"Straightness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the growth of children, and blunts the morals of youth, and makes murderers of men," went on the old lady, disregarding John's interruption, and sitting with expressive straightness. A silence fell upon the group that John and Katrina felt to be painful without understanding why. Patton and Sydney were burning with sympathy for Bob. It was Patton ...
— A Tar-Heel Baron • Mabell Shippie Clarke Pelton
... we say, it's struggling up, breaking out, asserting itself as it can. We can be on the side, you see, of his straightness. We can help him. But he has made out," said Miss Gostrey, ...
— The Ambassadors • Henry James
... doing badly. He was at least keeping them straight. And in the circumstances straightness was to be preferred to distance. Soon after leaving Little Hadley he had become ambitious and had used his brassey with disastrous results, slicing his fifty-third into the rough on the right of the road. It had taken him ten with the niblick to get back on to the ...
— The Clicking of Cuthbert • P. G. Wodehouse
... instinctively. And when the door of the ward opened he did, in fact, feel a faint lifting of the flat indifference which had followed on that one difficult rending surrender. He went to meet her. If she had looked at him with her usual straightness, she might have remembered the boy of whom she had been fond—a small, queer boy, who did not like having his face washed, and who came to her truculent and swaggering, with ...
— The Dark House • I. A. R. Wylie
... it had been thoroughly soaked—as if it had faded and shrivelled with a long steeping. The fields and copses, of course, are more forgiving. The railway line follows as well the charming Canal du Midi, which is as pretty as a river, barring the straightness, and here and there occupies the foreground, beneath a screen of dense, tall trees, while the Garonne takes a larger and more irregular course a little way beyond it. People who are fond of canals—and, ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James
... front of us in a perfectly straight line, with neat stone borders on either side, and one got so tired of seeing that line in front of one's nose that one welcomed the smallest change—even a slight ascent or a curve—in its endless, monotonous straightness. We came by and by to a little ascent—quite steep enough for camels. We could have easily avoided it by leaving the road and making a detour at the foot of the hill close to the ...
— Across Coveted Lands - or a Journey from Flushing (Holland) to Calcutta Overland • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... feet from base to tip, with a beautiful banner proudly waving from its ball crowned summit. These pillars, both large and small, were bark-coated below the roof. Each one had been carefully selected for its symmetrical straightness, as a representative tree from the different forests of the world. Altogether, they formed a most interesting collection, to which might well be devoted, many hours of admiring inspection, by every ...
— Solaris Farm - A Story of the Twentieth Century • Milan C. Edson
... naturally occurred that the canals might be of artificial origin, and might indicate the existence of a gigantic system of irrigation serving to maintain life upon the globe of Mars. The geometrical perfection of the lines, their straightness, their absolute parallelism when doubled, their remarkable tendency to radiate from definite centers, lent strength to the hypothesis of an artificial origin. But their enormous size, length, and number tended to stagger belief in the ability of the inhabitants ...
— Other Worlds - Their Nature, Possibilities and Habitability in the Light of the Latest Discoveries • Garrett P. Serviss
... Henry VII, 'sewyd the Kynge to be callyd Marchante Taylours'—evidently earning the disfavor of their neighbors, for a 'grete grudge rose among dyuers other craftys in the cyte against them.' Very soon, I fancy, these Marchante Taylours began to pride themselves on the straightness of their legs, and let subordinate craftsmen stretch their sartorius muscles. But why, as Carlyle puts it, the idea had 'gone abroad, and fixed itself down in a wide-spreading rooted error, that Tailors are a distinct species in ...
— The Perfect Gentleman • Ralph Bergengren
... looking down at the unconscious man. Gerald rose slowly to his feet and stood by her side. The face of Mr. John P. Dunster, even in unconsciousness, had something in it of strength and purpose. The shape of his head, the squareness of his jaws, the straightness of his thick lips, all seemed to speak of a hard and inflexible disposition. His hair was coal black, coarse, and without the slightest sprinkling of grey. He had the neck and throat of a fighter. But for that ...
— The Vanished Messenger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... guess was inaccurate. She was no mandarin's daughter, this one. She was young and exquisitely slim, with wisdom and sadness written upon her colorless face, and he was informed by a single glance at her exploring bright eyes and the straightness of her fine black brows, that she was ...
— Peter the Brazen - A Mystery Story of Modern China • George F. Worts
... to a narrowing from side to side there will be noticed an abnormal straightness of the quarters, with a turning in, more or less sudden, of the heels. This effect is given in these cases by the smith maintaining the shoe of a length and width that should normally fit a foot of that particular animal's size and substance. This is probably done with the idea of ...
— Diseases of the Horse's Foot • Harry Caulton Reeks
... rode through the town, they were struck with the narrowness and straightness of the streets, and at the generally European look of everything; and Mr. Thompson told them that nearly half the population of Buenos Ayres are European. The number of people upon horseback also surprised our young travellers; but horses cost only thirty shillings ...
— Out on the Pampas - The Young Settlers • G. A. Henty
... that he had been working with a road-construction company about three miles out on the road to Guests. I found that out from a perfect stranger." She paused again and the line of her mouth took on a grimmer straightness. "One of the men, who brought him in—a great rough boor he was—had the audacity to suggest that Joseph was around there seeing what he could pick up. I silenced him quickly enough. But can you imagine what brought him to such a place at ...
— Stubble • George Looms
... what should be where, if she only had it to put there? Have you seen the cheap alpacas, in two shades, sure to fade in different ways and out of kindred with each other, painfully looped in creasing folds, very much sat upon, but which would not by any means resign themselves to simple smoothed straightness, while silks were hitched ...
— The Other Girls • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... the sea upon our coast: therefore tidal rise and fall, "instead of having any connection" with the influence of the moon, are "completely controlled" by the direction and force of the wind! There is "a definite relation" between the straightness or want of straightness in a railroad and the speed of the train: ergo, the speed of the train, "instead of having any connection" with the locomotive and the force of steam, is "completely controlled" by the line of the road! It is by no means difficult to philosophize after this fashion; but ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 63, January, 1863 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... have wonderful color. Your eyes—there never was anything so clear. You were always straight—that was one of the things I admired about you. But now, you seem to be straight without the slightest effort—the natural straightness of a sapling." ...
— The Fashionable Adventures of Joshua Craig • David Graham Phillips
... whenever she thought about it, especially as there was always an uneasy sensation of guilt on her own part. She knew it was not a straight transaction, and poor Gwen, with all her faults, loved straightness. For lack of other friendships at school she was forced into companionship with Netta, but she never whole-heartedly liked her. Lately, especially, Netta had taken a rather high-handed tone, and was apt to order her chum about in a manner that Gwen's independent spirit greatly resented. The friction ...
