"Curve" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... automobile has nothing to do but watch his steering-wheel, and be ready to touch a pedal when he wishes to slow up or go faster or stop. If he makes a curve he does not have to bank his machine owing to his comparatively slow speed; but the aviator, traveling much faster through the air, must do this, bringing his airplane to a steep angle if he makes a very ...
— Around the World in Ten Days • Chelsea Curtis Fraser
... to leave the ground and start to curve gracefully upward, as the whizzing propeller did ...
— The Aeroplane Boys Flight - A Hydroplane Roundup • John Luther Langworthy
... wanderers are subject to the general laws that govern the universe. The great Newton announced that, like the planets, they were obedient to universal attraction; that they must follow an extremely elongated curve, and return periodically to the focus of the ellipse. From the basis of these data Halley calculated the progress of the comet of 1682, and ascertained that its motions presented such similarity with the apparitions of 1531 and 1607, that he ...
— Astronomy for Amateurs • Camille Flammarion
... when we missed her!..." She utters these incoherences with a great deal of eye-play, pressing a small, plump, jewelled hand, with short, broad fingers, and squat, though elaborately rouged and polished, nails, upon the bountiful curve of a Parisian corsage. "My heart did a double flip-flap ... hasn't done thumping yet. Am I pale still, Watkins?" She appeals to the recreant Watkins, who is busily repacking Baby in her luxurious perambulator. "I felt to go as ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... in spite of itself, the contemptuous curve became a very small smile. The girl's dark eyes dwelt for several seconds upon that portion of her suitor's countenance that was visible under the linen hat. There was a wonderful serenity about the mouth and chin she studied. They did not look ...
— The Swindler and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... one of his pupils that he had an inspired thumb, because the modelling-clay yielded to its careless sweep a grace of curve which it refused to the ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell
... few years we shall have condensed into our encyclopaedia the net value of all the theories at which the world has yet arrived. But year after year our tables get no completeness, and at last we discover that our curve is a parabola, whose arcs will ...
— Essays, First Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... and throng, which of old Ismenus and Asopus saw at night along their banks, in case the Thebans were in need of Bacchus, so, according to what I saw of them as they came, those who by good will and right love are ridden curve their steps along that circle. Soon they were upon us; because, running, all that great crowd was moving on; and two in front, weeping, were crying out, "Mary ran with haste unto the mountain [7] and Caesar, to subdue Ilerda, thrust at Marseilles, ...
— The Divine Comedy, Volume 2, Purgatory [Purgatorio] • Dante Alighieri
... well-marked increase in the physical signs of the presence of fluid in the chest. The pulse rose to 96, and the respirations considerably above the average of 24, which was at first noted. A strictly expectant attitude was maintained, and the temperature steadily fell in a curve corresponding to the rise, gradually reaching the normal at the end of a week. The physical signs at the base steadily cleared up, and at the end of six weeks the patient returned to ...
— Surgical Experiences in South Africa, 1899-1900 • George Henry Makins
... to provoke a fight, all that was necessary when the unappreciated portion of his name was flung at him and was not sufficient to awaken his ire, was to throw out our chests, hold back our shoulders, curve our arms and say in a throaty voice, "Who's ...
— South American Fights and Fighters - And Other Tales of Adventure • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... majestic, sentinel over the black, gold-streaked waters. Their cliff-like boldness is the greater, because to either side sweep in the East River and the Hudson River, leaving this piled promontory between. To the right hangs the great stretch of the Brooklyn Suspension Bridge, its slight curve very purely outlined with light; over it luminous trams, like shuttles of fire, are thrown across and across, continually weaving the stuff of human existence. From further off all these lights dwindle to a radiant semicircle ...
— Letters from America • Rupert Brooke
... stone fences, and the depth of the valley and its course made it impossible to reach the enemy's position at the bridge by artillery fire from the hill-tops on our side. Not so from the enemy's position, for the curve of the valley was such that it was perfectly enfiladed near the bridge by the Confederate batteries at the position now occupied by the National Cemetery. The bridge itself was a stone structure of three arches with stone parapets on the sides. These curved outward ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V1 • Jacob Dolson Cox
... two broiling hot days. As the cart went slowly down the hill, the moon was rising over the eastern mountains, and a breathless stillness reigned, broken only by the rumble of the vehicle. How familiar it all was; he knew every curve of the road and every ant-heap; every bush looming in the twilight seemed like an old acquaintance. Nineteen years had passed since Kellson had last seen the village. A clerk in the local public offices, he had left it on promotion, and now he was ...
— Kafir Stories - Seven Short Stories • William Charles Scully
... arrival of so formidable a force, fled down the canal in a curve, to an island in the river, where he summoned his warriors to meet him as speedily as possible. Casquin, marching as usual a mile and a half in advance, finding the town unprotected, and almost abandoned, ...
— Ferdinand De Soto, The Discoverer of the Mississippi - American Pioneers and Patriots • John S. C. Abbott
... to its usual milky-whiteness, and looking very pretty in her jaunty travelling-suit, met them at the door. Peering over her shoulder stood Ruth—a sunburned Ruth with bright eyes and a rounder curve to her cheek than it had worn two ...
— Blue Bonnet's Ranch Party • C. E. Jacobs
... H and K, the capital stem is almost straight on the down stroke, in the F and T it is little more of a wave line, and in S and L the line is much of a compound or double curve. ...
— Burroughs' Encyclopaedia of Astounding Facts and Useful Information, 1889 • Barkham Burroughs
... fine night, and the streets were dry and even clean for X——; there was a crescent curve of moonlight to be seen by the parish church tower, and hundreds of stars shone keenly bright in all ...
— The Professor • (AKA Charlotte Bronte) Currer Bell
... no man can violate his nature. All the sallies of his will are rounded in by the law of his being, as the inequalities of Andes and Himmaleh are insignificant in the curve of the sphere. Nor does it matter how you gauge and try him. A character is like an acrostic or Alexandrian stanza;—read it forward, backward, or across, it still spells the same thing. In this pleasing contrite wood-life which God allows me, let me record day by day my honest thought without prospect ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... father, but mingled with tresses of another tinge, shimmering like gold under certain lights. Her eyes, of deepest violet, were shaded by dark thick lashes, so long that when the lids were closed they traced a clear black curve on either cheek. The other maiden had, like their mother, and, I believe, like the younger matrons, the bright hair—flaxen in early childhood, pale gold in maturer years—and the blue or grey eyes characteristic of the ...
— Across the Zodiac • Percy Greg
... counting his steps. The roof sank with the advance until it became so low he was compelled to stoop. The sound of picks smiting the rock was borne to him, made faint by distance, but constantly growing clearer. There he came to another curve in the tunnel. ...
