own whiteness, seeming unborrowed of the moon. Through one peep-hole, and only one, shone a distant star, a faint white speck far away, dimmed by the nearer splendours of the sky. Sometimes the thinning edge of a cloud brightened in spume, and round the brightness came a circle of umber, making a window of fantastic glory for Dian the queen; there her white vision peeped for a moment on the world, and the next she was ...
— The House with the Green Shutters • George Douglas Brown
... know," James replied, carelessly flicking a speck from his overcoat sleeve. "The city supplied them for the committee what went to Moriarty's ...
— The Lever - A Novel • William Dana Orcutt
... you something about it. He has a dingy, fourth-story back room; small, I fancy, from the way in which he spoke of it, and not a speck of fire over! In such weather as this, how can a young man read his Bible, or ...
— Ester Ried Yet Speaking • Isabella Alden
... having smoothed the nap of his hat and flicked a speck of dust from his coat-sleeve, walked to the door of the inner room ...
— Psmith, Journalist • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... as I gazed about seeking for a clue, a speck on the north-west horizon caught my eye and my hopes went down. It looked like a distant ship; it might well have been the 'Aurora'. Well, what matter! the long journey was at an end-a terrible chapter of ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson
... take a little turn. Has the man brushed it? Did you see the man brush it yourself? What do you mean by saying he has brushed it, when you didn't see him? Let me look at the tails. If there's a speck of dust on the tails, I'll turn the man ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins
... caught a momentary glimpse of his real significance. "I am only a gnat, a speck in the sun, a youth facing the millions of great and wise and wealthy!" He leaped up in a frenzy. "Oh, I mustn't stay here! I must get back to my studies. Life is slipping by me, and I am doing nothing, ...
— Other Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland
... reached such a tremendous height that the city looked like a speck on the desert beneath them. Knowing he must act quickly, Rob seized the dangling left arm of the unconscious Turk and raised it until he could reach the dial of the traveling machine. He feared to unclasp the machine just then, for two ...
— The Master Key - An Electrical Fairy Tale • L. Frank Baum
... liberality with which he responded to the calls upon his generosity or benevolence. A year later he wrote in the same strain: "I have closed the war without a fortune; but I trust, and, from the attention that has been paid to me, believe, that there is not a speck in my character. True honour, I hope, predominates in ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. I (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan
... concludes thus: "You may as well look for chastity and mercy in the Empress of Russia, honour and consistency from the King of Prussia, wisdom and plain dealing from the Emperor of Germany, as a single speck of virtue from ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... beat out into mid-stream, where the sail of the low-lying craft would be but a speck when viewed from the shore, and with a beam wind laid her on a course which she kept almost dead straight, with a tack at long intervals only. In the shade of the awning the boys slept the dreamless sleep of the healthy, and he let them sleep on ...
— In Search of the Okapi - A Story of Adventure in Central Africa • Ernest Glanville
... danced upon the rippling water; the border of grand old trees that fringed the bank of the stream was reflected with exaggerated beauty far down among the waters; the glittering stars stole in and out among their branches, and shone in the clear crystal mirror. Now a fleecy speck of cloud floated over the face of the Queen of Night, from behind which she would soon emerge, with increased brilliancy, to dart her long arrowy beams away down to the pebbly bottom of the flowing river, kissing the ...
— Bucholz and the Detectives • Allan Pinkerton
... his observance has been half blind through prejudice either for or against; he either sees her magnified with adulation, or else the large end of the glass is placed against his eye and she is merely a speck in the distance. But let a woman step past that mysterious wall which separates the formal from the intimate—only one step—at once she is surrounded by the eyes of a man as if by a thousand spies. So ...
— Trailin'! • Max Brand
... hostility to human life which sobers indeed those who are intelligent enough to perceive it. It is only the fool or the brute or the sentimentalist who is unterrified by nature. The man of reflection and imagination sees his race crawling ant-like over its tiny speck of slowly cooling earth and surrounded by titanic and ruthless forces which threaten at any moment to engulf it. The religious man knows that he is infinitely greater than the beasts of the field or the clods of the highway. Yet Vesuvius belches forth its liquid fire and in ...
— Preaching and Paganism • Albert Parker Fitch
... upright in pitch darkness, hearing faint moaning sounds of pent-up winds, when we are silent, and long reverberations of our own voices, when we speak. Then, as we turn and crawl out again, we soon see before us one bright speck of light that may be fancied miles and miles away—a star shining in the earth—a diamond sparkling in the bosom of the rock. This guides us out again pleasantly; and, on gaining the open air, we find that while we have been groping in the ...
