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About   Listen
adverb
About  adv.  
1.
On all sides; around. "'Tis time to look about."
2.
In circuit; circularly; by a circuitous way; around the outside; as, a mile about, and a third of a mile across.
3.
Here and there; around; in one place and another. "Wandering about from house to house."
4.
Nearly; approximately; with close correspondence, in quality, manner, degree, etc.; as, about as cold; about as high; also of quantity, number, time. "There fell... about three thousand men."
5.
To a reserved position; half round; in the opposite direction; on the opposite tack; as, to face about; to turn one's self about.
To bring about, to cause to take place; to accomplish.
To come about, to occur; to take place. See under Come.
To go about, To set about, to undertake; to arrange; to prepare. "Shall we set about some revels?"
Round about, in every direction around.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"About" Quotes from Famous Books



... object of these three first examples is to give you an index to your truest feelings about European, and especially about your native landscape, as it is pensive and historical; and so far as you yourselves make any effort at its representation, to give you a motive for fidelity in handwork more ...
— Lectures on Art - Delivered before the University of Oxford in Hilary term, 1870 • John Ruskin

... man kept for use at any moment and possessing many secrets of the art of diplomacy, was insufficient for the dissipations of a life as splendid as that of the king of dandies, the tyrant of several Parisian clubs. Consequently Comte Maxime was often uneasy about matters financial. Possessing no property, he had never been able to consolidate his position by being made a deputy; also, having no ostensible functions, it was impossible for him to hold a knife at the throat of any minister to compel his nomination as peer of France. At the present ...
— The Deputy of Arcis • Honore de Balzac

... first epoch is to be considered as one period only because its contribution to the subject is as yet small and chronologically precedes the first great group. It ranges from the earliest beginnings of history to somewhere about B.C. 2300. The dates are largely conjectural, but for the most part the sequence of the events is known. It is the period covered by Dr. ...
— Babylonian and Assyrian Laws, Contracts and Letters • C. H. W. Johns

... London the ensuing week, and met Mr. George Smart by appointment in Bond Street. If the expert had been enthusiastic on a former occasion, he was ten times more so on this. He spoke in terms almost of rapture about the violin. He had compared it with two magnificent instruments in the collection of the late Mr. James Loding, then the finest in Europe; and it was admittedly superior to either, both in the delicate markings of its wood and singularly fine varnish. "Of its tone," he ...
— The Lost Stradivarius • John Meade Falkner

... his enterprises." But she would not admit that even then the cruelty of the mode of punishment was capable of defence, most of all in the case of Coligny, who, "being in his bed, lamed both on the right hand and left arm, lying in danger under the care of chyrurgions, being also guarded about his private house with a number of the king's guard, might have been, by a word of the king's mouth, brought to any place to have answered when and how the king should have thought meet." But she preferred to ascribe the fault, not to Charles, but to those around him whose age and knowledge ...
— History of the Rise of the Huguenots - Volume 2 • Henry Baird

... and then, for friends of yours that are dead—do you not?" The young priest answered: "Certainly, I do so very often." The Bishop rejoined: "So did I, when I was a young priest. But one time I was grievously ill. I was given up as about to die. I received Extreme Unction and the Viaticum. It was then that my whole past life, with all its failings and all its sins, came before me with startling vividness. I saw how much I had to atone ...
— Purgatory • Mary Anne Madden Sadlier

... five or six other men with them. They arrived at about nine in the morning and stayed until half-past four that afternoon. They had lunch with Lord Kitchener. A fine man the General is, well set up, big ...
— The Petticoat Commando - Boer Women in Secret Service • Johanna Brandt

... changed myself that no one should know me, and I came to Mandakan. It was noised abroad that I was dead. Little by little I grew in favour with the Dakoon, and little by little I gathered strong men about me-two hundred in all at last. It was my purpose, when the day seemed ripe, to seize upon the Palace as the Dakoon had seized upon my little city. I knew from my father, whose father built a new portion of the Palace, of a secret way by the ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... The economy is predominantly agricultural. Agriculture, including forestry, accounts for about 25% of GNP, employs about 45% of the labor force, and provides the bulk of exports. Paraguay has no known significant mineral or petroleum resources but does have a large hydropower potential. Since 1981 economic performance ...
— The 1991 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.

... little songs without any tune: the strain we have most frequently heard being an appeal to 'the sportsman' not to bag that choicest of game, the swallow. For bathing purposes, we have also a subscription establishment with an esplanade, where people lounge about with telescopes, and seem to get a good deal of weariness for their money; and we have also an association of individual machine proprietors combined against this formidable rival. M. Feroce, our own particular friend in the bathing ...
— Reprinted Pieces • Charles Dickens

... Societe de Medecine Legale, Archives d'Anthropologie Criminelle, May, 1907.) Doleris has shown (Bulletin de la Societe d'Obstetrique, Feb., 1905) that in the Paris Maternites the percentage of abortions in pregnancies doubled between 1898 and 1904, and Doleris estimates that about half of these abortions were artificially induced. In France, abortion is mainly carried on by professional abortionists. One of these, Mme. Thomas, who was condemned to penal servitude, in 1891, acknowledged performing 10,000 abortions during eight years; her charge ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis

... are incorrect; because they imply that one thing is less perfect, less extreme, &c. than another, which is not possible."—Murray's Gram., 8vo, Vol. i, p. 167. For himself, a man may do as he pleases about comparing these adjectives; but whoever corrects others, on such principles as the foregoing, will have work enough on his hands. But the writer who seems to exceed all others, in error on this point, is Joseph W. Wright. In his "Philosophical Grammar," ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown

... Jeff Saxton were happy about it all—till the car turned from a main thoroughfare upon a muddy street of shacks that clung like goats to the sides of a high cut, a street unchanged from ...
— Free Air • Sinclair Lewis

... that owing to her continued collapse the ceremony would have to be postponed. The clatter of polite wonder and gossip annoyed him beyond measure, and he was actually cross with his cousin on the way home when she ranted on about the way girls nowadays were brought up, coddled, so that a breath would blow them away. Somehow she had not looked like that kind ...
— Exit Betty • Grace Livingston Hill

... the West Side, his mind reverted to Robert Underwood. He had seen his old associate only once since leaving college. He ran across him one day on Fifth Avenue. Underwood was coming out of a curio shop. He explained hurriedly that he had left Yale and when asked about his future plans talked vaguely of going in for art. His manner was frigid and nervous—the attitude of the man who fears he may be approached for a small loan. He was evidently well aware of the change in his old associate's fortunes and having ...
— The Third Degree - A Narrative of Metropolitan Life • Charles Klein and Arthur Hornblow

... gods and similar exalted beings create, each in his own world, whatever they require by their mere volition, so the Supreme Person creates by his mere volition the entire world. That the gods about whose powers we know from the Veda only (not through perception) are here quoted as supplying a proving instance, is done in order to facilitate the comprehension of the creative power of Brahman, which is also known through ...
— The Vedanta-Sutras with the Commentary by Ramanuja - Sacred Books of the East, Volume 48 • Trans. George Thibaut

... of Holy Water, and certain Charmes called Exorcismes, have the power to make those Townes, cities, that is to say, Seats of Empire. The Fairies also have their enchanted Castles, and certain Gigantique Ghosts, that domineer over the Regions round about them. ...
— Leviathan • Thomas Hobbes

... one, whose piteous cry would almost have made one think it was uttered in sympathy with its mother's distress. Casting one more despairing glance, she was, apparently, about to retrace her weary steps with a look that completely baffles description, when her eye fell on a boat returning from the vessel, which that moment neared the water's edge, and she saw Captain Ormsby jump out. Hastily going up to him, she exclaimed, in a tone ...
— A Book For The Young • Sarah French

... by this letter: he put it into farmer Gray's hands, without saying a word; then drew his chair away from Rose, hid his face in his hands, and never spoke or heard one word that was saying round about him for full half an hour; till, at last, he was roused by his friend Robin, who, clapping him on his back, said, "Come, Stafford, English pride won't do with us; this is all to punish you for refusing to share and share alike with us in the mill of Rosanna, which is what you must ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth

... the newly found grave made but little impression upon the group and Lightfoot, the only one of the household who thought much about it, thought silently. To her the single question was: "Who lay there?" There was nothing strange to the others of the family in the thought that one man should have killed another, and no one attached blame to or proposed punishment of the slayer. Sometimes after such a happening, the ...
— The Story of Ab - A Tale of the Time of the Cave Man • Stanley Waterloo

... It was about the period when, with the fast world of cities, De Sauty was beginning to become type of an "ism"; already the attention of excitement-hunters had travelled far from Trinity Bay, and Cyrus Field had ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 40, February, 1861 • Various

... silence with a cool, calculating stare which some men had termed insolent, absently tapping his teeth with the gold rim of a monocle which he carried but apparently never used for any other purpose; and it was at about this time that a long low car passed near the door of the restaurant, crossing the traffic stream of Piccadilly to draw up at the corner of ...
— Dope • Sax Rohmer

... be kept at the temperature of the body, these colourless corpuscles will be seen to exhibit a marvellous activity, changing their forms with great rapidity, drawing in and thrusting out prolongations of their substance, and creeping about as ...
— Autobiography and Selected Essays • Thomas Henry Huxley

... pulsations that shook the flimsy walls of St. Isidore's, and drew new groans from the man on the chair. The young nurse's eyes travelled from him to a woman who stood behind the ward tenders, shielded by them and the young interne from the group about the hospital chair. This woman, having no uniform of any sort, must be some one who had come in with the patient, and had stayed unobserved in the ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick

... found drinking beer in a saloon on East Pecan Street by Colonel St. Vitus about a week before, and according to the Austin custom in such cases, was invited home by the colonel, and the next day accepted into society, with large music classes at ...
— Rolling Stones • O. Henry

... "I'm not sure about that—we'll put it up to our lawyers. Maybe they'll call it conspiracy, maybe blackmail. They'll make it whatever carries a long ...
— King Coal - A Novel • Upton Sinclair

... so frequently as here, where it seems to be the only forenoon employment of the principal people. The kava is a species of pepper, which they cultivate for this purpose, and esteem it a valuable article, taking great care to defend the young plants from any injury; and it is commonly planted about their houses. It seldom grows to more than a man's height, though I have seen some plants almost double that. It branches considerably, with large heart-shaped leaves, and jointed stalks. The root is the only part ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 15 (of 18) • Robert Kerr

... the examples of fine heraldic Seals that I have already given, the richly traceried Seal bearing the armorial Shield of JOHN, Lord BARDOLF, of Wormegay in Norfolk, about A.D. 1350; No. 442. This most beautiful Seal, which in the original in diameter is only one and one-sixth inches, has been somewhat enlarged in the engraving, in order to show the design more plainly. The arms of ...
— The Handbook to English Heraldry • Charles Boutell

