"Speck" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... which he was placed, Roswell, aided by the glass, had no difficulty in making her out, and in recognising her rig, form, and character. Stimson also examined her, and knew her to be the schooner. On that vast and desolate sea, she resembled a speck, but the art of man had enabled those she held to guide her safely through the tempest, and bring her up to her goal, in a time that really seemed miraculous for ...
— The Sea Lions - The Lost Sealers • James Fenimore Cooper
... quiet, cheerless station, white and solitary in the steppe, with its walls baking in the sun, without a speck of shade, and, it seems, without a human being. The train goes on after leaving one here; the sound of it is scarcely audible and dies away at last. Outside the station it is a desert, and there are no horses ...
— The Duel and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... Edestone, seeming to forget for the moment where he was, as a small speck which represented the approaching airship disclosed itself. "This time in the upper right-hand corner of the picture. See! I am on board, and I am driving her at one hundred and ten miles." And he followed with his pointer the swift course ...
— L. P. M. - The End of the Great War • J. Stewart Barney
... soon to follow it! [He gazes over the Channel.] There's not a speck of an enemy upon that shiny water yet; but the Brest fleet is zaid to have put to sea, to act in concert with the army crossing from Boulogne; and if so the French will soon be here; when God save us all! I've took to drinking neat, for, say I, one may as well have innerds burnt out as ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy
... speck," "a shadow of a creature," the larva of a Chalcidian, the Leucopsis, one of the parasites of the Mason-bee, knows that in the cell of the mason there is food for one only. Scarcely has it entered the tiny dwelling but we see this "nameless shape" ...
— Fabre, Poet of Science • Dr. G.V. (C.V.) Legros
... retained as a relic of an older home. It is quite possible that this home may have been in the neighboring wild and mountainous land of SHUSHAN (Susiana on the maps), whose first known population was also Turanian. These guesses take us into a past, where not a speck of positive fact can be discerned. Yet even that must have been only a station in this race's migration from a far more northern centre. Their written language, even after they had lived for centuries in an almost tropical country, where palms grew in vast groves, ...
— Chaldea - From the Earliest Times to the Rise of Assyria • Znade A. Ragozin
... with our faith. Its ideal perfection would be that it should be unbroken, undashed by any speck of doubt. But the reality is far different. It is no full-orbed completeness, but, at the best, a growing segment of reflected light, with many a rough place in its jagged outline, prophetic of increase; with many a deep pit of blackness on its silver surface; ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Mark • Alexander Maclaren
... disciples on the Mount of Transfiguration. It came not to lift Him on its soft folds to the heavens, but in order that, first, He might be plainly seen till the moment that He ceased to be seen, and might not dwindle into a speck by reason of distance; and secondly, that it might teach the truth, that, as His body was received into the cloud, so He entered into the glory which He 'had with the Father before the world was.' Such was ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... struck and lifted up the stern, so as to enable the seamen to disengage the tackle. The boat being thus dexterously cleared from the ship, was seen after a while from the poop, battling with the billows,—now raised, in its progress to the brig, like a speck on their summit, and then disappearing for several seconds, as if engulfed "in the horrid vale" ...
— The Loss of the Kent, East Indiaman, in the Bay of Biscay - Narrated in a Letter to a Friend • Duncan McGregor
... thrice in a week, no bigger than half your nail, till it has all dissolved in your mouth, and then spit out. This has fortified my teeth, that they are as strong as the pen of Junius.(1061) I learned it of Mrs. Grosvenor, who had not a speck in her teeth to her death. For your other complaints, I revert to my old sermon, temperance. If you will live in a hermitage, methinks it is no great addition to live like a hermit. Look in Sadeler's prints, they had ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... jelly with some power of slightly varying its actions in accordance with slightly varying circumstances and desires—given such a jelly-speck with a power of assimilating other matter, and thus of reproducing itself, given also that it should be possessed of a memory and a reproductive system, and we can show how the whole animal world can have descended it may be from an amoeba without interference from without, ...
— Selections from Previous Works - and Remarks on Romanes' Mental Evolution in Animals • Samuel Butler
... and the destruction they had caused, made his way to the scene of the ruins. He could find no trace of the Godfreys and was returning by the border of the lake to his log cabin, when he saw the sloop far in the distance like a speck on the frozen surface of the lake. He hastened out to where she lay. To his surprise and joy he found out, when nearing the little craft, signs of life on board. Sparks were issuing from the cabin. Very soon he was on board. He was met at the companion-way by the Captain who ...
— Young Lion of the Woods - A Story of Early Colonial Days • Thomas Barlow Smith
... even.... Let's go on watching him. (I don't see why her writing shouldn't be better. Indeed I don't.) See! There he goes down along the Embankment to Westminster just like a real man, for all that he's smaller than a grain of dust. What is running round inside that speck of a head of his? Look at him going past the Policemen, specks too—selected large ones from the country. I think he's going to dinner with the Speaker—some old thing like that. Is his face harder or commoner or stronger?—I can't quite see.... And now he's up and speaking in the House. ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells
... course it was the truth! The attraction of man and woman for each other is fundamental. The whole world of matter, from the speck of dust upwards, is ranged on its side. And yet men would keep it hidden away out of sight, behind a tissue of words; and with home-made sanctions and prohibitions make of it a domestic utensil. Why, it's as absurd as melting down the solar system to make ...
— The Home and the World • Rabindranath Tagore
... quitted the near view, and let his eye run along the edge of the horizon, until it rested upon a small speck, which he knew to be the lofty spire of Saint Paul's Cathedral. If, as he supposed, the Fair Geraldine was in attendance upon Anne Boleyn, at the palace at Bridewell, she must be under the shadow of ...
— Windsor Castle • William Harrison Ainsworth
... it, but that is again looking through another window. We are now considering relativity. If we cut off the very end of the point of the finest needle, we get so minute a particle of steel that it is hardly visible to the naked eye, and yet we know that that small speck contains not only millions but millions of millions of what are called atoms, all in intense motion and never touching each other. Try and conceive how small each of these atoms must be, and then try and grasp the fact, only lately proved by the discovery of Radio-activity, that each of ...