— Rambles Beyond Railways; - or, Notes in Cornwall taken A-foot • Wilkie Collins
... one thing that Ben was skilled at,—holding true. He raised the weapon to his shoulder, drawing down finely on that little speck of brown across the gulch. Few times in his life had he been more anxious to make a successful shot. Yet he would never have admitted the true explanation: that he simply desired to make good in the ...
— The Sky Line of Spruce • Edison Marshall
... to act upon things as they are and to make a reasonable provision for whatever they may be. Were armies to be raised whenever a speck of war is visible in our horizon, we never should have been without them. Our resources would have been exhausted on dangers which have never happened, instead of being reserved for what is really to take place. A steady, perhaps a quickened, ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Thomas Jefferson • Thomas Jefferson
... along at a rate of quite eight miles the hour. The shore grew dim behind us, but for a long while above the clinging mists I could see the flag that we had planted on the mound. By degrees it dwindled till it became a mere speck and vanished. As it grew smaller my spirits sank, and when it was quite gone, I felt very ...
— Allan and the Holy Flower • H. Rider Haggard
... even the fact that he had yet to get a job riding for the Concho outfit, in the eager joy of choosing a saddle, bridle, blanket, spurs, boots and chaps, to say nothing of a new Stetson and rope. The sum total of these unpaid-for purchases rather staggered him. His eighteen-odd dollars was as a fly-speck on the credit side of the ledger. He had chosen the best of everything that Roth had in stock. A little figuring convinced him that he would have to work several months before his outfit was paid for. "If I git a job ...
— The Ridin' Kid from Powder River • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... mind, as unreasonable as he who insists that everything has been divinely revealed to us. I know nothing more unbearable than the complacent type of scientist who knows very exactly all that he does know, but has not imagination enough to understand what a speck his little accumulation of doubtful erudition is when compared with the immensity of our ignorance. He is the person who thinks that the universe can be explained by laws, as if a law did not require construction ...
— The Stark Munro Letters • J. Stark Munro
... now gone over the ridge to the north. I saw him moor the boat, and begin to climb; and I watched his dark figure on the white snow, higher and higher, till it was a speck, and I could not make ...
— Feats on the Fiord - The third book in "The Playfellow" • Harriet Martineau
... these would-be murderers to know how their trick failed. That's the reason I didn't pound the brute to a jelly on the bed, for it would have made such a mess on the sheet. Now there isn't a speck on it. I'll take the vase with me into my room and finish the cobra off. In the morning I'll get rid of its body somehow. When these devils find tomorrow that you're not dead, they'll be very puzzled. Now, the question is, what ...
— The Elephant God • Gordon Casserly
... dollars per week. The light, airy bakery is always kept spotless. Adjacent to it is a commodious room with lockers for each man and two shower baths make it easy to keep clean. Down on the first floor the retail bakery is so immaculately clean that you would be willing to defy anyone to find one speck of dust in the place. Every article of food is under shining glass. The floor is white tiled. But the food is what attracts one. The pies swell out as if about to burst. To look at the bread and rolls makes one hungry ...
— Consumers' Cooperative Societies in New York State • The Consumers' League of New York
... floating upwards till they reached the level of the table and became visible to Dr. Speer. They were expressly made at my side, instead of, as usual, at my back, so that I might see them. They seemed to develop from a very bright speck, about the size of a pea, until they attained the size of a soda-water tumbler, and showed a soft luminosity like pale moonlight. They seemed to be covered with drapery and to be held by a hand. ...
— Psychic Phenomena - A Brief Account of the Physical Manifestations Observed - in Psychical Research • Edward T. Bennett
... speaking suddenly. And Alice, following his gaze, made out far to the north-eastward a moving speck. The Texan crouched and motioned the others into the shelter of a rock. "Wish I had a pair of glasses," he muttered, with his ...
— The Texan - A Story of the Cattle Country • James B. Hendryx
... waiting for the spring-time when they could be wound up and rival their owners in animation; and the shining tiled roofs, mosaic courtyards, and polished house trimmings flashed up a silent homage to the sky, where never a speck of dust could dwell. ...
— Hans Brinker - or The Silver Skates • Mary Mapes Dodge
... by those who object to that term, foliated— granite, being formed of the same materials as granite, namely, feldspar, quartz, and mica. In the specimen in Figure 622, the white layers consist almost exclusively of granular feldspar, with here and there a speck of mica and grain of quartz. The dark layers are composed of grey quartz and black mica, with occasionally a grain of feldspar intermixed. The rock splits most easily in the plane of these darker layers, and the surface thus exposed is almost entirely covered with shining spangles of mica. ...