— Beth Norvell - A Romance of the West • Randall Parrish
... alert as we approached the curve that opens the meadow into view, and—as I am a Christian man, living in the twentieth century—I saw this Vision: I beheld beneath the shade of the midmost oak eight men sitting stark naked, whereof one blew on a flute, one played a concertina, and the rest beat ...
— News from the Duchy • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... colour that drops from the hollow vaults and thickens the air with its richness. It is all so quiet and sad and faded and yet all so brilliant and living. The strange figures in the mosaic pictures, bending with the curve of niche and vault, stare down through the glowing dimness; the burnished gold that stands behind them catches the light on its little uneven cubes. St. Mark's owes nothing of its character to the beauty of proportion or perspective; there is nothing grandly balanced or far-arching; there ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... watch him as he springs, Circling the steeples with easy wings, Till across the dial his shade has pass'd, And the belfry edge is gained at last. 'Tis a bird I love, with its brooding note, And the trembling throb in its mottled throat; There's a human look in its swelling breast, And the gentle curve of its lowly crest; And I often stop with the fear I feel— He runs so ...
— Wreaths of Friendship - A Gift for the Young • T. S. Arthur and F. C. Woodworth
... actual industry will the lines of growing expense be regular in their relation to the increase of production, as would be the case in the figure A; they will always be irregular, as in the figure B. The curve of expense ai' in the figure B will be determined by the resultant of the various forces which make for increasing and diminishing returns for each new increment of the requisites of production required to ...
— The Evolution of Modern Capitalism - A Study of Machine Production • John Atkinson Hobson
... was a suburb that had not altogether, as people say, come off. It consisted, like pre-Roman Gaul, of three parts. There was first the Avenue, which ran in a consciously elegant curve from the railway station into an undeveloped wilderness of agriculture, with big, yellow brick villas on either side, and then there was the pavement, the little clump of shops about the post-office, and under the railway arch was a congestion ...
— Ann Veronica • H. G. Wells
... standing on a wide beach in the curve of a beautiful bay. Before her lay the sea, dark blue in the distance, a clear emerald green by the shore. To the right of her the beach stretched as far as she could see, firm yellow sand on the lower half, fine white silvery sand higher up. On the left it only ran for a couple of miles or ...
— The Happy Adventurers • Lydia Miller Middleton
... Place one must drive directly to the center of W——, turn eastward, then cross a handsome new iron bridge, and go southward a short distance, coming finally to the broad curve which sweeps up to the mansion, and away from the river, along ...
— The Diamond Coterie • Lawrence L. Lynch
... perceptible to sight by the starry gleam in which the motion of its wings enveloped it. The infant on the floor followed its course with his sagacious little eyes. After flying about the room, it returned in a spiral curve and settled ...
— Mosses from an Old Manse and Other Stories • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... spirit of caution with regard to nursemaids in the minds of their employers. Even those who were not young and good-looking were somewhat shepherded. The two or three quite elderly ones in the Gardens cast serious glances at the girl who walked past them to a curve in the path where large lilac bushes and rhododendrons made a sort of nook for a seat ...
— Robin • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... the one he wanted his hands were shaking as he flipped through it. The synopsis of Hengly's reports for the past five years. The gradual rise and fall of the k-factor from month to month. There were no sharp breaks in the curve or gaps in the ...
— The K-Factor • Harry Harrison (AKA Henry Maxwell Dempsey)
... the ground, crossed the rails in the fortunate shadow of one of the posts. There he found a place where, with his back to a pole-prop right at this curve in the trolley system, the ...
— Tom Swift and his Electric Locomotive - or, Two Miles a Minute on the Rails • Victor Appleton
... mortal some physical detail which he or she could find only in this particular person. It might be the veriest trifle. Some found it, it seemed, in the colour of an eye; some in the modulations of a voice, the curve of a lip, the shape of a hand, the lines of a body in motion. Whatever it chanced to be, it was, in most cases, an insignificant characteristic, which, for others, simply did not exist, but which, ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... can't give you the curve really described by the Projectile as it moves between the Earth and the Moon; this is to be obtained by allowing for their combined movement around the Sun. I will consider the Earth and the Sun to be motionless, that being sufficient for our ...
— All Around the Moon • Jules Verne
... the desired Australian continent and called Tierra Australis del Espiritu Santo; the large bay he named San Iago and San Felipe, and his anchorage Vera Cruz. He stayed here some months and founded the city of New Jerusalem at the mouth of the river Jordan in the curve of the bay. Quiros claims to have made a few sailing trips thence, southward along the east coast of the island; if he had pushed on far enough these cruises might easily have convinced him of the island-nature of the country. Perhaps he was aware of the truth; certainly ...
— Two Years with the Natives in the Western Pacific • Felix Speiser
... of vast windows, and an intricate scheme of architectural relief. Athwart these ran inscriptions horizontally and obliquely in an unfamiliar lettering. Here and there close to the roof cables of a peculiar stoutness were fastened, and drooped in a steep curve to circular openings on the opposite side of the space, and even as Graham noted these a remote and tiny figure of a man clad in pale blue arrested his attention. This little figure was far overhead across the space beside the higher fastening ...
— The Sleeper Awakes - A Revised Edition of When the Sleeper Wakes • H.G. Wells
... dear girls so fair but now, A mournful sight all bent and bowed— And grieving, thus he cried aloud:— "What fate is this, and what the cause? What wretch has scorned all heavenly laws? Who thus your forms could curve and break? You struggle, but no answer make." They heard the speech of that wise king Of their misfortune questioning. Again the hundred maidens sighed, Touched with their heads his feet, and cried:— "The God of Wind, pervading space, Would bring on us a foul disgrace, ...
— Hindu Literature • Epiphanius Wilson
... graceful, when she had written her name, and the finely chiselled lips had an upward curve of young scorn, as she turned from the table, while the notary and his clerk proceeded to witness the will. Immediately, the countess smiled, very brightly, showing beautiful teeth between smooth red lips, and her strong arms went round her young ...
— Taquisara • F. Marion Crawford
... Sclaveni extends from the city of Noviodunum and the lake called Mursianus to the Danaster, and northward as far as the Vistula. They have swamps and forests for their cities. The Antes, who are the bravest of these peoples dwelling in the curve of the sea of Pontus, spread from the Danaster to the Danaper, rivers that are many days' journey apart. But on the shore of Ocean, where 36 the floods of the river Vistula empty from three mouths, the Vidivarii ...
— The Origin and Deeds of the Goths • Jordanes
... Earth and Air, Listen to the Pilot's prayer— Send him wind that's steady and strong, Grant that his engine sings the song Of flawless tone, by which he knows 5 It shall not fail him where he goes; Landing, gliding, in curve, half-roll— Grant him, O Lord, a full control, That he may learn in heights of Heaven The rapture altitude has given, 10 That he shall know the joy they feel Who ride Thy realms on Birds ...