— The Youngest Girl in the Fifth - A School Story • Angela Brazil
... man, and he had a simple code of ethics. Above all things he prized and admired and demanded from his friends the quality of straightness. It was his one demand. He had never actually had a criminal friend, but he was quite capable of intimacy with even a criminal, provided only that there was something spacious about his brand of crime and that it did not involve anything mean or underhand. It was the fact that Mr ...
— Uneasy Money • P.G. Wodehouse
... is the loving record of a life that, from first to last, never challenged the world's attention—that was connected with no great movement or event, political, theological or social; but a life, all the same, that was lived with a truth, an earnestness and a straightness that won the affection and respect of all who came within its influence, and will, or we are much mistaken, glow warmly in the hearts and memories of just all whose eyes now light ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Volume 11, No. 26, May, 1873 • Various
... width of view and multiplicity of sympathies may not be a source of weakness. Contrast, for example, the character of Mark Fieldes with that of Marmaduke Lemarchant, and it will be clear that the strength and straightness of the latter is closely associated with the absence of that versatility of intellect and affection which make the former a more interesting but far less lovable and estimable personality. To see all sides and issues of a question, is a speculative, but not always a practical advantage; ...
— The Faith of the Millions (2nd series) • George Tyrrell
... window, and looked across the wide stretch of meadow-land and woodland on which the chateau, set on the very crown of the ridge, looked down. The road, running with the irritating straightness of so many of the roads of France, was visible for a full ...
— Arsene Lupin • Edgar Jepson
... did be alway in affection of the Exercises that were taught in the Upbringing of all the Peoples of the Mighty Pyramid; and by this explaining, you shall understand that I was like to be strong; but indeed, I owed the straightness and shaping of my body to the Mother that bore me. And afterward, in all my life, had I taken pride of my body to be of health and to have strength; and surely this is a matter very fit for pride; and to be told ...
— The Night Land • William Hope Hodgson
... Wedgwood says, the French plonger but the French plonger is plumbicare, while in Italian piombare is cadere a piombo, to fall straight like the plummet. To plunge, therefore, has nothing to do with the splashing sound of heavy bodies falling into the water, but with the concept of straightness, ...
— Chips from a German Workshop - Volume IV - Essays chiefly on the Science of Language • Max Muller
... piety has a natural tendency to become greasy of aspect, and whether, among the many miracles vouchsafed to the amiable and really great Wesley, he received for his disciples of all time to come the gift of a miraculous straightness and lankiness of hair, I know not; but I do know that every Methodist parson I have had the honour to know has been of one pattern, and that Mr. Goodge is no ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... often talked together on these knotty points which tangled up what should be the straightness of many a life's career, and as we mutually knew each other's opinions we did not discuss them at ...
— The Life Everlasting: A Reality of Romance • Marie Corelli
... slowly. "I shall think of you every day." She spoke almost with indifference, as if she had been asked to dust a room, but she turned aside quickly and pulled the little mat under the hot water jug quite out of its former straightness; then she hastened away down the long white entry, weeping ...
— The Queen's Twin and Other Stories • Sarah Orne Jewett
... matted roots of the turf, and lastly to its being embedded in the mould at various depths beneath the surface. When the same field was re-examined after the interval of a few years, such objects were found at a greater depth than before. The straightness and regularity of the lines formed by the embedded objects, and their parallelism with the surface of the land, are the most striking features of the case; for this parallelism shows how equably the worms must have worked; the result being, partly the effect ...
— A Book of Natural History - Young Folks' Library Volume XIV. • Various
... so put about at that as the other apparently expected to find him. He well knew the size of Cicely's love for him, and he'd heard her praise his straightness a thousand times. 'Twas true enough she set great store on her father; but love's love, and Sam was quite smart enough to know that love for a parent goes down the wind afore love for a lover. He looked forward, therefore, and weren't shook of his ...
— The Torch and Other Tales • Eden Phillpotts
... Ferrier's reasons for a course of action so wholly unlike any he had ever yet taken in the case of Lucy Marsham's son, Oliver's thoughts found themselves engaged in a sore and perpetual wrangle. Ferrier, he supposed, suspected him of a lack of "straightness"; and did not care to maintain an intimate relation, which had been already, and might be again, used against him. Marsham, on his side, recalled with discomfort various small incidents in the House of Commons which might have seemed—to an enemy—to ...
— The Testing of Diana Mallory • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... philosophy Deserts, and has a byway of his own: So much the restless eagerness to shine And love of singularity prevail. Yet this, offensive as it is, provokes Heav'n's anger less, than when the book of God Is forc'd to yield to man's authority, Or from its straightness warp'd: no reck'ning made What blood the sowing of it in the world Has cost; what favour for himself he wins, Who meekly clings to it. The aim of all Is how to shine: e'en they, whose office is To preach the Gospel, let the ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri
... are exquisite I can think of no praise pure enough for the sculptors of the same period, Donatello and Luca della Robbia, Matteo Civitale and Mina da Fiesole, who, as I refreshed my memory of them, seemed to me to leave absolutely nothing to be desired in the way of straightness of inspiration and grace of invention. The Bargello is full of early Tuscan sculpture, most of the pieces of which have come from suppressed religious houses; and even if the visitor be an ardent liberal he is uncomfortably conscious of the rather brutal process by which it has been ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... with a pale, oblong little face, that looked younger under its softening "bang" of fair curls across the forehead. She was a buff-and-gray-colored creature, with a narrow square chin and narrow square shoulders, and a flatness and straightness about her everywhere that gave her rather the effect of a wedge, to which the big black straw hat she wore tilted a little on one side somehow conduced. Miss Kimpsey might have figured anywhere as a representative of the New England feminine surplus—there ...
— A Daughter of To-Day • Sara Jeannette Duncan (aka Mrs. Everard Cotes)
... foundations of government. Incessant discussion of the theoretical bases of the social union is naturally considered worse than idle. It is felt by many wise men that the chief business of the political thinker is to interest himself in generalisations of such a sort as leads with tolerable straightness to practical improvements of a far-reaching and durable kind. Even among those, however, who thus feel it not to be worth while to be for ever handling the abstract principles which are, after all, only ...
— On Compromise • John Morley
... 9 And again, it showeth unto the children of men the straightness of the path, and the narrowness of the gate, by which they should enter, he having set ...
— The Book Of Mormon - An Account Written By The Hand Of Mormon Upon Plates Taken - From The Plates Of Nephi • Anonymous
... the landscape seemed unfamiliar to me, though it was, as to the lie of the land, an ordinary English low-country, swelling into rising ground here and there. The road was narrow, and I was convinced that it was a piece of Roman road from its straightness. Copses were scattered over the country, and there were signs of two or three villages and hamlets in sight besides the one near me, between which and me there was some orchard-land, where the early apples were beginning to redden on the trees. Also, just on the other side of the road ...
