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Compass   Listen
noun
Compass  n.  
1.
A passing round; circuit; circuitous course. "They fetched a compass of seven day's journey." "This day I breathed first; time is come round, And where I did begin, there shall I end; My life is run his compass."
2.
An inclosing limit; boundary; circumference; as, within the compass of an encircling wall.
3.
An inclosed space; an area; extent. "Their wisdom... lies in a very narrow compass."
4.
Extent; reach; sweep; capacity; sphere; as, the compass of his eye; the compass of imagination. "The compass of his argument."
5.
Moderate bounds, limits of truth; moderation; due limits; used with within. "In two hundred years before (I speak within compass), no such commission had been executed."
6.
(Mus.) The range of notes, or tones, within the capacity of a voice or instrument. "You would sound me from my lowest note to the top of my compass."
7.
An instrument for determining directions upon the earth's surface by means of a magnetized bar or needle turning freely upon a pivot and pointing in a northerly and southerly direction. "He that first discovered the use of the compass did more for the supplying and increase of useful commodities than those who built workhouses."
8.
A pair of compasses. (R.) See Compasses. "To fix one foot of their compass wherever they please."
9.
A circle; a continent. (Obs.) "The tryne compas (the threefold world containing earth, sea, and heaven.)"
Azimuth compass. See under Azimuth.
Beam compass. See under Beam.
Compass card, the circular card attached to the needles of a mariner's compass, on which are marked the thirty-two points or rhumbs.
Compass dial, a small pocket compass fitted with a sundial to tell the hour of the day.
Compass plane (Carp.), a plane, convex in the direction of its length on the under side, for smoothing the concave faces of curved woodwork.
Compass plant, Compass flower (Bot.), a plant of the American prairies (Silphium laciniatum), not unlike a small sunflower; rosinweed. Its lower and root leaves are vertical, and on the prairies are disposed to present their edges north and south. "Its leaves are turned to the north as true as the magnet: This is the compass flower." Compass saw, a saw with a narrow blade, which will cut in a curve; called also fret saw and keyhole saw. Compass timber (Shipbuilding), curved or crooked timber. Compass window (Arch.), a circular bay window or oriel window. Mariner's compass, a kind of compass used in navigation. It has two or more magnetic needles permanently attached to a card, which moves freely upon a pivot, and is read with reference to a mark on the box representing the ship's head. The card is divided into thirty-two points, called also rhumbs, and the glass-covered box or bowl containing it is suspended in gimbals within the binnacle, in order to preserve its horizontal position. Surveyor's compass, an instrument used in surveying for measuring horizontal angles. See Circumferentor. Variation compass, a compass of delicate construction, used in observations on the variations of the needle. To fetch a compass, to make a circuit.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Compass" Quotes from Famous Books



... different attributes and symbols of power, with torches in his hands as symbols of fire, sitting in the water and on the water, standing in the rain, riding in a canoe, enthroned on the clouds of heaven and on the cross-shaped tree of the four points of the compass, which, on account of its likeness to the Christian emblem, has many times been the subject of fantastic hypotheses. We see the god again on the Cab-sign, the symbol of the earth, with weapons, axe and spears, in his hands, ...
— Representation of Deities of the Maya Manuscripts • Paul Schellhas

... Illustrated, Boston: D. Lothrop & Co. Price, $1.50. We doubt whether in any book of the year prepared for the benefit or entertainment of young readers, another volume can be found which contains within so small a compass so much information about everyday things which can be turned to practical account, as well as that of purely educational value. It is well known that the house of D. Lothrop & Co. was selected by the Chautauqua Association to publish a course of reading of ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Vol. II, No. 6, March, 1885 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various

... It is called "The Three Sisters," and in substance is as follows:—In some primitive period of the earth's history, Father Plinlimmon promised to these nymphs of the mountain as much territory as they could compass in a day's journey to the sea, by way of dowry upon their alliance with certain marine deities they should meet there. Sabra, goddess of the Severn, being a prudent, well-conducted maiden, rose with the first streak of morning dawn, and, descending the eastern side of the hill, made choice ...
— Handbook to the Severn Valley Railway - Illustrative and Descriptive of Places along the Line from - Worcester to Shrewsbury • J. Randall

... in it; and that his mother, who lived to a great age, had shut up half the rooms in the house, in which either her husband, a son, {143} or daughter had died. The knight seeing his habitation reduced to so small a compass, and himself in a manner shut out of his own house, upon the death of his mother ordered all the apartments to be flung open, and exorcised by his chaplain, who lay in every room one after another, ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 69, February 22, 1851 • Various

... most recent actions must be spoken of first, or else many and various actions of his must be classified according to the different kinds of virtue which they display. But this topic of virtues and vices, which is a very extensive one, will now be brought into a very brief and narrow compass, instead of the many and various volumes in which ...
— The Orations of Marcus Tullius Cicero, Volume 4 • Cicero

... been near it. Hitherto my excursions had been limited to the Castle and its many gardens and surroundings. It was of a style with which I was not familiar—with four wings to the points of the compass. The great doorway, set in a magnificent frontage of carved stone of manifestly ancient date, faced west, so that, when one entered, he went east. To my surprise—for somehow I expected the contrary—I found the door open. Not wide open, but what is called ajar—manifestly ...
— The Lady of the Shroud • Bram Stoker

... first trespasser long, long ago with a yellow document that he called a "blanket- patent" and which was all but the bringer's funeral shroud, for the old hunter started at once for his gun and the stranger with his patent took to flight. Years later a band of young men with chain and compass had appeared in the hills and disappeared as suddenly, and later still another band, running a line for a railroad up the river, found old Jason at the foot of a certain oak with his rifle in the hollow of his arm and marking a dead- line which ...
— The Heart Of The Hills • John Fox, Jr.

... than human beings. 'Look!' cried a friend of mine, whom lately I found studying a map of London, 'isn't it appalling? All these streets—thousands of them—in this tiny compass! Think of the miles and miles of drab monotony this map contains! I pointed out to him (it is a thinker's penalty to be always pointing things out to people) that his words were nonsense. I told him that the streets on this map were no more monotonous than the rivers on ...
— Yet Again • Max Beerbohm

... a bold, fearless set, the Norse Vikings of old. They voyaged far and wide in open boats round the coasts of Europe, and across the stormy sea, long before the mariner's compass was invented, and they discovered Iceland and America long before Christopher Columbus was born. They had free spirits, these fierce Norwegians of old, and there was much good as well as evil in them. They had good and wise laws when nearly all the rest of ...
— Chasing the Sun • R.M. Ballantyne

... continuance thereof (after it be once imbraced) in his first integrity, either for zeale of affection, or strictnesse of discipline, hath beene by some learned Diuines[dd] obserued, to bee confined within the compass of twenty yeares; and then afterward by degrees, the one waxed cold, and the other dissolute: which being so, it is not to be maruelled though the Diuell now begin to shew himselfe in these his instruments, as heretofore, though he ...
— A Treatise of Witchcraft • Alexander Roberts

... man and the kinsman in Silas Crafts had throttled the righteous judge. "It breaks my heart, Thomas, but I must say it. You have put it out of your power to say with the Psalmist, 'I will wash mine hands in innocency: so will I compass thine altar, O Lord.' You must give up all thoughts of ...
— The Quickening • Francis Lynde