— Science and the Infinite - or Through a Window in the Blank Wall • Sydney T. Klein
... eye than a dog, or a fox, or than any of the wild creatures; but not so sharp an ear or nose. But in the birds he finds his match. How quickly the old turkey discovers the hawk, a mere speck against the sky, and how quickly the hawk discovers you if you happen to be secreted in the bushes, or behind the fence near which he alights! One advantage the bird surely has; and that is, owing to the form, structure, ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... Systems'. The shining belt on the central portion is the 'Mississippi River'. The rough ridge to the right is 'the Allegheny System' of mountains." Then I indicated the location of our larger cities. As I pointed to New York, I saw a mere speck moving. I was convinced that it was one of our large steamships, and as I so explained the astronomer looked at me ...
— Life in a Thousand Worlds • William Shuler Harris
... it was just, but granting justice; granting that it was the method of procedure in warfare, what comfort could that give to those who loved the boy? Peggy was greatly downcast in spirits when, as Harriet's figure became a mere speck on the farther shore, she and her father resumed their journey ...
— Peggy Owen and Liberty • Lucy Foster Madison
... sugar beets and sugar potatoes. There were also orchards of sugar plums and sugar apples and vineyards of sugar grapes. All the trees were sugar, and even the grass was sugar, while sugar grasshoppers hopped about in it. Indeed, Chubbins decided that not a speck of anything beneath the dome of Sugar-Loaf Mountain was anything but pure sugar—unless the inside of the frosted man proved to be ...
— Twinkle and Chubbins - Their Astonishing Adventures in Nature-Fairyland • L. Frank (Lyman Frank) Baum
... which the crew executed immediately. Then the vessel resumed its course, still escorted by the little cutter, which sailed side by side with it, menacing it with the mouths of its six cannon. The boat followed in the wake of the ship, a speck ...
— The Three Musketeers • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... out over the lake now, and awful high, and going fast before the wind, and the doctor was only a speck. And as I stared at that speck away up in the sky I thought this was a mean world to live in. Fur there was the only real friend I ever had, and no way fur me to help him. He had learnt me to read, and bought me good clothes, and made me know ...
— Danny's Own Story • Don Marquis
... exclaimed Holden. "I reckon all that man can endure as not to be compared with the crown of glory that awaits him who shall gain entrance into the Kingdom. What is this speck we call life? Mark," he continued, taking up a pebble and dropping it into the water, "it is like the bubble that rises to burst, or the sound of my voice that dies as soon away. Thereon waste I not a thought, except to prepare me for the coming ...
— The Lost Hunter - A Tale of Early Times • John Turvill Adams
... and he had a fine taste in painting, prints, architecture, and gardening. With such a fund of knowledge, his conversation must have been equally instructing and entertaining; but he was also a good man, a man of virtue and humanity. There is no character without some speck, some imperfection; and I think the greatest defect in his was an affectation in delicacy, or rather effeminacy, and a visible fastidiousness, or contempt and disdain of his inferiours in science. He also had, in some degree, that ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes - Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II • Samuel Johnson
... scene were sombre—the brown of the earth, the faded yellow of the dead stubble, the grey of the myriad of undulating backs. Only on the far side of the herd, erect, motionless—a single note of black, a speck, a dot—the shepherd stood, leaning upon an empty water-trough, solitary, ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris
... the speck presented by the reefed top-sail of the corvette had sunk beneath the horizon, in the southern board, and that ship was seen no longer. Several islands had been passed, looking tranquil and smiling amid the fury of the tempest; but it was impossible to haul up for any one among them. ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... speck was seen rapidly descending from the heavens; it grew to be as big as a crown-piece, then as a partridge, then as a tea-kettle, and flop! down fell a magnificent heron to the ground, flooring poor Max in ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray
... leaned over the railing, a small quiet speck in the moonlight. Marion kept turning her head in her direction. "Our poor little Flossy would not understand much about this experience, I suppose," she said at last; "she is such a child, and yet, I don't know—sometimes I have fancied that she thinks ...
— Four Girls at Chautauqua • Pansy
... of your behavior that morning, aren't you?" she continued. "Not a bit ashamed; not one speck regretful!" ...
— Bred of the Desert - A Horse and a Romance • Marcus Horton
... Suddenly a speck of light shone out far ahead in the darkness. It flickered for a second and then disappeared. In a moment or two it appeared again, and then disappeared in the same way. I drew my lady's ...
— Tales From Scottish Ballads • Elizabeth W. Grierson
... moment, watching with fascinated eyes the speck of scarlet that still trembled in the sunshine. It fluttered from sight at last, and with ...
— The Keeper of the Door • Ethel M. Dell
... looking for a speck of dust on the mantelpiece, not for its own intrinsic value, but for the sake of Mary's future. She had apparently no observation of value to offer upon the ...
— The Grey Lady • Henry Seton Merriman
... he paced his deck, And peered through darkness. Ah, that night. Of all dark nights! And then a speck— A light! A light! At last a light! It grew, a starlit flag unfurled! It grew to be Time's burst of dawn. He gained a world; he gave that world Its grandest lesson: "On! ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes
... "Have you found a speck, Arthur?" asked Langdon. "If I hadn't seen you risk your life fifteen or twenty thousand times ...
— The Star of Gettysburg - A Story of Southern High Tide • Joseph A. Altsheler
... with a scornful laugh. "I spoke, sir, of the mission of that small speck on the earth's broad surface, of which you think so much, and ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope
... see me 'way down here," said Helen, shaking her head. "They wouldn't notice such a speck on the lake." ...
— Ruth Fielding and the Gypsies - The Missing Pearl Necklace • Alice B. Emerson
... know, Whom Providence does not assign A parent excellent as mine! That faith beyond, above mistrust, That gratitude, so wholly just, Each several, crowding claim forgot, Whose source was light, without a blot; No moment of unkindness shrouding, No speck of anger overclouding: An awful and a sweet controul, A rainbow arching o'er the soul; A soothing, tender thrill, which clung Around the heart, while, all unstrung, The thought was still, ...