... Jehoash, had a long and prosperous reign. About 773 B.C. he appears to have co-operated with Assyria and conquered Damascus and Hamath. His son Zachariah, the last king of the Jehu Dynasty of Israel, came to the throne in 740 B.C. towards the close of the reign of Azariah, son of Amaziah, ...
— Myths of Babylonia and Assyria • Donald A. Mackenzie

... for full thirty days—and the word was—war. He smiled incredulously at the old fellow, but, unconsciously, he pushed his horse on a little faster up the mountain, pushed him, as the moon rose, aslant the breast of a mighty hill and, winding at a gallop about the last downward turn of the snaky path, went at full speed alongside the big gray wall that, above him, rose sheer a thousand feet and, straight ahead, broke wildly and crumbled into historic Cumberland Gap. From a little knoll he saw the railway station in the shadow of the wall, ...
— Crittenden - A Kentucky Story of Love and War • John Fox, Jr.

... to-day, for we find him in Mr. Thomas Tobyson of Tottenwood in Henri de Regnier's La Double Maitresse. For the most part the manners and customs of this type of man are only known to us by hearsay which we may refuse to credit. But about Thicknesse there is no manner of doubt; he has written himself down; he is the veridic and positive embodiment of the type. That is ...
— Impressions And Comments • Havelock Ellis

... the princess, and speaking to Mesrour, said, "Go immediately, see which it is, and bring me word; for though I am certain that it is Nouzhatoul-aouadat, I would rather take this method than be any longer obstinately positive about the matter, though of its certainty I am perfectly satisfied." No sooner had the caliph commanded than Mesrour was gone. "You will see," continued he, addressing himself to Zobeide, "in a moment, which of us is right." "For my part," replied Zobeide, "I know very ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous

... much less, to speak literally, had he gone to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. Mary, hiding away in uncomfortable quarters a short stone's throw from Madame Zenobie's, little imagined that, in her broad irony about his not hunting for employment, there was really a tiny seed of truth. She felt sure that two or three persons who had seemed about to employ him had failed to do so because they detected the defect in his hearing, and in one or ...
— Dr. Sevier • George W. Cable

... him a splendid match for any girl. Roderick had been spared a visit from Dick Wells, and had wondered that the young man had not kept his promise. He had longed and yet dreaded to see him. He had been able to learn nothing about the visit except what gossip said, and to-day he was full of hope and fear, as he watched. His fears were stronger, but he was young and he could not keep ...
— The End of the Rainbow • Marian Keith

... exceedingly difficult, alike in male and female, and we can not expect an amateur to succeed in accomplishing it. In the cow the opening into the bladder is found in the median line of the floor of the generative entrance, about 4 inches in front of the external opening, but it is flanked on either side by a blind pouch, into which the catheter will pass, in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, in the hands of any but the most skilled operator. In the bull or steer ...
— Special Report on Diseases of Cattle • U.S. Department of Agriculture

... feet in height,—a very few taller specimens showing some inclination to curve; but when cultivated near Dublin, they regularly twined up sticks 5 or 6 feet in height. Most Convolvulaceae are excellent twiners; but in South Africa Ipomoea argyraeoides almost always grows erect and compact, from about 12 to 18 inches in height, one specimen alone in Prof. Harvey's collection showing an evident disposition to twine. On the other hand, seedlings raised near Dublin twined up sticks above 8 feet in height. These facts are remarkable; for there can hardly be a doubt that in the dryer ...
— The Movements and Habits of Climbing Plants • Charles Darwin

... a body of knights. The success of our expedition depends upon you rather than upon me, and as I feel assured of your warm cooperation I have no fear as to what the result will be, if Dame Fortune will but favour us by throwing in our way some of those scourges of the sea in search of whom we are about to set out. Many of us have already encountered them, and, fighting side by side with older knights, have borne our share of the work, while those who have not done so will, I am sure, do equally well when the opportunity arrives. We shall not this voyage ...
— A Knight of the White Cross • G.A. Henty

... dissolve the soda in one tbsp. cold water and stir it into the sour milk; add this, and the egg well beaten, to the other ingredients. Lastly add the flour, and beat briskly for 1/2 minute. Pour into a well buttered pan and bake in a moderate oven for about 50 minutes. ...
— Public School Domestic Science • Mrs. J. Hoodless

... from Mr Benson. Mr Bradshaw looked at him very earnestly. His eyes were fixed on the ground—he made no inquiry—he uttered no expression of wonder or dismay. Mr Bradshaw ground his foot on the floor with gathering rage; but just as he was about to speak, Mr Benson rose up—a poor deformed old man—before the stern and portly figure that was ...
— Ruth • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell

... look out for a vacancy in the shoeblack line," I said; "but to go on—up the hill. Is there any claret or water or soda about—I don't much care what ...
— To-morrow? • Victoria Cross

... her life in obscurity, until, at the age of twenty-four, the events which succeeded the battle of Culloden brought those energies, which had been nurtured in retirement, into active exertion. Indeed, until about a year before she engaged in that enterprise which has rendered her name so celebrated, she had never quitted the islands of South Uist and Skye; she had, at that time, passed about nine months in the family of Macdonald of Largoe in Argyleshire, and this was the ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745 - Volume III. • Mrs. Thomson