— The Student's Elements of Geology • Sir Charles Lyell
... mount was scattering the pebbles of the river-bed as Wee Willie Winkie left the cantonment and British India behind him. Bowed forward and still flogging, Wee Willie Winkie shot into Afghan territory, and could just see Miss Allardyce a black speck, flickering across the stony plain. The reason of her wandering was simple enough. Coppy, in a tone of too-hastily-assumed authority, had told her overnight that she must not ride out by the river. And she had gone to prove her own spirit and teach ...
— The Kipling Reader - Selections from the Books of Rudyard Kipling • Rudyard Kipling
... way of the Wady Sadr has become the main commercial route connecting El-Muwaylah with Tabuk.[EN151] During the evening we walked up the Wady Surr, finding, in its precipitous walls, immense veins of serpentine and porphyritic greenstone, but not a speck of gold. The upper part of the Fiumara also showed abundant scatters of water-rolled stones, serpentines, and hard felspars, whose dove-coloured surface was streaked with fibrils and at times with regular veins of silvery lustre, as if ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 1 • Richard Burton
... astonished people, sprang upon the magic string, balanced himself for a moment on the steep incline, and then ran as nimbly up as a sailor would have mounted a rope ladder. Higher and higher he climbed till he seemed no bigger than a lark ascending into the blue sky, and then, like some tiny speck, far, far ...
— A Chinese Wonder Book • Norman Hinsdale Pitman
... a foreign substance, rub the other eye, in order to make both eyes water. If the speck can be seen, it can generally be taken out by twisting a small piece of gauze or cloth around a toothpick and drawing it over the speck, or by twisting up a piece of paper like a lamp lighter and, after wetting ...
— Camping For Boys • H.W. Gibson
... crackled up like straw; He was the first to turn and draw His sword, that had nor speck nor flaw; Hah! hah! la ...
— The Defence of Guenevere and Other Poems • William Morris
... among poplars, and that ribbon is the boundary between Empire and Republic. On such a clear day as this the view from the hill is extraordinarily interesting. From its grassy top a little aeroplane cannon stares to heaven, watching the east for the danger speck; and the circumference of the hill is furrowed by a deep trench—a "bowel," rather—winding invisibly from one subterranean observation post to another. In each of these earthly warrens (ingeniously wattled, roofed and iron-sheeted) ...
— Fighting France - From Dunkerque to Belport • Edith Wharton
... Venning, and the boy noticed that the pupils of the eyes had a white speck, which gave to them ...
— In Search of the Okapi - A Story of Adventure in Central Africa • Ernest Glanville
... that the three took counsel together and halted, and the scouts who were watching them report that they remained absolutely stationary for the next half hour. The Martian who had been overthrown crawled tediously out of his hood, a small brown figure, oddly suggestive from that distance of a speck of blight, and apparently engaged in the repair of his support. About nine he had finished, for his cowl was then seen above the ...
— The War of the Worlds • H. G. Wells
... forced to perform the thousand tyrannies that are directed against the child during the day by cruel and thoughtless parents, the lunatic asylum would soon be our place of refuge. Such trivial things as a spot on the shoe, a speck of dirt upon the clothes, a mere tip of the hat, a slight turn of the scarf often give rise to such violent reprimand, and very often brutal punishment, that the savageness of barbarians is mild compared to such ...
— Tyranny of God • Joseph Lewis
... Turk. "Wilt thou be beaten then, and by an Israelite? Shall this lovely maid be given to a perverter of the Scriptures, to an inheritor of the fire, to one of a race that would not bestow on their fellow-men so much as the speck out of a date-stone? It were a ...
— The Sea-Hawk • Raphael Sabatini
... boat, during the latter part of the afternoon, but none came; until toward sundown, when I saw a speck on the water, and as it drew near I found it was the gig, with the captain. The hides, then, were not to go off. The captain came up the hill, with a man, bringing my monkey jacket and a blanket. He looked pretty black, but inquired whether I had enough to eat; ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... there's one thing I wanted to ax you,' said Andy, resting a moment from his chopping: 'it's goin' on four months now since we see a speck of green, an' will the snow ever be off the ground agin, at all, ...
— Cedar Creek - From the Shanty to the Settlement • Elizabeth Hely Walshe
... sound. Something silvery and glistening rose swiftly toward the sky. It dwindled to a speck. There were more roarings. Three more silvery, glistening objects flung themselves heavenward, leaving massive trails of seemingly solid smoke behind them. Then there were bellowings. Larger ships rose up. As ...