— Story Hour Readings: Seventh Year • E.C. Hartwell
... from thought to thought, groping indistinctly amongst memories, like a man trying to cross from door to door in a darkened unfamiliar room. But, no doubt, if he were to look out, by some magic the whole scene would be displayed before him. He would not see the curve of monotonous two-storied houses, with here and there a white blind, a patch of light, and shadows appearing and vanishing, not the rain plashing in the muddy road, not the amber of the gas-lamp opposite, ...
— The Hill of Dreams • Arthur Machen
... light of the locomotive was seen coming around a curve in the road, the shrill whistle resounded through the wintry air, and in a few minutes the train came rumbling up to the station, when instantly all ...
— Bucholz and the Detectives • Allan Pinkerton
... away in a green-embowered village that follows the horseshoe curve of its bijou harbour. They are mostly Spanish and Indian mestizos, with a shading of San Domingo Negroes, a lightening of pure-blood Spanish officials and a slight leavening of the froth of three or four pioneering white races. No steamers touch at Ratona ...
— Whirligigs • O. Henry
... your lawn, in which you sometimes lie on a very hot summer's afternoon. But it is a queer bed to sleep in, for your head and your heels are both of them stuck up in the air, while your body hangs underneath in a graceful curve. ...
— Little Folks (Septemeber 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... little head-room that the laird could not ascend without stooping. Cosmo was short enough as yet to go erect, but it gave him always a feeling of imprisonment and choking, a brief agony of the imagination, to pass through the narrow curve, though he did so at least twice every day. It was the oldest-looking thing about ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... any well-grown group of the tree which prevails most near the proposed site of the cottage. Its summit will be a rounded mass. Take the three principal points of its curve: namely, its apex and the two points where it unites itself with neighboring masses. Strike a circle through these three points; and the angle contained in the segment cut off by a line joining the two lower points is to be the angle of the cottage roof. ...
— The Poetry of Architecture • John Ruskin
... into a grim city of hoarse, roaring streets, wherein the endless throngs swirled and surged as I had seen the yellow waters curve and fret, contending, where the river pauses, rock-bound. Here were no bright costumes, no bright faces, none stayed to greet another; all was stern, and swift, and voiceless. London, then, said I to ...
— Paul Kelver • Jerome Klapka, AKA Jerome K. Jerome
... a small, oblong blotch in the curve of the tower not more than twenty feet from where I stood, and on a direct line with my balcony. True, I could not at first see a face, but as my eyes grew a little more accustomed to the darkness, I fancied I could distinguish a shadow that ...
— A Fool and His Money • George Barr McCutcheon
... beauty, the brooding calm, the gracious silence, when he went with her on her fishing expeditions into the wilds. And here was her favorite Geinig—sometimes with tawny masses boiling down between the boulders, sometimes sweeping in a black-brown current round a sudden curve, and sometimes racing over silver-gray shallows; but always with this continuous murmur that seemed to offer a kind of companionship where there was no other sound or sign of life. And would she be up here later on? he asked himself, with a curious kind of interest. Would she ...
— Prince Fortunatus • William Black
... he asked in his low, unruffled voice, his eyebrows raised in real or assumed surprise. "Yet it matches your dress," and lightly his long fingers touched the folds of green silk swathed across the youthful curve of her breast. He glanced at an open box filled with shimmering stones on a ...
— The Sheik - A Novel • E. M. Hull
... dust, turned and cut lightly by the chopper, gathered into a tender, mellow mass, and she lifted it out upon the board. She shook out the scalded cloth, spread it upon the emptied bowl, sprinkled it snowy-thick with flour, rolled out the crust with a free quick movement, and laid it on, into the curve of the basin. Barbara brought the apples, cut up in white fresh slices, and slid them into the round. Mrs. Holabird folded over the edges, gathered up the linen cloth in her hands, tied it tightly with a string, and Barbara disappeared with it behind the damask screen, where ...
— We Girls: A Home Story • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... said Garratt Skinner. He pointed to a great buttress of rock overlain here and there with fields of snow, which jutted out from the ice-wall of the mountain, descended steeply, bent to the west in a curve, and then pushed far out into the glacier as some great promontory pushes out into the sea. "Do you see a hump above the buttress, on the crest of the ridge and a little to the right? And to the right of the hump, a depression in the ridge? That's what they ...
— Running Water • A. E. W. Mason
... I have been treated as grown-up for years and years, and that I have several younger sisters whom I have tried to keep in order." There was a returning twinkle in Annie's brown eyes and a comical curve ...
— A Houseful of Girls • Sarah Tytler
... Bay there was a swooping curve in the hill road. It was at this same curve that Brian Buidh had first met the Dark Master, and it was here he had set that trap which had won him tribute for the Bird Daughter. When first he had ridden that road Brian had had a score of lusty men at his back; on the second ...
— Nuala O'Malley • H. Bedford-Jones
... straightforwardness, the high spirits, and also the loquacity and the want of reverence. But even her faults caused amusement, and if she had preserved many of the characteristics of a clever child, she was none the less a tall and handsome woman, who looked older than her years on account of that low curve of the hair over the ears, and that fullness of bodice and skirt which Mr. Gibson has either initiated or imitated. The whisk of those skirts, and the frank, incisive voice and pleasant, catching laugh were familiar and welcome sounds ...
— The Tragedy of The Korosko • Arthur Conan Doyle
... promised, as he sprang up and ran to the edge of the rimrock to wave a good-bye to Luigi, who was disappearing round a curve of the trail. ...
— The Story of Wool • Sara Ware Bassett
... now, and, followed by Moise, crossed the neck of the bend and passed on down the river some distance. The boys, following more slowly around the curve of the beach, finally saw both Alex and Moise poised on some high rocks and pointing at the wild water which stretched below them for the distance of two or three hundred yards. Moise, who seemed to be more savage than Alex, made a wild figure as he ...
— The Young Alaskans on the Trail • Emerson Hough
... "pull away," the doctor stood up, waving his oar frantically, and Boston assisted. But if their shouts and gestures were understood aboard the cruiser, they were ignored. She slowly turned in a wide curve and headed straight for the Neptune which had drifted to leeward ...
— Great Sea Stories • Various
... listless and tired, frankly bored by the clerk. He stared out over the sickle curve of the bay along the Cavite shore, where a line of white beach made a barrier between the water and the green jungle. The red-roofed buildings of Cavite lay out on the end of the sickle like a clutter of bleached bones cast up by ...
— Isle o' Dreams • Frederick F. Moore
... study the large drawing, where we delineate the escape wheel ten inches in diameter, it will readily be seen that although we claim one and a half degrees lock, we really have only about one degree, inasmuch as the curve of the peripheral line m diverges from the line B f, and, as a consequence, the absolute lock of the tooth C on the locking face of the entrance pallet E is but about one degree. Under these conditions, if we did ...