... o' nowhere, where the worst is like the best; Where there aren't no p'ints o' compass, an' a man can get a rest; Where a breeze is like a blizzard, an' the weather at its best; Dogs and Huskies does the workin' and ...
— Memories and Anecdotes • Kate Sanborn

... school, can lay off a road. That is a mistake. There is a class of topographical engineers older than the schools, and more unerring than the mathematics. They are the wild animals—buffalo, elk, deer, antelope, bears, which traverse the forest, not by compass, but by an instinct which leads them always the right way—to the lowest passes in the mountains, the shallowest fords in the rivers, the richest pastures in the forest, the best salt springs, and the shortest practicable routes between remote points. They travel thousands of miles, have their annual ...
— The Character and Influence of the Indian Trade in Wisconsin • Frederick Jackson Turner

... house-building, and in other branches of the art of carpentering, the builder has his rule, lathe, compass, line, and a most ingenious machine ...
— Philebus • Plato

... the Missouri, the compass, the books, and the maps were in one canoe. The captains had the compass to find the West. One day a big wind hit this canoe and turned it nearly over. Sacajawea's husband was at the rudder. He ...
— The Bird-Woman of the Lewis and Clark Expedition • Katherine Chandler

... saying to Masrur, "Take him up," returned to the palace. Accordingly, the Eunuch took up Abu al-Hasan and carrying him to the palace of the Caliphate, set him down before Al-Rashid, who bade the slaves and slave-girls compass him about, whilst he himself hid in a place where Abu al-Hasan could not see him. Then he commanded one of the hand-maidens to take the lute and strike it over the Wag's head, whilst the rest smote upon their instruments. So they played and sang, till Abu al-Hasan awoke ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton

... did any traveling in those days and as a result there were no maps or travel books to set you thinking you must pack up your traps to-morrow and start for some place you never had seen. But by and by the compass was invented, larger and better ships came to be built, and men got the idea the world was round instead of flat (as they had at one time supposed), a discovery that comforted vastly the timid souls who had always been afraid of falling off ...
— Carl and the Cotton Gin • Sara Ware Bassett

... the Austrians with a thunderbolt, wait until he has done so, and I will then pay your account in rix dollars of the Emperor of Germany, and the gold frederics of the King of Prussia." His Majesty, resuming his compass, began to move his armies upon the map; and truth to tell, the account of the engineer was not paid until after the battle of Austerlitz, and then, as the Emperor had said, in rix ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton

... to a wing vein that at one point seems broken so as to permit of a folding or bending; either to pack into a small compass ...
— Explanation of Terms Used in Entomology • John. B. Smith

... to give me a notion of how you're gwine to work," he said, as the youth brought his compass and set it up on its tripod at the foot of the tree. "For, otherwise, how am I to be sure of my corner, when you say ...
— The Young Surveyor; - or Jack on the Prairies • J. T. Trowbridge

... I intended to reimburse him when I saw Mr. Dix. For I knew that his wallet was not over full, since he had left the half of his savings with his mother. Much to my secret delight, he agreed to this as within the compass of a gentleman's acceptance. Had he not, I had the full intention of leaving him to post it alone, and of offering myself to the ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... sayings and proverbs, so much despised by the literary epicures, the Chesterfields of the age, are the roast beef of science. They contain the experience, the wisdom, of nations and ages compressed into the compass of a nutshell. To crack the shell and extract the contents to feed those who have appetites is the ...
— Noah Webster - American Men of Letters • Horace E. Scudder

... bright and merry, where boys can go whose mothers' parlors are too fine for them to sit in. There are enough to be found to clap them on the back, and tell them stories that their mothers must not hear, and laugh when they compass with their little piping voices the dreadful litanies of sin and shame. In middle life, our poor Sophie, who as a girl was so gay and frolicsome, so full of spirits, had dried and sharpened into a hard-visaged, angular woman,—careful ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 76, February, 1864 • Various

... universe. But when afterwards, returning to himself, and entering into his own heart, he considered that Astarte had perhaps died for him, the universe vanished from his sight, and he beheld nothing in the whole compass of nature but Astarte expiring and Zadig unhappy. While he thus alternately gave up his mind to this flux and reflux of sublime philosophy and intolerable grief, he advanced toward the frontiers of Egypt; and his faithful domestic was already in the first ...
— Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories • Edited by Julian Hawthorne

... is repeated in different keys no less than five times, the entire period extending to forty-nine measures. The accompaniment of this charming melody is thoroughly Chopinesque, consisting of arpeggio figures generally covering the compass of a tenth. In spirit this passage is much the same as that of the second idea in the Polonaise in C-sharp minor. After the second idea there is a coda concluding this part of the work. It is then repeated with a few very slight modifications. ...
— The Masters and their Music - A series of illustrative programs with biographical, - esthetical, and critical annotations • W. S. B. Mathews

... is anxious to secure for herself a predominance in the new nation to be moulded out of the old scattered elements: Hungary believes that the consolidation of the Slavs would place her in a dangerous and humiliating position, and conspires day and night to compass exactly the reverse of Servian wishes. Thus the two countries are theoretically at peace and practically at war. While the conflict of 1877 was in progress collisions between Servian and Hungarian were ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, August, 1878 • Various

... the Titanola Company are constructing for Mr. Boomer, the famous War lecturer, is approaching completion. This remarkable instrument, which roughly resembles a double-bassoon, stands about 45 feet high, and has a compass of 500 octaves, from the low B flat in profundissimo to the high G on the Doncaster St. Leger line. The use that Mr. Boomer makes of the Bombastophone is very original and effective. Whenever he sees that the attention of his audience is flagging he introduces an interlude of "bombination," ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, February 23, 1916 • Various

... to bring spy-glasses, as well as everything else that we thought we were likely to need, but forgot about a compass, which may be worth ...
— Two Boys in Wyoming - A Tale of Adventure (Northwest Series, No. 3) • Edward S. Ellis

... animals of other continents, as described and portrayed by the naturalist, and similar orders in America. All new inventions interested him. "I am so pleased," he writes, "with the new invented lamp that I shall not grudge two guineas for one of them." He had seen "a pocket compass of somewhat larger diameter than a watch, and which may be carried in the same way. It has a spring for stopping the vibration of the needle when not in use. One of these would be very convenient in case of a ...
— James Madison • Sydney Howard Gay

... determined bearing given out by a commander-in-chief, as well as line-of-battle. "From line of battle form line of bearing," or reverse. The line of bearing must be that point of the compass on which the ships bear from each other, and from which the line of battle can readily be formed ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth

... time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks Within his bending sickle's compass come; Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks, But bears it out ev'n to the ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck

... the narrow opening, but were stopped again— this time by some one pushing rudely past them to get in. From the three points of the compass to which the impact scattered them, they saw a shape of darkness squeeze itself, sack and all, to enter. An ordinary man would have broken every bone in his body, judging by the portion that projected into the air behind. But he managed it somehow, though the ...
— A Prisoner in Fairyland • Algernon Blackwood

... scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye compass sea and land to make one proselyte; and when he is become so, ye make him twofold more a son ...
— The Social Principles of Jesus • Walter Rauschenbusch

... of CHARLES LAMB lies within a narrow compass. It comprehends only few events. His birth and parentage, and domestic sorrows; his acquaintance with remarkable men; his thoughts and habits; and his migrations from one home to another,—constitute the sum and substance ...
— Charles Lamb • Barry Cornwall