... up and followed him out. "I'm going your way," he said. "Git in with me." Jimmie climbed into the buggy; and while the bony old mare ambled along through the summer night the driver asked questions about Jimmie's life. Where had he been brought up? How had it been possible for a man to live all his life in America, and know so little ...
— Jimmie Higgins • Upton Sinclair

... often by the side of the Countesses, labouring to describe to the natives of a level country the Grampian mountains, and, above all, the beauties of Glen Houlakin, he was as often riding with Hayraddin in the front of the cavalcade, questioning him about the road and the resting places, and recording his answers in his mind, to ascertain whether upon cross examination he could discover anything like meditated treachery. As often again he was in the rear, endeavouring to secure the attachment of the two horsemen by kind words, ...
— Quentin Durward • Sir Walter Scott

... return to Paris, his valet appeared one day with the card of General Vogotzine. It was on Andras's lips to refuse to see him; but, in reality, the General's visit caused him a delight which he would not acknowledge to himself. He was about to hear of hey. He told the valet to admit Vogotzine, hypocritically saying to himself that it was impossible, ...
— Prince Zilah, Complete • Jules Claretie

... assembly from his vantage ground of six foot four, his cool intrepidity not one whit shaken by the knowledge that, by what he was about to say, he should draw down on his own head all the wrath of the roughest ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall

... speak out in noble verse, not merely utter himself through the masks of dramatis personae. Can she, as he alleges, really help him by her sympathy, by her counsel? Let him put ceremony aside and treat her en bon camerade; he will find her "an honest man on the whole." She intends to set about knowing him as much as possible immediately. What poets have been his literary sponsors? Are not the critics wrong to deny contemporary genius? What poems are those now in his portfolio? Is not AEschylus the divinest of divine Greek spirits? ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden

... chewed which I could lecture against. If you should ever be betrayed into any of these philanthropies, do not let your left hand know what your right hand does, for it is not worth knowing. Rescue the drowning and tie your shoestrings. Take your time, and set about some ...
— Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience • Henry David Thoreau

... Weakness, hesitation and inconsistency marked his character in his later years, and have made him a puzzle to modern students. These inconsistencies of character have led to widely divergent conclusions about the man, his sincerity of purpose and ...
— George Eliot; A Critical Study of Her Life, Writings & Philosophy • George Willis Cooke

... down the river only to die of fever along with many more. The victory of Plassey and the large compensation paid for the destruction of Old Calcutta and its church induced thousands of natives to flock to the new capital, while the number of the European troops and officials was about 2000. When chaplains were sent out, the Governor-General officially wrote of them to the Court of Directors so late as 1795:—"Our clergy in Bengal, with some exceptions, are not respectable characters." From the general ...
— The Life of William Carey • George Smith

... pleasant place on the whole for healthy persons, but there was still a large number of individuals to whom it was by no means a pleasant place. No choice was given us, so far as we knew, as to whether we would enter the world or not, nor about the circumstances which were to surround us. Our lives indeed were strangely conditioned by an abundance of causes which lay entirely outside our control, such as heredity, temperament, environment. One supposed ...
— Beside Still Waters • Arthur Christopher Benson

... my eyes, so that I was forced to turn away that I might hide my emotions. Carthoris wept openly as the slaves pressed about him with expressions of affection, and words of sorrow for our common loss. It was now that Tars Tarkas for the first time learned that his daughter, Sola, had accompanied Dejah Thoris upon the last long pilgrimage. I had not had the heart to tell him what Kantos ...
— The Gods of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... son of his old friend. In him, during the short time he lived, Young found a patron, and in his dissolute descendant a friend and a companion. The marquis died in April, 1715. In the beginning of the next year, the young marquis set out upon his travels, from which he returned in about a twelvemonth. The beginning of 1717 carried him to Ireland: where, says the Biographia, "on the score of his extraordinary qualities, he had the honour done him of being admitted, though under age, to take his seat in the House ...
— Lives of the Poets: Gay, Thomson, Young, and Others • Samuel Johnson

... uneasy about him, the Sultan is keeping very quiet, not letting any one have the smallest idea what he means to say or do when these reforms are ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 16, February 25, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various

... word to old Wharton about money," Lopez replied,—"except as to the cost of this election I was telling ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope

... you think you could repose any confidence in a woman you have known only about a month? Did you think she wouldn't tell me—her promised husband? She has told me—everything that she succeeded in getting out of you. She is heart and soul with me in this deal. She is ambitious. Do you think she would hesitate to sacrifice a clod-hopper like you? She's ...
— 'Firebrand' Trevison • Charles Alden Seltzer

... Australia) for three successive nights, dreamed of his returning to America. She did not expect him until early in the fall of the year. She was dreaming of him in the spring. On the fourth morning after her dream she received a letter telling her about his unexpected return. These are so-called telepathic dreams, usually from minds of living people, although telepathic connection from minds of disincarnate ...
— The Secret of Dreams • Yacki Raizizun

... Dean of Barchester and marry his wife's sister! He talked of it, and talked of it till he was nearly ill. Mrs Grantly almost wished that the marriage was done and over, so that she might hear no more about it. ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope

... circumstances, "In the secret of His tabernacle shall He hide me; He shall set me up upon a rock." It was with Philistia at his feet before and Saul's kingdom in arms behind that his triumphant confidence was sure that "Now shall mine head be lifted up above mine enemies round about me." It was in weakness, not expelled even by such joyous faith, that he plaintively besought God's mercy, and laid before His mercy-seat as the mightiest plea His own inviting words, "Seek ye My face," and His servant's humble ...
— The Life of David - As Reflected in His Psalms • Alexander Maclaren

