"Serpentine" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... struck at it with his Service axe—the wolf thing tracking the red stain of the outlaws' trail along the base of the sand bank out across the ash colored silt sands. He watched it pausing, where the wind had eddied the dust in serpentine lines over the tracks, sniffing the air, loping across the break, and on out again at a run, nose down to earth: a blot against the sky; the burned out sulphur sky above an earth of embers and ashes. Was it a mirage; or was he going delirious; ...
— The Freebooters of the Wilderness • Agnes C. Laut
... she'll keep her word, Strong, and dissolve partnership, if I go on. I wish I had three hundred a year, and was away. At a German watering-place you can do devilish well with three hundred a year. But my habits are so d——reckless: I wish I was in the Serpentine. I wish I was dead, by Gad, I wish I was. I wish I had never touched those confounded bones. I had such a run of luck last night, with five for the main, and seven to five all night, until those ruffians wanted to pay me with Altamont's ...
— The History of Pendennis, Vol. 2 - His Fortunes and Misfortunes, His Friends and His Greatest Enemy • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Lycius, he succumbs to the serpentine grace of Lamia; or as Porphyro, hidden in the silence, ...
— A Day with Keats • May (Clarissa Gillington) Byron
... Park, the Serpentine River, the cottages on its bank, and seemed highly diverted by the horsemen and carriages in the ring. The pertinence of his remarks afforded Thaddeus a ray of hope that his senses had not entirely lost their union with reason; ...
— Thaddeus of Warsaw • Jane Porter
... of noon, when the young wife's delicate, slender figure, carrying a white duster in her hand, entered the burgomaster's study. Here she stationed herself at the window, from which the pouring rain streamed in numerous crooked serpentine lines, pressed her forehead against the panes, and gazed down ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... central painted cupola of large but exquisite proportions, supported by pilasters with gilded capitals, and angels of white marble springing from golden brackets; walls incrusted with rare materials of every tint, and altars supported by serpentine columns of agate and alabaster; a blaze of pictures, and statues, and precious stones, and precious metals, denoted one of the chief temples of the sacred brotherhood of Jesus, raised when the great order had recognized that the views of ...
— Lothair • Benjamin Disraeli
... such a book as this of Whately's,—so informed and leavened as it is by an elegant taste,—I am most painfully impressed by the shortcomings of very much which is called good landscape-gardening with us. As if serpentine walks, and glimpses of elaborated turf-ground, and dots of exotic evergreens in little circlets of spaded earth, compassed at all those broad effects which a good designer should keep in mind! We are gorged ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 79, May, 1864 • Various
... betimes. Scarlet-capped chanticleer gets himself on the nearest rail fence and lifts up his rancorous voice like some irate old cardinal launching the curse of Rome. Something crawls swiftly along the gray of the serpentine turnpike—a cart, with the driver lashing a jaded horse. A quick wind goes shivering by, and is lost ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. X (of X) - America - II, Index • Various
... the elk, had supplied me with food; and as I sat on a grave, in that beautiful bluff in the wilderness—the enamelled prairie, the thousand grassy hills that were visible, with their golden heads and long deep shadows, (for the sun was setting,) and the Missouri winding in its serpentine course, the whole scene was of the most beautiful and tranquil kind. The soft whispering of the evening breeze, and the distant, subdued and melancholy howl of the wolf, were the only sounds that reached my ears. It was a very solitary, and yet a ...
— History, Manners, and Customs of the North American Indians • George Mogridge
... a great piece of water here called the Serpentine, because it curves round like a serpent, and anyone can hire a boat and go for a row, and sometimes the whole of the water is covered with boats. At other times in the winter, when the ice is safe, there are hundreds and hundreds of skaters to be seen. ...
— The Children's Book of London • Geraldine Edith Mitton
... of a house in the rue Serpentine, was speaking angrily. He said he didn't care whether Hartman liked it or not; he was telling him, not ...
— The King In Yellow • Robert W. Chambers
... you're good for is catching fish and feeding ducks and planting things in gardens. Why don't you come down and feed the ducks in the Serpentine?" ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 29. August, 1873. • Various
... circumference is under three-quarters of a mile. This small point rises abruptly out of the depths of the ocean. Its mineralogical constitution is not simple; in some parts the rock is of a cherty, in others of a felspathic nature, including thin veins of serpentine. It is a remarkable fact, that all the many small islands, lying far from any continent, in the Pacific, Indian, and Atlantic Oceans, with the exception of the Seychelles and this little point of rock, are, I believe, composed either of coral or of erupted matter. The volcanic ...
— The Voyage of the Beagle • Charles Darwin
... neglected pollards, fantastic roots bared by the winter torrents, tangled trailers and wild plants, and infinite variety of tints and shades (i., 23-29). He denounces the improvements of Capability Brown (see "Romanticism," vol. i., p. 124): especially the clump, the belt and regular serpentine walks with smooth turf edges, the made water with uniformly sloping banks—all as insipidly formal, in their way, as the old Italian gardens which ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... And Adderley gave a kind of serpentine writhe on the grass as he raised himself to a half-sitting posture— "Gentle Goblin, do not mistake me! When I say that Miss Vancourt is unwritable, I would fain point out that she is above and beyond the reach of my Muse. I cannot 'experience' her! Yes—that is so! What a poet needs ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli
... out a thousand serpentine heads or knots of water, which wriggle down deliberately through the air and expend themselves in mist before half the descent is over. Then a new set burst from the body and sides of the fall, with the same fortune on the remaining distance; and thus the most charming ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... quarter. And presently I became aware of certain suspicious-looking movements of the long grass, about a hundred yards distant, suggestive of the presence of an animal of some kind approaching the antelope cautiously along a sort of wavering, serpentine course. When I first discovered this movement the creature that caused it was at such a distance that it was completely concealed among the long grass, even from the elevation which I occupied; but a minute later ...
— Through Veld and Forest - An African Story • Harry Collingwood
... the village is very fine, on an eminence, gently rising to a thick wood at some distance, a beautiful little serpentine river in front, on which are a bridge, a mill, and a small cascade, at such a distance as to be very pleasing objects from their houses; and a cultivated country, intermixed with little woods lying between them and Quebec, from which they are distant ...
— The History of Emily Montague • Frances Brooke
... road, dip into a sand arroyo, edge slanting up the farther bank, wriggle round a cluster of small hills, shoot out across a mesa, and climb slowly toward those hills to the west, finally to contort itself into serpentine switchbacks as it sought the crest—and once on the crest (which was in reality but the visible edge of another great mesa), there would be grass for a horse and cedar-wood for a fire, and water with ...
— The Ridin' Kid from Powder River • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... doesn't care for my whims and fancies. I have read novels until I am tired. I am not allowed to go out by myself, and mamma can scarcely walk to Kensington-gardens without sinking under the exertion. We drive out sometimes; but I am sick to death of crawling slowly up and down by the Serpentine staring at people's bonnets. I might enjoy it, perhaps, if I had you with me to make fun out of some of the bonnets. The house is very comfortable; but it always seems to me unpleasantly like some philanthropic ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... what actual experience has taught us!—this is precisely what she did not do. When the horrible apparition first rose in her very face, as it were, a momentary weakness caught her and she clung to the sash for support. Then the wonderful fire of the malignant eyes, green, serpentine, opalescent, with the wave-like flux of a glowworm's light seen under a glass, riveted her attention. She had ceased to tremble. Our fear of death varies with our desire for life. Dulled by a great grief, she did not ...
— The Darrow Enigma • Melvin L. Severy
... California partisans and the Stanford fanatics. A California graduate, his companion along the cocktail route, recognized him; immediately, he was riding shoulder high. His bearers broke for the sidewalk, and down Market Street he went, a blue-and-gold serpentine dancing behind him. There was his first Jinks at the Bohemian club—an impromptu affair, thrown in between the revelling Christmas Jinks in the clubhouse and the formally artistic Midsummer High Jinks in the Russian River Grove. The Sire, noting his smile and figure, impressed him ...