— A Dream of John Ball, A King's Lesson • William Morris
... and tall and straight. Oh, the relief of the tallness and straightness and whiteness! She had thought of something dwarfed and clumsy—dark, misshapen, slouching beast-like on two shapeless feet. Why were people ...
— The Incomplete Amorist • E. Nesbit
... engineer and miner who seems to have a strange sense of direction practically unknown to many other animals. How he manages to form tunnels and burrows in lines of such unusual straightness is unknown; he always works in darkness, unless it is that he can see in the dark. His little hills are not deliberate structures; they are only shaft ends through which this miner throws out the earth that he has scooped from subterranean depths, and in most cases smoothed out so that ...
— The Human Side of Animals • Royal Dixon
... alternate hope and doubt with Bles Alwyn. Strength and ambition and inarticulate love were fighting within him. He felt, in the dark thousands of his kind about him, a mighty calling to deeds. He was becoming conscious of the narrowness and straightness of his black world, and red anger flashed in him ever and again as he felt his bonds. His mental horizon was broadening as he prepared for the college of next year; he was faintly grasping the wider, fuller world, and its thoughts ...
— The Quest of the Silver Fleece - A Novel • W. E. B. Du Bois
... inhabited side of the house. Staggering after Magdalen, with the basket of keys in one hand and the candle in the other, old Mazey sorrowfully compared her figure with the straightness of the poplar, and her disposition with the crookedness of Sin, all the way across "Freeze-your-Bones," and all the way upstairs to her own door. Arrived at that destination, he peremptorily refused to give her the candle until he had first seen her safely ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins
... followed the little blue butterfly, who danced along as straight as it was possible for him to go, for he, like Bevis, did not like too much straightness. Now the oak knew the butterfly was there, and that was why he dropped his leaf; and so did the nut-tree bough, and that was why he drooped and let the sun sparkle on the water, and the stream smiled to ...
— Wood Magic - A Fable • Richard Jefferies
... Katherine almost sternly when he went back to the house; though he gave her the lilies, and bid her keep her soul sweet and pure as their white bells. She was sitting by Mistress Gordon's side, in one of those tall-backed Dutch chairs, whose very blackness and straightness threw into high relief her own undulating roundness and mobility, the glowing colours of her Indian silk gown, the shining amber against her white throat, and the picturesque curl and flow of her fair hair. Captain Hyde sat opposite, bending toward ...
— The Bow of Orange Ribbon - A Romance of New York • Amelia E. Barr
... weary, footsore, and exhausted; my feet so sore and blistered, indeed, that long before I reached a gharrie I was obliged to take off my boots and wrap them in handkerchiefs. The dust was deep and made heavy walking, and the level straightness of a great part of the road is wearisome. Overtaking even at my slow rate of progress a string of creaking buffalo carts, I got upon the hindmost, but after a little rest found the noise, dust, and slow progress ...
— The Golden Chersonese and the Way Thither • Isabella L. Bird (Mrs. Bishop)
... people felt the oppression of this union between quietude and terror. I see blank well-ordered streets and men in black moving about inoffensively, sullenly. It goes on day after day, day after day, and nothing happens; but to me it is like a dream from which I might wake screaming. To me the straightness of our life is the straightness of a thin cord stretched tight. Its stillness is terrible. It might snap with a noise like thunder. And you who sit, amid the debris of the great wars, you who sit, as it ...
— The Napoleon of Notting Hill • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... to these gardens gave That wondrous beauty which they have; She straightness on the woods bestows; To her the meadow sweetness owes; Nothing could make the river be So crystal pure, but only she, She yet more pure, sweet, straight, and fair Than gardens, woods, ...
— Andrew Marvell • Augustine Birrell
... all the crowd guessed at the meaning of the sacrifice, except one man. He did not weep nor lament nor speak one word of sorrow. But his shoulders were bent from their accustomed straightness, and his eyes lacked their steady gleam. He sat by the side of his friend all that day and through the next night, refusing to eat or take rest, and motionless, except when he stooped to pat the dog that lay at his feet and that raised his head occasionally with a mournful whine. Andrew Johnstone ...
— Duncan Polite - The Watchman of Glenoro • Marian Keith
... of the arts, within the last thirty years, it is much less from the grandeur and beauty of the monuments, than from the breadth and straightness of the streets; and much less from its edifices, than from its uniform regularity, its extent and position, that the capital of New Spain attracts the admiration of Europeans. M. De Humboldt had successively visited, within a very ...
— Travels in North America, From Modern Writers • William Bingley
... is beautifully smooth. The extreme straightness of the trunk and limbs is very striking, and may be compared to the crooked limbs of the Horsechestnut, where the branch is continually interrupted by the flower-cluster. In the Beech the flowers ...
— Outlines of Lessons in Botany, Part I; From Seed to Leaf • Jane H. Newell
... other, would necessitate lowering the neck end, which is not what I want to do. First the knife, then the files (coarse ones), and, little by little, I get nearer and nearer to a fit, when I try angle and the straightness of the whole with the fiddle, using compasses to measure from inner point of purfling, upper corner, to corner of fingerboard on corresponding side, with their exact counterparts on the other; and testing height of fingerboard ...
— Violin Making - 'The Strad' Library, No. IX. • Walter H. Mayson
... hoarsely. "If that don't lick creation for smartness!" he cried. "And how are we to get to this safe? It would serve him right if we collar the lot. It'll teach him that if he ain't honest by nature he's got to be when he deals with the like of us. I like straightness, and by the Lord I'll have it!" He brought his great fist down upon the table to emphasize this ...
— The Firm of Girdlestone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... her a figure of moment and interest. She was handsome in almost a mannish sort of way, being of such height and straightness, and her brown eyes had a depth and fire in which more than a few men had drowned themselves. Also, once she had saved a settlement by riding ahead of a marauding Indian band to warn their intended victims, and had averted another tragedy of pioneer life. Pioneers proudly told strangers to ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... and fair proportion with the upper part; that the nose, in escaping the aquiline bend (always hard and cruel in a woman, no matter how abstractedly perfect it may be), has erred a little in the other extreme, and has missed the ideal straightness of line; and that the sweet, sensitive lips are subject to a slight nervous contraction, when she smiles, which draws them upward a little at one corner, towards the cheek. It might be possible to note these blemishes in another woman's face but it is not easy to dwell on them in hers, ...
— The Woman in White • Wilkie Collins
... the moon obscured, but the phosphorescence of water common in these latitudes at this season marked the prow and wake of the advancing ships with lines of smoky flame. It was this, perhaps, that saved us from disaster—this and the keenness of American eyes, and the straightness of American shooting. From the high-flung superstructure of a big ship one of the eager lookouts noted an unwonted line of shining foam on the port bow. In a second he realized that here at last was the reality of peril. ...