... than the Pretensions of People upon these Occasions. Every thing a Man hath suffered, whilst his Enemies were in play, was certainly brought about by the Malice of the opposite Party. A bad Cause would not have been lost, if such an one had not been upon the Bench; nor a profligate Youth disinherited, if he had not got drunk every Night by toasting an outed Ministry. I remember a Tory, who having been fined in a Court of Justice ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele

... about Georgiana's work, fast as was its pace. Each trip across the floor, from pantry to dining-room and back again, demonstrated housewifely efficiency. Both hands were always full and she seemed never to forget what she meant to do. If she passed the stove on her way somewhere ...
— Under the Country Sky • Grace S. Richmond

... few days before the end of the quarter. The builder—in whose service Jim's brother, Joe, was—sent Joe to pay a small account for ironmongery, which had been due for some weeks. When he entered the shop Tom was behind his desk, and Jim was taking some instructions about a job. Mr. Furze was out. Joe produced his bill, threw it across to Tom, and pulled the money out of his pocket. It was also market day; the town was crowded, and just at that moment Mr. Eaton drove by. Tom looked out of the window on his left hand ...
— Catharine Furze • Mark Rutherford

... always makes my annoyances seem light, to be riding about to visit these fine houses. Not that I am intolerant towards the rich, but I cannot help feeling at such times how much characters require the discipline of difficult circumstances. To say nothing of the need the soul has ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. II • Margaret Fuller Ossoli

... of vicinal location is greatly enhanced if the neighboring people are grouped about an enclosed sea which affords an easy highway for communication. The integrating force of such a basin will often overcome the disintegrating force of race antagonisms. The Roman Empire in the Mediterranean was able to evolve an effective centralized ...
— Influences of Geographic Environment - On the Basis of Ratzel's System of Anthropo-Geography • Ellen Churchill Semple

... arrangements, auditory, tactual, and muscular, into a process of automatic manipulation. Combining such facts with the doctrine of hereditary transmission, we reach a theory of Instinct. A chick, after coming out of the egg, balances itself correctly, runs about, picks up food, thus snowing that it possesses a power of directing its movements to definite ends. How did the chick learn this very complex co-ordination of eyes, muscles, and beak? It has not been individually taught; its personal experience ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall

... hypotheses appeared, I could think of nothing better, and was just about to leave the window, and retire to bed, when the driver of the strange carriage, who had hitherto sat motionless, turned, and looked me full in the face. Never shall I forget the appearance of this man, whose sallow countenance, ...
— In the Wrong Paradise • Andrew Lang

... of my own happiness disposed me to take the brightest view of my son's chances, I must nevertheless acknowledge that some nervous anxieties still fluttered about my heart while the slow minutes of suspense were counting themselves out in the breakfast-room. I had as little attention to spare for Owen's quiet prognostications of success as for Morgan's pitiless sarcasms on love, courtship, and ...
— The Queen of Hearts • Wilkie Collins

... the spot where the young philosopher had shown such early proofs of his genius; and I accordingly paid the forfeit of an impertinent, for the gentleman who resides there caught the prowler, and in genteel terms bade her go about her business, and never return. How ungracious! ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller

... do you salvage it after the crew stops screaming for help. If you use enough fuel to catch it, you won't get back. You just leave such a ship there forever, like an asteroid, and it's a damn shame about the men trapped aboard. Heroes all, no doubt—but the smallness of the widow's monthly check failed to confirm the heroism, and Nora was bitter about the price of Oley's ...
— Death of a Spaceman • Walter M. Miller

... from the approbation of those, whom we ourselves esteem and approve of, than of those, whom we hate and despise. In like measure we are principally mortifyed with the contempt of persons, upon whose judgment we set some value, and are, in a peat measure, indifferent about the opinions of the rest of mankind. But if the mind received from any original instinct a desire of fame and aversion to infamy, fame and infamy would influence us without distinction; and every opinion, according as it were favourabk or unfavourable, would equally excite that desire or aversion. ...
— A Treatise of Human Nature • David Hume

... talk about it! poor Stanley's wants are pressing, and, if you don't make haste, we shall have some one call that has a ...
— The School For Scandal • Richard Brinsley Sheridan

... first principle here, the one is to be understood for that arcane nature which is beyond the one, since all language is subverted about it, can only, as we have already observed, be conceived and venerated in the most ...
— Introduction to the Philosophy and Writings of Plato • Thomas Taylor

... pony, he spent a large part of every day riding over the prairies. The blue skies and the bright sunshine were tonics to the heart as well as to the body. Sometimes his route lay for miles through the woods, where perfect solitude reigned but for the chatter of birds that circled about him. In these long rides his heart went back over the past, reviving the memory of those first precious days with Vida. They seemed far away, and their recollection, like the perfume of wilted flowers plucked from the grave of a dear one. If he could not have ...
— Divers Women • Pansy and Mrs. C.M. Livingston

... more than Miss Tucker does," said Appleton, "for I can't flatter myself that she suspects in the least what I am about." ...
— Ladies-In-Waiting • Kate Douglas Wiggin