— Watch and Clock Escapements • Anonymous
... and the fourth acts the pair went out into the foyer, where, ascending to the next floor, they made the round of the long curve behind the boxes, Pearson pointing out to his friend the names of the box ...
— Cap'n Warren's Wards • Joseph C. Lincoln
... gazed at their own reflections in the lagoon. Beyond lay waving chapparel, where cocoa-palms and breadfruit trees intermixed with the mammee apple and the tendrils of the wild vine. On one of the piers of coral at the break of the reef stood a single cocoa-palm; bending with a slight curve, it, too, seemed seeking its ...
— The Blue Lagoon - A Romance • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... of all, teachers and taught, was to render the institution some day illustrious by occupying the Woolsack, or the chief place at the Speaker's right hand? A curious destiny is his: at a certain point the curve of his ascent was as it were truncated, and he took to the commonest level of ordinary life. He may now be seen, staid and sedate in his walk, which brings him, with a regularity that has rendered him useful to ...
— The Book-Hunter - A New Edition, with a Memoir of the Author • John Hill Burton
... Macbeth, Richard, and Othello, the philosophy of mind is but the material of the poet. These personages are ideal; they are effects of the contact of a given internal character with given outward circumstances, the results of combined conditions determining (so to say) a moral curve of original and inimitable properties. Philosophy is exhibited in the same subserviency to poetry in many parts of Crabbe's Tales of the Hall. In the writings of this author there is much to offend a refined taste; but at least in the work ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... The curve of the net was now reduced to fifty feet, and soon it was not above forty; and at this stage of the proceedings what with the weight being collected in such narrow limits, and the water being so shallow, the captain became doubtful of its bearing so tremendous a ...
— Menhardoc • George Manville Fenn
... beardless, and rather square in contour; the mouth not small, but keenly cut, like marble, and always quivering before he spoke, as if the lightning of his thought ran thither naturally to seek spontaneous expression; teeth white; chin cleft; nose of the unclassified order, rather long, the curve opposite to aquiline, and saved from sharpness by nostrils that dilated with a pulse of their own, as those of very proud and sensitive people are apt to do; a wide, low forehead crowned with dark hair, long and fine; heavy brows that overhung deep-set ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 37, November, 1860 • Various
... he made no effort to start the car, but sat slowly drawing on his heavy gloves, and staring abstractedly at the dull, uninteresting stretch of street before him, where a dismal spring wind was stirring chaff and papers about the subway entrance, and surface cars were grinding and ringing on the curve. ...
— The Beloved Woman • Kathleen Norris
... from the dawn of the sailing period can appreciate without much difficulty the radical revolution which he was setting on foot. It was a revolution, as we can plainly see, that was tending to bring the long-drawn curve of tactical development round to the point at which the Elizabethans had started. Surprise is sometimes expressed that, having once established the art of warfare under sail in broadside ships, our seamen were so long in finding the tactical ...
— Fighting Instructions, 1530-1816 - Publications Of The Navy Records Society Vol. XXIX. • Julian S. Corbett
... harbour of Alexandria. Large rewards had been offered to any pilot who would take them in, but none could be found who would venture to steer into that port a vessel drawing more than twenty feet of water. They had, therefore, remained at anchor outside, in Aboukir Bay, drawn up in a curve along the deepest of the water, with no room to pass them at either end, so that the commissary of the fleet reported that they could bid defiance to a force more than double their number. The admiral believed that Nelson had not ventured to attack ...
— A Book of Golden Deeds • Charlotte M. Yonge
... eyebrows was the pucker that shows the intense strain it requires to be at ease in Bohemia. Pat must come each sally, mot, and epigram. Every second of deliberation upon a reply costs you a bay leaf. Fine as a hair, a line began to curve from her nostrils to her mouth. To hold her own not a chance must be missed. A sentence addressed to her must be as a piccolo, each word of it a stop, which she must be prepared to seize upon and play. And she must always be ...
— The Trimmed Lamp • O. Henry
... Bangles', and he did not at all like the aspect of the establishment. Inside the office he could see a man standing with a cigar in his mouth, very resplendent with a new hat,—with a hat remarkable for the bold upward curve of its rim, and this man was copiously decorated with a chain and seals hanging about widely over his waistcoat. He was leaning with his back against the counter, and was talking to some one on the other side of it. There was something in the ...
— The Last Chronicle of Barset • Anthony Trollope
... stem of the tree, and about six feet above its first forking, he perceived an object that at once fixed his attention. It looked like a goat's horn, only that it was more like the curving tusk of a rhinoceros or a very young elephant. It was sticking out from the tree, with the curve directed downwards. Altogether, it looked quite different from a branch of the sycamore, or anything ...
— The Cliff Climbers - A Sequel to "The Plant Hunters" • Captain Mayne Reid
... a root, which, in old trees, spreads much above the surface of the ground, the trunk rises to a considerable height in a single stem. Here it usually divides into two or three principal branches, which go off by a gradual and easy curve. Theses stretch upwards and outwards with an airy sweep, become horizontal, the extreme half of the limb, pendent, forming a light and regular arch. This graceful curvature, and absence of all abruptness, in the primary limbs and forks, and ...
— Outlines of Lessons in Botany, Part I; From Seed to Leaf • Jane H. Newell
... to be. Every time it sucked in its slight moisture it was gently adapting this nourishment to the fulfillment of its ultimate end, asking itself whether the small material had better be bestowed on the left bough or the right, whether certain leaves should curve more obliquely toward the sun, and whether it had better wave its branches and catch the passing breeze or leave them quiet. If we could rightly imagine such a state of things, our tree would be much unlike its brothers of the ...
— The Nature of Goodness • George Herbert Palmer
... rather, it became by insensible degrees the distant roll of a retreating thunderstorm. A landscape, glittering with sun and rain, stretched before him, arched with a vivid rainbow, framing in its giant curve a hundred visible cities. In the middle distance a vast serpent, wearing a crown, reared its head out of its voluminous convolutions and looked at him with his dead mother's eyes. Suddenly this enchanting landscape seemed to rise swiftly upward, ...
— Stories by Modern American Authors • Julian Hawthorne
... museums, and you will see that the fore-claws are just in the same forward attitude as those of a dog, or a common bear when he walks or stands. But this is a distorted and unnatural position, and in life would be a painful and intolerable attitude for the ant-bear. The length and curve of his claws cannot admit of such a position. When he walks or stands his feet have somewhat the appearance of a club-hand. He goes entirely on the outer side of his fore-feet, which are quite bent inwards, ...