— Our Navy in the War • Lawrence Perry
... ground, with their paper on a copy-board—a piece of planed deal, the size of the copy, an appendage now nearly exploded—their cheek-bones laid within half an inch of the left side of the copy, and the eye set to guide the motion of the hand across, and to regulate the straightness of the lines and the forms of the letters. Others, again, of the more grown boys, are working their sums with becoming industry. In a dark corner are a pair of urchins thumping each other, their eyes steadily fixed on the master, lest he might happen to glance in that direction. Near the master ...
— The Hedge School; The Midnight Mass; The Donagh • William Carleton
... chapter was a chapter of semi-digression. We now return to the straight course. Is the straightness none too evident? Ah well, it's a matter of relativity. A child is born with one sex only, and remains always single in his sex. There is no intermingling, only a great change of roles is possible. But man in the ...
— Fantasia of the Unconscious • D. H. Lawrence
... seemingly favourable to a democracy destroy a democracy, and many things seemingly favourable to an oligarchy destroy an oligarchy. Those who think this the only virtue extend it to excess, not considering that as a nose which varies a little from perfect straightness, either towards a hook nose or a flat one, may yet be beautiful and agreeable to look at; but if this particularity is extended beyond measure, first of all the properties of the part is lost, but at last it can hardly be admitted to be a nose at all, on account of the excess of the rise or ...
— Politics - A Treatise on Government • Aristotle
... This morning, however, in this strange light, which was at this very hour undergoing a subtle change that I could not define as yet, mile after mile of road seemed to lift itself up in the far away distance, as if you might drive on for ever through fairyland. The very fact of its straightness, flanked as it was by the rows of frosted trees, seemed like a call. And a feeling that is very familiar to me—that of an eternity in the perpetuation of whatever may be the state I happen to be in, came over ...
— Over Prairie Trails • Frederick Philip Grove
... natives in complexion, strength, or health. Instances of great age occur amongst them; and they are subject to no more nor less infirmities than others. Beauty or ugliness, weakness or strength, deformity or straightness, are common to the Cagots as to the rest of the human race. This, however, is certain, that in some villages the richest persons are of the proscribed order; but they, nevertheless, are held in a certain degree of odium, and their alliance is avoided: the ...
— Barn and the Pyrenees - A Legendary Tour to the Country of Henri Quatre • Louisa Stuart Costello
... of his limbs may read it. He alloweth of no judge but the eye: painting, bolstering, and bombasting are his orators. By these also he proves his industry, for he hath purchased legs, hair, beauty, and straightness, more than nature left him. He unlocks maidenheads with his language, and speaks Euphues, not so gracefully as heartily. His discourse makes not his behaviour; but he buys it at court, as countrymen their clothes in Birchin ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various
... to the length of the wool, and the thickness of the yarn to be produced. These gills are used in the production of worsted yarn until the size of the rope of wool has been so reduced and twisted that there is no chance of any fiber getting crossed or out of the order of straightness. A worsted yarn is, consequently, a straight yarn, or a yarn ...
— Textiles • William H. Dooley
... be India that had made him so lean and stiff and hard. But he was handsomer even than he had been five years ago, and he looked taller, he was so formidably upright and well-built. (As a competitive exhibition Jimmy's straightness was pitiful. And yet, if his antagonist had been anybody but Reggie, it might have had a ...
— The Belfry • May Sinclair
... colourless olive complexion, clear as to the face and sallow about the neck, formed in her that assemblage of points whose union many persons regard as the perfection of beauty. How, with the tintless pallor of her skin and the classic straightness of her lineaments, she managed to look sensual, I don't know. I think her lips and eyes contrived the affair between them, and the result left no uncertainty on the beholder's mind. She was sensual now, and in ten years' time she would be coarse—promise plain was written in ...
— The Professor • (AKA Charlotte Bronte) Currer Bell
... by the river side. The Cam is a stream much slighted by the lover of wild and romantic scenery; and its chief merit, in the eyes of our boys, is that it approaches more nearly to a canal in its straightness and the deliberation of its slow lapse than many more famous floods—and is therefore more adapted for the maneuvres of eight-oared boats! But it is a beautiful place, I am sure; and my ghost will certainly walk there, "if our loves remain," as Browning says, both for ...
— Escape and Other Essays • Arthur Christopher Benson
... climbing up and being shot down and walking, Nan and Barry and Gerda and Kay reached Land's End. They went down to Sennan Cove to bathe, and the high sea was churning breakers on the beach. Nan dived through them with the arrowy straightness of a fish or a submarine, came up behind them, and struck out to sea. The others behind her, less skilful, floundered and were dashed about by the waves. Barry and Kay struggled through them somehow, bruised and choked; Gerda, giving it up—she was no great swimmer—tranquilly ...
— Dangerous Ages • Rose Macaulay
... of Attic salt at that. Men were regarded as virtuous when they were brave, when they were honest; the idea of using the expression in its later sense occurred, if at all, in jest merely, as a synonym for the eunuch. It was the matron and the vestal who were supposed to be straight, and their straightness was wholly supposititious. The ceremonies connected with the phallus, and those observed in the worship of the Bona Dea, were of a nature that no virtue could withstand. Every altar, Juvenal said, had its Clodius, and even in Clodius' absence there were always those ...
— Imperial Purple • Edgar Saltus
... thereof, even close unto its first articulation, between the two third joints of the middle and ring fingers, pressing about the said thumb thereof very hard with them both, and, whilst the remanent joints were contracted and shrunk in towards the wrist, he stretched forth with as much straightness as he could the fore and little fingers. That hand thus framed and disposed of he laid and posited upon Panurge's navel, moving withal continually the aforesaid thumb, and bearing up, supporting, or under-propping that hand upon the above-specified fore and little ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... other, like school-boys round the red-hot stove on a winter's morning. I knew they had been planted in a right line, and I don't, even now, comprehend why they should not come up in a right line. I weeded them, and though freedom from foreign growth discovered an intention, of straightness, the most casual observer could not but see that skewiness had usurped its place. I repaired to my friend the gardener. He said they must be thinned out and transplanted. It went to my heart to pull up the dear things, but I did ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 55, May, 1862 • Various
... at any rate, had not been forgotten, and carelessness of life is certainly conducive to steadiness of nerve. Jack Vavasour, who was out one day, was under the impression she wished to break her neck. Mrs. Fane became noted in her county for going with the most unflinching straightness, but so little did she care for the reputation, that sometimes she would stick unambitiously to the roads and ...
— Bluebell - A Novel • Mrs. George Croft Huddleston
... to natural forms it is not necessary to make things ugly; a conventional flower implies no unmeaning straightness or impossible curve, it may keep all its interesting characteristics, but it has to obey other requirements specially necessary in the particular design. Another point to be noted is that, since there is freedom of choice of flowers and other objects, only ...