... of whom the other married Sir William Cecil, afterwards Lord Burleigh. Sir Nicholas Bacon had six children by his former marriage, and by his second wife two sons, Antony and Francis, of whom Antony was about two years the elder. The family home was at York Place, and at Gorhambury, near St. Albans, from which town, in its ancient and its modern style, Bacon afterwards took his titles ...
— The Advancement of Learning • Francis Bacon

... should have been quite incapable of imagining its like. The feeling that we have experienced something overpowering, something which we cannot utter, overwhelms us all. We see it in each other's faces and feel it in the pressure of a hand. Words are too weak, so each is silent about what he feels. We are conscious of one thing alone: Germany's heart has appeared ...
— What Germany Thinks - The War as Germans see it • Thomas F. A. Smith

... put himself therefore in mourning, out of regard to the memory of his departed friend, and exhibited genuine marks of sorrow and concern, though he had in reality more cause to grieve than he as yet imagined. When quarter-day came about, he applied to the steward of his lordship's heir for the interest of his money, as usual; and the reader will readily own he had some reason to be surprised, when he was told he had no claim either to principal or interest. True it is, the manager talked very civilly as well as sensibly ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett

... retreated, casting one glance backward at the black and white, the blue and brown colours that streaked the wall, while the dull green weasels were in perpetual shadow. By night the bats would flit round and about that gloomy place. It would not do to return by the same path, lest another keeper might be coming up it; so I stepped into the wood itself. To those who walk only in the roads, hawks and owls seem almost rare. But a wood is a place to which ...
— The Amateur Poacher • Richard Jefferies

... retriever; he's generally with me but I left him at home to-day; there have been tramps about lately." ...
— The Rider in Khaki - A Novel • Nat Gould

... 1019, when Go-Ichijo occupied the throne, a large host of invaders suddenly poured into the island of Tsushima. There had not been any warning. Tsushima lies half-way between the south of Korea and the northeast of Kyushu, distant about sixty miles from either coast. Since the earliest times, its fine harbours had served as a military station for ships plying between Japan and Korea, but such intercourse had long been interrupted when this ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi

... friends and advisers in the great search. Philosophers gathered about him like bees; and by their assistance, together with the formulae in the works of Geber, he had soon spent 2000 crowns more. But he was not discouraged. He applied to the treatises of Archelaus, Rufreissa, and Sacro-bosco; associated ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 453 - Volume 18, New Series, September 4, 1852 • Various

... absolutely helpless. Every weapon he possessed had been taken from him whilst he lay unconscious. His armour had been removed. He had nothing upon him save his light summer dress, and the precious heart hanging about his neck. Even the satisfaction of making one last battle for his life was denied him. His limbs were yet stiff and weak. His enemy would grip him as though he were a child if he so much as attempted to cast himself upon him. All ...
— In the Days of Chivalry • Evelyn Everett-Green

... forgot to reign. When kings in western Europe were so ignorant that they could with difficulty scrawl their names, eastern emperors wrote books and composed poetry. It is true that Byzantine scholars were erudite rather than original. Impressed by the great treasures of knowledge about them, they found it difficult to strike out into new, unbeaten paths. Most students were content to make huge collections of extracts and notes from the books which antiquity had bequeathed to them. Even this task was useful, however, ...
— EARLY EUROPEAN HISTORY • HUTTON WEBSTER

... the Tenth, employed Raphael to decorate parts of the Vatican. The Vatican was the palace of the Popes in Rome, and one of the open courts of the palace had a gallery or Loggia, as it is called, built about its three sides. Raphael caused to be painted on the walls of this gallery festoons of flowers and fruit and sometimes animals, all surrounded and entwined with graceful ornaments. But it was the vaulted ceiling of the gallery that ...
— Raphael - A Collection Of Fifteen Pictures And A Portrait Of The - Painter With Introduction And Interpretation • Estelle M. Hurll

... and was returning to my couch beneath a tree, when suddenly an object presented itself to my eyes that absolutely rooted me to the spot. At about twenty or thirty yards distant, where but the moment before the long line of horizon terminated the view, there now stood a huge figure of some ten or twelve feet in height,—two heads, which surmounted ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 1 (of 2) • Charles Lever

... an' at once," ordered Jonathan. "Give him a rifle, some meat, an' a canoe, for he can't travel, an' turn him loose. Only be quick about it, because if Wetzel comes in, God himself couldn't save ...
— The Last Trail • Zane Grey

... Switzerland, with his father and mother. He had already become familiar with the French language, and a year later he read Latin with some facility. Although the father judiciously studied to repress his son's marked precocity of talent, Arthur wrote about this time several plays in prose and in rhyme,—compositions which were never exhibited, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, No. 38, December, 1860 • Various

... complement of hardware, apart from the H hinges of early years and the butts which soon followed. It will be noted that all of these six-panel doors have stiles and muntins of virtually equal width, any variation being slightly wider stiles. Top and frieze rails are alike and about the same width as the muntin, but the bottom rail is somewhat broader and the lock rail the broadest of the four. Moldings are very simple and confined to the edge of the panels, with the splayed or beveled panels of earlier years gradually being abandoned ...
— The Colonial Architecture of Philadelphia • Frank Cousins

... AND CHOCOLATE.—The fruit of the cacao tree is in the form of pods from 6 to 10 inches in length and 3 to 4 inches in diameter. These pods are filled with a white, pulpy mass in which are embedded from twenty to forty seeds about twice the size and very much the shape of kidney beans. Fig. 10 shows the three stages of the treatment through which the seeds are put before they can be used for a beverage. After they are removed ...
— Woman's Institute Library of Cookery, Vol. 5 • Woman's Institute of Domestic Arts and Sciences