— The Readjustment • Will Irwin
... the Keeper writhed and flicked a tangle of tentacles; serpentine, whiplike. Silvery white, they were dyed with the scarlet and orange flaming of the surface now hidden from my eyes; reflected those sullen and angry gleamings. Vermiceous, coiling, they seemed to drop from every inch of ...
— The Metal Monster • A. Merritt
... and each particular trunk a growth Of intertwisted fibres, serpentine, Upcoiling, and inveterately convolved— Nor uninformed with Phantasy and looks ...
— The Lost Hunter - A Tale of Early Times • John Turvill Adams
... England, and at certain times of the day, during "the season" (May and June), Hyde Park is always filled with a merry company. In midsummer it is rather more deserted, and yet the walks stretching between the flower-beds, and the Serpentine stream, are always flocking with people on summer Sundays or ...
— John and Betty's History Visit • Margaret Williamson
... light of the candles, the face of Jennka became more clearly visible. The lividness had almost gone off it, remaining only here and there on the temples, on the nose, and between the eyes, in party-coloured, uneven, serpentine spots. Between the parted dark lips slightly glimmered the whiteness of the teeth, and the tip of the bitten tongue was still visible. Out of the open collar of the neck, which had taken on the colour of old parchment, showed two stripes: one dark—the ...
— Yama (The Pit) • Alexandra Kuprin
... and the dead looks of all the throng come to life immediately. The man who has been frantically hauling in a rope that bade fair to have no end ceases his labours, and they glide down the serpentine bends of ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy
... answered, "and made all the preliminary arrangements. I took out my razor-case, examined the edges, found the sharpest, and—put it carefully away again. I loaded all the chambers of my revolver, and locked it up. I sauntered by the classic banks of the Serpentine, sleeping tranquilly in the rays of the sunset (that sounds like poetry, but I don't mean poetry). Of the three I think I prefer it, and if the worst comes to the worst, it's there still, and it's ...
— A Terrible Secret • May Agnes Fleming
... expenditure has rendered the rude hill which, covered chiefly with evergreens, overlooks Spa, a succession of beautiful promenades. Serpentine walks are led through its thickets, agreeable surprises are prepared for the stranger, and all the better points of view are ornamented by seats and summer-houses. One of these places was covered by a permanent protection against the weather that had a name ...
— A Residence in France - With An Excursion Up The Rhine, And A Second Visit To Switzerland • J. Fenimore Cooper
... of jasper, agate, chalcedony, serpentine, nephrite, steatite, quartz, crystal, glass, jade (white and green), and chrysoprase. Mention is also made of rakan, but the meaning of the term is obscure. Probably it was ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... window, set out with objects carved in serpentine, held her for a moment; but remembering how often she had paused here lately, she felt ashamed, and walked on. Presently there moved towards her a lady in a Bath-chair; a lady who had once been beautiful, but now, though ...
— The Whirlpool • George Gissing
... is found in an irregular mass or mountain, as Mr Cronstedt has properly observed; but he has also said, that this is not the case in general. His words are: "It is oftener found in form of veins in mountains of another kind, running commonly in a serpentine manner, contrary or across to the direction of ...
— Theory of the Earth, Volume 1 (of 4) • James Hutton
... type may possibly be of Eastern origin. The krisses of the Malays, at the present day have serpentine blades. ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 76, April 12, 1851 • Various
... warm hedge grew lush eglantine, Green cowbind and the moonlight-colour'd May, And cherry-blossoms, and white cups whose wine Was the bright dew yet drain'd not by the day; And wild roses, and ivy serpentine, With its dark buds and leaves wandering astray; And flowers, azure, black, and streak'd with gold, Fairer than any ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... that his best friend was making love to her, in spite of his free-love principles, he was very seriously annoyed. When he presently abandoned her, feeling a spiritual affinity in another direction, she drowned herself in the Serpentine: and his second wife needed all her natural sweetness and all her inherited philosophy to reconcile her to the waves of Platonic enthusiasm for other ladies which periodically swept the too sensitive heart of her husband. Free love would not, then, secure ...
— Winds Of Doctrine - Studies in Contemporary Opinion • George Santayana
... in the far distance, on the broad avenue that leads direct from the Serpentine. She was young and graceful in form; but she walked with a quick step, with her eyes looking down, like one who regarded neither youth nor grace. Curiously enough, this downcast look gave to her fair face a modest, captivating grace, ...
— Fighting the Flames • R.M. Ballantyne
... Representing in terms of weight the mineralogical changes in the katamorphism of serpentine rocks to iron ...
— The Economic Aspect of Geology • C. K. Leith
... melting at last into blue distance; an open valley studded with groups of astounding trees which were all scarlet and gold. Mountains, deep-green, purple, pale-violet, framed the valley, and through its midst was flung a bright blue necklace of long lakes and serpentine rivers. In the nearest and largest lake, towering castles of white cloud came continuously and went. Very far off, browsing among lily pads, Mr. Cotter could see a cow moose and her calf. And, high over his head, there passed presently a string of black ...
— If You Touch Them They Vanish • Gouverneur Morris
... such tenants never fails to excite curiosity. That which is illustrated accommodated another oyster of delicate texture, a thorny clam (which has the reputation of being poisonous), a mass of seaweed, a serpentine mollusc, two species of coral—the red organ-pipe and a mushroom—three burrowing crabs, besides a number of smaller animals, fixed and mobile, in addition to the congregation of less obvious life critical examination would undoubtedly ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... melody. Zachariah made up for his brother's timidity. Full of fun, what dreadful faces the young Gipsy would pull, they were absolutely frightful; then he would twist and turn his body into all sorts of serpentine contortions. If spoken to he would suddenly, with a hop, skip, and a jump alight in his tent as if he had tumbled from the sky, and, sitting bolt upright, make a hideous face till his mouth nearly stretched from ear to ear, while his dark ...
— Gipsy Life - being an account of our Gipsies and their children • George Smith
... itself against the all-embracing silver brightness. Here and there windows glowed warm, set in the pale, glistering facades of the adjacent houses. A cool, light wind, hailing from the direction of the unseen Serpentine, stirred the hanging clusters of the pink geraniums that fell over the curved lip of the stone vases, standing along the broad coping of the balcony, and gently caressed the girl's ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... village, it is evident that something unusual is going on; they pass people moving in the same direction, with eager and expectant faces, to one of whom Mr. Webster ventures these questions: Can his serpentine majesty be seen to-day? and where to the best advantage? Receiving satisfactory replies, the coachman is ordered to drive to the old wind-mill, where they arrive in a few moments,—from the shady side of this quaint structure, ...
— The New England Magazine, Volume 1, No. 1, January 1886 - Bay State Monthly, Volume 4, No. 1, January, 1886 • Various
... on the morning of the 13th, to stem the current under sail, but as the course of the river was very serpentine, we found that greater progress could be made by tracking. Steel River presents much beautiful scenery; it winds through a narrow, but well wooded, valley, which at every turn disclosed to us an agreeable variety of prospect, rendered more picturesque by the effect of the season on the foliage, ...
— Narrative of a Journey to the Shores of the Polar Sea, in the Years 1819-20-21-22, Volume 1 • John Franklin
... But when a man dances, it reminds me of that amusing French book called "Le Diable Boiteux," which has been free-thinkingly translated, "The Devil on Two Sticks." A woman's dancing is gliding, swaying, serpentine. A man's is jerks, hops, convulsions, and acute angles. The woman is light, airy, indistinctly defined. Airy movements are in keeping. The man is sombre in hue, grave in tone, distinctly outlined; and ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton
... way home he did so, and ordered the porter up to the house. The magnificent avenue was a serpentine one, and our friends had barely time to get out of sight of the lodge, by a turn in it, when they heard the voices of the pursuers, hallooing for the porter, and ...