— Wanderings In South America • Charles Waterton
... called the banner, is broad and erect, and so is the upper petal of the pea flower; the two lower petals, called the wings, are outspread and wing-shaped; so are those of the pea; and the two petals below the wings are united on their edges, curve upward, and form what is called the keel, and so you see are the corresponding petals of the pea flower. And now look at the stamens and pistils. You see that nine of the ten stamens have their filaments united into a sheath around the pistil, but the tenth stamen has its filament free. These ...
— The Story of My Boyhood and Youth • John Muir
... her hand a great curve in the air, to indicate the immensity of the horizons she had opened up to Monsieur de Lucan. Then, drawing her mother toward the dining-room, and snuffing the air ...
— Led Astray and The Sphinx - Two Novellas In One Volume • Octave Feuillet
... fellow stood speechless with wonder as she came on, picking her way daintily among the beds and rows, her skirts held carefully, her beautiful figure expressing health and strength and joyous, tingling life in every womanly curve ...
— The Calling Of Dan Matthews • Harold Bell Wright
... to call and spur. They rounded a curve which made a sort of apse to the side of the valley, and presently they were hid from their pursuers. Looking back from the thicket they saw the plainsmen riding hard. ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... cause to be grateful to him for the care with which he looked after their safety and comfort. Since then the appearance of the interior has been changed very considerably. The two tiers of boxes were where they are now, but their fronts were perpendicular, and there was no bulging curve at the proscenium. Besides the two tiers of boxes, as they exist at present, there were twelve baignoirs, six on a side at the stage ends of the parquet circle, so-called. These were found to be unprofitable, and were abolished when the house was remodeled about ten years after ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... his nose, not reflectively, but savagely, in order to drive the blood into it, and urged the dogs to their work again. He travelled on the frozen surface of a great river. Behind him it stretched away in a mighty curve of many miles, losing itself in a fantastic jumble of mountains, snow-covered and silent. Ahead of him the river split into many channels to accommodate the freight of islands it carried on its breast. These islands were silent and white. No animals nor humming insects broke ...
— Love of Life - and Other Stories • Jack London
... ages—of battles from yesterday—of battle-fields that, long since, nature had healed and reconciled to herself with the sweet oblivion of flowers—of battle-fields that were yet angry and crimson with carnage. Where the terraces ran, there did we run; where the towers curved, there did we curve. With the flight of swallows our horses swept round every angle. Like rivers in flood, wheeling round headlands; like hurricanes that side into the secrets of forests; faster than ever light unwove ...
— Miscellaneous Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... Rounding a curve in the path he saw a man rushing down the road with Edith in his arms. The mother was racing after him, while the little boy lay wailing where he had fallen in his frantic effort to follow. In the distance stood a car, with a woman waiting beside ...
— Blacksheep! Blacksheep! • Meredith Nicholson
... curves against the sky overhead, and sometimes, in one sweep of an instant, described an arc of more than forty-five degrees, bringing up with a sudden jerk, which made it necessary to hold on with both hands, and then sweeping off in another long, irregular curve. I was not positively sick, and came down with a look of indifference, yet was not unwilling to get upon the comparative terra firma of the deck. A few hours more carried us through, and when we saw the sun go down, upon our larboard beam, in the direction of the ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... the sad portrait of a gentleman, undoubtedly the late lamented Norton. His uninteresting nose appeared to turn up at the constant odor of cookery in which it dwelt; his hair was plastered down over his forehead in a gorgeous abandoned curve such as some of the least sophisticated of Mr. John T. ...
— Seven Keys to Baldpate • Earl Derr Biggers
... out a grayish-white palm for the quarter-dollar the passenger was ready to drop into it, and stepped back to the platform of the car. The engine bell tolled slowly, as if it sounded a knell, and the train wound away. The curve of the line carried it out of sight in less than a minute, but in the clear mountain air the quickened ringing of the bell, the pant of the engine, and the roll of the wheels were audible for a long time. Then the engine, with a ...
— Despair's Last Journey • David Christie Murray
... take him for one of the poor invalids who attend the establishment regularly, and whose apparition, silent as night-birds in the fencing-room where they come to be weighed, contrasts so strangely with the healthy laughter and superabundant vigour of the rest of the company. But the contemptuous curve of the large nose and the weary lines round the mouth vaguely recalled some face he knew in society. In his dressing-room he asked the man who was shampooing him, 'Who was that, Raymond, who bowed to me ...
— The Immortal - Or, One Of The "Forty." (L'immortel) - 1877 • Alphonse Daudet
... of all due care in respect of the annealing of the casting by slow cooling, and the utmost care and delicate handling of it in the process of grinding the surface into the requisite curve and smoothness suitable to receive the final polish,— I was on more than one occasion inexpressibly mortified by the sudden disruption and breaking up of my speculum. Thus many hours of anxious care and labour proved of no avail. I had to begin again and proceed da capo. I ...
— James Nasmyth's Autobiography • James Nasmyth
... traversed was haunted by the memories of thirty years ago; to the other, this coming home was a step towards the fulfilment of his hopes. They followed their own meditations, glad or sorrowful, until the last curve was turned, and they stopped before the great white pillars of the portico. Then Maurice remembered that this was his first coming home as master, and felt a momentary shyness take possession of him before his own new importance. He had been able during his absence to keep ...
— A Canadian Heroine - A Novel, Volume 3 (of 3) • Mrs. Harry Coghill
... Donald steered the canoe, in a great sweeping curve, out into the vague blackness of ...
— At War with Pontiac - The Totem of the Bear • Kirk Munroe and J. Finnemore
... marquise to two rings close together fixed to a board; then making her lie down, he fastened her wrists to two other rings in the wall, distant about three feet from each other. The head was at the same height as the feet, and the body, held up on a trestle, described a half-curve, as though lying over a wheel. To increase the stretch of the limbs, the man gave two turns to a crank, which pushed the feet, at first about twelve inches from the rings, to a distance of six inches. ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - THE MARQUISE DE BRINVILLIERS • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... it end? Where would the cars go? Would they ever reach the bottom of the long grade without jumping the rails at some sharp curve, only to plunge into the woods down some lofty embankment? No time to think about that. The thing to do was to get out of the way, and prevent the runaway train from dashing into the engine. He whistled to the station-master to close the switch, and give him the clear line. He ...