... the condition of them that are under the Law, how sad it is, both from the nature of the covenant they are under, and also by the carriage of God unto them by that covenant. And now, because I would bring all into as little a compass as I can, I shall begin with the use and application of the whole in as brief a way as I can, desiring the Lord to bless ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... certain, that we must steer to the northward to get into the Java sea, and as we have a compass we shall have no difficulty in doing that," said ...
— The Rival Crusoes • W.H.G. Kingston

... hundredth tenant of our fold, though the ninety and nine may be sure of escaping the wolf at its entrance. If any one is disposed, then, to take a hundred instances of lives endangered or sacrificed out of those I have mentioned, and make it reasonably clear that within a similar time and compass ten thousand escaped the same exposure, I shall thank him for his industry, but I must be permitted to hold to my own practical conclusions, and beg him to adopt or at least to examine them also. Children that walk in calico before open fires are not ...
— Medical Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... arrived at the pretty town of Herridon among the hills and moors, set apart for the idle and ailing of this world. Of the world literally, for there might be seen at the pump-room visitors from every point of the compass—Hindoo gentlemen brought by sons who ate their legal dinners near Temple Bar; invalided officers from Hongkong, Bombay, Aden, the Gold Coast and otherwhere; Australian squatters and their daughters; attaches of foreign embassies; a prince from the Straits Settlements; ...
— An Unpardonable Liar • Gilbert Parker

... boy, fix it up as you think best!" he said, giving him as ample a squeeze as his one arm could compass. "You're a soldier and a gentleman, and whatever you do will ...
— The Keeper of the Door • Ethel M. Dell

... vanish on earth are found again— The hopes of youth, the resolves of age, The vow of the lover, the dream of the sage, The golden visions of mining cits, The promises great men strew about them; And, packt in compass small, the wits Of monarchs who rule as well without them!— Like him, but diving with wing profound, I have been to a Limbo underground, Where characters lost on earth, (and cried, In vain, like Harris's, far and wide,) In heaps like yesterday's orts, are ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al

... their backs on the ancestral home, travel ten thousand miles with no other object but to do his countrymen good? The natural Chinaman cannot receive it. He suspects us. And he has enough to pillow his suspicion on. Let him turn the points of the compass. He sees the great North-land in the hands of Russia. He sees the Spaniard tyrannizing over the Philippine Islanders. He sees Holland dominating the East Indies. He sees India's millions at the feet of the ...
— Forty Years in South China - The Life of Rev. John Van Nest Talmage, D.D. • Rev. John Gerardus Fagg

... are bent upon his destruction, is making a final, stupendous effort to compass ours. I know that you have placed certain seals upon the windows of this house, and that after dusk these windows are never opened. I know that imprints, strangely like the imprints of fiery hands, may be seen at this moment upon the casements ...
— Brood of the Witch-Queen • Sax Rohmer

... lying there inert, as a dead fact, in our sterile self. Do we not see this on all sides, examples of life into which all the dignified things have been crammed and all the beautiful ones, and which despite the statues, pictures, poems, and symphonies within its narrow compass, is yet so ...
— Laurus Nobilis - Chapters on Art and Life • Vernon Lee

... called in France; but different in its phenomena from anything of his earlier days. The "plague wind," so he named it—tremulous, intermittent, blighting grass and trees—blew from no fixed point of the compass, but always brought the same dirty sky in place of the healthy rain-cloud of normal summers; and the very thunder-storms seemed to be altered by its influence into foul and powerless abortions of tempest. We should now be disposed ...
— The Life of John Ruskin • W. G. Collingwood

... would have regarded with pitying contempt the trick of the "previous question." And this explains the undoubted pre-eminence of Athenian oratory. This accounts for the fact that we find in the forensic annals of a single city, and within the compass of a single century, such names as Lysias, Isokrates, Andokides, Hypereides, Aischines, and Demosthenes. The art of oratory, like the art of sculpture, shone forth more brilliantly then than ever since, because then the conditions favouring its ...
— The Unseen World and Other Essays • John Fiske

... said, to have a downright good fight, and nobody out of temper! She would come home from the windy war with her face glowing, her eyes flashing, her hair challenging storm from every point of the compass, and her heart merry with very peacefulness. Her only thoughts of trouble were, that her father's body lay unburied, and that Borland would ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald

... here we discover in him the ancient characteristic of always being occupied with himself, but without really observing himself. He thinks only of himself, not about himself; his mind is occupied with what he has before him; he is interested in his whole being, in its entire compass, and he cherishes the belief that his friends are likewise interested therein. We, therefore, find everything mentioned in his letters, from the highest moral to the most common physical need; indeed he directly ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. II • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke

... to live in, until one fine day I was cut loose from the apron-strings of my lady mother, and the tether of my abbe tutor, and launched head-foremost into that vortex of temptation and iniquity, the world of Paris, like a ship without a chart or a compass. A precious race I ran in consequence, for a time; and if I had not been so fortunate as to meet you, Marie, whose bright eyes brought me out, like a blessed beacon, safe from that perilous ocean, I know not but I should have suffered shipwreck, both in fortune, which is a trifle, and ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 1 July 1848 • Various

... events to be mirrored only in the little world of the actors in her little drama, whereas Helene Boehlau grants to the historical figures of Old Weimar participation at least in episodes. Clara Viebig can compass no great characters or persons of superior intelligence; even men she hardly shows otherwise than in their sensual brutality. She succeeds best with simple, vegetative natures of elemental instincts and eruptive passions, like the women of the Eifel, ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various

... he who attempts to tread this dangerous ground may be sometimes in one domain and sometimes in the other; so the only safe road is the broad highway that leads straight through and has been well defined by line and compass. ...
— Rolling Stones • O. Henry

... performed two or three revolutions of the compass but they partook chiefly of the character of sea and land-breezes: during the night and early part of the morning the wind was usually light from the northward and at ten o'clock, gradually dying away, was succeeded by a ...
— Narrative of a Survey of the Intertropical and Western Coasts of Australia] [Volume 2 of 2] • Phillip Parker King

... for the dressing of wounds which Milichus alledged that he had ordered, he denied the statement altogether. He had not given any such orders. The whole story was the fabrication of a vile slave, attempting, by these infamous means, to compass his master's destruction. Scevinus said all this with so bold and intrepid a tone of voice, and with such an air of injured innocence, that Nero and his friends were half disposed to believe that he was unjustly accused, and to dismiss him from custody. This might very probably have ...
— Nero - Makers of History Series • Jacob Abbott

... Russian problem; the want of a touchstone by which to test the overwhelming mass of conflicting information which poured in upon them; their constitutional lack of moral courage, and the circumstance that they were striving to reconcile contradictories. Without chart or compass they drifted into strange and sterile courses, beginning with the Prinkipo incident and ending with the written examination to which they naively subjected Kolchak in order to legalize international relations, which could not truly be described as either war or peace. ...
— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon

... Penzance I bought a compass and a chart containing many particulars about the Scilly Isles. This done we trudged on to the Land's End, and, arrived there, the real difficulties of our adventure presented themselves. First of all ...
— The Birthright • Joseph Hocking

... selfish in this appetite — He finds that good chear unites good company, exhilerates the spirits, opens the heart, banishes all restraint from conversation, and promotes the happiest purposes of social life. But Mr James Quin is not a subject to be discussed in the compass of one letter; I shall therefore, at present, leave him to his repose, and call another ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett

... among the hills, after winding through every point of the compass for fully an eighth of a mile. It gradually rose from its commencement—occasionally interrupted by sharp ascents—until its termination, when they found they had ...
— Adrift in the Wilds - or, The Adventures of Two Shipwrecked Boys • Edward S. Ellis