— The Lay of Marie • Matilda Betham
... I watched her with my wild-beast eyes. If I had seen one paltering with duty—if I had witnessed one flickering shadow of untruth in word or action—if, more than all things, my woman's instinct had ever been conscious of the faintest speck of impurity in thought, or word, or look, my old hate would have flamed out with the flame of hell! my contempt would have turned to loathing disgust, instead of my being full of pity, and the stirrings ...
— Ruth • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... recently. But close by, behind the horizontal branch of the great oak, was a tangled patch of undergrowth and brambles, broken and pressed down in places, as though it had been entered by a human being. As Colwyn was looking at this place, his eye was attracted by a yellow speck in the background of green. It was a tiny fragment of khaki, caught on one of ...
— The Hand in the Dark • Arthur J. Rees
... Abe. We are a good deal above the present bed of the stream, and should probably have to sink a considerable distance before we got down to paying ground; that young fellow said they have hardly found a speck of gold. It would be a risky thing to do; still, we can think it over, ...
— Captain Bayley's Heir: - A Tale of the Gold Fields of California • G. A. Henty
... was limited, as on Earth. A great star winked into view in the east. It was as bright as Venus seen from Earth. It had a just-perceptible disk. Close to it, infinitely small, there was a speck of light which seemed somehow like a star. Cochrane squinted at it. He thought of the great gas-giant world he'd seen out a port on the way here. It had an attendant moon-world which itself had icecaps and seas and continents. He ...
— Operation: Outer Space • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... universal chaos, no more than a speck of helpless dust amid the whirling wheels of Nature's inexplicable machinery, and clung the tighter to the simple fundamental facts of which his heart was sure—behind and above all this was God, who held all these things in His hand. And over ...
— A Maid of the Silver Sea • John Oxenham
... (though even this is of a mystical and indirect kind), there is ample evidence that Fielding probably thought that it was better to be Tom Jones than to be an utter coward and sneak. There is simply not one rag or thread or speck of evidence to show that Fielding thought that it was better to be Tom Jones than to be a good man. All that he is concerned with is the description of a definite and very real type of young man; the young man whose passions and whose selfish necessities sometimes seemed to be stronger ...
— All Things Considered • G. K. Chesterton
... object to that term, foliated— granite, being formed of the same materials as granite, namely, feldspar, quartz, and mica. In the specimen in Figure 622, the white layers consist almost exclusively of granular feldspar, with here and there a speck of mica and grain of quartz. The dark layers are composed of grey quartz and black mica, with occasionally a grain of feldspar intermixed. The rock splits most easily in the plane of these darker layers, and the surface thus exposed is almost entirely covered ...
— The Student's Elements of Geology • Sir Charles Lyell
... tremor takes the last long plunge as Curtius may have done when the gulf was open in the Forum and he rode down the Aventine and spurred out into thin air to fulfil the omens of the augurs and save the perilled life of Rome,—he was just feeling and saying this, when a dark speck appeared at the very edge of the green. It was a log, perhaps fifteen or twenty feet in length, over the Fall!—a mere log, nothing in another place, but everything in the place it for that moment occupied. For one instant he saw it hang trembling on the verge, then for another its dark outlines ...
— Shoulder-Straps - A Novel of New York and the Army, 1862 • Henry Morford
... with coming daylight as he rode plashing across the stream and up the opposite bank. She watched hint, rubbing the blinding mist from her eyes, until horse and man became a mere dark speck, finally fading away completely into the dull plain ...
— Keith of the Border • Randall Parrish
... were motionless, their majestic billows glowing in the sun. She saw a Mexican eagle swoop over the cloud, sailing on slow wing high above it, and growing so distant in her vision that he became a mere speck moving in the limitless ...
— 'Drag' Harlan • Charles Alden Seltzer
... to the shore, and looked out to sea. They could still see the ship, but it was already becoming a speck ...
— Brave and Bold • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... speck appeared and as it grew within the scope of my glass, it was easy to recognize the shape of a Taube. That was ...
— My Home In The Field of Honor • Frances Wilson Huard
... unable to detect a diminution of his store ...."—after reading this, to see the men of science still maintaining their theory of "a hot globe cooling," one may be excused for feeling surprised at such inconsistency. Verily is that great physicist right in viewing the sun itself as "a speck in infinite extension—a mere drop in the Universal sea;" and saying that, "to Nature nothing can be added; from Nature nothing can be taken away; the sum of her energy is constant, and the utmost man ...
— Five Years Of Theosophy • Various
... of the able and daring generals who had served him in so many fields. But Stuart, the gay and brilliant, the medieval knight who had such a strong place in the commander-in-chief's affections, was there. Nor was his plumage one bit less splendid. The yellow feather stood in his hat. There was no speck or stain on the broad yellow sash and his undimmed ...
— The Shades of the Wilderness • Joseph A. Altsheler
... at Venning, and the boy noticed that the pupils of the eyes had a white speck, which gave to ...
— In Search of the Okapi - A Story of Adventure in Central Africa • Ernest Glanville
... city should be saved because of its ten just men, than for society, if society were to depend on ten who were not snobs. All this arose from the keenness of his vision into that which was really mean. But that keenness became so aggravated by the intenseness of his search that the slightest speck of dust became to his eyes as a foul stain. Public[o]la, as we saw, damned one poor man to a wretched immortality, and another was called pitilessly over the coals, because he had mixed a grain of flattery with a bushel ...
— Thackeray • Anthony Trollope
... this would give him about a mile or more start of me. I hurried on, but failed to overtake him. At the end of an hour I rode to the top of a hill which commanded a view of the course he should have taken. Not a moving speck was to be seen. I knew then that he had gone astray. But in ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke
... them until they had shrunk to a mere moving speck against the sky, then he crossed the sand creek and climbed the hill. When he reached the gate the front of the house was dark, but a light was shining from the side windows. The pigs were squealing in the hog corral, and Nils could see a tall ...
— The Troll Garden and Selected Stories • Willa Cather
... superior gentleman who introduced them to him had a slightly dimmed and tarnished appearance as he sat beside his friends. There was an immaculate finish and newness about all their appointments—not a speck upon their linen, nor a grain of dust upon their broadcloth and polished boots. If the theory be true that character is shown in dress, these men, outwardly so spotless, must be worthy of the confidence with which they had inspired their new acquaintance. They ...