... for me, for us, I mean. I will tell you how that came about. One day when I was cross, and sair put out wi' your affairs, Davie, Dr. Morrison came into my office. I'm feared I wasna glad to see him; and though I was ceevil enough, the wise man read me like a book. 'John,' says he, 'I am not come to ask you for siller to-day, nor am I come to reprove ...
— Scottish sketches • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr

... centuries, is voluminous, but of little value to the practical scientific worker, since hardly two descriptions can be found which agree. The variations in size of the ruin given by various authors is astonishing, ranging from 1,500 square feet to nearly 5 acres or about 200,000 square feet in area. These extreme variations are doubtless due to difference of judgment as to what portion of the area covered by remains of walls should be assigned to the Casa Grande proper, ...
— Casa Grande Ruin • Cosmos Mindeleff

... of Washington, D. C., about 350 feet from the White House premises is a building known as the Cameron House, in which is located headquarters and main offices of a woman's organization at which is continually congregated women of character, courage and intelligence, who come from various sections ...
— Jailed for Freedom • Doris Stevens

... steady and quiet, though there is very little to amuse him in the country." The baron said, "Bring him in to see us, Monsieur l'Abbe, it will be a distraction for him occasionally." After the coffee the baron and the priest took a turn about the grounds and then returned to say good-night ...
— Une Vie, A Piece of String and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant

... celebrating whatever peace he knew. His father was not communicative; and what could I say? He sat, answering me distantly and austerely, and he might have been a bearded sage seeing in retrospect a world he had long known, and who at last had made up his mind about it, though he would not tell me what that was. Outside we could hear revellers approaching. They paused at our door; their feet began to ...
— Waiting for Daylight • Henry Major Tomlinson

... modern times—the connection between music and poetic and literary sources of inspiration. But he had a right to choose his own line of effort; it is for us to become familiar with his works as they are. They comprise about two hundred songs, three pianoforte sonatas and many lesser pieces, two concertos for pianoforte and orchestra, a wonderfully fine violin concerto, four symphonies—each with a character of its own—and ...
— Music: An Art and a Language • Walter Raymond Spalding

... John went several times to London during it and was kindly and honorably entertained by Lord Harlow during his visits. Then he saw his Jane in environments that made him a little anxious about the future. Surrounded by luxury, a belle and favorite in society, a constant participator in all kinds of amusement and the recipient of much attention, how would she like to settle down to the exact monotony of ...
— The Measure of a Man • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr

... the guards at mid-day, and instead of receiving the dinner ration had been taken to a covered hand-cart. The guard told them to push it, and at the same time handed them shovels and picks. Under escort they dragged this mysterious load, which was carefully covered with a tarpaulin, for about three miles to a very lonely spot. At last they came to a deep hole. They were compelled to back the cart to the brink of the pit, and were then curtly bidden ...
— Sixteen Months in Four German Prisons - Wesel, Sennelager, Klingelputz, Ruhleben • Henry Charles Mahoney

... shrouded in fog. We were late starting. About nine the curtain of gray began to lift and break. We climbed pastures and aspen thickets, high up to the spruce, where the grass grew luxuriant, and the red wall of rock overhung the long slopes. The view west was magnificent—a long, bulging range of mountains, vast stretches of green aspen slopes, ...
— Tales of lonely trails • Zane Grey

... time we had for watching then. For now we had come to the real danger of our journey. We had to drop ever closer to the moon as we spun about it, to slacken our pace and watch our chance, until at last we could dare ...
— The First Men In The Moon • H. G. Wells

... and Fluctuations of the Water in strong and proper Colours, with the Picture of a Ship entering at one end, and sailing by Degrees through the whole Piece. On another there appeared the Green Shadows of Trees, waving to and fro with the Wind, and Herds of Deer among them in Miniature, leaping about upon the Wall. I must confess, the Novelty of such a Sight may be one occasion of its Pleasantness to the Imagination, but certainly the chief Reason is its near Resemblance to Nature, as it does not only, like other Pictures, give the Colour and Figure, but ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele

... and philosophy of life, and yet exciting commiseration by the very isolation of his position. He had been stolen by the Indians in the Ohio Valley when a mere boy, during the marauding forays which they waged against the frontiers about 1777. He was not then, perhaps, over seven years of age—so young, indeed, as to have forgotten, to a great degree, names and dates. His captors were Saganaw Chippewas, among whom he learned the ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft

... of life in Australia. It tells how Archie accidentally discovered a gold-mine, and thus brought about important changes in more lives ...
— The Crown of Success • Charlotte Maria Tucker

... and, after breakfast, went out alone to look about the village. It was located in a picturesque and beautiful spot. On the East was the broad bay and sea. On the West were undulating hills covered with umbrageous forests. To the South were some promontories and romantic headlands, against which the restless waters lashed themselves into foam. On ...
— Sustained honor - The Age of Liberty Established • John R. Musick,

... and fidelity to the interests of the country, were of such admirable avail to the purposes, and under the direction, of the mighty spirits that wielded their rough agency,—this great assemblage was sunk in such mental barbarism, as to be placed at about the same distance from their illustrious intellectual chiefs, as the hordes of Scythia from the finest spirits of Athens. It was nothing to this debased, countless multitude spread over the country, existing in the coarsest habits, destitute, in the proportion of thousands to ...
— An Essay on the Evils of Popular Ignorance • John Foster