... libraries being open to the public, any one having the privilege to call for the book he wishes, where he may read as quietly as in his own house. This is extremely useful to studious and literary men, as there are so many works of reference too expensive to be within the compass of a small private library, which may be found in the liberal establishments in which Paris abounds. Museums, exhibitions, academies, gardens, public buildings, etc., are, with a very few exceptions, accessible ...
— How to Enjoy Paris in 1842 • F. Herve

... ended in the very stronghold of his power. That which, with the divine blessing, the reformer's preaching then accomplished in St Andrews, was by the same or similar means effected in the chief cities of the kingdom, and throughout the greater part of the lowlands, almost within the compass of a single year. In fact, four months after his arrival, he could write to his friends: "Nothwithstanding the fevers have vexed me, ... yitt have I travelled through the most part of this realme where (all praise be to His ...
— The Scottish Reformation - Its Epochs, Episodes, Leaders, and Distinctive Characteristics • Alexander F. Mitchell

... in the Hollis driveway, he had seen Ruth Nelson but twice. She had spent the winters at boarding-school, and in the summers she traveled with her aunt. She was still the divinity for whom he shaped his end, the compass that always brought him back to the straight course. He looked upon her possible recognition and friendship as a man looks upon his reward in heaven. In the meantime he suffered himself to be consoled by ...
— Sandy • Alice Hegan Rice

... was a third penguin. He was without a mate, but this was an opportunity to get one. With all the speed his little legs could compass he ran to and fro, taking stones from the deserted nest, laying them beneath a rock, and hurrying back for more. On that same rock was my friend. When the victim came up with his stone he had his back turned. But as soon ...
— The Worst Journey in the World, Volumes 1 and 2 - Antarctic 1910-1913 • Apsley Cherry-Garrard

... the room, her mind took a wide range, and visited more human interests than my wife was at first able to mention, though afterward she remembered so many that I formed the notion of something encyclopedic in its compass. When she reached the letter Z, she rose and took leave of my wife, saying that now she must go and lie down, as it appeared to be her invariable custom to do (in behalf of the robust health which she had inherited unimpaired from a New England ancestry), at exactly half-past four every afternoon. ...
— The Whole Family - A Novel by Twelve Authors • William Dean Howells, Mary E. Wilkins Freeman, Mary Heaton Vorse, Mary Stewart Cutting, Elizabeth Jo

... thing to be so big, sir," said the great forester, slowly subsiding, and doubling himself up till he was once more in reasonable compass on the block. "It makes people think ye can do so much wark, and a man has a deal to ...
— Three Boys - or the Chiefs of the Clan Mackhai • George Manville Fenn

... actively employed—likewise quite in the Oriental style—in enlarging on all sides his kingdom, which was even then not small, though its compass is probably over-stated at 2300 miles; we find his armies, his fleets, and his envoys busy along the Black Sea as well as towards Armenia and towards Asia Minor. But nowhere did so free and ample an arena present itself to him as on the eastern and northern shores ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen

... to conceal the burning blushes of shame with his hands, while his recollection of past circumstances confirmed his uncle's accusation. Ambition was the crime of both his parents; hypocrisy the means used by the cautious Lord Bellingham in seeking to compass those ends which his bolder consort pursued with the effrontery of determined versatility. Sedley remembered his mother a court-beauty, the favourite of the Queen, and the glass which reflected the smiles ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West

... A painted line girdled it in the middle to divide between the blood (sprinkled) above, and the blood (sprinkled) below. The painted line and downward was five cubits. The foundation was a cubit. And three cubits was the compass, and the circuit was a cubit, and there they put the blood sprinkled below. The painted line and upward was five cubits—a cubit the horns, and three cubits the compass, and one cubit the circuit. And there they put the blood which was sprinkled above. And the blood intended to ...
— Hebrew Literature

... this subject civilized man has developed a sort of double personality. If we take European nations, no legitimate interest of any one of them would seem to justify the tremendous destructions which a war to compass it would necessarily entail. It would seem as though common sense and reason ought to find a way to reach agreement in every conflict of honest interests. I myself think it our bounden duty to believe ...
— Memories and Studies • William James

... 1258, they presented a variety of petitions to the king, in relation to his own personal expenditure, as well as that of his courtiers; requiring him to diminish the charges of his table, attire, etc., and, bluntly, to "bring his appetite within a more reasonable compass;" to all which he readily gave his assent. (Sempere y Guarinos, Historia del Luxo, y de las Leyes Suntuarias de Espana, (Madrid, 1788,) tom. i. pp. 91, 92.) The English reader is reminded of a very different result, which attended a similar interposition of the commons in the time of Richard ...
— History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella V1 • William H. Prescott

... stood on the Place of Death. It was lifeless yet, save for the uneasy eagles who watched him from a splintered crag; and the clean, black shadow that lapped out over the plain held the woman and the treasures in its compass. ...
— Silver and Gold - A Story of Luck and Love in a Western Mining Camp • Dane Coolidge

... stones supported by pillars of ice several feet in height (Fig. 108). These "glacier tables" commonly slope more or less strongly to the south, and thus may be used to indicate roughly the points of the compass. Can you explain their formation and the direction of their slope? On the other hand, a small and thin stone, or a patch of dust, lying on the ice, tends to sink a few inches into ...
— The Elements of Geology • William Harmon Norton

... latter. On July 21st the Admiralty gave me full powers. From July 23rd I was almost entirely employed on preparations. The course of operations is described in my printed Paper: the original maps, curves, and graphical projections, are in the bound MSS.: 'Correction of Compass in Iron Ships—"Rainbow,"' at the Greenwich Observatory. The angular disturbances were found on July 26th and 30th, requiring some further work on a raft, so that they were finally worked out on Aug. 11th. ...
— Autobiography of Sir George Biddell Airy • George Biddell Airy

... know I saved your life?' returned the other, not deigning to look at him, his eyes travelling instead between the compass and the sails. 'Where would you have been, if that boom had swung out and you bundled in the clack? No, SIR, we'll have no more of you at the mainsheet. Seaport towns are full of mainsheet-men; they hop upon one leg, my son, what's left of them, and the rest are dead. (Set ...
— The Ebb-Tide - A Trio And Quartette • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne

... approach in that wise and just spirit which should characterize the relations of two great and friendly powers. While our supreme interests demand the exclusion of a laboring element which experience has shown to be incompatible with our social life, all steps to compass this imperative need should be accompanied with a recognition of the claim of those strangers now lawfully among us ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents, Volume IX. • Benjamin Harrison

... people be landlords, or hold the lands so divided among them that no one man, or number of men, within the compass of the few or aristocracy, overbalance them, the empire (without the interposition ...
— The Commonwealth of Oceana • James Harrington

... at our command to illustrate this as fully as we could wish, even if the patience of our readers would permit of it, but we can perhaps illustrate sufficiently within a very short compass. We have already spoken of the Oriental extravagance of the language used in the scandal, which might pass in Persia or Central Arabia, where wild hyperbole is permitted by the genius of the language, and where people are accustomed ...
— Reflections and Comments 1865-1895 • Edwin Lawrence Godkin

... They might have fired a cannon at his ear, and he would not have jumped as he did when I spoke to him. And white he was,—as white as his collar. But, nevertheless, he was not without his compass, the screw. He puts up his eyeglass, and looks at me up and down; and then he says in his finest manner, 'What is it, my good fellow? Do you want to speak ...
— The Clique of Gold • Emile Gaboriau