— Talents, Incorporated • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... Smith and Stuart Mill; with the naturalists, to sound the depths of the argument as to the origin of species and the genesis of man; with the astronomers, to leave the narrow bounds of earth, and explore the illimitable spaces of the universe, in which our solar system is but a speck; with the mathematicians, to quit the uncertain realm of speculation and assumption, and plant our feet firmly on the rock of exact science:—to come back anon to lighter themes, and to revel in the grotesque humor ...
— A Book for All Readers • Ainsworth Rand Spofford
... You'll have to come with me, Nan, into this enchanted land. Your estate is large only if you don't lift up your head and look farther. You own a hundred thousand acres in the mountains, and yet, after all, it's but a tiny speck on the horizon of one little corner of a state. Beyond is the great world with its beautiful rivers, its valleys, its shining shores and emerald seas. This big world is mine—the Alps and the Mountains of the Moon and your little blue ...
— The Root of Evil • Thomas Dixon
... settled in the red-painted house. When he entered, the hum sounded like the distant roar of a family of lions. He knocked in amazement. No one answered. When he had opened the door he stood still on the threshold, for at first he could see nothing but a dense smoke, through which a yellow speck of light appeared, with a great halo round it. Gradually he discovered in this smoke a few rotund forms, placed around the candle like so many planets around the sun, and at times something was seen to move, possibly a man's arm, but not unlike an ...
— Debit and Credit - Translated from the German of Gustav Freytag • Gustav Freytag
... her:" in allusion, doubtless, to the presence of this vessel. We were all very anxious as the night approached as to the state of the weather; and lo! for the first time in five or six days, we had a beautiful star-light night, without a speck of cloud anywhere to be seen. The enemy continued plain in sight, and our black smoke, as it issued from the stack, would have betrayed us at a distance of five miles. We were therefore reluctantly compelled to ...
— The Cruise of the Alabama and the Sumter • Raphael Semmes
... still extremely obscure), from 1700 to 300,000 electrons revolve at a speed that reaches as high as 100,000 miles a second. Instead of being crowded together, however, in their minute system, each of them has, in proportion to its size, as ample a space to move in as a single speck of dust would have in a moderate-sized room (Thomson). This theory not only meets all the facts that have been discovered in an industrious decade of research, not only offers a splendid prospect of introducing unity into the eighty-one different elements of the chemist, but it opens out a still ...
— The Story of Evolution • Joseph McCabe
... he promised to bring Idun back to Asgard if the goddess Freyja would lend him her falcon guise. No sooner said than done; and with eager gaze the gods watched him as he flew away, becoming at last only a dark moving speck against the sky. ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 2 (of 12) • Various
... of his position was quickly forced upon him. A dead calm now prevailed. Henry gazed eagerly, wistfully round the horizon. It was an unbroken line; not a speck that resembled a sail was to be seen. Remembering for the first time that his low raft would be quite invisible at a very short distance, he set about erecting a flag. This was easily done. Part of his red shirt was torn off and fastened to a light spar, the end of which he stuck between ...
— Gascoyne, The Sandal Wood Trader - A Tale of the Pacific • R. M. Ballantyne
... orchards that flourish, rank and wild, no longer cared for by pious and loving hands. From the rough road that climbs the mountains to Assunto, the convent is invisible, a gnarled and ragged olive grove intervening, and a spur of cliffs as well, while from Palermo one sees only the speck of white, flashing in the sun, indistinguishable from the many similar gleams of desert monastery or ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Ghost Stories • Various
... mountain island of Scarba overlooking the fierce, far-famed whirlpool, that we could see from the deck, breaking in long lines of foam, and sending out its waves in wide rings on every side, when not a speck of white was visible elsewhere in the expanse of sea around us. And then came an opener space, studded with smaller islands,—mere hill-tops rising out of the sea, with here and there insulated groups of pointed rocks, the skeletons of perished hills, amid which the ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller
... it; the pin-point of a man at the right had left his two companions and was turning in at the first of the row of cottages. Another photograph was produced. It showed the second man entering the gate of the fourth cottage. And the final picture of the series showed the remaining speck plodding on alone toward his home in ...
— Italy at War and the Allies in the West • E. Alexander Powell
... scarce a speck Was on the child from heel to neck, Though she was sorely mired; Nor gave she sign of grief's unrest, Till, hid upon her mother's breast, She wept till ...
— A Hidden Life and Other Poems • George MacDonald
... woods not very far away, and presently he came down to the edge of the pond, rolling a heavy birch cutting before him. He noticed at once that the water was falling, and he started straight for the dam to see what was the matter. The amateur naturalist saw him coming, a dark speck moving swiftly down the pond, with a long V-shaped ripple spreading out behind him like the flanks of a flock of wild geese. But the beaver was doing some thinking while he swam. He had never before known the water to fall so suddenly and rapidly; ...