— Willy Reilly - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... his nephew there, in pleasant dreams. "They are both asleep," whispers Mr. BUMSTEAD to himself. He goes back to his own bed, accompanied unconsciously by a chair caught in his coat-tail; puts on his hat, opens an umbrella over his head, and lies down to dread serpentine visions. ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 13, June 25, 1870 • Various
... growing only where they would afford a grateful shade either to the wayfarer or to the gardens arranged upon the flat-topped roofs of the houses. The roads were so cunningly planned that, by means of their serpentine windings, an easy gradient was everywhere maintained; and, lastly, the entire island was encompassed by a lofty and immensely solid wall, or quay, built of enormous blocks of granite the face of which had been worked to so smooth a surface as to ...
— The Adventures of Dick Maitland - A Tale of Unknown Africa • Harry Collingwood
... The Ortach, all of a piece, rises up in a straight line to eighty feet above the angry beating of the waves. Waves and ships break against it. An immovable cube, it plunges its rectilinear planes apeak into the numberless serpentine ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... foothold, and guiding the others to do the same. At last, at a sharp turn of one of these rocky eminences, they perceived an enormous cloud of white vapor rising up like smoke from the earth, and twisting itself as it rose, in swaying, serpentine folds, as though some giant spirit-hand were shaking it to and fro like a long flowing veil in the air. Sigurd ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli
... it. But there the whole thing is. If I thought that any part of your interest in the man's scientific attainments had become diverted to the man himself, I should feel inclined to take him by the neck and throw him into the Serpentine." ...
— The Moving Finger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... gate was locked, but the keeper let him in, declaring, however, that there was nobody within the precincts. Although it was not late, the autumnal darkness had now become intense; and he found some difficulty in keeping to the serpentine path which led to the quarter where, as the man had told him, the one or two interments for the day had taken place. He stepped upon the grass, and, stumbling over some pegs, stooped now and then to discern if possible ...
— Wessex Tales • Thomas Hardy
... unlifted arms—but Dick had no earthly desire to go to the Parks. Once and only once since Maisie had shut her door he had gone there under Alf's charge. Alf forgot him and fished for minnows in the Serpentine with some companions. After half an hour's waiting Dick, almost weeping with rage and wrath, caught a passer-by, who introduced him to a friendly policeman, who led him to a four-wheeler opposite the Albert Hall. He never told Mr. Beeton of Alf's forgetfulness, but . . . this was ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... I dropped the subject. We toddled along a bit, and sat down on a couple of chairs by the Serpentine. ...
— Death At The Excelsior • P. G. Wodehouse
... last night," he said. "I was a-walkin' with my missus alongside the Serpentine—in London, that is. There was swans sailin' on it, an' we was 'eavin' bits of bread to 'em. 'Fred,' she says, 'you'll 'ave it beautiful for your regatta. You'll win,' she says, 'the Stokers' Cutters, the Vet'rans' Skiff's, the Orficers' Gigs, ...
— The Long Trick • Lewis Anselm da Costa Ritchie
... was created when all three larval types—serpent, eagle-lion, and antelope-fish—were blended to form a monster with bird's feet and wings, a lion's forelimbs and head, the fish's scales, the antelope's horns, and a more or less serpentine form of trunk and tail, and sometimes also of head. Repeated substitution of parts of other animals, such as the spiral horn of Amen's ram, a deer's antlers, and the elephant's head, led to endless ...
— The Evolution of the Dragon • G. Elliot Smith
... execution is very simple, and there is no limit to the number of times the eight-bar measure may be played—or rather, the limit is set according to the fancy of the leader, for he may, if he pleases, and if the audience manifests no impatience, lead his side back and forth in a serpentine track, round and round for ever so long, till finally they ...
— The Morris Book • Cecil J. Sharp
... horizon, while to the east a long range of mountains rose against the sky. It was the Pacific on the west, and the Wahsatch mountains on the east, with the broad valleys basking in a summer sun between them, through which rivers wound their dark serpentine lines, while away to the north-east the great desert lay, with its white sands glittering beneath the rays ...
— The American Family Robinson - or, The Adventures of a Family lost in the Great Desert of the West • D. W. Belisle
... saddler made me observe a prospect, which was perhaps the only one of the kind in England. Below us was a hollow, not unlike a huge kettle, hollowed out of the surrounding mass of earth; and at the bottom of it a little valley, where the green meadow was divided by a small rivulet, that ran in serpentine windings, its banks graced with the most inviting walks; behind a small winding, there is just seen a house where one of the most distinguished inhabitants of this happy vale, a great philosopher, lives retired, dedicating almost all his time to ...
— Travels in England in 1782 • Charles P. Moritz
... 22nd of February a very singular spectacle was got up on the Serpentine. Late in the evening a fine "brass band," attended by near a thousand torchbearers, suddenly marched on to the ice on the ornamental water in Kensington Gardens, and struck up popular airs; as by a signal, large fires were lighted on the ice, tents were erected, and barrels ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... bigger than themselves; if he could see the big obedient dogs, who walk solemnly through the Park carrying their master's stick, never pausing in their impressive march unless it be to plunge into the Serpentine and rescue a drowning child, he would know what I mean. He would admit that a dog who cannot answer to his own name and pays but little more attention to "Down, idiot," and "Come here, fool," is not every place's dog. He would admit it, if he had time. But before I could have called his attention ...
— Happy Days • Alan Alexander Milne
... streams shrink up to mere threads of water, which, trickling down the bottoms of the deep barrancas, or ravines, scarce feed and keep alive the rivers of the valleys. The rivers, almost lost in their wide and naked beds, seem like thirsty rills winding in serpentine mazes through deserts of sand and stones, and so shallow and tranquil in their course as to be forded in safety in almost every part. One autumnal tempest, however, changes the whole face of nature: the clouds break in deluges among the ...
— Chronicle of the Conquest of Granada • Washington Irving
... In the conception of Tito, George Eliot has quite surpassed herself, and in all literature there is no delineation of a character surpassing this. One of her critics says there is no character in her novels "more subtly devised or more consistently developed. His serpentine beauty, his winning graciousness, his aesthetic refinement, his masculine energy of intellect, his insinuating affectionateness, with his selfish love of pleasure and his cowardly recoil from pain, his subdulous serenity and treacherous calm, as of a faithless summer sea, make up a being that ...
— George Eliot; A Critical Study of Her Life, Writings & Philosophy • George Willis Cooke
... truth, there is yet a real element of truth in the assertion of Nietzsche: "We believe that severity, violence, slavery, danger in the street and in the heart, secrecy, stoicism, tempter's art and devilry of every kind, everything wicked, tyrannical, predatory and serpentine in man, serves as well for the elevation of the human species as its opposite."[220] To ignore altogether the affirmation of that opposing morality, it may be, would be to breed a race of weaklings, fatally ...
— The Task of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis
... what contempt, in his sweet forgivable way, the old man spoke of much that passes nowadays for criticism. He said Hazlitt was exactly the opposite of Lord Chesterfield, who advised his son, if he could not get at a thing in a straight line, to try the serpentine one. There were no crooked pathways in Hazlitt's intellect. His style is brilliant, but never cloyed with ornamentation. Hazlitt's paper on Gifford was thought by Procter to be as pungent a bit of writing as had appeared in his day, and he quoted this paragraph as a sample ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields
... and shine! Rise and shine, you tripe-hounds!" ... Broken dreams on a smelly, straw-stuffed pillow and lumpy straw-stuffed pallet, dreams of "Circle and cha-a-a-a-a-a-a-nge" "On the Fore-hand, Right About" "Right Pass, Shoulder Out" "Serpentine" "Order Lance" "Trail Lance" "Right Front Thrust" (for the front rank of the Queen's Greys carry lances); dreams of riding wild mad horses to unfathomable precipices and ...
— Snake and Sword - A Novel • Percival Christopher Wren
... was wise and good, and tried her best to make her people happy. The only thing she had to vex her was the absence of her daughter; for the fairies, for reasons of their own, determined to bring up the little Princess Serpentine among themselves. ...