— Embroidery and Tapestry Weaving • Grace Christie
... 'beauty shops,' then, as the newspapers call them, he got the idea of changing his nose by cutting and folding back the skin, surgically eliminating the hump, and rearranging the skin over the altered bridge so as to produce perfect straightness when healed. From the same source came the hint of cutting permanent dimples in his cheeks,—a detail that fell in admirably with his design of an agreeable countenance. The dimples would be, in fact, but skilfully made scars, cut so as to last. What are ...
— The Mystery of Murray Davenport - A Story of New York at the Present Day • Robert Neilson Stephens
... evidently, altogether pretty; a straight, slender, grey-eyed English girl of the sort who show "good" figures and fresh complexions. The sister, who was not pretty, was also straight and slender and grey-eyed. But the grey in this case was not so pure, nor were the straightness and the slenderness so maidenly. The brother of these young ladies had taken off his hat as if he felt the air of the summer day heavy in the great pavilion. He was a lean, strong, clear-faced youth, with a formed nose and thick light-brown ...
— The Tragic Muse • Henry James
... lacy tower with the shining light on top. The storms beat on its side, the tower leans in the wind, the tower of steel and of stone leans and leans a full two feet. Then when the blast is past, this tower of steel and of stone swings back to straightness again. ...
— Here and Now Story Book - Two- to seven-year-olds • Lucy Sprague Mitchell
... of the numerous lines which intersect the whole of the equatorial and temperate regions of Mars are, their straightness combined with their enormous length. It is this which has led Mr. Lowell to term them 'non-natural features.' Schiaparelli, in his earlier drawings, showed them curved and of comparatively great width. Later, he found them to be straight fine lines when ...
— Is Mars Habitable? • Alfred Russel Wallace
... the radiant physical bloom of his Rosamund. This woman, with her tenuity, her pallor, her haunted cheeks and temples, her large, distressed and observant eyes—dark hazel in color under brown eyebrows drawn with a precise straightness till they neared the bridge of the nose and there turning abruptly downwards, her thin and almost white-lipped mouth, her cloudy brown hair which had no shine or sparkle, her rather narrow and pointed chin, suggested to him unhealthiness, ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens
... together. The British road was quite different. It curled as fancy dictated, wandered along the foot or the scarp of a range of hills, followed the ridge of winding downs, and only by chance stumbled briefly into straightness. Whenever ancient remains show a long straight line or several correctly drawn right angles, we may be sure that they date ...
— Ancient Town-Planning • F. Haverfield
... middle size, and slightly disposed towards embonpoint; her eye was of the deepest and most liquid blue, and rendered apparently darker, by long lashes of the blackest jet—for such was the colour of her hair; her nose slightly, but slightly, deviated from the straightness of the Greek, and her upper lip was faultless, as were her mouth and chin; the whole lower part of the face, from the perfect "chiselling," and from the character of her head, had certainly a great air of hauteur, but the extreme melting softness of her eyes took ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Vol. 1 • Charles James Lever
... there was no entrance or egress. And certainly nothing could get in over the top, or out that way. For though the sides of the great, natural bowl were green up to a certain distance, beyond that, and between the rim and a point half way down, they were almost perpendicular in straightness. And, being of rock, they would, it seemed, afford scarcely a foot or hand-hold for the most ...
— The Boy Ranchers on the Trail • Willard F. Baker
... of an uncompromising straightness. It lay across the slightly undulating sandy plain like a long yellow ruler; and on each side were the neatly marked squares and parallelograms of the little truck farms, all cultivated by Italians. Their new and unabashed ...
— Days Off - And Other Digressions • Henry Van Dyke
... jowl of the Southern Hound had been got rid of, and the coat had been somewhat altered. The old school of breeders had evidently determined upon great speed and the ability to stay, through the medium of deep ribs, heart room, wide loins, length of quarter, quality of bone, straightness of fore-leg, and round strong feet; the slack loined, loosely built, and splayfooted hound of former generations had been left behind. To such perfection, indeed, had the Foxhound attained, that long before the close of the eighteenth century sportsmen ...
— Dogs and All About Them • Robert Leighton
... set her fingers in between Katharine's, but when she drew them back with the strings upon them, they wavered, lost their straightness, knotted and then resolved themselves into a single loop as in a swift wind a cloud dies away beneath the ...
— Privy Seal - His Last Venture • Ford Madox Ford
... the large flat-bottomed Chesapeake Bay skiff are shown in figure 4. While it is possible that the narrow beam of this skiff, the straightness of both ends of its bottom camber, and its rig show some New Haven sharpie influence, these characteristics are so similar to those of the flatiron skiff that it is doubtful that many of the Bay sharpies had any real relation to the New Haven boats. As indicated by figures 5 and 7, the Chesapeake ...
— The Migrations of an American Boat Type • Howard I. Chapelle
... Boston business with her usual Boston probity she was really all the while holding herself. She wore her "handsome" felt hat, so Tyrolese, yet some how, though feathered from the eagle's wing, so truly domestic, with the same straightness and security; she attached her fur boa with the same honest precautions; she preserved her balance on the ice-slopes with the same practised skill; she opened, each evening, her "Transcript" with the same interfusion of suspense and resignation; she attended ...
— The Wings of the Dove, Volume 1 of 2 • Henry James
... the boxes in the front tier were already on fire, and still more were smouldering, but the straightness of the vent up which the flame was coming, together with the closeness and stillness of the vault, made the flame mount straight up as in a chimney. I therefore divined rather than saw what remained for me ...
— The Dew of Their Youth • S. R. Crockett
... our Athens, and may the cows of Boston be embalmed with the bulls of Egypt! A white heifer should be perpetually grazing, at her tether, in the shadow of the Great Elm. Would it be wholly unbecoming one born in full view of that lovely inclosure to suggest that the straightness of the lines in which the trees are planted on Boston Common, and the rapidly increasing thickness of their foliage, destroy in the summer season the effect of breadth and liberty, hide both the immediate ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 42, April, 1861 • Various
... then that the destined time had arrived for my planting. That afternoon I marked out my corn-field, driving the mare to my home-made wooden marker, carefully observant of the straightness of the rows; for a crooked corn-row is a sort of immorality. I brought down my seed corn from the attic, where it had hung waiting all winter, each ear suspended separately by the white, up-turned husks. They were the selected ears of last year's crop, even ...
— Adventures In Friendship • David Grayson
... and tortuous in proportion to their remoteness. Lastly, it is to be remarked that there ultimately arise in the higher social organisms, as in the higher individual organisms, main channels of distribution still more distinguished by their perfect structures, their comparative straightness, and the absence of those small branches which the minor channels perpetually give off. And in railways we also see, for the first time in the social organism, a system of double channels conveying currents in opposite directions, as do the ...