... than dead!" Then cold and hot and moist and dry In order to their stations leap, And Music's power obey. 10 From harmony, from heavenly harmony This universal frame began; From harmony to harmony Through all the compass of the notes it ran, The diapason closing full in ...
— Selections from Five English Poets • Various

... and rules of life are taken away, the loss cannot possibly be estimated. From that moment we have no compass to govern us; nor can we know distinctly to what port we steer. Europe, undoubtedly, taken in a mass, was in a flourishing condition the day on which your revolution was completed. How much of that ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various

... voices that are equal in every way in regard to power of tone, compass, and control. The one varies the color and character of the tone continually with the change of thought and sentiment, and is enabled thereby not only to avoid monotony, but to use the impressive, persuasive voice, the tone the sentiment demands. In this way he has magnetic power and influence ...
— The Renaissance of the Vocal Art • Edmund Myer

... smack of injustice; but her nature (and this also is characteristic of her type) is so warmly generous that her heart easily can be caught into kindness on the rebound. The Vidame, who in spite of his antiquarian testiness is something of a philosopher, takes advantage of her peculiarities to compass such of his wishes as happen to run counter to her laws. His Machiavellian policy is to draw her fire by a demand of an extravagant nature; and then, when her lively refusal has set her a little in the wrong, handsomely to ask of her as a ...
— The Christmas Kalends of Provence - And Some Other Provencal Festivals • Thomas A. Janvier

... fine palace and a great, as I will tell you. It stands in a great plain abounding in lakes and streams and springs of water. Round about it is a massive and lofty wall, five miles in compass, well built, and all garnished with battlements. And within this wall is the king's palace, so great and fine that no one could imagine a finer. There are in it many great and splendid halls, and ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa

... judging him by what he is capable of performing, however unfrequently he may exercise his powers to the best advantage, the Mocking-Bird is probably equalled only by two or three of our singing-birds. His notes are loud, varied, melodious, and of great compass. They may be compared to those of the Red Thrush, more rapidly delivered, and having more flute notes and fewer guttural notes and sudden transitions. He also sings on the wing and with fervor, like the Linnet, while the other Thrushes sing ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various

... bed for about a month; but at last, in spite of the red pepper application, his burns healed and he got well. When the rabbit saw that the badger was getting well, he thought of another plan by which he could compass the creature's death. So he went one day to pay the badger a visit and to congratulate him on ...
— Japanese Fairy Tales • Yei Theodora Ozaki

... house stood, had never been disturbed until March, 1888—a hundred and seven years after the massacre—when the ground about the site of the house was plowed; many interesting relics were turned up, among them a compass and sun-dial in a copper case. I myself found a number of relics among the charred ruins of the house."—R. ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers

... to South Africa and Australia where the crops are six months later than the European and American harvests may be forgiven, because the German thinks longitudinally, and north and south are the two points of the compass which he never bothers his head about. If the Germans had been a seafaring people they'd have discovered America before Columbus, but they would never have found the North Pole or rounded the ...
— The Green Rust • Edgar Wallace

... Mr. Low warned the Congress; and Mr. Galloway could see that while the Massachusetts men were in "behavior very modest, yet they are not so much so as not to throw out hints, which like straws and feathers show from which point in the compass the wind comes." In the early days of the Congress, if we are to believe Mr. Hutchinson, this cold north wind was so much disliked that the New York and New Jersey deputies, "and others," carried a vote against ...
— The Eve of the Revolution - A Chronicle of the Breach with England, Volume 11 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Carl Becker

... River, above Lake Winnebago. The Mascoutins, Fire Nation, or Nation of the Prairie, are extinct or merged in other tribes.—See "Jesuits in North America." The Miamis soon removed to the banks of the River St. Joseph, near Lake Michigan.] These two tribes lived together within the compass of the same inclosure of palisades; to the number, it is said, of more than three thousand souls. The missionaries, who had brought a highly-colored picture of the Last Judgment, called the Indians to council and displayed it before them; while ...
— France and England in North America, a Series of Historical Narratives, Part Third • Francis Parkman

... capable of, which would arrive to all men indifferently, good or bad, if the parting with this earthly body would suddenly mount us into the heavenly. When by a just Nemesis the souls of men that are not heroically virtuous will find themselves restrained within the compass of this caliginous air, as both Reason itself suggests, and the Platonists have unanimously determined." Thus also the most thorough-going, and probably the most deeply versed in the doctrines of the master among modern Platonists, Thomas Taylor (Introduction. Phaedo):—"After this ...
— Five Years Of Theosophy • Various

... by accident. If we arrive there, it will be because we turn the helm, set the sail, watch the compass and stand on the "lookout" with reference to that destination. There are many ways of being lost—only one way of being saved; Jesus Christ is the way. He comes across the sea to-day, His feet on the glass of the wave, as on Galilee, ...
— Around The Tea-Table • T. De Witt Talmage

... gold—there's a good father! You must keep it, Sarah, and not give it, nor lend it. I know you won't marry, as he is dead; nor see your sister—mind that; if you see her, or serve her, the bitterest curse that ever rose from a father's grave will compass ...
— Turns of Fortune - And Other Tales • Mrs. S. C. Hall

... a very good song, I assure you, Jane. I do wish you had a better ear. Why, Bruce has a voice of remarkable compass. I fancied he struck ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 20, August 1877 • Various

... them; in the former she thought herself greatly inferior. Perhaps she underrated herself: her voice, though not indeed powerful, was low and sweet, and very clear; and the entire simplicity and feeling with which she sang hymns, was more effectual than any higher qualities of tone and compass. She had been very much accustomed to sing with Alice, who excelled in beautiful truth and simplicity of expression; listening with delight, as she often had done, and often joining with her, Ellen had caught something ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Elizabeth Wetherell

... of wonders (I can say no less), That I should be preserved in that distress That I have met with here! Oh, blessed be That hand that from it hath deliver'd me! Dangers in darkness, heaven, hell, and sin, Did compass me, while I this vale was in; Yea, snares, and pits, and traps, and nets did lie My path about, that worthless, silly I Might have been catch'd, entangled, and cast down, But since I live, let Jesus wear ...
— Bible Stories and Religious Classics • Philip P. Wells

... in the privilege of riding in the empty waggons from the rickyard back to the sheaves, whence we returned toilfully on foot, to career it again over the billowy acres in these great galleys of a stubble sea. It was the nearest approach to sailing that we inland urchins might compass: and hence it ensued, that such stirring scenes as Sir Richard Grenville on the Revenge, the smoke-wreathed Battle of the Nile, and the Death of Nelson, had all been enacted in turn on these dusty quarter decks, as they swayed ...
— The Golden Age • Kenneth Grahame

... toward him, her eyes peeping at him like bright birds from under the eaves of her hood. "Lord, I believe that I am afraid of you!" she coquetted. "When I bethink me that all the time I have been chiding you for being unambitious for glory, you have had this in your mind! I shall never presume to compass your moods again. Yes. Oh, yes! I shall see daggers in your smile and poison in your lightest word." Laughing, she stooped and kissed his hand with the first semblance of respect which she had ...
— The Ward of King Canute • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz

... north",' continued Elzevir, ''tis clear he means to take a compass and mark north by needle, and at eighty feet in the well-side below that point will lie the treasure. I fixed yesterday with the Bonaventure's men that they should lie underneath this ledge tomorrow sennight, if the sea be smooth, and ...
— Moonfleet • J. Meade Falkner

... companion with her as if she had been impelled by some horrible demoniac force which knew no abatement. With the black night above them—with the fierce wind howling around them, sweeping across a broad expanse of hidden country, blowing as if it had arisen simultaneously from every point of the compass, and making those wanderers the focus of its ferocity—the two women walked through the darkness down the hill upon which Mount Stanning stood, along a mile and a half of flat road, and then up another ...
— Lady Audley's Secret • Mary Elizabeth Braddon

... athwart its azure bosom. Now and then a clump of willows sigh low in the evening breeze. Far away to the north stretched a mountain range, blue in the distance; to the south lay the luxuriant valley of the stream. The streets were narrow and laid out with a total disregard of the points of the compass. ...
— Literary Hearthstones of Dixie • La Salle Corbell Pickett

... trails, where low-hung clouds swept curtainwise to make the compass seem like a lie-begotten trick. There were gorges, hewn when the Titans needed dirt to build the awful Himalayas—shadow-darkened—sheer as the edge of Nemesis. Long-reaching, pile on pile, the over-lapping spurs leaned over them. The wind ...
— Rung Ho! • Talbot Mundy

... & sincerely I think it the noblest poem in the language, next after the Paradise lost; & even that was not made the vehicle of such grand truths. "There is one mind," &c., down to "Almighty's Throne," are without a rival in the whole compass of my poetical reading. "Stands in the sun, & with no partial gaze Views all creation"—I wish I could have written those lines. I rejoyce that I am able to relish them. The loftier walks of Pindus are your proper region. There you have no compeer in modern times. Leave the ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas

... preciousness all "the precious things put forth by the sun" in the more genial time of the year. But days began to become longer, nevertheless, as the weeks went on; and daylight was pushing those happy mornings and evenings into lesser and lesser compass; and snow quite disappeared from the fields, and buds began to swell on the trees and take colour, and airs grew more gentle in temperature; though I am bound to say there is a sharpness sometimes in the nature of a Shampuashuh spring, that quite ...
— Nobody • Susan Warner

... supper of mutton pillau, Mirza Hassan proceeds to say his prayers, borrowing my compass to get the proper bearings for Mecca, which I have explained to him during the afternoon. With no little dismay he discovers that, according to my explanations, he has for years been bobbing his head daily several degrees east of the holy city, and, ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens

... Saint Dominic's is gathered together within the comparatively narrow compass of four walls, there is some possibility of ascertaining how it prospers, and what events are interesting it. But when the same school is scattered to the four winds of heaven during the holidays, it would require a hundred eyes and more to ...
— The Fifth Form at Saint Dominic's - A School Story • Talbot Baines Reed

... glimpse of Mrs. Carew with her mask off; in the company of the child, if I could compass it; if not, then entirely alone with her own thoughts, ...
— The Millionaire Baby • Anna Katharine Green

... Martin a chart. The points of the compass were marked in a corner. Certain courses and routes were given, and fixed lights indicated by which the vessel might be guided. There was a number of patches as if to warn the navigator of shallows, and again a number of small ...
— The Summons • A.E.W. Mason

... in order to discover the coasts of Africa, went successfully round it; and the third year after their setting out, returned to Egypt through the Straits of Gibraltar. This was a very extraordinary voyage, in an age when the compass was not known. It was made twenty-one centuries before Vasco de Gama, a Portuguese, (by discovering the Cape of Good Hope, in the year 1497,) found out the very same way to sail to the Indies, by which these Phoenicians had come from thence ...
— The Ancient History of the Egyptians, Carthaginians, Assyrians, • Charles Rollin

... excellent Buccaneer himself, on his first visit here. Speaking in his published voyages of this spot, he says—"My fancy led me to call it Cowley's Enchanted Isle, for, we having had a sight of it upon several points of the compass, it appeared always in so many different forms; sometimes like a ruined fortification; upon another point like a great city," etc. No wonder though, that among the Encantadas all sorts of ocular deceptions and ...
— The Piazza Tales • Herman Melville

... a circle, indicating the four points of the compass on it. Then he mapped the town of Faraway and others, east, west, north, and south of it. So he made a map of the county and bade them copy it. Around the county in succeeding lessons he built a map of the state. Others in the middle group were added, ...
— Darrel of the Blessed Isles • Irving Bacheller

... seventy of you, counting my little bride yonder, and I am not going to spend my life in swinging girls; yet, by the time I have given each of you a swing, the first will be wanting another! No! if you want to swing, get in, all seventy of you, into one swing, and then I will see what I can compass.' ...
— Tales Of The Punjab • Flora Annie Steel

... how oddly it remained during the whole of the first act vacant. The house was beyond everything, the actress beyond any one; though to describe again so famous an occasion—it has been described repeatedly by other reporters—is not in the compass of the closing words of a history already too sustained. It is enough to say that these great hours marked an era in contemporary art and that for those who had a spectator's share in them the words "revelation," "incarnation," "acclamation," "demonstration," "ovation"—to name only ...
— The Tragic Muse • Henry James

... a flat mesa-like bluff, the highest point on her land. The trees were small and close together, mingling their green needles overhead and their discarded brown ones on the ground. From here Carley could see afar to all points of the compass—the slow green descent to the south and the climb to the black-timbered distance; the ridged and canyoned country to the west, red vents choked with green and rimmed with gray; to the north the grand upflung mountain kingdom crowned with ...
— The Call of the Canyon • Zane Grey

... have it to an extraordinary degree. We could drop an antelope on the plain and leave it for an hour or more. With a quick glance about our lama would fix the place in his mind, and dash off on a chase which might carry us back and forth toward every point of the compass. When it was time to return, he would head his pony unerringly for that single spot on the plain and take us back as straight as the flight ...
— Across Mongolian Plains - A Naturalist's Account of China's 'Great Northwest' • Roy Chapman Andrews

... Indian characteristics is the keenness of perception by which they are enabled to track their game or find their way through pathless forests without the aid of chart or compass. The Indian captive, Gyles, relates the following incident which may be ...
— Glimpses of the Past - History of the River St. John, A.D. 1604-1784 • W. O. Raymond

... ratified the treaty by an oath of allegiance, from which he could absolve his conscience so soon as the Mogul arms had retired from Anatolia. But the fears and fancy of nations ascribed to the ambitious Tamerlane a new design of vast and romantic compass; a design of subduing Egypt and Africa, marching from the Nile to the Atlantic Ocean, entering Europe by the Straits of Gibraltar, and, after imposing his yoke on the kingdoms of Christendom, of returning home by the deserts of Russia and Tartary. This remote, and perhaps imaginary, danger was averted ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon

... ineffable Name which built the palace of King Solomon, which builds houses not made with hands—houses of flesh which souls inhabit, craving for a heart and a love to fill them, can and will satisfy their longings; . . .I know no other words in the English language which compresses into small compass such a body of high and inclusive thought as verse nine. (1) God the sole changeless, to whom we turn with passionate desire as the one abiding-place, as we find how all things suffer loss and change, ourselves, alas! the greatest. (2) His power and love ...
— Introduction to Robert Browning • Hiram Corson

... Son of God, as the Saviour He has given to us. Simple trust, not only in a creed, but in a Person. I trust my soul to Him. I trust the keeping of my soul to Him. God has promised that whosoever trusts Him, mercy shall compass him on every side. ...
— Sovereign Grace - Its Source, Its Nature and Its Effects • Dwight Moody