— The Yellow Fairy Book • Various
... from underbrush, for the distance of two miles, passing two beautiful lakes. By this time night had overtaken us, and it was with difficulty that we could follow the trail, the tracks of the horses' shoes, which were our sole guide, being hardly discernible. But we pressed on, following the dark, serpentine line of freshly disturbed earth till it turned up the side of the mountain, where we followed it for upwards of a mile. Fearing lest we were not upon the right trail, we dismounted, and, placing our faces close to the ground, examined it carefully, but could not discover ...
— The Discovery of Yellowstone Park • Nathaniel Pitt Langford
... of the straight line had asserted its power, and fashion felt its sway. Such was the feeling that produced the coffee-pot of 1692, the straight lines of which continued in vogue until the middle of the following century, when a reaction in favour of bulbous bodies and serpentine spouts set in. ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... Communion classes, and so nice for me. Some ladies in Melbourne give a velvet altar cloth, Lady S. in Sydney gives all the white linen: our Communion plate, you know, is very handsome. Some day Joan must send me a solid block of Devonshire serpentine for my Font, such a one as there is at Alfington, or Butterfield might now ...
— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge
... subjected to so dread an ordeal; at last there floated to where he was standing the welcome cry of "En voiture! En voiture, s'il vous plait!" The dark serpentine mass on which the lonely man's eyes were fixed shivered as though it were a sentient being waking to life, and slowly the train ...
— The Uttermost Farthing • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... a singular little fact which made itself clear to her just then. She was certainly not a child; she was not even a very young girl, at twenty-four; she had never been prudish, and she did not affect the pre-Serpentine innocence of Eve before the fall. Yet it was suddenly apparent to her that because she was a singer men treated her as if she were a married woman, and would have done so if she had been even five years younger. ...
— The Primadonna • F. Marion Crawford
... bleak Where, outside, rain and wind combine With a furtive ear, if I strive to speak, With a hostile eye at my flushing cheek, 10 With a malice that marks each word, each sign! O enemy sly and serpentine, Uncoil thee from the waking man! Do I hold the Past Thus firm and fast 15 Yet doubt if the Future hold I can? This path so soft to pace shall lead Through the magic of May to herself indeed! Or narrow if needs the ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning
... proportions of Egypt would be represented by a green ribbon an inch wide and a yard long, lying upon the ground in a serpentine form; and to complete the model, we might imagine a silver filament passing along the center of the green to denote the Nile. The real valley of verdure, however, is not of uniform breadth, like the ribbon so representing it, but widens as it approaches the sea, ...
— Xerxes - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... chain of inter-communication, like to a prodigious sarpent, with his head resting upon the shores of Europe, and his lengthened form stretching over the ocean and curling along this great winding stream in serpentine grandeur, proudly flaps his tail at Paducah! . . . SIR, the ball is in motion; it is rolling down in noise of thunder from the mountain heights, and comes booming in its majesty over the wide-spread plain. Yes, Sir, and it will continue to roll on, and on, gathering ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, April 1844 - Volume 23, Number 4 • Various
... of magicians. None can withstand him, and nobody can pass the terrible serpentine designs which Miramon has set to guard the gray scarps of Vraidex, unless one carries the more terrible sword Flamberge, which I have here in its ...
— Figures of Earth • James Branch Cabell
... The serpentine or double curved chute gates, O O, when formed with surfaces tapering or sloping from their centers towards their ends, and so arranged, relative to intermediately situated diaphragms or plates, r r, that one ...
— Scientific American, Vol. 17, No. 26 December 28, 1867 • Various
... unique: it combines the qualities of every river. Like the Rhone, it is rapid; broad like the Loire; encased, like the Meuse; serpentine, like the Seine; limpid and green, like the Somme; historical, like the Tiber; royal like the Danube; mysterious, like the Nile; spangled with gold, like an American river; and like a river of Asia, ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume V (of X) • Various
... water, tossing the fish in its jaws and making a tremendous commotion. I was much struck also by the singular appearance presented by certain diving birds having very long and snaky necks (the Plotus Anhinga). Occasionally a long serpentine form would suddenly wriggle itself to a height of a foot and a half above the glassy surface of the water, producing such a deceptive imitation of a snake that at first I had some difficulty in believing it to be the ...
— The Naturalist on the River Amazons • Henry Walter Bates
... and disappeared down the high road to St. Gwithian, pedalling like a squirrel on a treadmill, the tails of his new mackintosh spread like wings on the breeze. So Aunt Angela with serpentine guile had deferred her raid until the last moment and then bagged "The Limit," the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, January 28th, 1920 • Various
... and sassafras; but I suspected that an animal or a reptile of some kind was at the bottom of the mystery at a prior period. That is why I wanted the flour. Look! Do you see where I sifted it over this spot near the Patagonian plant? And do you see those serpentine tracks through the middle of it? The Mynga Worm is there—in that box, at the roots of ...
— Cleek: the Man of the Forty Faces • Thomas W. Hanshew
... stream can be quite clearly recognised; but, indeed, the brighter stars scattered along it form a stream recognisable with the naked eye, and have long since been regarded by astronomers as such, forming the stars of the Serpent and the Crown, or a serpentine streak followed by a loop of stars shaped like a coronet. Now the Milky Way, and the outlying streams of stars connected with it, seem to form a region of the stellar universe where fashioning processes are ...
— Myths and Marvels of Astronomy • Richard A. Proctor
... long may be called a toy ship, but it is a toy that can teach much to an Admiral, and I should not like to have as my comrade on a voyage the man of forty who can pass the Serpentine without a glance at the little ragged urchin there, who is half in the water himself while he reaches with a twig his tiny lugger after its long voyage across the lake among ducks, and row-boats, ...
— The Voyage Alone in the Yawl "Rob Roy" • John MacGregor
... which is indicated by the nature of the soil. The bluffs and bottoms invariably alternate; and when you have bluffs on one side, you are sure to have bottom on the other. The windings are extremely uniform, with few exceptions, curving in a serpentine form in so regular a manner, that the Indians always calculated the distance by the ...
— A Ramble of Six Thousand Miles through the United States of America • S. A. Ferrall
... with a more crystalline fracture, and translucent on their edges; and these are fusible into a green enamel. Several other varieties are chiefly characterised by containing innumerable threads of dark-green serpentine, and by having calcareous matter in their interstices. These rocks have an obscure, concretionary structure, and are full of variously coloured angular pseudo fragments. These angular pseudo fragments consist of the first-described dark green rock, of a brown softer ...
— Volcanic Islands • Charles Darwin
... wickedness. I verily believe that it is the predominant of every man, good and bad, except in so far as it is mortified by grace. O the turnings and windings of the heart upon itself, in all the most apparently direct motions towards God and the good of men! What serpentine and crooked circumgirations and reflections are there in the soul of man when the outward action and expression seems most regular and directed towards God's glory, and others edification! Whoever of you have any acquaintance with your own spirits cannot but ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... enlightened must obey; the consequence is, that the inhabitants of New Orleans look forward to the Shell-road ride, or drive, with as much interest and satisfaction as our metropolitan swells do to the Serpentine or the Row. ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray
... Where wavering masses bulge and gape Mysterious, and shape to shape Dies momently through whorl and hollow, And form and line and solid follow Solid and line and form to dream Fantastic down the eternal stream; An obscure world, a shifting world, Bulbous, or pulled to thin, or curled, Or serpentine, or driving arrows, Or serene slidings, or March narrows. There slipping wave and shore are one, And weed and mud. No ray of sun, But glow to glow fades down the deep (As dream to unknown dream in sleep); Shaken translucency illumes The hyaline of drifting glooms; The strange soft-handed ...
— Georgian Poetry 1911-12 • Various
... imaginable, for they fly from them when they come near them; and as they fly they are caught and devoured by them, as if it were done by the harts; but the ibes are tame creatures, and only enemies to the serpentine kind: but about these ibes I say no more at present, since the Greeks themselves are not unacquainted with this sort of bird. As soon, therefore, as Moses was come to the land which was the breeder of ...