— Harper's Young People, April 6, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... consisted of a long cylindrical basket of wicker- work, of which the foremost half was hid by a semi-cylinder of a closer texture, which became broader towards the top, and there separated from the basket, so as to come forwards in a curve. This frontlet, of the length of four feet, was closely covered with the glossy bluish green feathers of a sort of pigeon, and with an elegant border of white plumes. A prodigious number of the long tail feathers ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 14 • Robert Kerr
... one side, she beheld the gaze of Leta fixedly fastened upon her over Sergius's shoulder. In the sparkle of those burning eyes and in the curve of those half-parted lips, there appeared no longer any vestige of the former pretended sympathy or affection. There was now malice, scorn, and hatred—all those expressions which, from time to time, had separately ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 4, October, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... devoured by ourselves and our dogs with great relish. He is about the size of a very small cow; has a large head and enormously thick horns, which cover the whole top of his head, bend down toward his cheeks, and then curve up and outward at the point. He is covered with long, brown hair, which almost reaches the ground, and has no tail worthy of the name. He seems to be an active and an angry creature. When I wounded him he came at me furiously, but had not pluck to charge home. As he turned away I gave ...
— Fast in the Ice - Adventures in the Polar Regions • R.M. Ballantyne
... (which hereabouts ran shallow for five or six hundred yards) it reared itself in ten-foot combers, rank stampeding on rank, until the sixth or seventh hurled itself far up the beach, spent itself in a long receding curve, and drained back to the foaming forces behind. Their untiring onset fascinated Dicky; and now and again he tasted renewal of his terror, as a wave, taller than the rest or better timed, would ...
— Lady Good-for-Nothing • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... heroic desire to return to nature, is, of course, in some respects, rather like the heroic desire of a kitten to return to its own tail. A tail is a simple and beautiful object, rhythmic in curve and soothing in texture; but it is certainly one of the minor but characteristic qualities of a tail that it should hang behind. It is impossible to deny that it would in some degree lose its character if attached to any other part of the anatomy. Now, nature is like a tail in the sense ...
— Varied Types • G. K. Chesterton
... downwards, between two rows of great agaves, to a little grove of laurels, cypresses and olives, to which roses cling. She passed the great pine that looks towards the Crelian and winding down, on the right by a long curve of paths, she reached the spring which an ancient sarcophagus receives on the steep slope, within a belt of myrtles, a few steps below the gardener's little house. Here she stopped. A window in the little house was lit up; surely that was Piero's window. A shadow flitted ...
— The Saint • Antonio Fogazzaro
... because the scene was large and the diminutive chapel, which was not longer than ten braccia and not higher than five, would not contain the whole, and above all the Assumption of Our Lady herself, Spinello, with beautiful judgment, caused it to curve round within the length of the picture, on to a part where Christ and the Angels are receiving her. In a chapel in S. Trinita he made in fresco a very beautiful Annunciation; and in the Church of S. Apostolo, on the panel ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol 2, Berna to Michelozzo Michelozzi • Giorgio Vasari
... A question quite as reasonable, and Mr. Romfrey laughed under his breath. To relieve an uncertainty in Cecilia's face, that might soon have become confusion, he described the downs fronting the paleness of earliest dawn, and then their arch and curve and dip against the pearly grey of the half-glow; and then, among their hollows, lo, the illumination of the East all around, and up and away, and a gallop for miles along the turfy thymy rolling billows, land to left, sea ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... I feared the possible passing by of the two decrepit cronies, when Carlotta stood at my open French window this morning. She is really indecently beautiful. She was wearing a deep red silk peignoir, open at the throat, unashamedly Parisian, which clung to every salient curve of her figure. I wondered where, in the name of morality, she had procured the garment. I learned later that it was the joy and pride of Antoinette's existence; for once, in the days long ago, when she was femme ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke
... triumph, and his burned with the agonised protest of the vanquished. At such times there was somewhat of fear in the glances that followed her beauty, which almost seemed to blaze—her colour was so rich, the curve of her red mouth so imperial, the poise of her head, with its loosening coils of velvet ...
— A Lady of Quality • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... not see him, and while he wondered whether he ought to get up she put her foot on the step and leaned out, as if she weighed the possibility of jumping off. She swung back when the cars lurched round a curve, and the measured roll of wheels changed to a sharp, broken din. The train was running on to the trestle and Lister saw the water shine below the platform. He got up, and moving quietly, seized the girl's arm and pulled her from ...
— Lister's Great Adventure • Harold Bindloss
... leaned forward to catch his words, "I find that the curves of Miss La Neige, Mrs. Parker, and Mr. Downey are only so far from normal as would be natural. All of them were witnessing a thing for the first time with only curiosity and no fear. The curve made by Mr. Bruce shows great ...
— Master Tales of Mystery, Volume 3 • Collected and Arranged by Francis J. Reynolds
... filled out; the boat heeled gently over and ran in a long curve. The islets at the harbour mouth rushed past us. We were making straight ...
— Seven Icelandic Short Stories • Various
... impression that he made,—whether from that golden-brown tint of skin that always seems full of slumbering light, or from the teeth that flashed so beneath the triste moustache whenever the haughty lips parted and unbent their curve, or whether it were a habit the eyes seemed to have of accompanying all his thoughts with a ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 79, May, 1864 • Various
... penitently, one hand nervously clutching a branch of rhododendron, one foot twisting in the moss, Lescott was seeing an altogether new Sally. There was a renunciation in her eyes that in contrast with the child- like curve of her lips, and slim girlishness of her figure, seemed ...
— The Call of the Cumberlands • Charles Neville Buck
... moving in upon him quickly, groping, yet moving rapidly. It was like playing blind man's buff, with everyone blindfolded except one. "Get hold of him!" cried one. He found himself in the arc of a loose curve of pursuers. He felt suddenly he must ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... hand, the path that Christ makes runs clear on, without a break, across the gulf, like some daring railway bridge thrown across a mountain gorge, and goes straight on on the other side without a curve, only with an upward gradient. The manner of work may change; the spirit of the work and the principles of it will remain. Self-surrender will be the law of Heaven, and 'they shall follow the Lamb whithersoever ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren
... broad bed of loose rocks reached high up at its foot, and in the curve of the point were great sand and gravel- covered hummocks of ice. For some distance below us the farther and right bank of the river was lined with huge ice-banks, still 10 and 12 feet thick, which extended up ...
— A Woman's Way Through Unknown Labrador • Mina Benson Hubbard (Mrs. Leonidas Hubbard, Junior)
... watch her at the mirror. She gave herself the most critical examination since she left the East and on the whole she approved of the changes. The stirring life in the open had darkened the olive of her skin, she found, but also had made it more translucent; the curve of her cheek was pleasantly filled; her throat rounder; her head better poised. And above all excitement gave her the ...
— Alcatraz • Max Brand
... a word containing one special idea can extend its meaning is the word bend. This word originally meant to pull the string of a bow in order to let fly an arrow. The expression "bend a bow" was used, and as the result of pulling the string was to curve the wooden part of the arrow, people came in time to think that "bending the bow" was this making the wood to curve. From this came our general use of "bend" to mean forcing a thing which is straight into a curve or angle. We have, of course, ...