— A Knight Of The Nineteenth Century • E. P. Roe
... truly warned so I might make preparation. I determined on the morrow to seize the ship and retain it for my own use. All owners of boats had long since fled the land. The next morning when I awoke the ship was a distant speck upon the growing ocean. It seemed the gods of some few others ...
— Chit-Chat; Nirvana; The Searchlight • Mathew Joseph Holt
... Captain Boyton is not discernable yet. Over the gray waters one sees through a good glass, the white fringe of surf breaking on the sandy beach, which is lined by a black mass of people behind whom is burning a large bonfire. A speck is at length made out to the right of the boat, 'three points off,' as the white haired old salt on board remarks. The sky gets lighter, the sea deep blue. We can now plainly see the dauntless Captain paddling actively away toward us, riding buoyantly over the swelling waves, and making good ...
— The Story of Paul Boyton - Voyages on All the Great Rivers of the World • Paul Boyton
... smells—and the toys, too!" Ann said. "Sort of queer and yet sweet, like mother's glove case. I think she said it was sandal-wood. That set must have been a darling when it was new, but there's only just a speck of blue left and the gilt is every bit gone. These must be Aunt Jane's toys that she had ...
— The Wonderful Bed • Gertrude Knevels
... chasing the Wild Goose will do the Incognitans all the good in the galaxy, it will take their minds off controversies over interhemispherical trade and put them on to the quest of the Unobtainable; they will get to know something of the Universe outside their own little speck. Mr. Yardo has seen a good deal of the Universe in the course of advising on how to recondition space-packed meat and he found it ...
— The Lost Kafoozalum • Pauline Ashwell
... many miles away, a speck on the dusty carpet of the desert, something moved! Hours must elapse before that tiny figure, provided it were approaching, could reach the solitary palm. Delightedly, Rita contemplated the infinity of time. Even if the figure moved ever so ...
— Dope • Sax Rohmer
... this labyrinth that I don't know when I would have found my way out if I had not heard a little animal—I don't know what it was —scurrying away in front of me. I followed it, and eventually saw a little speck of light. That proved to be the hole through which ...
— The Vizier of the Two-Horned Alexander • Frank R. Stockton
... then. We would walk for hours together, walk in complete silence and understanding. My strength seemed to be returning more day by day. We went far afield in search of material for her thesis. She would track down the most minute speck of hearsay, to ...
— Each Man Kills • Victoria Glad
... there are some doves." No wild beast haunt the environs; they cannot get at the water. The people keep a few sheep, goats, and fowls. There are also a dozen or so of camels. It is remarkable that the soil of this speck of vegetable existence is entirely sandy, and all the water comes out of the sand. But in places, indeed, on the coast of Barbary, the finest and most vigorous vegetation often bursts forth out of a purely sandy soil. By the time all the ghafalah had taken their ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... its ears erect, and he followed its gaze to see on the plain's trail, far over near where it melted into the foothills, a moving speck crawling toward him. ...
— The Range Boss • Charles Alden Seltzer
... deceived by the applause that the public gave to an acquisition so beautiful and so unique. This diamond was called the "Regent." It is of the size of a greengage plum, nearly round, of a thickness which corresponds with its volume, perfectly white, free from all spot, speck, or blemish, of admirable water, and weighs more than 500 grains. I much applauded myself for having induced the Regent to make so ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... small patch of cultivated ground, hemmed in on every side by dense and lofty woods, which spread their waving shadows for miles and miles away to the north and south, to the east and west, with only here and there, at wide intervals, a similar clearing, or a natural glade to speck ...
— The Red Moccasins - A Story • Morrison Heady
... stop to speak to him. And then, when our pilgrim looked up, he saw a gentleman standing beside him to whom he was ashamed to speak. For the gentleman had no burden on his back, and he did not go over the plain laboriously. There was not a spot or a speck, a rent or a wrinkle on all his fine raiment. He could not have been better appointed if he had just stepped out of the gate at the head of the way; they can wear no cleaner garments than his in the Celestial City itself. 'How now, good fellow? Whither away ...
— Bunyan Characters - First Series • Alexander Whyte
... how the blind develop an unusually keen sense of hearing; for there, in the blackness, which (at first) was entirely unrelieved by any speck of light, I became aware of the fact, by dint of tense listening, that Smith was retiring by means of some gateway at the upper end of the little garden, and I became aware of the fact that a lane or court, with which this gateway communicated, gave ...
— The Hand Of Fu-Manchu - Being a New Phase in the Activities of Fu-Manchu, the Devil Doctor • Sax Rohmer
... onward into the black shadow of the hills, within which the town and pier lay invisible, save where a twinkling light gave token of some lonely fisher's wife, watching the weary night through for the boat which would return with dawn. Here and there upon the sea, a black speck marked a herring-boat, drifting with its line of nets; and right off the mouth of the glen, Amyas saw, with a beating heart, a large two-masted vessel lying-to—that must be the "Portugal"! Eagerly he looked up the glen, and listened; ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... halted, and the scouts who were watching them report that they remained absolutely stationary for the next half hour. The Martian who had been overthrown crawled tediously out of his hood, a small brown figure, oddly suggestive from that distance of a speck of blight, and apparently engaged in the repair of his support. About nine he had finished, for his cowl was then seen ...
— The War of the Worlds • H. G. Wells
... craftiness, nor handling the Word of God deceitfully; but by manifestation of the truth commending ourselves to every man's conscience in the sight of God' (2 Cor 4:2). All these sentences are chiefly to be applied to doctrine, and so are, as it were, an offer to any, if they can, to find a speck, or a spot, or a wrinkle, or any such thing in this river ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... I'd have died of lonesomeness long before this. You know how I hate this life, this homestead business. You know I'm only waiting until you've finished and we can be married and go away where there is something worth while. Now be reasonable. You work too hard, so that every little speck looks like a mountain. And it's making you narrow, too, or will if you don't watch out. I have to kill time somehow till we can be married and so you ought not to find fault with my doing it. Run along over and talk to Imo in her cabin now, Lee; that's a good boy. I didn't get back home ...