— Essays: Scientific, Political, & Speculative, Vol. I • Herbert Spencer
... many hours of painful walking, two things alone had impressed themselves upon his consciousness: the dark illimitable forest and the double line of rails, which with the absolute straightness of exact science had stretched behind and in front till the tree-tops in the far distance seemed to touch, and the rails themselves to vanish into the black heart of the close-growing pines. For miles he had limped along the ...
— A Maker of History • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... then. I shall be there, in the very front seat, dressed in flowing curls," Catie's hair, at this epoch, was pokery in its stiff straightness; "and a real lace dress. And, after service, all the rich people in the church will ask us out to dinner. Of course, in a church like that, the minister's wife is always at the top of things, and I shall help along your work by making people like me and ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray
... carolling of its birds; so I entered, thinking to gaze on it awhile and wend my way." Said she, "With love and gladness!"; and Masrur was amazed at the sweetness of her speech and the coquetry of her glances and the straightness of her shape, and transported by her beauty and seemlihead and the pleasantness of the garden and the birds. So in the disorder of his spirits ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 8 • Richard F. Burton
... marvellous straightness, Younkins guided the leading yoke of cattle directly toward the creek on the other side of which Charlie yet stood, a tall, but animated landmark. When, after descending the gradual slope on which the land lay, the trees that bordered the stream hid the lad from view, it was decided that the furrow ...
— The Boy Settlers - A Story of Early Times in Kansas • Noah Brooks
... stretched himself and yawned—after the fashion of any one who has been sleeping a long time in a cramped position; and without being in the least conscious of it, he sidled up to the arm of the throne and rubbed his back up and down—to test the perfect straightness of it. ...
— The Primrose Ring • Ruth Sawyer
... overflowing with fun, came Miss Squeers's tea-drinking—the result of her suddenly falling in love with the new usher, and that chiefly by reason of the straightness of his legs, "the general run of legs at Dotheboys Hall being crooked." How John Browdie (with his hair damp from washing) appeared upon the occasion in a clean shirt—"whereof thecollars might have belonged to some giant ancestor,"—and greeted the ...
— Charles Dickens as a Reader • Charles Kent
... wooden bench, and two boxes, completed the furniture of her cell. There was no bed: she allowed herself but two hours' sleep; and this refreshment, such as it was, was taken on the floor, with her head leaning on the stool,—when she lay down in this way, the straightness of the closet preventing her from taking any position that ...
— The Life of St. Frances of Rome, and Others • Georgiana Fullerton
... the Theory of Consequents?" "Look at your shadow," said his teacher; "and you will know." Liehtse turned his head and looked at his shadow. When his body was bent the shadow was crooked; when upright, it was straight. Thus it appeared that the attributes of straightness and crookedness were not inherent in the shadow, but corresponded to certain positions in the body . . . . "Holding this Theory of Consequents," says Liehtse, "is to be at home in the antecedent." Now the antecedent of the ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... person he perceived on the hearth-rug, basking before the Minister's ample fire, was Lord Lackington. The sight of that vivacious countenance, that shock of white hair, that tall form still boasting the spareness and almost the straightness of youth, that unsuspecting complacency, confused his ideas and made him somehow feel the whole ...
— Lady Rose's Daughter • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... at the point where it was drawn out to form the preceding back-stitch, and brought out as many threads further on as were covered by the last back-stitch. The beauty of stitching depends on the uniform length of the stitches, and the straightness of the line formed, to ensure which it is necessary to count the threads for each stitch, and to draw a thread to mark the line. If you have to stitch in a slanting line across the stuff, or the stuff be such as to render the drawing of a thread impossible, a coloured tacking ...
— Encyclopedia of Needlework • Therese de Dillmont
... seem to be much offended, because I said, 'Vain man! Think not by the straightness of thine order in outward, and bodily conformity to outward and shadowish circumstances, that thy peace is maintained with God?' But why so much offended at this? [It is say you] 'Because you intend by this the brethren of ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... young ladies. They are newish, three-storied buildings of dingy grey brick with slate roofs, and they are perfectly flat, without a bow-window or even a projecting cornice or window-sill to break the straightness of the line from one end of the street to ...
— Liza of Lambeth • W. Somerset Maugham
... infinitely more full of temptation, bloomful with radiant health, the blush of youth and conscious loveliness upon her lips and looking out under the crisp entanglement of her hair, all simple purity and straightness of soul in the fearless innocency of her eyes; the Lady Ysolinde, deeper taught in the mysteries of existence, more conscious of power, not so beautiful, but oftentimes giving the impression of beauty more strongly than her fairer rival, ...
— Red Axe • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... now, at a word from Johnson, a hundred eager hands seized the heavy timbers, and, under Lance's superintendence, placed them upon the blocks. The joints were next brought closely together, the bolts inserted, the perfect straightness of the entire length of keel accurately tested, and finally the bolts were all simultaneously driven home and the keel "laid," amidst the deafening cheers of the pirates and the roar of a battery of guns which had been placed temporarily ...
— The Pirate Island - A Story of the South Pacific • Harry Collingwood
... suffering from a "debauchery of long driving." The general sense of Mr. Travis's remark is excellent, meaning that there is a tendency to regard a very long drive as almost everything in the playing of a hole, and to be utterly careless of straightness and the short game so long as the ball has been hit from the tee to the full extent of the golfer's power. A long drive is not by any means everything, and the young golfer should resist any inclination to strive for the 250-yard ...
— The Complete Golfer [1905] • Harry Vardon
... specifically human development of the red lips is more pronounced in the African than in the European,[3] and if there is anything in what has been called the "god-like erectness of the human carriage" then it must be admitted that the Bantu women exhibit a straightness of form which may well be envied ...
— The Black Man's Place in South Africa • Peter Nielsen
... prayer for fleetness. Keeper of the deer's way, Reared among the eagles, Clear my feet of slothness. Keeper of the paths of men, Hear a prayer for straightness. ...
— Defenders of Democracy • The Militia of Mercy
... what sowing! Why, they must have had a crooked plough, and a set of bandy-legged horses, to plough such ploughing. There was no more straightness in their furrows than in a dog's hind leg. And then where had the man flung the seed to? Here was a bit come up, and there never a bit. It was his belief that they must go to Jericho to find half of his ...
— Stories of Comedy • Various
... fact, and a most comforting one; for what a constant anxiety it must have been to believe that the straightness of a child's legs, and the shape of its nose, ears, and head were the direct results of our care! What a responsibility, to which every one must have felt unequal! And what a relief to say: "Nature will think of that. I ...
— Spontaneous Activity in Education • Maria Montessori
... GRATEFUL, and he rose to his feet with something of the old straightness and of the old power. And by evil chance his eye, and mine, fell upon a sword hanging on the farther wall. Well I remembered when he had received it, well I knew the inscription on its blade, "Presented by ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... Beatrice's mouth were of a kind that have twisted many men's lives awry; and those men have thought straightness well lost for such red lips. Yes, Beatrice was good to look upon. She had a way of throwing her head back, and showing the smooth, round whiteness of her throat when she laughed, that had thrilled me time and again. And how often, and how gaily ...