— Stories That Words Tell Us • Elizabeth O'Neill
... nothing to say. He thought she had never been so beautiful before. The firelight, striking her face at an upward angle, brought out clearly the noble symmetry of her features, the level brow, the wide, delicate nostrils, the even curve of her lips, the splendid breadth of her smooth forehead, shaded by her heavy black hair. She seemed to feel cold, for she sat near the flames, resting one foot upon the fender, in an attitude that threw into relief the perfect curves of her figure, ...
— Sant' Ilario • F. Marion Crawford
... a book unopened in her hand, gazing intently into the fire, which cast responsive flickers over her face, giving a shadowed emphasis to the faint line which had begun to display itself, not unattractively, between her eyebrows and the irregular curve of her brown hair. She was growing very weary of it all, the distraction which she had sought, the forgetfulness of self which she had hoped to achieve, by living perpetually in a crowd. Indeed, to such a point had she carried ...
— A Comedy of Masks - A Novel • Ernest Dowson and Arthur Moore
... in him like a blue flame: the hope that within an hour or two he would hold this radiant girl in his arms and touch her lips. He thought of the garden outside, full of shadows and scented starlight, and looking at the curve of her lips, his eyes darkened, and strange bells rang in his ears. She had eluded him for many nights, although she knew he loved her. He had kissed her fingers and the palm of her hand, but tonight out in the ...
— Blue Aloes - Stories of South Africa • Cynthia Stockley
... the time, engine Number 36, and he was making the run between Syracuse and Rochester. He was fourteen minutes behind time, and the throttle was wide open. In consequence, when he swung around the curve at the flower-bed, a wheel of his cart destroyed a peony. Number 36 slowed down at once and looked guiltily at his father, who was mowing the lawn. The doctor had his back to this accident, and he continued to pace slowly to and fro, pushing ...
— The Monster and Other Stories - The Monster; The Blue Hotel; His New Mittens • Stephen Crane
... me into trouble!" thought the stranger, trying in vain to smooth down the corners of the offending organ, which in spite of him would curve with what Hagar called a sneer, and from which there finally broke a merry laugh, sadly at variance with the suffering expression of ...
— Maggie Miller • Mary J. Holmes
... all the way from Millbrook to Spotswood, corresponds to the mathematical definition of a straight line. It forms the third concession of the township, and there is not a curve in it anywhere. The concessions number from west to east, and the sidelines, running at right angles to them are exactly two miles apart. At the northwestern angle formed by the intersection of the ...
— The Gerrard Street Mystery and Other Weird Tales • John Charles Dent
... bank of the Danube, just below the place where the river makes a curve at the modern Gran, came two men riding at the head of a caravan. For several days they had followed the picturesque banks of the green river, with its bulrushes and willows, and its swarms of wild duck ...
— Historical Miniatures • August Strindberg
... is carefully buckling his belt and making himself perfectly easy and comfortable, as all good pilots do. As he straightens himself up from a careful inspection of the Deviation Curve[10] of the Compass and takes command of the Controls, the Throttle and the Ignition, the voices grow fainter and fainter until there is nothing but a trembling of the Lift and Drift wires to indicate to his understanding eye their state of tension in ...
— The Aeroplane Speaks - Fifth Edition • H. Barber
... a broad river, sweeping round in an imposing curve from the South-Eastward, with abrupt ranges of sandstone hills, for the most part cleared of forest, hemming it in on either side, and a glimpse of lofty blue mountains towering skywards far away to the North-East, is a ...
— British Borneo - Sketches of Brunai, Sarawak, Labuan, and North Borneo • W. H. Treacher
... to guide him; he'll take you quite safely," he called back to her. "Let the reins hang." And in the dusk of early morning they safely turned the curve where Harry King had fallen, never knowing ...
— The Eye of Dread • Payne Erskine
... the direction of the stables. As he hesitated, in momentary doubt which course to take, the sound of hoofs in the avenue caught his ear, and he stood still. In a moment there came into view, round a curve in the leafy distance, two horses with riders, advancing at a brisk canter. Soon he perceived that the riders were ladies; they drew rein as they approached him, and then it was to be seen that they were the pair he had judged to be such close friends last night—Lady ...
— The Market-Place • Harold Frederic
... because he aspired. But, at least, he did not suffer long. He aspired himself quickly away. Toward the last he wrought at a problem in his first favorite study, that of mathematics, and left behind him, as a memorial of his later life, a remarkable result of investigation on the curve called the cycloid. During his final illness he pierced himself through with many sorrows,—unnecessary sorrows, sorrows, too, that bore a double edge, hurting not only him, but also his kindred,—in practising, from mistaken religious motives, ...
— Classic French Course in English • William Cleaver Wilkinson
... large crowd of people left to cheer as it slowly passed out of the Station. The appearance of this monster train was magnificent. More than 2,000 of the passengers were in open trucks, and at certain points, where there was a curve in the line, and a good sight could be obtained, the train, as it wound its way through the valley, presented a scene not easily to be ...
— The Story of the Cambrian - A Biography of a Railway • C. P. Gasquoine
... scene followed scene, there entered a confidante, then a hero, then a crowd of supers. But he saw nothing but the apparition that had first fascinated him. His eyes fastened greedily on her beauty, caressing the two bare arms, encircled with rings of metal, gliding along the curve of the hips below the high girdle, plunging amid the brown locks that waved above the brow and were tied back with three white fillets; they clung to the moving lips and the white, moist teeth that ever and anon flashed in the ...
— The Aspirations of Jean Servien • Anatole France
... hundred paces from the Chapdelaine house the bank of the Peribonka fell steeply to the rapid water and the huge blocks of stone above the fall, and across the river the opposite bank rose in the fashion of a rocky amphitheatre, mounting to loftier heights-an amphitheatre trending in a vast curve to the northward. Of the birches, aspens, alders and wild cherries scattered upon the slope, October made splashes of many-tinted red and gold. Throughout these weeks the ruddy brown of mosses, the changeless green of fir and cypress, were no more than a background, ...
— Maria Chapdelaine - A Tale of the Lake St. John Country • Louis Hemon
... down over the golf links, as the car swung around the long curve at the head of the slope. "I don't know where he is," she said tonelessly. "Where did ...
— Cabin Fever • B. M. Bower
... garment the surface of every acre, went to the very tops of the highest hills, adding a strange feature to hill scenery. The river only approaches these hills in a few places and always at right angles, and is by them deflected, leaving them always on the outer curve of the semicircle or bend in the stream. From these points and from the summit of these cliffs the view is very fine, stretching often in many places far up and down the river and away over the plain west of the river, which seems to repose upon its lap as far as the ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks
... employed by the Company being armed, she had her main deck clear of goods, and carried six nine-pounders on each broadside; her ports were small and oval. There was a great spring in all her decks,—that is to say, she ran with a curve forward and aft. On her forecastle another small deck ran from the knight-heads, which was called the top-gallant forecastle. Her quarter-deck was broken with a poop, which rose high out of the water. The bowsprit staved very much, and was to appearance almost as a fourth mast: the more ...