... Romance is hardly evident for it is the scene itself with its rustic prettiness which is chiefly stressed. Yet the patron by whom this version was commissioned may well have felt that it was sensitively rendered and within its minor compass expressed to some extent the magical enchantment distilled by the verses. That the Emperor's stimulus survived his death is plain; for in about the year 1620, two manuscripts of the Bhagavata Purana appeared—both in a style of awkward crudity in which the idioms of Akbar's ...
— The Loves of Krishna in Indian Painting and Poetry • W. G. Archer

... your wonder, but not exceed the compass of your imagination. But how shall I convey to you an idea of the ever-varying and accidental beauties of this majestic scenery! Sometimes the vapour-winged tempest, flitting along some lonely vale, ...
— Translations of German Poetry in American Magazines 1741-1810 • Edward Ziegler Davis

... sink, As if we could slide from its outer brink. Ah, it is not the sea; It is not the sea that sinks and shelves, But ourselves that rock and rise With endless and unweary motion, Now touching the very skies, Now sinking into the depths of ocean; Ah! if our souls but poise and swing, Like the compass in its brazen ring, Ever level and ever true To the toil and the task that we have to do, We shall sail securely, and safely reach The fortunate isles, on whose shining beach The sights we see, the sounds we hear, Will be those of ...
— Silver Links • Various

... non-military reader, it should be explained that this is the formation in which troops are considered least vulnerable against artillery or distant rifle and machine-gun fire. Great care was taken to ensure that direction was maintained, an officer with compass being specially detailed for this purpose, and that touch was not lost with the units on either flank. A battery of field artillery had been detailed to support the advance of this battalion; the forward observation officer went ...
— With the British Army in The Holy Land • Henry Osmond Lock

... childish sorrow. Only when the tears had dried upon my face, and there was that after-sense of resignation which follows a nervous outbreak, did I upbraid myself for a weakling, and set to think out plans for my release. I had no compass, but, taking the north through the "pointers," I tried to make out the course in which I was drifting; yet this, I must confess, was a hopeless task. I thought that the boat was being carried by a steady current; yet whether the current set ...
— The Iron Pirate - A Plain Tale of Strange Happenings on the Sea • Max Pemberton

... grass. Another led along the water to bluebell land; another into the coombs of the hills; all meadows, which was the beauty of it; for though you could find wheat in plenty if you liked, you always walked in grass. All round the compass you could still step on sward. This is rare. Of one other path I have a faded memory, like a silk marker in an old book; in truth, I don't want to remember it except the end of it where it came down to the railway. ...
— Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies

... his own thoughts, aspirations, and yearnings repeated in the mind of his favourite pupil, and he was confronted by a problem more difficult to solve than any that had met him before. In his own case he felt he had a compass to steer by—the restraint and guidance of his vows and his habit to help him. But how would it be with this ardent and imaginative boy? His mind was struggling to free itself from artificial trammels. To what goal ...
— The Secret Chamber at Chad • Evelyn Everett-Green

... near the lofty, inviolate cliffs, there opened up sombre clefts and caverns, honeycombing the island at all points of the compass. She slipped past rugged pinnacles, like buttresses to the island, here trailed with vines, valanced with shrubs of unnameable beauty, and yonder shrivelled and bare like the ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... been reached relative to the sphere of your activity in connection with the World's Fair. I think your report, the report of your committee, of which Mrs. Montgomery is chairman, and which she recently submitted, crystallizes into close compass about the line of action the board might appropriately pursue. The report referred to dealt not only with the conclusion reached, but the details whereby those conclusions were reached. It included ...
— Final Report of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission • Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission

... made its way to the low, shedlike eating-house with a pre-breakfast solemnity bordering on sulkiness. Not a petticoat was in sight to offset the spurs and sombreros that filed into breakfast from every point in the compass, prepared to eat primitively, joke broadly, and quarrel speedily if that sensitive and often inconsistent something they called honor ...
— Judith Of The Plains • Marie Manning

... The Irishman's first proceeding was to replenish the fire. This kept the creature at a safe distance, although he began trotting around and around, as if to seek some unguarded loophole through which to compass the destruction of the man who had ...
— The Lost Trail - I • Edward S. Ellis

... limbs, and, from near the end of the upper and third limb, an arrow pointed slantingly downward, away from the trunk of the tree. In the lower right-hand corner was a hand holding a flaming torch. Between the tree and the torch was a cross, marked with the four main points of the compass. In the lower left-hand corner of the map itself was a small circle, marked "Hangtown"; and from there a crooked line trailed in a northeasterly direction to the upper right-hand quarter of the skin, where a ...
— The Cave of Gold - A Tale of California in '49 • Everett McNeil

... "Give not the compass and the level to the false measurer; for with true instruments, he will make untrue apportionments. And he will say: 'See, I carry on me the level, the rule and the square, and I am a good measurer.' So long as men shall be covetous and cruel, will they make the most merciful laws ...
— The Well of Saint Clare • Anatole France

... a lot after that. I scrambled about in all directions, rather foolishly hurried, and over countless stone walls it seemed, and completely dazed as to the true points of the compass. Then suddenly, just when a kind of despair came over me, the cottage stood there solidly before my eyes, and I found myself not two feet from the door. Was ever mist before so deceptive? And there, just behind it, I made out the row of pines like a dark wave breaking through ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery In Four Volumes - Mystic-Humorous Stories • Various

... that humour; but I still fear to meet with as great obstacles on her side as on her father's. Would to God you had loved some other lady, then I had not had so many difficulties to surmount. However, I shall employ all my wits to compass the thing; but time is required. In the mean time, take heart, and trust ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Volume 1 • Anonymous

... Even the red-skinned rover goes not here alone, but only with a large band of his kindred—a "hunting" or "war-party." The ground is neutral, as it is hostile—claimed by many tribes and owned by none. All enter it to hunt or make war, but none to settle or colonise. From every quarter of the compass come the warrior and hunter; and of almost as many tribes as there are points upon the card. From the north, the Crow and Sioux; from the south, the Kiowa, the Comanche, the Jicarilla-Apache—and even at times the tame Taosa. From the east ...
— The Wild Huntress - Love in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid

... make me suffer for it. My head is turning like a reel. I know not what fish to take. On one side love constrains me; on the other the burden of my family. I love Renzolla dearly, I love my own life dearly. If I do not give the lizard this portion of my heart, she will take the whole compass of my unfortunate body. So now, dear wife, advise ...
— Stories from Pentamerone • Giambattista Basile

... does not easily fall off, even though he has not the full command of his senses. Only for the first hour or so did Pasha's rider do much toward guiding their course. In hunting-horses, however, the sense of direction is strong. Pasha had it—especially for one point of the compass. This point was south. So, unknowing of the possible peril into which he might be taking his rider, south he went. How Pasha ever did it, as I have said, only Pasha knows; but in the end he struck the ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry

... Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks Within his bending sickle's compass come. Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks But bears it out even to the ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... the bag tied to some string), my slippers, a pair of lightish walking-shoes, my Spanish books, my new microscope (about six inches long and three or four deep), which must have cotton stuffed inside; my geological compass; my father knows that; a little book, if I have got it in my bedroom—'Taxidermy.' Ask my father if he thinks there would be any objection to my taking arsenic for a little time, as my hands are not quite well, and I have always observed that if I once get them well, and change my ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume I • Francis Darwin