— The Iron Furrow • George C. Shedd
... they stopped coming past and then I got up and went along the bank and looked for him. I could see, way across the river, a little white speck, shining through the trees, which ...
— W. A. G.'s Tale • Margaret Turnbull
... creep about her heart tightened and grew cold, as if it were changing to an icy band, which would freeze her pulses in its tightening clasp. She looked out through the sunshine, watching the light boat till it became a mere speck in the distance, and finally disappeared among the windings of the long curve of land which stretched out into ...
— A Noble Woman • Ann S. Stephens
... sublime, and gilds the vault of day. Silent with upturn'd eyes unbreathing crowds Pursue the floating wonder to the clouds; And, flush'd with transport or benumb'd with fear, Watch, as it rises, the diminish'd sphere. 35 —Now less and less!—and now a speck is seen!— And now the fleeting rack obtrudes between!— With bended knees, raised arms, and suppliant brow To every shrine with mingled cries they vow.— "Save Him, ye Saints! who o'er the good preside; 40 "Bear ...
— The Botanic Garden. Part II. - Containing The Loves of the Plants. A Poem. - With Philosophical Notes. • Erasmus Darwin
... sunset, it was now twilight on the mountain top and dusky evening over all the country round about. But Pegasus flew so high that he overtook the departed day, and was bathed in the upper radiance of the sun. Ascending higher and higher, he looked like a bright speck, and at last could no longer be seen in the hollow waste of the sky. And Bellerophon was afraid that he should never behold him more. But while he was lamenting his own folly the bright speck reappeared, and drew nearer and nearer until it ...
— Journeys Through Bookland V2 • Charles H. Sylvester
... blemish, disfigurement, deformity; adactylism[obs3]; flaw, defect &c. (imperfection) 651 ; injury &c. (deterioration) 659; spots on the sun|!; eyesore. stain, blot; spot, spottiness; speck, speckle, blur. tarnish, smudge; dirt &c. 653. [blemish on a person's skin: list] freckle, mole, macula[Anat], patch, blotch, birthmark; blobber lip[obs3], blubber lip; blain[obs3], maculation, ; scar, wem|; pustule; whelk; excrescence, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... spoke the words which follow, And in terms like these expressed her: "What's this speck upon the ocean, What this blue upon the billows? If it be a flock of wild geese, Or of other beauteous birdies, Let them on their rushing pinions Soar aloft amid the ...
— Kalevala, Volume I (of 2) - The Land of the Heroes • Anonymous
... overspread Anthony Sieberer's face, but it disappeared quickly when he happened to turn his eyes to the neighboring mountains. He looked keenly and searchingly toward the mountain-path leading to Mittewald. He saw there a small black speck which was advancing with great rapidity. Was it a bird? No, the speck had already become larger; he saw it was a human being—a woman speeding along the mountain-path. Now she was so close to them that he could distinguish ...
— Andreas Hofer • Lousia Muhlbach
... a name, Learning but a yearning emptiness, and whither leadeth Ambition? Man is a mote dancing in a sun-ray—the world, a speck hanging in space. All things vanish and pass utterly away save only True-love, and that abideth everlastingly; 'tis sweeter than Life, and stronger than Death, and reacheth up beyond the stars; and thus it is I pray you tell ...
— The Broad Highway • Jeffery Farnol
... schooner stood on. No eye on board was turned towards us. We must have presented, indeed, but a small speck on the wide ocean. Tim now waved violently, but all our shouting and waving was of no avail. Uncle Paul then kept the boat away, to obtain another chance of being seen; though, of course, there was no hope ...
— The Wanderers - Adventures in the Wilds of Trinidad and Orinoco • W.H.G. Kingston
... food scarcest, Cuddy hatched a new plot. Right across the feeding-ground, almost the only good one now in the Stormy Moon, he set a row of snares. A cottontail rabbit, an old friend, cut several of these with his sharp teeth, but some remained, and Redruff, watching a far-off speck that might turn out a hawk, trod right in one of them, and in an instant was jerked into the air to dangle ...
— Wild Animals I Have Known • Ernest Thompson Seton
... responsible for this confused memory, but it seemed to be associated, too, with the story of Crombie the gardener—and with Antony Ferrara. He felt that somewhere in the darkness surrounding him there was a speck of light, if he could but turn in the right direction to see it. So, whilst Robert Cairn walked restlessly about the big room, the doctor sat with his chin resting in the palm of his hand, seeking to concentrate his mind upon that vague memory, ...
— Brood of the Witch-Queen • Sax Rohmer
... chairs; the wallpaper was like the inside of the bath, but alas, without the water; of the two pictures, the one over the mantelpiece was a steel-engraving of the Good Shepherd and the one over the sideboard was an oleograph of the Sacred Heart. Mark knew every fly speck on their glasses, every discoloration of their margins. While he was sighing over the sterility of the room, he heard the door of his father's study open, and his father and Mr. Astill do down the ...
— The Altar Steps • Compton MacKenzie
... forget, never, I know! Twenty-five years are over and gone to-night, and the close, unrivalled companionship of them, and I am alone from now on—but you'll not forget!) and then they turned to each other and I was no more than a speck on the evening water. "Put your back into it, man; get along, can't you?" I growled to Caliban. We shot ahead and left them to each other, alone under the heavy, yellow moon ...
— Margarita's Soul - The Romantic Recollections of a Man of Fifty • Ingraham Lovell
... brushing an invisible speck of dust from the sleeve of his checked coat, strolled rather casually into the ...
— The Air Trust • George Allan England
... without beholding a star, nor could star be beheld from which the Gods' hall, with all its vastness, would not have been utterly invisible. Elenko leaned over the battlements, and watched the racing meteors. Prometheus stood by her, and pointed out in the immeasurable distance the little speck of shining dust from ...
— The Twilight of the Gods, and Other Tales • Richard Garnett
... the old woman and the young man stood looking off over the rolling meadows of blue grass. Cutting the lush green pasture lands was the white limestone turnpike. Far off in the distance a blue speck appeared on the white road. In a twinkling it grew into a car and then went whizzing by, leaving a cloud of white dust in its wake. Jeff smiled and, glancing down at his old cousin, caught an answering smile on ...