— Forest Neighbors - Life Stories of Wild Animals • William Davenport Hulbert
... a fact." He turned his crested head upward, trying to think of a way, and saw a black speck moving across the sky. ...
— Policeman Bluejay • L. Frank Baum
... what she said dressing. Dislike dressing together. Nicked myself shaving. Biting her nether lip, hooking the placket of her skirt. Timing her. 9.l5. Did Roberts pay you yet? 9.20. What had Gretta Conroy on? 9.23. What possessed me to buy this comb? 9.24. I'm swelled after that cabbage. A speck of dust on the patent leather of ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... staircase or the side of a pyramid. There was not for miles round that place so much as a slope like that of Ludgate Hill. And this was a slope like that of the Matterhorn. The whole street had lifted itself like a single wave, and yet every speck and detail of it was the same, and I saw in the high distance, as at the top of an Alpine pass, picked out in pink letters the ...
— Tremendous Trifles • G. K. Chesterton
... Something I said however, gave him knowledge that I was a seaman, and he paused a moment more civilly before resuming his watch, even pointing out what resembled the gleam of a distant sail far away on our starboard quarter. This was such a dim speck against the darkening horizon that I stood up to see better, shadowing my eyes, and forgetful of all else in aroused interest. Undoubtedly it was a sail, although appearing no larger than a gull's wing, and my imagination took me in spirit across the leagues of water. I was ...
— Wolves of the Sea • Randall Parrish
... thoughts, he quitted the near view, and let his eye run along the edge of the horizon, until it rested upon a small speck, which he knew to be the lofty spire of Saint Paul's Cathedral. If, as he supposed, the Fair Geraldine was in attendance upon Anne Boleyn, at the palace at Bridewell, she must be under the shadow of this very spire; and the supposition, whether correct or not, produced such quick ...
— Windsor Castle • William Harrison Ainsworth
... and buffeted for about forty minutes before we arrived at the little speck of an island that is Quarantine. Long before we were there we sighted the great La Montaigne near the group of buildings on the island, where she had been waiting since early morning for the tide and the customs officials. The tug steamed alongside, and quickly up ...
— The Poisoned Pen • Arthur B. Reeve
... as so often, a picture arises before our eyes most significant and full of interest. Mary upon her horse, perhaps pausing now and then to glance afar into the wide space, where her hawk hung suspended a dark speck in the blue, or whirled and circled downward to strike its prey, while the preacher on his hackney paused reluctant, often essaying to take his leave, retained always by a new subject. Suddenly she broached another and more private matter, turning aside from the attendants ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant
... "Only speck of consciousness and motionless in the void," the whisper began again. "Terribly alive, terribly alone. Seem outside space yet—still in body. Can't see, hear, feel—short-circuited from every sense—but in some strange way realize ...
— The Metal Monster • A. Merritt
... vast the increase of knowledge and of power which the future may have in store for man, he can scarcely hope to stay the sweep of those great forces which seem to be making silently but relentlessly for the destruction of all this starry universe in which our earth swims as a speck or mote. In the ages to come man may be able to predict, perhaps even to control, the wayward courses of the winds and clouds, but hardly will his puny hands have strength to speed afresh our slackening planet ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... down to the saddle pack without taking his eyes off the moving speck and took out the radiophone. He held it to his ear and thumbed ...
— Anything You Can Do ... • Gordon Randall Garrett
... cabbage fields to where he could, by crossing a meadow, get into a wood. For an hour he sat on a log at the wood's edge and looked south. Away in the distance, over the roofs of the houses of the town, he could see a white speck against a background of green—the Butterworth farm house. Almost at once he decided that the thing he had seen in Clara's eyes and that was sister to something he had seen in Rose McCoy's eyes had nothing to do with him. The mantle of vanity he had been wearing dropped off ...
— Poor White • Sherwood Anderson
... the southward, in the direction of the mountain spurs, and on the very boundary of her vision, a black speck seems to be quivering and flickering, so indistinct, so impalpable, that none but the experienced eye can ...
— Cowmen and Rustlers • Edward S. Ellis
... was gifted with good sight; and though the figure appeared but as a tiny speck, it was unmistakably that of a man bearing a burden upon his back and ascending steadily toward the highest point of all. In a word it was a steeplejack. As the name passed through the King's mind it evoked ...