— The Message • Alec John Dawson
... carrying herself with an extreme straightness both of body and soul. She was conscious to the full of her own beauty in her new suit, and of the loveliness of her little sister in her white fur nest of a sledge. She was inordinately proud. She had asked Ida if she might ...
— By the Light of the Soul - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... to be so impatient, Louis," the one who had acted as interrogator said. "Anyone could see, with half an eye, that those two fellows were, as they said, old men-at-arms. There is a straightness and a stiffness about men who have been under the hands of the drill sergeant there is no mistaking; and I could swear that fellow is a Gascon, as ...
— Saint Bartholomew's Eve - A Tale of the Huguenot WarS • G. A. Henty
... that we set the great weapon again. Then, seeing that the arrow was straight in the groove, I replaced the frappings, and immediately discharged it. This time, to my very great pleasure and pride, the arrow went with a wonderful straightness towards the ship, and, clearing the superstructure, passed out of our sight as it fell behind it. At this, I was all impatience to try to get the line to the hulk before we made our dinner; but the men had not yet laid-up sufficient; there being then only four ...
— The Boats of the "Glen Carrig" • William Hope Hodgson
... is no expectation of recovering the straightness of the end of the bone; but these patients are liable to another misfortune, that is, to acquire afterwards a distortion of the spine; for as one leg is shorter than the other, they sink on that side, and in consequence bend the upper ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. II - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... blossoms, crimson seed-berries, and fresh green leaves, whose surface, not rain-washed for months, is as full of colour as ever. The palm-trees rise without a branch, tall, slender, and graceful, from the warmly generous earth, and spread at last, as if tired of their straightness, into beautiful crowns of fans, which sway toward each other with every breath of air. Innumerable butterflies and humming-birds, in the hot, dazzling sunshine of noonday, will be hovering over the beds of sweet purple heliotrope and finding their way into the hearts ...
— A Summer in a Canyon: A California Story • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... the line when sloped either as in Figure 21 or 22. If, however, the slope be too much in the direction shown in Figure 21, practice is necessary to enable the drawing of straight lines if they be long ones, because any variation in the angle of the instrument to the paper obviously vitiates the straightness of the line. If, on the other hand, the square be too close to the line, and the pen therefore requires to be sloped as in Figure 22, the ink flowing from the pen-point is apt to adhere to the square-edge, ...
— Mechanical Drawing Self-Taught • Joshua Rose
... until 3 or 4 P.M. In the figure as given on p. 386 (Fig. 163) the first dot was made at 3 P.M.; and the tracing was continued for the following 65 h. When the leaf pointed to the dot next above that marked 3 P.M. it stood horizontally. The tracing is remarkable only from its simplicity and the straightness of the lines. The leaf each day described a single great ellipse; for it should be observed that the ascending and descending lines do not coincide. On the evening of the 11th the leaf did not descend quite so low as usual, and it now ...
— The Power of Movement in Plants • Charles Darwin
... Church; but this did not hinder him from consorting with the godless children of the tents, or contributing towards the upkeep of Nonconformist-schools. The gypsies honoured and trusted him because, crooked themselves, they appreciated straightness and clean living in another. They had never known him use a bad word or do a bad thing. He was, on occasion, arrogant, overbearing, ungracious, in short all the unattractive things that a proud and masterful man can be; but his friendship was as strong as the man himself; his charity above the narrow ...
— The Life of George Borrow • Herbert Jenkins
... brown skin was clear, smooth and soft in texture. Her eyes clear, too, watchful and reticent; on occasion—such as the driving of a business bargain say, or of a drunken client—hard as flint. Her mouth, a wholesome red, inclined to fullness; but had been governed to straightness of line—will dominant, not only in her every movement, but in repose as she now sat, the chair rockers at a backward tilt, her capable and well-shaped hands folded on her black apron in the hollow of ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... the fruit of thine own body, the flesh of thy sons and of thy daughters, which the Lord thy God hath given thee, in the siege, and in the straightness wherewith thine enemies shall ...
— God and my Neighbour • Robert Blatchford
... regretting every step that took him from her. But as he reached the next corner his shoulders snapped back into defiant straightness, he thrust his hands into the side pockets of his top-coat, and strode away, feeling that he had shaken off a burden of "niceness." He had, willy-nilly, recovered his freedom. He could go anywhere, ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis
... of expression! how true and clear! how little we see nowadays, among grown-up men, of this straightness of the soul—of this losing or never finding "ce moi!" There is more than is perhaps generally thought in this. Man in a state of perfection, would no sooner think of asking himself—am I right? am I appearing to be what inwardly ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown
... surrender, and the desire to cry down and hurt and demolish with argument gives rise to this kind of intellectual fireworks. These attempts of mine to establish my superiority by revilement might have occasioned me amusement to-day, had not their want of straightness and common courtesy ...
— My Reminiscences • Rabindranath Tagore
... I saw the house that doubts began to trouble me as to the fitness of my intention. It was a much larger house than any I had ever been in, and there was a straightness and primness about it which somehow did not suggest any very warm welcome to a young sailorman, whose pride in his first appointment and in the spreading of his wings for his first flight ...
— Carette of Sark • John Oxenham
... the age of artificiality!" said Ella; "and what an apt commentary upon the subject we were talking about, Phyllis! We were discussing the merits of directness in speech and straightness in every way. We were ridiculing the timid maid—all sandals and simper—of forty years ago. Why should men and women have ever taken the trouble to be affected? Let us go in to lunch and eat with the appetites of men and women of the nineties, ...
— Phyllis of Philistia • Frank Frankfort Moore
... ornamental, and made of the best ebony. But all that you have really to do is to keep your back as straight as you can; and not think about what is upon it—above all, not to boast of what is upon it. The real and essential meaning of 'virtue' is in that straightness of back. Yes; you may laugh, children, but it is. You know I was to tell about the words that began with V. Sibyl, what does ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... to mitigate the complacency with which our young friend gave himself up to it; nothing, that is, save a natural benevolence which had not yet been extinguished by the consciousness of official greatness. For Count Vogelstein was official, as I think you would have seen from the straightness of his back, the lustre of his light elegant spectacles, and something discreet and diplomatic in the curve of his moustache, which looked as if it might well contribute to the principal function, ...
— Pandora • Henry James
... watching. He watched the second. The third did not spin. It merely swayed. But the fourth.... The lines up to the crane hook were twisted. As the largest of the four crates lifted from its bed, it twisted the lines toward straightness. It spun. It spun more and more rapidly, and then more and more slowly, and stopped, and began ...