— The Comings of Cousin Ann • Emma Speed Sampson
... the sign of putrefaction, until hardly anything remains; and even then the brown hue is often absent. As a rule, the look of live flesh is preserved until the final pellet, formed of the skin, the sole residue, makes its appearance. This pellet is white, with not a speck of tainted matter, proving that life persists until the body is ...
— The Life of the Fly - With Which are Interspersed Some Chapters of Autobiography • J. Henri Fabre
... pen. "I do like to kip things handy," he said; "nobody do knaw what'll 'appen." Then, turning to Ikey Trethewy, he said, "You do knaw of a young woman who do live up to Pennington—a young woman jist come there, called Penryn, I speck, Ikey, my deear?" ...
— The Birthright • Joseph Hocking
... we skirted this miserable coast, upon which not a green speck relieved the eye; at length we sighted the minaret which marked the position of Larnaca, the port or roadstead to which the mail was bound; and in the town we distinguished three or four green trees. We cast anchor about half a mile ...
— Cyprus, as I Saw it in 1879 • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... was a poor chance that I had—and I was well aware of it. There was small prospect of fishing boats or the like coming out that evening; small likelihood of any coasting steamer sighting a bit of a speck like me. All the same, I was going to keep my chin up as long as possible, and the first thing to do was to take care of my strength. I made shift to divest myself of a heavy pea-jacket that I was wearing and of the unnecessary clothing beneath it; I got rid, too, ...
— Dead Men's Money • J. S. Fletcher
... the wind and the snow 50 All loathliest weeds began to grow, Whose coarse leaves were splashed with many a speck, Like the water-snake's belly ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... have not more than fifteen or twenty years the start of you to that eternity, and I am prepared to go. There is an eternity behind and an eternity before, and this little speck in the centre is but a minute. The difference between your time and mine is trifling, and I therefore tell you—be prepared. I am prepared—you have a heavy responsibility. It behooves you to prepare, and more than it ...
— The Battle of Principles - A Study of the Heroism and Eloquence of the Anti-Slavery Conflict • Newell Dwight Hillis
... seeming too, Arthur,' his friend went on. 'Really, the fighter need never be out of that "feste Burg." I was thinking just now, not only that work looks easy, but that it looks small. Individual effort, I mean; the utmost that any one man can do. It is a mere speck. The living waters that shall be "a river to swim in," are very shallow yet; and where the fishers are to stand and cast their nets, it is a waste of barrenness. You have never been on the shores of the Dead Sea, Arthur; you do not know how a little thread of green on ...
— The Gold of Chickaree • Susan Warner
... speck flamed and was again only a moving speck. It ejected something which hurtled toward the ship ...
— Talents, Incorporated • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... do, upon elements that have gone through the cycle of vegetable life. The secret of vegetable life, then, is in the green substance of the leaf where science is powerless to unlock it. Conjure with the elements as it may, it cannot produce the least speck of living matter. It can by synthesis produce many of the organic compounds, but only from matter that has already been through the organic cycle. It has lately produced rubber, but from other ...
— The Breath of Life • John Burroughs
... had a queer fad. He cultivated one of his finger-nails, that of the little finger of his left hand, with the greatest care. Just like a Chinese mandarin. At last the nail was fully a centimetre long, and made holes in all his gloves. Now, whenever a speck of dirt lodged in this nail, he was in the habit of removing it with his teeth. It wasn't exactly a nice thing to do; but, you see, he had a passion for that nail. I often said to him, 'My dear fellow, do keep your ...
— 'Jena' or 'Sedan'? • Franz Beyerlein
... in a grasp as strong as a man's; and three minutes later Mrs Olliver—whose seat on a horse was as ungainly as her hand on its mouth was perfect—had become a mere speck ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver
... smallpox, it could not have been more vigorously scrubbed, aired, and refreshed. Early as it was, every carpet was routed up, curtains pulled down, cushions banged, and glory holes turned out till not a speck of dust, a last year's fly, or stray straw could be found. Then they all sat down and rested in such an immaculate mansion that one hardly dared to move for fear of destroying the shining ...
— Rose in Bloom - A Sequel to "Eight Cousins" • Louisa May Alcott
... their parents took; but when they were shown into a large outer room, and were told it was the cow-stable, they had no words with which to express their astonishment. They would have said it was the show-room of the place. There was not a speck on the whitewashed walls; the pine ceiling was so clean it fairly glistened; there were crisp, white muslin curtains at the windows. The raised earthen floor was covered with pure white sand, arranged in fancy ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, Nov 1877-Nov 1878 - Scribner's Illustrated • Various
... National Assembly for enfranchising them. On his bleached worn face are ploughed the furrowings of one hundred and twenty years. He has heard dim patois-talk, of immortal Grand-Monarch victories; of a burnt Palatinate, as he toiled and moiled to make a little speck of this Earth greener; of Cevennes Dragoonings; of Marlborough going to the war. Four generations have bloomed out, and loved and hated, and rustled off: he was forty-six when Louis Fourteenth died. The Assembly, as one man, spontaneously rose, and did reverence to the Eldest of the World; ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... mate came floating through the blue sky that silhouetted the trees in the garden. She made a pretence of alighting upon the balcony railing, sheered off, coquetted among the treetops, came back again, retreated so far that she was merely a white speck against the blue vault, and then, true to her sex, having proved her liberty only to tire of it, with a flight so swift that the eye could scarcely follow her, she came back again and rested upon the farther end of the balcony, where she immediately began to preen herself ...
— The Turquoise Cup, and, The Desert • Arthur Cosslett Smith
... her face with a pink ribbon in a bow on top of her head. She loosened this ribbon, and shook her hair quite loose. She peeped out of the golden radiance of it at herself, then she shook it back. She was charming either way. She was undeveloped, but as yet not a speck of the mildew of earth had touched her. She was flawless, irreproachable, except for the knowledge of her beauty, through heredity, in her heart, which was older ...
— By the Light of the Soul - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... artificial light. And always that dragging of the general down to the particular, that circumscribing of everything by the personal, every rose a token, the moon something to kiss by, flowers prostituted into bouquets. She thought how happy she was this morning, feeling a little tiny speck of the miracle of life instead of trying to catch it like a wasp under the wine glass of some ...