... Instantly Baker saw his opportunity. 'Fall in!' he commanded, and so accustomed were the men to obeying his orders that the majority fell in instantly. The ringleader and a few others refused to obey, and Baker was about to administer another thrashing to the former when his wife besought him not to do so. He acted on her advice, and promised to overlook the mutineers' conduct if they apologised, which they promptly ...
— Noble Deeds of the World's Heroines • Henry Charles Moore

... drew the blockade closer around me. It had expected at least that I should make some effort to win my way back into popularity, and it did not at all like, when it chose to boycott me, that I should boycott it. So gradually we forgot what the quarrel was about, and set ourselves to see who ...
— Boycotted - And Other Stories • Talbot Baines Reed

... Kitty, and upon her face there dawned that rapt expression, which always appeared when she was about to ...
— Marjorie's Maytime • Carolyn Wells

... the British side of the boundary. The effect of this treaty was to remove all serious causes of dispute about territory between Germany and Great Britain in East Africa. It rendered quite valueless Peters's treaty with Mwanga and his promenade along the Tana; it freed Great Britain from any fear of German competition to the northwards, and recognized that her influence extended to the western limits ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... the street Lena stopped. She stood under one of the street lamps, and after a sharp glance in all directions, stealthily drew a piece of paper out of the bag she carried. She was plainly nervous, and Bob watched her intently. She was about to read the note that the fake detective had handed ...
— Bob Cook and the German Spy • Tomlinson, Paul Greene

... to Fyodor about this land and asked whether Platon, a well-to-do peasant of good character belonging to the same village, would not take the land for ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy

... mind and heart to noble issues? Going to church does not help them, for it must be an exclusive church and an exclusive pew, under an exclusive pastor who patronizes Jesus Christ but does not sympathize with Him, and who talks about the "dregs of society" as if it were something far removed from the knowledge and consciousness of ...
— Memories of Jane Cunningham Croly, "Jenny June" • Various

... Both acquired fame abroad; and both returned to be watched and depressed at home. This is not peculiar to Sparta. Oligarchy, wherever it has existed, has always stunted the growth of genius. Thus it was at Rome, till about a century before the Christian era: we read of abundance of consuls and dictators who won battles, and enjoyed triumphs; but we look in vain for a single man of the first order of intellect,—for a Pericles, a Demosthenes, or a Hannibal. The Gracchi formed a strong democratical party; Marius ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Contibutions to Knight's Quarterly Magazine] • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... sitting perfectly still, except that she still bobbed her old head up and down in a strange unearthly manner. She had about ten cards in her hand which she held motionless. Her eyes seemed to be fixed in one continued stare directly on the face of her foe. Her lower jaw had fallen so as to give a monstrous extension to her cadaverous face. There she sat ...
— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope

... worse than this; the Bible does not say that any one of the nine lepers used for the injury of his fellows the strength that Christ gave back to him. All that is said is that they were ungrateful; but how about those who go out from our colleges and universities? Are not many of these worse than ungrateful? I would not venture to use my own language here; I will ...
— In His Image • William Jennings Bryan

... themselves by watching the delegates and other foreign arrivals strolling to and fro along the elegant spaciousness of the Quai, chatting with one another. They noticed little things to write to their papers about, such as hats, spats, ways of carrying umbrellas and sticks, and so forth. They overheard fragments of conversation in many tongues. For, clustering round about the Assembly, were the representatives, ...
— Mystery at Geneva - An Improbable Tale of Singular Happenings • Rose Macaulay

... reminds one of the old days when Yorkshire returned two members, and Rutlandshire two also. And the discrepancy has greatly increased as young States have been added to the Union, while the old States have increased in population. New York, with a population of about 4,000,000, and with thirty-three members in the House of Representatives, sends two Senators to Congress. The new State of Oregon, with a population of 50,000 or 60,000, and with one member in the House of Representatives, sends also two Senators to ...
— Volume 2 • Anthony Trollope

... my lord, I was about to say, that the imagination is the Voli-Donzini; or, to speak plainer, the unical, rudimental, and all- comprehending abstracted essence of the infinite remoteness of things. Without ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. II (of 2) • Herman Melville

... when they get shabby they are thrown aside, and many of the village youths round about get hold of them and ...
— Dr. Jolliffe's Boys • Lewis Hough

... stranger found this young swineherd ambiguous; and there was another curious thing too which the stranger noticed about Manuel. ...
— Figures of Earth • James Branch Cabell

... which is hidden from those very scholars because their eyes could not bear its lustre, a transluminous light which fills the soul with beatific visions, and of which it is said that God wraps it about ...
— Delsarte System of Oratory • Various

... his medical studies at the age of about twenty-three, entered the Dominican Order, then only recently established, but continued his practice of medicine undisturbed. His ecclesiastical preferment was rapid. He attracted the attention of the Bishop ...
— Old-Time Makers of Medicine • James J. Walsh



Words linked to "About" :   some, roughly, about turn, near, think about, mess about, most, more or less, bring about, nearly, make no bones about, approximately, lounge about, man-about-town, nigh, stick about, write about, bum about, lark about, get about, almost, thresh about, active, set about, knock about, come about, mill about, cast about, swing about, close to, just about, bustle about, astir, or so, virtually, moon about



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