— Space Platform • Murray Leinster
... there was a feature in which Mammy took a pride, it was in the straightness of the children's limbs and the flatness of their backs, above all the limbs and backs in the other branches of the family; so, firing up at once, she replied that she would like to see a flatter back than "this here one," ...
— Plantation Sketches • Margaret Devereux
... cupboard, and closely investigated the place on which the box had stood. The slight layer of dust—so slight as to be imperceptible to the unassisted eye—which had surrounded the four sides of the box, presented its four delicate edges in perfectly undisturbed straightness of line. This mute evidence conclusively proved that the box had not been moved during her quarter of an hour's absence in Mr. Keller's room. She put it back again, and heaved a ...
— Jezebel • Wilkie Collins
... nostrils, the gentle chin, were a little sharper than was natural, now, from illness, but round in outline and not over prominent; and the slender throat was very delicate and feminine. Only in the dark-blue eyes there was still that unabashed, quick glance and long-abiding straightness, and innocent hardness, and the unconscious selfishness of ...
— Adam Johnstone's Son • F. Marion Crawford
... pocket, and read it in the coach coming home. But, my dear child, you do look so old-fashioned with your gown made all tight, and your hair all tumbling about in curls. Curls are quite gone out.' We must do your hair differently,' she continued, trying to smooth Molly's black waves into straightness. ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... true that my gaze had wandered near the close of his harangue. I like to look at my guardian; the fine old chap, with his height and straightness, his bright blue eyes and proud silver head, is a sight for sore eyes, as they say. But just then I had glimpsed something that was even better worth seeing. I am not impressionable, but I must confess that I was ...
— The Firefly Of France • Marion Polk Angellotti
... appearance of his new territory; and subsequent accounts have proved, that the opinion he then formed was not erroneous. He described Norfolk Island as one entire wood, or rather as a garden overrun with the noblest pines, in straightness, size, and magnitude, far superior to any he had ever seen. Nothing can exceed the fertility of its soil. Wherever it has been since examined, a rich black mould has been found to the depth of five or six feet: ...
— The Voyage Of Governor Phillip To Botany Bay • Arthur Phillip
... spear is a sumpit or blow-pipe. This is a small wooden tube about eight feet long. The smoothness and straightness of the bore is remarkable. The hole is drilled with an iron rod, one end of which is chisel-pointed, through a log of hard wood, which is afterwards pared down and rounded till it is about an inch ...
— Children of Borneo • Edwin Herbert Gomes
... for straightness. After the heat-treating, the ends are ground, a spot ground on the enlarged end and each barrel tested on a Brinell machine. The pressure used is 3,000 kg., or 6,614 lb., on a 10-millimeter ball, which is standard. Hardness of ...
— The Working of Steel - Annealing, Heat Treating and Hardening of Carbon and Alloy Steel • Fred H. Colvin
... he lowered the glass from his eyes. "Take a look, Professor. These people may be easy to fool when it comes to prophecies, but when it comes to engineering and architecture they're sound all the way through. Just look at the straightness of that wall running up the hill, and how exact the alignment is of the two parts above and below that ledge of rocks. They had to get that alignment, you know, by taking fore-sights and back-sights from the top of ...
— The Aztec Treasure-House • Thomas Allibone Janvier
... fact that the trees never move at all. At any rate a kind of chill suddenly struck Wat Danbury, and it flashed through his mind that there had been some very singular points about this run— its length and its straightness, and the fact that from the first find no one had ever caught a glimpse of the creature. Some silly talk which had been going round the country about the king of the foxes—a sort of demon fox, so fast that it could outrun any pack, ...
— The Green Flag • Arthur Conan Doyle
... not only the unsparing unapologetic ugliness and the rigid straightness which overwhelmed her. It was the planlessness, the flimsy temporariness of the buildings, their faded unpleasant colors. The street was cluttered with electric-light poles, telephone poles, gasoline pumps for motor cars, boxes of goods. ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis
... stood there with a long rubber slicker tight-buttoned from collar to hem. Below that Brent saw rubber boots. She stood with a lance-like straightness, very tall, very pliant, and as he stared with a fixity which would have amounted to impertinence had it not been disarmed by amazement she looked past him and through him as if he were himself ...
— A Pagan of the Hills • Charles Neville Buck
... back into her chair and let her eyes wander to his breadth of shoulder, straightness of back and even to the curl of his hair that cast its dancing shadows upon the wall in front of him. She had never had a man turn his back on her this way, and yet now the accomplished deed struck her in nowise as boorish or rude. He had paid her the tribute of a deep admiration, as clear and ...
— Six Feet Four • Jackson Gregory
... excitement, he may make to change or overcome them. Employment is the half, and the primal half, of education—it is the warp of it; and the fineness or the endurance of all subsequently woven pattern depends wholly on its straightness and strength. And, whatever difficulty there may be in tracing through past history the remoter connections of event and cause, one chain of sequence is always clear: the formation, namely, of the character of nations by their employments, and the determination of their final fate ...
— The Queen of the Air • John Ruskin
... I thought from your features and the straightness of your coal-black hair, that you were." Riel's blood was nigh unto boiling in his veins, but he had craft enough to preserve a tolerably ...
— The Story of Louis Riel: The Rebel Chief • Joseph Edmund Collins
... feet with a swiftness that implied that if it was to go he wanted, she was more than ready to oblige him. As she mounted her bicycle, the shut firmness of her mouth, the straightness of her back, and the grip of her little hands on the handle bars were eloquent of her determination to be gone. And her face, he noticed, was pinker than he ever ...
— The Combined Maze • May Sinclair
... are to expect with God? He whom God hath cursed, and with whom he hath been angry, having changed some of them into apes and swine, and who worship Taghut, they are in the worse condition, and err more widely from the straightness of the path. When they came unto you, they said, We believe: yet they entered into your company with infidelity, and went forth from you with the same; but God well knew what they concealed. Thou shalt see many of them hastening unto iniquity and malice, and to ...
— Sacred Books of the East • Various
... of whole and part; but the notion, once arrived at, implies that the whole is greater. In fact, we could not have the notion without an experience tantamount to this conclusion.... When we have mastered the notion of straightness, we have also mastered that aspect of it expressed by the affirmation that two straight lines can not inclose a space. No intuitive or innate powers or perceptions are needed in such case.... We can not have the full meaning of Straightness, without going ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill
... to have been equally ready to swear that she was the fairest of her species. In point of fact, however, it was no less vivid to him than it had been before that he loved Dora Temperly for qualities which had nothing to do with straightness of nose or pinkness of complexion. Her figure was straight, and so was her character, but her nose was not, and Philistines and other vulgar people would have committed themselves, without a blush on their own flat faces, ...
— A London Life; The Patagonia; The Liar; Mrs. Temperly • Henry James |