— The Antiquities of the Jews • Flavius Josephus
... the historian says, it was almost large enough for real or intire fleets. How would a British sailor relish an advertisement that a mock engagement between two squadrons of men of war would be exhibited on such a day in the Serpentine river? or that the ships of the line taken from the enemy would be carried in procession from Hyde-Park-Corner to Tower-wharf? Certain it is, Lucullus, in one of his triumphs, had one hundred and ten ships of war (naves ...
— Travels Through France and Italy • Tobias Smollett
... Almighty's grenadier-march." On joining battle, he audibly utters, with bared head, some growl of rugged prayer, far from orthodox at times, but much in earnest: that lifting of his hat for prayer, is his last signal on such occasions. He is very cunning as required, withal; not disdaining the serpentine method when no other will do. With Friedrich Wilhelm, who is his second-cousin (Mother's grand-nephew, if the reader can count that), he is from of old on the best footing, and contrives to be ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Volume IV. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Friedrich's Apprenticeship, First Stage—1713-1728 • Thomas Carlyle
... the track was clear, the private car was backed again down the ridge. Following the serpentine winding of the right of way, the general manager was able to run the car far around the mountain, and it stopped opposite the southern face, which rose across the broad canyon. When the party in the car got their ...
— The Daughter of a Magnate • Frank H. Spearman
... multitude of idols in this dwelling, and though they had no separate temple, various feasts were dedicated to them. After the conquest they were for the most part broken and destroyed, and it was only lately that, by accident, the head of the god of the waters, beautifully worked in serpentine marble, was discovered there; still, one statue had been preserved, that of an Indian, said to have been placed there by the Aztecs, as a memorial of their sorrow at the death of Montezuma, to whom, on account of his misfortunes, they gave the name of "el Indio triste." ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon De La Barca
... says that I committed an economy in placing in my original title-page, that the question between him and me, was whether "Dr. Newman teaches that Truth is no virtue." It was a "wisdom of the serpentine type," since I did not add, "for its own sake." Now observe: First, as to the matter of fact, in the course of my Letters, which bore that title-page, I printed the words "for its own sake," five times ...
— Apologia pro Vita Sua • John Henry Newman
... If you want to see London, you must come here on a fine summer day in June, at about four o'clock, and you will gaze on the finest and gayest equipages of England. A very pretty piece of water is in this park, which is called "the Serpentine River." The best skating of London is to be seen here, we are told, in hard winters. The entrance from Piccadilly is by a fine threefold arch. Here is the great Achilles of bronze, in honor of Wellington, made out of the cannon which the duke captured in Spain. St. James's and the Green ...
— Young Americans Abroad - Vacation in Europe: Travels in England, France, Holland, - Belgium, Prussia and Switzerland • Various
... blades in groups of three slightly radiated vertical strokes (No. 2, p. 177[f096b]). A pattern of two elements, again, may be formed in a still more simple way by linear contrast, as in No. 3, where the pyramidal trees are formed by a continuous serpentine stroke of the pen terminating in a spiral stem. The diagonal arrangement of the trees produces a chequer, the intervals of which can be varied by the contrasting ...
— Line and Form (1900) • Walter Crane
... they were fed by their sister battalion, the 2nd, and had begun to unwind their putties. But what a sight! Their putties were not soaked and not caked; say, rather, that there may have been a core of puttie inside, but that the men's legs were imbedded in a serpentine cast of clay. As for their boots, you could only infer them from the huge balls of stratified mud they bore round their feet. Red mud, yellow mud, black mud, brown mud—they lifted their feet toilsomely; they were land plummets that had sucked up specimens of all the heavy, sticky soils ...
— Story of the War in South Africa - 1899-1900 • Alfred T. Mahan
... to Hei-ma-hou led up the dry river bed, with the Great Wall on the left stretching its serpentine length across the hills, and on the right picturesque cliffs two hundred feet in height. At their bases nestle mud-roofed cottages and Chinese inns, but farther up the river the low hills are all of loess—brown, wind-blown dust, packed hard, which can be cut like cheese. Deserted ...
— Across Mongolian Plains - A Naturalist's Account of China's 'Great Northwest' • Roy Chapman Andrews
... held in Hyde and St. James's Parks, in the latter of which there was a grand display of fireworks; while, still further to amuse the John and Jenny Gulls of the cities of London and Westminster, there was a sham naval engagement got up on the Serpentine River, representing a battle between the British and American fleets. Of course the British fleet was victorious, and the Americans struck their colours, amidst the huzzas and shouts of the family of the Gulls, who, having ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 3 • Henry Hunt
... spot where one another is writing, or reading, or sauntering. This view of the castle(397) is what I have just finished, and is the only side that will be at all regular. Directly before it is an open grove, through which you see a field, which is bounded by a serpentine wood of all kind of trees, and flowering shrubs, and flowers! The lawn before the house is situated on the top of a small hill, from whence to the left you see the town and church of Twickenham encircling a turn of the river, that looks exactly like a seaport in miniature. ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole
... fellow with a great bull neck, and hair and beard flowing all into one—a man more like the black-maned lion of North Africa than anything else. But it was not his appearance that fascinated the serpentine one, it was the look he cast down upon those two lucky diggers; a scowl of tremendous hatred—hatred unto death. Instinct told the serpent there must be more in this than extempore envy. He waited and watched, and, when the black-maned ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade
... the subject and began to flatter me. I liked it for a few moments, but she flattered me so very grossly that the pleasure was soon over. She had a serpentine way of coming close at me when she pretended to be vitally interested in the friends and localities I had left, which was altogether snaky and fork-tongued; and when she made an occasional bounce upon Startop (who said very ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens
... arrow, cooking before a cheerful fire, while a male and female cannibal in modern attire, the gentleman being clad in a blue coat and white trousers, and the lady in a deep red pelisse with a parasol of the same, were approaching the meal with hungry eyes, up a serpentine gravel path leading thereunto. A decidedly indelicate young gentleman, in a pair of wings and nothing else, was depicted as superintending the cooking; a representation of the spire of the church in Langham ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... a curious sidelong movement, half-winning and half-serpentine. She was aged fourteen, a very fair and very slight girl, with a thin face and thin lips, and extraordinarily slender hands; in general appearance fragile. She wore a semi-circular comb on the crown of her head, and her abundant ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... of Ophiuridae are to be met with at Trincomalie, crawling busily about, and insinuating their long serpentine arms into the irregularities and perforations in the rocks. To these they attach themselves with such a firm grasp, especially when they perceive that they have attracted attention, that it is next to impossible to procure unmutilated specimens without previously depriving them of life, or at ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent
... minerals produce slags only with soda: stilpnosiderite, plombgomme, serpentine, silicate of manganese (from Piedmont), mica from granite, pimelite, pinite, blue dichroite, sphenc, karpholite, pyrochlore, tungstate of lime, green soda tourmaline, lazulite, ...
— A System of Instruction in the Practical Use of the Blowpipe • Anonymous
... her dress was of the ordinary German Reform-Kleid type, and her figure had the rather jelloid appearance of those who affect this style. Her regulation witch's hat was by now, probably, in the Serpentine, and her round head was therefore disclosed, with two stout sand-coloured plaits pursuing each other ...
— Living Alone • Stella Benson
... level and contains about two acres. An extensive plain lies between the middle and southwest forks, the last of which after watering a country like that of the other two branches, disappears about twelve miles off, at a point bearing south 30 degrees west. It is also more divided and serpentine in its course than the other two, and possesses more timber in its meadows. This timber consists almost exclusively of the narrow-leafed cottonwood, with an inter-mixture of box alder and sweet-willow, the underbrush being thick and like that of the Missouri lower ...
— History of the Expedition under the Command of Captains Lewis and Clark, Vol. I. • Meriwether Lewis and William Clark
... destroyed the edifice originally erected by Constantine and replaced by the church built by Theodosia, which was also burned). The dome is one hundred and eighty feet from the floor. To adorn it, the Temple of Diana at Ephesus was ravaged of eight serpentine columns, and eight more of porphyry were taken from the Temple of the Sun at Baalbek to add to its beauty. It is alleged that its cost approached $64,000,000, including the "graft." Its artistic value is greatly ...