— King John of Jingalo - The Story of a Monarch in Difficulties • Laurence Housman
... the baby walked with him down to the turn in the road. There they stood and watched him through their tears, as he followed the path up through the pines on the mountain side. At last, no larger than a speck, he disappeared behind the hills. Then they went home to await ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... "I done 'speck, seh, yo go roun' to de back," said the negro, as Croyden put his foot on the step. "Ole Mose 'im live dyar. I'll bring 'im heah, ef ...
— In Her Own Right • John Reed Scott
... &c., till twenty, which is erua ahuru, this is two tens; twenty-one consists of the terms for two tens and one. In this manner they count to ten tens, which is rau. Ten raus is one mano, or thousand; ten manos one million, and so on. How exactly the Algonquin method, but not a speck of analogy in words. ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft
... breathing deep of earth's plain fragrance; he looked up into the great array of heaven, and was quieted. His little turgid life dwindled to its true proportions; and he saw himself (that great flame-hearted martyr!) stand like a speck under the cool cupola of the night. Thus he felt his careless injuries already soothed; the live air of out-of-doors, the quiet of the world, as if by their silent music, ...
— Prince Otto • Robert Louis Stevenson
... already turned blue; and as she pressed it slightly, a whitish froth issued from the mouth. From between his lashes she brushed away some speck, very carefully, as though fearful ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... crystal may be, when reduced even to small size it will be found that the crystals are still of the same shape. If this process is taken still further, and the substance is ground to the finest impalpable powder, as fine as floating dust, when placed under the microscope each speck, though perhaps invisible to the naked eye, will be seen a perfect crystal, of the identical shape as that from which it came, one so large maybe that its planes and angles might have been measured and defined ...
— The Chemistry, Properties and Tests of Precious Stones • John Mastin
... it concluded, Lennox flicked at a speck. "I am grateful to Paliser for that, but for the manner in which he treated her, I shall have a ...
— The Paliser case • Edgar Saltus
... right: do you know those nasty creatures have gone and left every speck of the supper dishes unwashed? I've got half a mind to give them ...
— At Fault • Kate Chopin
... came we here in all the noon-day light With only darting swallows over us To make a speck of darkness on the sun? Let us go down where walls will shut us round. Your castle has a hundred quiet halls, A hundred chambers, where the shadows lie On things put by, forgotten long ago. Forgotten lutes with strings that Time has slackened, We two shall draw them close ...
— Helen of Troy and Other Poems • Sara Teasdale
... looked the sky suddenly brightened in a tiny spot out to sea. A long pencil of light shot up from the water, and a cloud was tinged with a speck of dull white light. ...
— A Prisoner of Morro - In the Hands of the Enemy • Upton Sinclair
... sighted them, just a little speck near the sky-line, an' we bore down on them for all we was worth. Half an hour later they was alongside, an' of all the chilly, miserable-looking men I ever ...
— Sea Urchins • W. W. Jacobs
... sah," and Private Massay of "B" Troop, who was the commanding officer's orderly for the day, spoke up, "Ef de Cap'n could git in through de little doah in de stoah-room, and go through de kitchen, I speck he could git in widout ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. XXXI, No. 3, July 1908. • Various
... not stay long in that hot place, and I did not take a pick and happen to strike upon a nugget, as it is said the Duke of Edinburgh did, though I saw a small dish of the dirt washed when we reached the top, and it yielded a speck or two. We saw "the colour," as the expression is. I felt quite relieved at last to find myself at the top of the shaft, and in the coolness and freshness of the open air. Here the dirt raised from the mine is put into the iron puddling-machine, and worked round and round with ...
— A Boy's Voyage Round the World • The Son of Samuel Smiles
... prints, architecture, and gardening. With such a fund of knowledge, his conversation must have been equally instructing and entertaining; but he was also a good man, a man of virtue and humanity. There is no character without some speck, some imperfection; and I think the greatest defect in his was an affectation in delicacy, or rather effeminacy, and a visible fastidiousness, or contempt and disdain of his inferiours in science. He also ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes - Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II • Samuel Johnson
... had so recently sailed on, looking to be as quiet and peaceful as if there were no such things as hurricanes and angry waves, and dotted here and there by the glistening sails of inward bound vessels. Far away to the westward a long black wreath of smoke, following in the wake of a small speck on the water, announced the approach of the Havana steam packet; and close in, hugging the shore, glided a solitary American barque, apparently bound to Havana to finish her freight, her white sails gleaming in the sun. The ...