— Balloons • Elizabeth Bibesco
... hurried symptoms of a man having fallen overboard. I made the people in the boat tug at their oars towards the spot; but though we pulled over and over the ship's wake twenty times, the water was everywhere unruffled and unmarked by any speck. At length I rowed on board, turned the hands up to muster, to ascertain who was gone, and found all present but our poor little Triton! It appeared that the lad, who was one of the sides-men, fatigued with the day's amusement, had stretched himself in the fore-part of ...
— The Lieutenant and Commander - Being Autobigraphical Sketches of His Own Career, from - Fragments of Voyages and Travels • Basil Hall
... the black speck became less ambiguous. George beheld a white stern heaving up and down. He ran forward as if to accelerate her return, crying ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... France and Spain, with a small portion of the northern part of the continent of Africa. Of individual edifices not a trace could be discovered, and the proudest cities of mankind had utterly faded away from the face of the earth. From the rock of Gibraltar, now dwindled into a dim speck, the dark Mediterranean sea, dotted with shining islands as the heaven is dotted with stars, spread itself out to the eastward as far as my vision extended, until its entire mass of waters seemed at length to tumble headlong over the abyss of the horizon, and I found myself listening on tiptoe ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 1 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... 9, 1804] 9th of October Tuesday 1804 a windey night Some rain, and the wind Continued So high & cold We could not Speck in Council with the Indians, we gave them Some Tobacco and informed them we would Speek tomorrow, all the grand Chiefs visited us to day also Mr Taboe, a trader from St. Louis- Many Canoes of a Single ...
— The Journals of Lewis and Clark • Meriwether Lewis et al
... into groups of twos and threes, and moving away, but Lucy Haines and Jerry stood motionless, their gaze following the vanishing speck which was the south-bound train. Then slowly Lucy's head turned. She had never been friendly with Jerry Morton. She had shared the disapproval of the community, intensified by her inherent inability to understand the temperament ...
— Peggy Raymond's Vacation - or Friendly Terrace Transplanted • Harriet L. (Harriet Lummis) Smith
... overmastering desire for possessions. She hides her wealth in inaccessible places and sets her jealous, invisible forces to guard and determinedly hold all possible avenues of approach to them. But this world was given to man to conquer and own and make much of; and the glitter of a speck of useful metal in a stray boulder in the lonely canon; or the chance outcropping of rock which to the practised eye denotes the nearness of the deposit of oil—these, or any of the thousand and one signs, ...
— Insights and Heresies Pertaining to the Evolution of the Soul • Anna Bishop Scofield
... en washin' cloze, he sorter lick he chops, en 'low dat some er dese odd-come-shorts he gwine ter call en pay he 'specks. De minnit he say dat, Brer Rabbit, he know sump'n' 'uz up, en he 'low ter hisse'f dat he 'speck he better whirl in en have some fun w'iles it gwine on. Bimeby Brer Fox up'n say ter Brer Rabbit dat he bleedzd ter be movin' 'long todes home, en wid dat ...
— Nights With Uncle Remus - Myths and Legends of the Old Plantation • Joel Chandler Harris
... courtyard clean, bringing in a barrel of water twice a day, splitting and dragging in wood for the kitchen and the house, keeping out strangers, and watching at night. And it must be said he did his duty zealously. In his courtyard there was never a shaving lying about, never a speck of dust; if sometimes, in the muddy season, the wretched nag, put under his charge for fetching water, got stuck in the road, he would simply give it a shove with his shoulder, and set not only the cart but the horse itself moving. If he set to ...
— The Torrents of Spring • Ivan Turgenev
... not a continent, nor even an island, visible beneath them. The watery expanse did not present a single speck of land, not a solid surface upon ...
— The Mysterious Island • Jules Verne
... planted it in a pot, and watered and tended the little plant carefully. And now the most extraordinary thing happened, for from this moment everything in the old man's house was changed. When he awoke in the morning he always found his room tidied and put into such beautiful order that not a speck of dust was to be found anywhere. When he came home at midday, he found a table laid out with the most dainty food, and he had only to sit down and enjoy himself to his heart's content. At first he was so surprised he didn't know what to think, but after a time he grew a little ...
— The Green Fairy Book • Various
... chilliness; the sea, bathed in silver, glistens in the moonlight; we sit under awnings and glide through the water. The loneliness of this great ocean I find very impressive—so different from the Atlantic pathway—we are so terribly alone, a speck in the universe; the sky seems to enclose us in a huge inverted bowl, and we are only groping about, as it were, to find a way out; it is equidistant all around us; nothing but clouds and water. But as we sail westward ...
— Round the World • Andrew Carnegie
... murmured, involuntarily; "steady, steady!" these last words were to his horse, who seemed to be moving under him, not from fear, but from impatience. What had been the red and gold paper of the cracker was now the scarlet and gold lace of his own cavalry uniform. He knocked a speck from his sleeve, and scanned the distant ridge, from which a thin line of smoke floated solemnly away, with keen, impatient eyes. Were they to stand inactive all ...
— The Brownies and Other Tales • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... trowsers and a gay cravat. "Our beloved Union must and shall be preserved. The fabric that our fathers reared for us must not be allowed to crumble. We will prop it with our mangled bodies," and he brushed a speck of dust from the fine ...
— Fort Lafayette or, Love and Secession • Benjamin Wood
... the dark heavens a tiny speck of red light glowed, lingered a moment and vanished. Then another, then a green ...
— Tam O' The Scoots • Edgar Wallace
... clouds came nearer, until a shell, whining as it whizzed past us, burst about a hundred yards behind our trench. A second shell followed, exploding almost at the same place. At the same time, we noticed a faint spinning noise above us. Soaring high above our position, looking like a speck in the firmament, flew a Russian aeroplane, watching the effect of the shells and presumably directing the fire of the Russian artillery. This explained its sudden accuracy. One of our aeroplanes rose, giving chase to the enemy, and simultaneously our batteries got into action. The Russians ...
— Four Weeks in the Trenches - The War Story of a Violinist • Fritz Kreisler
... that glints in heaven may be a lowin' sun, Though like a speck of light it seem amid the welkin dun; The humblest sodger on the field may win a warrior's crest: The birdie sure to sing is the gorbal of ...