— A Fantasy of Mediterranean Travel • S. G. Bayne
... his Majesty, the Eu-shee, or symbol of peace and prosperity, and expressed his hopes that my Sovereign and he should always live in good correspondence and amity. It is a whitish agate-looking stone, perhaps serpentine, about a foot and a half long, curiously carved, and highly prized by the Chinese; but to me it does not appear in itself to be of any ...
— Travels in China, Containing Descriptions, Observations, and Comparisons, Made and Collected in the Course of a Short Residence at the Imperial Palace of Yuen-Min-Yuen, and on a Subsequent Journey thr • John Barrow
... for while the swallow and the house-martin discover the greatest address in raising and securely fixing crusts or shells of loam as cunabula for their young, the bank-martin terebrates a round and regular hole in the sand or earth, which is serpentine, horizontal, and about two feet deep. At the inner end of this burrow does this bird deposit, in a good degree of safety, her rude nest, consisting of fine grasses and feathers, usually ...
— The Natural History of Selborne • Gilbert White
... occasioned by a disease of the cornea. Neither are they exempt from some other diseases. The most common of which is the tetter, or ring-worm, that seems to affect almost one half of them, and leaves whitish serpentine marks every where behind it. But this is of less consequence than another disease which is very frequent, and appears on every part of the body in large broad ulcers, with thick white edges, discharging a clear thin matter, some of which had a very virulent appearance, particularly those on ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 15 (of 18) • Robert Kerr
... got over a third of the distance between the Bayswater Road and the Serpentine, when he was aware of a small, thin ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... turning of the first sod four wide pools, covering in all one hundred acres of ground, were ready to be filled, and at the end of 1898 the ground was metamorphosed into the largest area of water in the London district, with the exception of the Serpentine. ...
— The Naturalist on the Thames • C. J. Cornish
... came to an end; Yes, the outgazing over the stream, With the sun on each serpentine bend, Or, later, the luring moon-gleam; ...
— Moments of Vision • Thomas Hardy
... London parks, the ancient manor of Hyde. It was an early resort of fashion, for the Puritans in their time complained of it as the resort of "most shameful powdered-hair men and painted women." It covers about three hundred and ninety acres, and has a pretty sheet of water called the Serpentine. The fashionable drive is on the southern side, and here also is the famous road for equestrians known as Rotten Row, which stretches nearly a mile and a half. On a fine afternoon in the season the display on these roads is grand. In Hyde Park ...
— England, Picturesque and Descriptive - A Reminiscence of Foreign Travel • Joel Cook
... often brought to my house was suckling a litter of puppies. She was foolishly taken up and thrown into the Serpentine in the month of April. The suppression of milk was immediate and complete. There was also a determination to the head, and attacks resembling epilepsy. The puppies that were suffered to remain with the mother, were very soon as epileptic as she was, and were destroyed. A ...
— The Dog - A nineteenth-century dog-lovers' manual, - a combination of the essential and the esoteric. • William Youatt
... sale. I don't need practice and I'd like to preserve the beautiful illusion that maybe I could crack your shield if I wanted to. I'll work on Miss Snake-Hips here, the serpentine charmer—but say, I'll bet there's a bone in it. You can block ...
— The Galaxy Primes • Edward Elmer Smith
... three months of this sort of thing. I came to London for pleasure and I have suffered slavery ever since. I hadn't been in town two days when looking over the Serpentine Bridge I beheld a man struggling in the water. I was weak enough to rescue him, and he immediately proved so oppressively grateful that I have never been able to escape from his clutches from that day to this. I ...
— Three Hats - A Farcical Comedy in Three Acts • Alfred Debrun
... a serpentine walk, overarched by laurustinus, and they had proceeded some yards before he ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson
... till the whole row, with a rapid clack-clack-clack, lies flat upon the table. This is called a "running fire"; and this is the structural principle of a good many plays. We feel that the playwright is, so to speak, inventing as he goes along—that the action, like the child's fantastic serpentine of blocks, might at any moment take a turn in any possible direction without falsifying its antecedents or our expectations. No part of it is necessarily involved in any other part. If the play were found too long or ...
— Play-Making - A Manual of Craftsmanship • William Archer
... that follow whose significance is lost in a serpentine rhetoric. They hint at nights of critical terrors. During the writing of them Mallare was engaged in a desperate pursuit of himself. He was escaping. He perceived his thoughts racing from his grasp like Maenads down a tangled slope. The dread of finding himself ...
— Fantazius Mallare - A Mysterious Oath • Ben Hecht
... sauntering in a leisurely way toward her, stopping now and then to admire some beautiful dog sniffing the scent of water-rats in the weeds, or a group of babies tumbling on the sand, or a half-naked undergraduate sculling along the serpentine reaches of the river, or a college crew cleaving the waters with the precision of an arrow, to a long, rhythmic swing of eight slim bodies and a low, brief grunt of command. The rich October light striking silvery gleams from the walls of the ...
— The Street Called Straight • Basil King
... temper made him the most unpopular man in England, except in Devonshire, where everybody doted on him. He was "a man of desperate fortunes," and he did not shrink from violent methods. In studying his life we are amused, we are almost scandalised, at his snake-like quality. He moves with serpentine undulations, and the beautiful hard head is lifted from ambush to strike the unsuspecting enemy at sight. With his protestations, his volubility, his torrent of excuses, his evasive pertinacity, Sir Walter Raleigh is the very opposite of the "strong silent" type of soldier ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse
... Along the serpentine path which was bordered with masses of brilliant chrysanthemums, Beryl walked rapidly, feeling almost stifled by the pressure of contending emotions. Recollecting that these spice censers of Autumn were her mother's favorite ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... intwine[obs3]; twist, coil, roll; wrinkle, curl, crisp, twill; frizzle; crimp, crape, indent, scollop[obs3], scallop, wring, intort[obs3]; contort; wreathe &c. (cross) 219. Adj. convoluted; winding, twisted &c. v.; tortile[obs3], tortive|; wavy; undated, undulatory; circling, snaky, snake-like, serpentine; serpent, anguill[obs3], vermiform; vermicular; mazy, tortuous, sinuous, flexuous, anfractuous[obs3], reclivate[obs3], rivulose[obs3], scolecoid[obs3]; sigmoid, sigmoidal[Geom]; spiriferous[obs3], spiroid[obs3]; involved, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... great and real as the direct. The spirit receives from the body just as much as it gives to the body. Not one name of word or deed—not of the putrid veins of gluttons or rum-drinkers— not peculation or cunning or betrayal or murder—no serpentine poison of those that seduce women—not the foolish yielding of women—not of the attainment of gain by discreditable means—not any nastiness of appetite— not any harshness of officers to men, or judges to prisoners, or fathers to sons, or sons to fathers, ...
— Poems By Walt Whitman • Walt Whitman
... Row with Horace, looking about her for acquaintances. She found some, and would not have been sorry to linger with them. But Horace wanted her to go further afield, and accordingly they soon moved on towards the Serpentine. It was when they were just in sight of the water that they met Captain Hindford, already alluded to as a man who had eventually more knowledge than other people of the events which led to the drawing-up of Mrs. Errington's strange will. He was one of the many men who admired Mrs. ...
— Tongues of Conscience • Robert Smythe Hichens
... go back the long way to the ship, but struck a match, and went lighting up girandoles, cressets, candelabra, into a confusion of lights among great numbers of pale-tinted pillars, rose and azure, with verd-antique, olive, and Portoro marble, and serpentine. The mansion was large, I having to traverse quite a desert of embroidered brocade-hangings, slender columns, and Broussa silks, till I saw a stair-case doorway behind a Smyrna portiere, went up, and wandered some time in a house of gilt-barred ...