... of the famous Escotillo of whom such marvellous stories are told. He was here in my house, and for a consideration of a thousand crowns that I gave him he constructed this head, which has the property and virtue of answering whatever questions are put to its ear. He observed the points of the compass, he traced figures, he studied the stars, he watched favourable moments, and at length brought it to the perfection we shall see to-morrow, for on Fridays it is mute, and this being Friday we must wait till the next day. In the interval your worship may ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

... state 'tis fit, Worthy the owner, and the owner it. The several chairs of order look you scour With juice of balm and every precious flower: 60 Each fair instalment, coat, and several crest, With loyal blazon, evermore be blest! And nightly, meadow-fairies, look you sing, Like to the Garter's compass, in a ring: Th' expressure that it bears, green let it be, 65 More fertile-fresh than all the field to see; And Honi soit qui mal y pense write In emerald tufts, flowers purple, blue, and white; Like sapphire, pearl, and rich embroidery, Buckled below fair knighthood's bending knee: ...
— The Merry Wives of Windsor - The Works of William Shakespeare [Cambridge Edition] [9 vols.] • William Shakespeare

... Mary's absence with greater equanimity than he had thought possible, he was always glad to receive her letters, with their delicate aroma of the English country; and it pleased him to think that his future was comfortably settled. The engagement was a sort of ballast, and he felt that he could compass his journey without fear and without disturbance. James did not ask himself whether his passion was very ardent, for his whole education had led him to believe that passion was hardly moral. The proper and decent basis of marriage was similarity of station, and the good, ...
— The Hero • William Somerset Maugham

... time, on his sacred word of honor, and at the full compass of his voice. But Neelie was not satisfied even yet. She reverted to first principles, and insisted on knowing whether Allan was quite sure he loved her. Allan called Heaven to witness how sure he was; and got another question directly for his pains. Could he solemnly declare that he would never ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins

... again turned west and, at ten o'clock, the boats for the landing party were lowered and, the men taking their places in them, rowed away for the shore, which was some two miles distant. The night was dark; but Mr. Lyons had with him a pocket compass and had, before embarking, taken the exact bearings of the battery, from the spot where they would land. He was therefore able to shape his course to a point half a ...
— Held Fast For England - A Tale of the Siege of Gibraltar (1779-83) • G. A. Henty

... from the doorstep of the parsonage watched the stooped figure as it shambled down the street. The rain was still falling in torrents. The thought crossed his mind that the old man might not be able to compass the two miles or more of country road. Then he got into his raincoat ...
— An Alabaster Box • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman and Florence Morse Kingsley

... "most wonderful woman in the world," Aunt Betsey, for example; or that most laconic of carriers, Mr. Barkis; or, to name yet one other, Uriah Heep, that reddest and most writhing of rascally attornies. As it was, however, there were abundant realizations within the narrow compass of this Reading of the principal persons introduced in the autobiography of David Copperfield. The most loveable, by the way, of all the young heroes portrayed in the Dickens' Gallery was there, to begin with, ...
— Charles Dickens as a Reader • Charles Kent

... Marshall, Herle, and Vines, for the Presbyterians, and Messrs. Thomas Goodwin and Philip Nye for the Independents. The business of this Sub-Committee, called "The Sub-Committee of Agreements," was to reduce into the narrowest compass the differences between the Independents and the rest of the Assembly. The Sub-Committee did their best, and reported to the Grand Committee; but for various reasons the Grand Committee postponed the subject. Meanwhile these proceedings had obtained for the Independents a re-hearing in the ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson

... struck with the fact that they did indeed find him covered with fur! While they were caressing Sabella and wringing her hands (which is a favourite form of endearment with foolish people) chariots were seen approaching from all points of the compass, ...
— The Green Fairy Book • Various

... inspires, Stretch o'er the infinite her wing sublime, A narrow compass limits her desires, When wreck'd our fortunes in the gulf of time. In the deep heart of man care builds her nest, O'er secret woes she broodeth there, Sleepless she rocks herself and scareth joy and rest; Still is she wont some new disguise to wear, ...
— Faust Part 1 • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

... must have had the coarse-growing, yellow-flowered, daisy-like PRAIRIE ROSIN-WEED (Silphium laciniatum) in mind when he wrote this stanza of "Evangeline," his lines apply with more exactness to the delicate prickly lettuce, our eastern compass plant. Not until 1895 did Professor J. C. Arthur discover that when the garden lettuce is allowed to flower, its stem leaves also exhibit polarity. The great lower leaves of the rosin-weed, which stand nearly vertical, with ...
— Wild Flowers, An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and - Their Insect Visitors - - Title: Nature's Garden • Neltje Blanchan

... endless fertility of resource, he was certain of sympathy and sound advice. But in an oriental despotism there are other forces at work besides those of la haute politique, and Ibrahim had one deadly enemy who was sworn to compass his destruction. The Sultana Roxalana was the light of the harem of the Grand Turk. This supremely beautiful woman, originally a Russian slave, was the object of the most passionate devotion on the part of Soliman; but ...
— Great Pirate Stories • Various

... tempts my soul to mischief. [Exit the PROPHET hastily. Would that I were a woman, and could weep, And slake hot rage with tears! O spiteful fortune, To lure me to the limit of my dreams, Then turn and crowd the ruin of my toil Into the narrow compass of a night! My brother's deep disgrace—myself the scorn Of envious harriers and thieves of fame, Who fain would rob me of the lawful meed Of faithful services and duties done— Oh, I could bear it all! But to behold Our ruin'd people hunted to their graves— To see ...
— The Ontario Readers: The High School Reader, 1886 • Ministry of Education

... which he repeats as often as a holder-forth that has but two sermons, to which if he adds the history of his hawks and fishing he is very painful and laborious. He does his endeavour to appear a droll, but his wit being, like his estate, within the compass of a hedge, is so profound and obscure to a stranger that it requires a commentary, and is not to be understood without a perfect knowledge of all circumstances of persons and the particular idiom of the place. He has no ambition to appear a person ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various

... the water in Ashburton range, if no rain has fallen there; those hills are the last of the rising ground within range of vision, which ends in about latitude 17 degrees 14 minutes. From south-south-east round the compass to south-south-west nothing but dense forest and Sturt Plains. ...
— Explorations in Australia, The Journals of John McDouall Stuart • John McDouall Stuart

... it. It is only water-clogged. My little compass on the charm is all right and it will give us our bearings, north and south, so that I can get the time by the sun. I'll drive a little stake out there on the level, and when the shadow is precisely north and south, then it is noon. It's all very ...
— Nedra • George Barr McCutcheon

... characters in it, are very conspicuous. But to him who really endeavours to discover the country of an anonymous writer, such an argument, unless reduced to very minute details, and contracted into a very narrow compass, will not appear satisfactory. He will recollect that the extremes of society are very uniform, that courts resemble each other as well as prisons; and that, as was once observed, if King Christophe's courtiers were examined, the great features of their character ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 344, June, 1844 • Various

... ascended Richmond-hill, on the summit of which a large smoke was made at noon, at which time a similar smoke was made on Prospect-hill, that was very distinctly seen, and its bearings taken, to ascertain the relative situation of the two hills. This bearing, which was S 35 degrees 00 minutes E by compass, gave, with the latitude observed on each, the distance between the two hills about eighteen miles in a ...
— An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 2 • David Collins



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