— Chantry House • Charlotte M. Yonge
... will occasionally lift up his little pipe in a glee. He does not dance, but the honest fellow would give the world to do it; and he leaves his clogs in the passage, though it is a wonder he wears them, for in the muddiest weather he never has a speck on his foot. He was at St. John's College, Cambridge, and was rather gay for a term or two, he says. He is, in a word, full of the milk-and-water of human kindness, and his family lives ...
— Men's Wives • William Makepeace Thackeray
... speed; and, though it stopped repeatedly to question Kaffirs or country folk, and to communicate with the cyclists and other patrols who were scouring the country on the flanks, reached Chieveley, five miles from Colenso, by about three o'clock; and from here the Ladysmith balloon, a brown speck floating above and beyond the distant hills, ...
— London to Ladysmith via Pretoria • Winston Spencer Churchill
... wondered. He also was somewhere among the sea and the sunshine, white and playing like a bird, shining like a vivid, restless speck of sunlight. She struck the water, smiling, feeling along with him. They two were the owners of this morning, as a pair of wild, large ...
— The Trespasser • D.H. Lawrence
... was a speck of white cloudiness in the late afternoon sky. It grew swiftly in size, and a winking blue-white light appeared in its center. That light grew brighter—and the noise managed somehow to increase—and presently the ruddy sunlight was diluted by light ...
— The Pirates of Ersatz • Murray Leinster
... to have grown noble in another atmosphere, but with a ready bent to underhand and brooding vengeance. Insensible, it seemed, to gratitude. Proud with the unreasoning pride of an Oriental; cruel, and violently passionate. One soft and tender speck there was in this dark and sullen heart; it was an exceedingly great and forbearing love for ...
— Emily Bront • A. Mary F. (Agnes Mary Frances) Robinson
... half an hour, we chase in every direction, then fire again toward the shore. It is just four; a gray light is working up through the mist, and we catch the faintest glimpse of the Daylight, one of our fleet. A few minutes later, and we see a speck near the shore, which the spyglass shows to be the steamer we chased and fired after in the night. The surf beats about her; in her frantic efforts to escape, she in the darkness has been run ashore by our close ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 6, No. 1, July, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... in colour at all times, but feebler than common in the rich sunshine, and more like the coat of a sandy tortoise-shell cat; with long nails, nicely pared and sharpened; with a natural antipathy to any speck of dirt, which made him pause sometimes and watch the falling motes of dust, and rub them off his smooth white hand or glossy linen: Mr Carker the Manager, sly of manner, sharp of tooth, soft of ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... sputtering. Then, for the first time, she observed that Janus Grubb was nowhere in sight. Harriet got up and tip-toed softly to the edge of the cliff, where she lay down flat, peering over. At first she saw nothing of interest; then all at once she caught sight of a moving speck at the foot ...
— The Meadow-Brook Girls in the Hills - The Missing Pilot of the White Mountains • Janet Aldridge
... pervading gloom. My next-door neighbor perhaps has parted with her son. Now the ship in which he is, with a thousand brave comrades, is ploughing through the stormy midnight ocean. Presently (under the flag we know of) the thin red line in which her boy forms a speck, is winding its way through the vast Canadian snows. Another neighbor's boy is not gone, but is expecting orders to sail; and some one else, besides the circle at home maybe, is in prayer and terror, thinking of the summons which ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... fault, as the way is too. Some prepossession, such as starts amiss, by but a hair's-breadth at the shoulder-blade, the arm o' the feeler, dip he ne'er so brave; and so leads waveringly, lets fall wide o' the mark his finger meant to find, and fix truth at the bottom, that deceptive speck." ...
— Introduction to Robert Browning • Hiram Corson
... trust you with a real gun, how many men of your own company do you speck you can manage to ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 2 • Charles Farrar Browne
... forerunner of the calamity under which his heart now grieved so bitterly. Aphiz Adegah's life had been a bold one, he knew no fear. The air of his native hills was not freer than his own spirit and as he looked off once more at the tiny white speck in the distance that marked the spot where Komel was, his resolution was instantly made, and he swore to ...
— The Circassian Slave; or, The Sultan's Favorite - A Story of Constantinople and the Caucasus • Lieutenant Maturin Murray
... long bar, marble slabs, marble wainscoting, polished brass, polished silver, shining mirrors, on which there was not the smallest speck of dust, very many shining glasses, empty glasses, glasses with straws sticking in them, and glasses partially filled with bits of ice. Bar-keepers in spotless white linen prepared the famous American drinks, innumerable in variety, with a dexterity bordering on art and a stolidity out ...
— Atlantis • Gerhart Hauptmann
... courser he will pluck the locks, And burn them as a sacrifice to Him Who gives him power o'er Nature: next he limns With silver wand upon the smooth firm beach A mimic ship—look out, where ocean's verge Meets the blue sky, a whitening speck is seen, That nears and nears—her canvass spreads to heav'n; Fair blows the wind, and roaring through the waves, On comes the Demon ship, in which he sails To farthest Ind—but this adventure needs A sacrifice more potent—human marrow Scoop'd from the spine, and ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 492 - Vol. 17, No. 492. Saturday, June 4, 1831 • Various
... Straining his eyes, beneath an arch of hand, Or thought he saw, the speck that bare the king Down the long water opening on the deep, Somewhere far off, pass on, and on, and go From less and less and ...
— Some Summer Days in Iowa • Frederick John Lazell
... watched the little steamer, the only link that held one still bound to the world of men, weigh anchor and steam slowly down the green inlet, departing and leaving one behind it, as one watched it growing smaller, dwindling ever, till it was a mere speck, and then saw it vanish, leaving the green riband of water unbroken save for the passing bergs? How one would realise solitude when the boat had absolutely disappeared, and how that solitude would thrill through and through ...
— Five Nights • Victoria Cross
... to be the glacier," said Seppi, "and I'm glad goats are so sure-footed. We'd better start along, for it's getting later every minute, and I'm bound to reach that farm-house before dark." He pointed to a speck ...
— The Swiss Twins • Lucy Fitch Perkins |