— The Purple Cloud • M.P. Shiel
... to the Duke of Wellington. At Cumberland Gate was Tyburn. The "Ring" near Grosvenor Gate was the scene of gallantries of the days of Charles II.; of late it has been devoted to the games of gamins and street urchins. The Serpentine is a rather suggestively and incongruously named serpentine body of water, which in a way serves to give a variety to an otherwise ...
— Dickens' London • Francis Miltoun
... English writer, Dodwell, suggests, the true explanation of the allegorical fiction is that the serpent was the river Cephis'sus, which, after the deluge had overflowed the plains, surrounded Parnassus with its serpentine involutions, and was at length reduced, by the rays of the sun-god, within its due limits. The poet OVID gives the following relation ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... rapid; irrigation is consequently difficult and navigation impossible. The course of the Iskr is remarkable: rising in the Rilska Planina, the river descends into the basin of Samakov, passing thence through a serpentine defile into the plateau of Sofia, where in ancient times it formed a lake; it now forces its way through the Balkans by the picturesque gorge of Iskretz. Somewhat similarly the Deli, or "Wild," Kamchik ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... opportunities of Kensington Gardens—the Round Pond, the winding Serpentine, the mysterious seclusion of the Dutch brick Palace! Genii swarm there. One jostles possibilities. It is a land of romance, bounded on the north by the Abyss of Bayswater, and on the south by the Amphitheatre of the Albert Hall. But for a centre of adventure I choose ...
— Miss Cayley's Adventures • Grant Allen
... midst of the fields, even a hovel may have a certain grace derived from the pure air, the verdure, the open country—a hill, a serpentine road, vineyards, quickset hedges, moss-grown thatch and rural implements; but poverty in Paris gains dignity only by horror. Though recently built, this house seemed ready to fall into ruins. None of its materials ...
— Colonel Chabert • Honore de Balzac
... even beheld the enchantress since that never-to-be-forgotten morning when he had seen her pass at the head of the serpentine procession of pupils, slowly winding across the Market Square. But he knew she was still in Gueldersdorp. He felt her, for one thing. We know that in his case Love's clairvoyant instinct had got its nightcap on. We saw Greta depart on the train bound North and branch ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... sleepless ocean—Argus more dread Than he with hundred lidless watching orbs, And slept, and dreamed, and dreaming saw the sea. But in the stormy nights, when all was dark, And the wild tempest swept with slanting wing Against her refuge, and the heavy spray Shot through the doorway serpentine cold arms To seize the fore-doomed morsel of the sea, She slept not, evermore stung to new life By new sea-terrors. Now it was the gull: His clanging pinions darted through the arch, And flapped about her head; now 'twas a wave ...
— The Poetical Works of George MacDonald in Two Volumes, Volume I • George MacDonald
... is reeling, writhing, and fainting in coils. Motoring down these serpentine hills is like hurling yourself into space, and ...
— The Princess Passes • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson
... a little farther on, he saw old Lord Thrapston tottering along on his stick. Lord Thrapston hated a parson, and scowled at poor Mr. Taylor as he went by. Mr. Taylor shrank from meeting his eye, and hurried along till he reached the Serpentine, where he stood still for a few minutes, drinking in the fresh breeze. But the breeze could not blow his puzzle out of his brain. Was it a crime, or merely an escapade? What had she said to the young man? What had her feelings been or become towards the young man? Moreover, what had she ...
— Comedies of Courtship • Anthony Hope
... serpentine lie invents new forms. At first it usurps divine power. It is supposed to say 541:24 in the first instance, "Ye shall be as gods." Now it repudiates even the human duty ...
— Science and Health With Key to the Scriptures • Mary Baker Eddy
... the waters and the Earth, but the human family. Not only does the mighty ocean obey this wonderful influence in the ebb and flow of its tides, but the Earth, as she rotates upon her axis, obeys this mighty power and manifests in her depths and heights in her serpentine movement about the Sun. ...
— Within the Temple of Isis • Belle M. Wagner
... granitic syenite of Schooley's mountain, distant at least forty miles. Others had no known type nearer than Connecticut, in the opposite direction, while the gneiss and mica slate of the island of New-York, with their various embedded minerals, the serpentine and many of the magnesian minerals of Hoboken, with sandstone and trap of the Pallisadoc range, were distinctly recognisable. In this great excavation, where a region of a mile square was wholly removed, to a depth, in many places, ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various
... was certainly a new one, but it was lined with rhododendrons and costly shrubs, and it wound and wound serpentine fashion through shrubberies and miniature plantations which indicated not only remarkably good taste, but vast expenditure. At intervals the trees had been felled to permit a view of the lake, lying below, like a ...
— At Love's Cost • Charles Garvice
... Street, Russell Square, was Master George's great friend and admirer. They both had a taste for painting theatrical characters; for hardbake and raspberry tarts; for sliding and skating in the Regent's Park and the Serpentine, when the weather permitted; for going to the play, whither they were often conducted, by Mr. Osborne's orders, by Rowson, Master George's appointed body-servant, with whom they sate in great comfort ...
— Boys and girls from Thackeray • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... down Rotten Row as Holroyd said this, with the dull leaden surface of the Serpentine on their right, and away to the left, across the tan and the grey sward, the Cavalry Barracks, with their long narrow rows of gleaming windows. Up the long convex surface of the Row a faint white mist was crawling, and a solitary, spectral-looking horseman was cantering ...
— The Giant's Robe • F. Anstey
... we'll e'en speak out the truth. Can you suppose there yet is such a dupe As still believes that wretch an honest man? The later strokes of his serpentine brain Outvie the arts of Machiavel himself, His Borgian model here is realiz'd And the stale tricks of politicians play'd Beneath a vizard fair—— ——Drawn from the heav'nly form Of blest religion weeping o'er the land For virtue fall'n, ...
— The Group - A Farce • Mercy Warren
... high moors which enclose the bay, those distant sleepy uplands where the keels of the cumulus clouds are grounded, there are saline meadows, lush and warm, where ditches serpentine between barriers of meadowsweet, briers and fat grasses. Nearer to the sea the levels are of moist sand covered with a close matting of thyme, and herbage as close and resilient as moss, levels that ...
— Old Junk • H. M. Tomlinson
... stockaded villages: the smaller one being situated on a small hill on the Endaw Kioung, which comes from near the serpentine mines, and falls into the Mogaung river here; this has about twelve houses: the one below about twenty, the inhabitants are Shans chiefly, and appear numerous and healthy. ...
— Journals of Travels in Assam, Burma, Bhootan, Afghanistan and The - Neighbouring Countries • William Griffith
... four walls. There was no door visible. These tapestries were magnificently figured with golden dragons; and as the serpentine bodies gleamed and shimmered in the increasing radiance, each dragon, I thought, intertwined its glittering coils more closely with those of another. The carpet was of such richness that I stood knee-deep in its pile. ...
— The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu • Sax Rohmer
... her friend's motives, crept in a serpentine fashion to the hillock, where she soon found Whitewing— to the intense but unexpressed joy of that ...
— The Prairie Chief • R.M. Ballantyne
... wardrobe, a chapel, and a passage into a great hall. Between every tower, in the midst of the said body of building, there was a winding stair, whereof the steps were part of porphyry, which is a dark-red marble spotted with white, part of Numidian stone, and part of serpentine marble; each of those steps being two-and-twenty feet in length and three fingers thick, and the just number of twelve betwixt every landing-place. On every landing were two fair antique arcades where the light came ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VII (of X)—Continental Europe I • Various
... off my hat, he threw a piece of cloth round my shoulders and we went on. About a quarter of a mile farther towards the hills, through a delightful shade of breadfruit trees, we stopped at the side of a small serpentine river: here I was in view of a house on the other side at about fifty yards distance. From this house the young king was brought out on a man's shoulders, clothed in a piece of fine white cloth, and I was desired by Tinah to salute ...
— A Voyage to the South Sea • William Bligh
... of speckled trout and shining pickerel, to say nothing about the many play hours spent upon its margin; but now the stream is lost beneath the vast reservoir, and has washed away all traces of flowers, strawberries and verdant grass that used to mark its serpentine wanderings, by assuming ...