— Graham's Magazine, Vol. XXXII No. 4, April 1848 • Various
... you when you assured us that all was well because you had taken in the Almighty as a sleeping-partner in the business of governing a State. That fault in all conscience is big enough, but it becomes a mere speck when it is measured ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, September 23, 1914 • Various
... wrongs The bears aveng'd, at its departure saw Elijah's chariot, when the steeds erect Rais'd their steep flight for heav'n; his eyes meanwhile, Straining pursu'd them, till the flame alone Upsoaring like a misty speck he kenn'd; E'en thus along the gulf moves every flame, A sinner so enfolded close in each, That none ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri
... theory of evolution have to believe that God allowed the sun to form out of the nebula, and the earth to form from the sun, that He allowed Man to develop slowly from the speck of protoplasm in the sea. That at some period of Man's gradual evolution from the brute, God found Man guilty of some sin, and cursed him. That some thousands of years later God sent His only Son down upon the earth to save Man ...
— God and my Neighbour • Robert Blatchford
... where all remained that he coveted upon earth. And Katerina, she too felt as if her existence was a blank; and as the vessel sailed from the port, she breathed short; and when not even her white and lofty topgallant sail could be discovered as a speck, she threw herself on her couch and wept. And M'Clise as he sailed away, remained for hours leaning his cheek on his hand, thinking of, over and over again, every lineament and feature of ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... handkerchief carefully, wiped the last speck of Dry Lake dust from his shiny toes. "Yuh won't crawfish on me, if I tell yuh?" he inquired anxiously, standing up and ...
— The Lonesome Trail and Other Stories • B. M. Bower
... Eufaula, and I should think that the improvement in some of the cabins was not very much in advance of what it was in Slavery. The cabins are made with doors, but not, to my recollection, a single window pane or speck of plastering; and yet even in some of those lowly homes I met with hospitality. A room to myself is a luxury that I do not always enjoy. Still I live through it, and find life rather interesting. The people have much to learn. The condition of the women is not very enviable ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still
... 65 That we may lift the soul, and contemplate With lively joy the joys we cannot share. My gentle-hearted Charles! when the last rook Beat its straight path along the dusky air Homewards, I blest it! deeming its black wing 70 (Now a dim speck, now vanishing in light) Had cross'd the mighty Orb's dilated glory, While thou stood'st gazing; or, when all was still, Flew creeking o'er thy head, and had a charm[181:1] For thee, my gentle-hearted Charles, to whom 75 No sound is ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... really an invalid, or had sunk into invalid habits, and made no effort to rally. If his father urged him to go out—nay, once or twice he gulped down his pride, and asked Osborne to accompany him—Osborne would go to the window and find out some flaw or speck in the wind or weather, and make that an excuse for stopping in the house over his books. He would saunter out on the sunny side of the house in a manner that the squire considered as both indolent and unmanly. Yet if there was a prospect ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... that story to impress me," the doctor whispered. "Not a speck of foreign matter in it. Moreover, the wound is almost on top of his head. Now, if he had been thrown from a horse and had struck on top of his head on a rock with sufficient force to lacerate his scalp and produce a minor fracture, he would, undoubtedly, have crushed his ...
— The Pride of Palomar • Peter B. Kyne
... hand. A sumptuous desk, and luxurious leather-covered armchairs furnished the room; a beautiful little Parian copy of a famous Cupid and Psyche decorated the mantelpiece, and betrayed the touch of pagan in the Presbyterian. A bright fire burned in the grate, and there was not a speck of dust anywhere. ...
— The Imperialist • (a.k.a. Mrs. Everard Cotes) Sara Jeannette Duncan
... year that you'll get tired of me," she laughed, as she got into the car. Mrs. Baird waved until they turned the bend in the road. Polly looked back in a last farewell, until the buildings on the hill were a tiny speck. Then she turned to her uncle. "Uncle Roddy," she said, seriously, "do you remember what you said to me the first night I was home, ...
— Polly's Senior Year at Boarding School • Dorothy Whitehill
... slightly, and still the evidence he looked for did not come. Nothing seemed to change but those dark fringes; only now some wave of the branches as the wind began to rise, let in the moonlight for a moment upon a small white speck across the road. He thought so: something whiter than a wet stone or a bleached stick,—or it might be fancy. Noiselessly and almost invisibly, for Dane could move like an Indian, and with such quickness, ...
— Wych Hazel • Susan and Anna Warner
... pressed upon him like an illimitable and deserted ocean. The sun was a tiny white disk on his right, hanging between rosy coronal wings; his native Earth, a bright greenish point suspended in the dark gulf below it; Mars, nearer, smaller, a little ocher speck above the shrunken sun. Above him, below him, in all directions was vastness, blackness, emptiness. Ebon infinity, sprinkled with ...