— The Phantom Ship • Frederick Marryat
... touched him. Her way of holding her head, rather meekly, rather proudly, sufficiently averted to give him the curve of the cheek, touched him, ...
— The Side Of The Angels - A Novel • Basil King
... its appearance would of itself have justified the shouting. The wheels were very marvels of construction. Stout bands of burnished bronze reinforced the hubs, otherwise very light; the spokes were sections of ivory tusks, set in with the natural curve outward to perfect the dishing, considered important then as now; bronze tires held the fellies, which were of shining ebony. The axle, in keeping with the wheels, was tipped with heads of snarling tigers done in brass, and the bed was woven of ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace
... Here we find ourselves in the midst of a cheerful animated throng, engaged in mending nets, in painting boats, and in other occupations connected with a sea-faring life. The tall fantastic houses with balconied windows that line the curve of the sea-shore, the glistening sands and the brown-legged, gay-capped fishermen, combine to present a charming picture of southern Italian life, so that we could gladly linger in observing the ever-changing scenes of life and industry. But we cannot tarry long, for the ubiquitous beggars who have ...
— The Naples Riviera • Herbert M. Vaughan
... gold-brown hair; but a pair of big, soft, pansy eyes, fringed with long, curling, black lashes, looked out from under dark and perhaps just a trifle heavy eyebrows. Moreover, there was that indescribable expression in the curve of her lips and the pose of her head; to say nothing of a lissome, vivacious grace in her whole carriage which proclaimed her a daughter of the younger branch of the ...
— A Honeymoon in Space • George Griffith
... moment after this. He was examining her minutely with his wise, calm eyes. He was noting the sensitive curve of the pretty full lips, the tender droop of the set of her head, the gracious charm of her little regular features, and the intelligence of her broad brow. With all her simplicity, she looked no fool or weakling. And to think that the narrow code of ...
— The Point of View • Elinor Glyn
... horses away from under a wagon, and yet sufficiently near it not to precipitate the crash? Have you ever at the same time tried to keep them from falling on the rocks ahead and from plunging over the bank as you turn a sharp curve on a steep down grade? If you have, then you know the nature of my ...
— A Woman Tenderfoot • Grace Gallatin Seton-Thompson
... face more especially, and the magnificent expression of his features, that first struck the beholder—the broad imaginative brow, the keen large lustrous eye, pervading, clear, undazzled as the eagle's, the bold Roman nose, the resolute curve of the clean-cut mouth, full of indomitable pride and matchless energy—all these bespoke at once the versatile and various genius of the great statesman, orator, and captain, who was ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 1 of 2) • Henry William Herbert
... and more mechanical, his attention disengaged itself from the moment—from the voice of Mr. Jessup astern, the girl's intent gaze, the swirl about the blade, the scent and pageant of the green banks on either hand—and pressed forward to follow each far curve of the stream, each bend as it slowly unfolded. Bend upon bend—they might fold it a hundred deep; but somewhere ahead and beyond their folding lay ...
— True Tilda • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... course, exactly what the eagle wished. Here was his opportunity for the spectacular. Diving straight downward—first, however, increasing his speed with two swift strokes of his powerful wings which then became set in a half curve—he overtook the falling breakfast in mid air, seized it, swung gracefully outward and disappeared ...
— Wings of the Wind • Credo Harris
... brutality. The cabin-boy—and he weighed one hundred and sixty-five at the very least—crumpled up. His body wrapped limply about the fist like a wet rag about a stick. He lifted into the air, described a short curve, and struck the deck alongside the corpse on his head and shoulders, where he lay and writhed ...
— The Sea-Wolf • Jack London
... but I caught sight of the curve of a shoulder and the movement of a busy hand. As I pushed ...
— Aftermath • James Lane Allen
... the different directions in which the gauging telescope was pointed. On these lines are laid off lengths proportional to the cube roots of the number of stars in each gauge. The irregular line joining the terminal points will be approximately the bounding curve of the stellar system in the great circle chosen. Within this line the space is nearly uniformly filled with stars. Without it is empty space. A similar section can be constructed in any other great circle, ...
— Sir William Herschel: His Life and Works • Edward Singleton Holden
... satisfied; His look was all dissatisfied. His beard swung on a wind far out of sight Behind the world's curve, and there was light Most fearful from His forehead, and He sighed, "That star went always wrong, and from the start ...
— Mary, Mary • James Stephens
... and returned to place more logs on the fire she opened her eyes and looked up at him. The curve of her mouth ...
— The Common Law • Robert W. Chambers
... lever, sanded the track, and the heavy train got under way again; but the whistles behind grew nearer, sounding danger-signals, and in turning a curve he looked out and saw a train speeding after him at a rate that must bring it against the rear of his own train if something were not done. He broke into a sweat as he pulled the throttle wide open and ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner
... for words," said one of them. "Every curve and droop of his figure, as he walked slowly and with bent head, told all of us who saw him that hope was gone and that death had won ...
— Twelve Men • Theodore Dreiser
... asked. "Is it—is it any one I know?" Then, as if suddenly conscious that he was betraying too keen an emotion for the occasion, pitiful as it was, he forced his lips into a steadier curve, and quietly said: "After what has happened here, I am naturally overcome by a circumstance so ...
— The Mill Mystery • Anna Katharine Green
... this boat, rolling its tiny waves, no higher than a finger, with the faint sound of a rake on the shingle. And the big white gulls, with their wings unfurled, circled about in the blue heavens, flying off and then coming back in a curve above the heads of the kneeling crowd, as if to see what they ...
— Une Vie, A Piece of String and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... the center line of boiler; formerly it was the great aim to keep this low, and numerous schemes to this effect were propounded, but now it has become generally recognized that a high pitched engine will travel as steadily and more safely round a curve—given a good road—than a low pitched one; and thus while in 1850 the average height of the center line of boilers varied between 5 ft. 3 in. and 6 ft. 3 in., now in the latest designs it lies between 7 ft. ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 458, October 11, 1884 • Various
... a bad name as an idler, and was fast losing his self-respect. And when that sheet-anchor is once lost, anything may happen to the ship; however gay its trim, however taut its sides, however delicate and beautiful the curve of its prow, it may drive before the gale, it may be dashed pitilessly among the iron rocks, or stranded hopelessly upon the harbour bar. A little more of this discipline, and a boy naturally noble-hearted and capable, might have been transformed into ...
— St. Winifred's - The World of School • Frederic W. Farrar |