— Withered Leaves from Memory's Garland • Abigail Stanley Hanna
... have encountered storms in the great aerial sea, and lost compass and reckoning, and have been lured by false lights to perish miserably at the hands of their cruel enemies. It may be true that gulls are seen on the Serpentine, that woodcocks are flushed in Lincoln's Inn Fields, but the citizen who goes to his office in the morning and returns after the lamps have been lighted, does not see them, and they are nothing in his life. Those who concern themselves to chronicle such incidents ...
— Birds in Town and Village • W. H. Hudson
... by plunging toward her, rearing her head in as serpentine a manner as she could command; and after a struggle the two mighty saurians went down together in a whirlpool of frothing waves. They came up quite out of breath, and sat laughing and panting on the willow root, which in one place ...
— Hildegarde's Holiday - a story for girls • Laura E. Richards
... sunk with all on board, leaving only a few good swimmers survivors of the wreck! Similar "accidents" occur in rivers, scarce two hundred yards in width; and you yourselves are acquainted with the annual drownings, even in the narrow and icy Serpentine! ...
— The Boy Tar • Mayne Reid
... his pocket for a pencil, produced the rump thereof, spread the letter upon his knee, and began writing on the back of it. It was like an internal surgical operation, for his tongue protruded as he wrote, marking his progress by a series of serpentine writhings ...
— St. Cuthbert's • Robert E. Knowles
... subject for a painter is here presented!—the frozen snowy landscape; the bare skeleton trees; the broad serpentine course of the frost-bound river, with here and there patches of open water showing darkly against the snow-covered ice; the scattered groups of soldiers treading carefully, and with the possibility before them that at the next step the treacherous floor might precipitate ...
— Harper's Young People, January 27, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... any city. Grace Church, on Ninth and West streets, is a large Gothic temple, seating nearly eight hundred persons—warmed, frescoed and heavily carpeted inside, and walled externally with brownstone mixed with the delicate pea-green serpentine of Chadd's Ford. The architect was a native Wilmingtonian—Thomas Dixon—now of Baltimore. The windows, including a very brilliant oriel, are finely stained: the font is a delicate piece of carving, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Volume 11, No. 26, May, 1873 • Various
... port is Mompava, about sixteen miles to the northward of Pontiana, and the second port belonging to the sultan. The river is shallow, narrow, extremely serpentine, and constantly running down with great rapidity. The country around is a paradise in comparison with Pontiana. It is upon an elevated site, and, wherever the eye reaches, it is clear of jungle, and of fine rich mold, susceptible of the highest culture. There ...
— The Expedition to Borneo of H.M.S. Dido - For the Suppression of Piracy • Henry Keppel
... "Serpentine; and that white vein running through is soapstone. Ah! now we shall get to know a little ...
— Menhardoc • George Manville Fenn
... forms. The "dragon of Babylon", for instance, which was portrayed on walls of temples, had a serpent's head, a body covered with scales, the fore legs of a lion, hind legs of an eagle, and a long wriggling serpentine tail. Ea had several monster forms. The following description of one of these ...
— Myths of Babylonia and Assyria • Donald A. Mackenzie
... straight direction for nigh on to fifty rods, and at an angle so steep that the water, although the bottom was rough, fairly flattened itself as it ran; and the channel where the current was the deepest gave forth a serpentine sound as it whizzed downward. The smoke, which hung heavily over the stretch from shore to shore, was too dense for the eye to penetrate a yard. Amid the smoke sparks floated, and brands, crackling as they fell, plunged through it into the steaming water. Guidance of the frail craft was, ...
— How Deacon Tubman and Parson Whitney Kept New Year's - And Other Stories • W. H. H. Murray
... issue of my spiteful execrations. Then there's Achilles, a rare engineer! If Troy be not taken till these two undermine it, the walls will stand till they fall of themselves. O thou great thunder-darter of Olympus, forget that thou art Jove, the king of gods, and, Mercury, lose all the serpentine craft of thy caduceus, if ye take not that little little less-than-little wit from them that they have! which short-arm'd ignorance itself knows is so abundant scarce, it will not in circumvention deliver a fly from a spider without drawing their massy ...
— The History of Troilus and Cressida • William Shakespeare [Craig edition]
... deep in the splendid forest, there was fire,—at first nothing but a thin, serpentine trail of ashes through moss and bedded needles; then, scarcely six inches in width, a smouldering, sinuous path from which fine threads of smoke rose straight upward, vanishing in the ...
— A Young Man in a Hurry - and Other Short Stories • Robert W. Chambers
... The mud, wherever I examined it, even close to the concretions, did not contain any carbonate of lime. The concretions are generally nodular, sometimes rough externally, sometimes stalactiformed; they are of a compact structure, but often penetrated (as well as the mud) by hair-like serpentine cavities, and occasionally with irregular fissures in their centres, lined with minute crystals of carbonate of lime; they are of white, brown, or pale pinkish tints, often marked by black dendritic manganese or iron; they are either darker or lighter ...
— South American Geology - also: - Title: Geological Observations On South America • Charles Darwin
... their part; we can't understand a word they say, but their humorous faces and comic gestures are irresistibly funny. Suddenly Golden-Jacket puts down her cigar, springs to her feet, and gets across the shaking boards with marvellous serpentine movements in a skirt tighter even than a modern one, literally a tube wound around her legs. Then, waving her long thin hands and arms so that ripples seem to run up and down them, she sings in a thin shrill ...
— Round the Wonderful World • G. E. Mitton
... shifted independently. They rose upwards in a continuous stream from earth to sky, vanishing utterly as soon as they reached the dark of the sky. They were interlaced one with another, making a great column, and I saw their limbs and huge bodies melting in and out of each other, forming this serpentine line that bent and swayed and twisted spirally with the contortions of the wind-tossed trees. They were nude, fluid shapes, passing up the bushes, within the leaves almost—rising up in a living column into ...
— The Willows • Algernon Blackwood
... seen in this amphibious little village to the buildings and landscapes on Chinese platters and tea-pots; but here I found the similarity complete; for I was told that these gardens were modeled upon Van Bramm's description of those of Yuen min Yuen, in China. Here were serpentine walks, with trellised borders; winding canals, with fanciful Chinese bridges; flower-beds resembling huge baskets, with the flower of "love lies bleeding" falling over to the ground. But mostly had the fancy of Mynheer Broekker been displayed about a stagnant little lake, on which a corpulent ...
— The Crayon Papers • Washington Irving
... white gleam of falling water. One of my companions touched my arm as we swept round the base of a hill and opened up the lofty, snow-covered peak of a mountain, which seemed, as we wound on our serpentine way, ...
— Dracula • Bram Stoker
... extensive than that of hypersthene. It often has a more or less distinct fibrous structure, and when this is pronounced the sheen has a certain resemblance to that of cat's-eye. Masses sufficiently large for cutting are found in the norite of the Kupferberg in the Fichtelgebirge, and in the serpentine of Kraubat near Leoben in Styria. In this connexion mention may be made of an altered form of enstatite or bronzite known as bastite or schiller-spar. Here, in addition to schillerization, the original enstatite has been altered by hydration and the product has ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various
... length. 'How different from those Cyclopean blocks and walls along the Exmoor cliffs are these rich purple and olive ironstone layers, with their sharp serrated lines and polished slabs, set up on edge, snapped, bent double, twisted into serpentine curves, every sheet of cliff scored with sharp parallel lines ...
— Prose Idylls • Charles Kingsley
... you haven't yet begun to throw yourself into the position of affairs in prehistoric Tuscany. You can't shuffle off your own century. For between the broad plain and the range of hills where the Viale dei Colli now winds serpentine on its beautiful way round the glens and ravines, the Arno runs, a broad torrent flood in times of freshet: the Arno, unbridged as yet (in the days I speak of) by the Ponte Vecchio, an impassable frontier between the ...
— Science in Arcady • Grant Allen |