— Salvage in Space • John Stewart Williamson
... rather how little, of our composition it is, and how exquisitely fine that little is, that creates in us this consciousness of existence; and all beyond that is like the pulp of a peach, distinct and separate from the vegetative speck in ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... because of its ten just men, than for society, if society were to depend on ten who were not snobs. All this arose from the keenness of his vision into that which was really mean. But that keenness became so aggravated by the intenseness of his search that the slightest speck of dust became to his eyes as a foul stain. Public[o]la, as we saw, damned one poor man to a wretched immortality, and another was called pitilessly over the coals, because he had mixed a grain of flattery ...
— Thackeray • Anthony Trollope
... myself I CAN get through about as much work in a day as anybody!" Her eye wandered round her rooms with a modest air of placid self-approval which was almost comic. Everything in them was as well-kept and as well-polished as good servants, thoroughly drilled, could make it. Not a stain or a speck anywhere. A miracle of neatness. Indeed, when I carelessly drew the Norwegian dagger from its scabbard, as we waited for lunch, and found that it stuck in the sheath, I almost started to discover that rust could intrude ...
— Hilda Wade - A Woman With Tenacity Of Purpose • Grant Allen
... o' my business? Whose business is it den, I'd like to know? Wuz I his mother tell he was fifteen years old, or wusn't I?—you answer me dat. En you speck I could see him turned out po' and ornery on de worl' en never care noth'n' 'bout it? I reckon if you'd ever be'n a mother yo'self, Valet de Chambers, you wouldn't talk ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... She had her hair tied back from her face with a pink ribbon in a bow on top of her head. She loosened this ribbon, and shook her hair quite loose. She peeped out of the golden radiance of it at herself, then she shook it back. She was charming either way. She was undeveloped, but as yet not a speck of the mildew of earth had touched her. She was flawless, irreproachable, except for the knowledge of her beauty, through heredity, in her heart, which was older than ...
— By the Light of the Soul - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... Willy was amazed. How could she guess that while riding on Gid's back he had been a little glad to think he could not help it? He had hardly known himself that he was glad, it was such a wee speck of a feeling, and so covered up with ...
— Little Grandfather • Sophie May
... stick frayed by many deep cuts with a knife, and waved them repeatedly from left to right, at the same time pouring out a rapid flood of words. They had caught sight of a hawk high up and far away from them, and they were trying to persuade it to fly towards the right. Presently the hawk, a tiny speck in the sky, sailed slowly out of sight behind a hill on the right, and the men settled themselves to watch for a second hawk which must fly towards the left, and a third which must circle round and round. In the course of about ...
— The Pagan Tribes of Borneo • Charles Hose and William McDougall
... from Cape Town. We used to ride morning and evening on the flat country which surrounds Mafeking, where no tree or hill obscures the view for miles; and one then realized what a tiny place the seat of government of the Bechuanaland Protectorate really was, a mere speck of corrugated iron roofs on the brown expanse of the burnt-up veldt, far away from everywhere. I think it was this very isolation that created the interest in the siege at home, and one of the reasons why the Boers were so anxious to reduce it was that this town was practically ...
— South African Memories - Social, Warlike & Sporting From Diaries Written At The Time • Lady Sarah Wilson
... not to the northeast whence the banks of cloud had risen, but to the southwest, and it seemed as though a little speck was there against the hurrying film of cloud. We were drawing near the forest line, where a little creek made an indentation. I listened, and from afar came a sound like the strumming of low notes on a guitar, and sad. The terrified scream of a panther broke ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... walls whence they looked down into the water; at the fragrance of the evergreens that surrounded the beautiful palace with its balustrades, dedicated to all the worst passions of the human race; with the sharp rocky outline of Turbia; with an almost invisible speck on the horizon which they said was Corsica; with everything, which, whether mirage or reality, lifted her out of herself, and plunged her into that state of excited happiness and indescribable ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... perchance deem sleep, Wherewith the steadfast coral-stems uprise, Which, by the toil of gathering energies, Their upward way into clear sunshine keep, Until, by Heaven's sweetest influences, Slowly and slowly spreads a speck of green Into a pleasant island in the seas, Where, mid fall palms, the cane-roofed home is seen, And wearied men shall sit at sunset's hour, Hearing the leaves and loving ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... daybreak a speck was seen in the horizon; now it is visible above the hollow wave, now curtained from our sight by the swelling billow: we approach nearer; the speck divides, and two spots appear; they ...
— Journal of a Visit to Constantinople and Some of the Greek Islands in the Spring and Summer of 1833 • John Auldjo
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