"Beam of light" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... replied: "Juno, nor fear the eye of God or man; For all around us I will throw such veil Of golden cloud, that not the sun himself With sharpest beam of light may ...
— The Iliad • Homer
... soft one, And undereaten to the fall. Mine amulet ... This last ... upon thine eyelids, to shut in A happier dream. Sleep, sleep, and thou shalt see My grayhounds fleeting like a beam of light, And hear my peregrine and her bells in heaven; And other bells on earth, which yet are heaven's; Guess ...
— Queen Mary and Harold • Alfred Lord Tennyson
... welcome her husband! And yet there was something—something in the air, in the feel of things—the lowering fixity of that man's eyes, or—thunder coming, after all this heat! Surely the night was unnaturally still and dark, hardly a breath of air, and so many moths out there, passing the beam of light, like little pale spirits crossing a river! Mrs. Ercott smiled, pleased at that image. Moths! Men were like moths; there were women from whom they could not keep away. Yes, there was something about Olive that drew men to her. Not meretricious—to ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... intelligent, and had a kindly face. Though ordinarily cool, courageous, and self-possessed, he was unable to conceal a strong emotion, which looked much like fear. A heavy silence fell upon the room, disturbed only by the official stenographer, who was sharpening his pencils. A stray beam of light from the westering sun slipped into the room between the edge of the window-shade and the sash, and fell across the chair reserved for the convict. The uneasy eyes of the warden finally fell upon this beam and there his glance rested. The chairman, ...
— The Ape, the Idiot & Other People • W. C. Morrow
... the roar of the rapid and a fan-shaped beam of light swung round a bend in the track. Then the locomotive bell began to toll, and Foster walked past the cars as they rolled into the station. He found Featherstone putting on a fur coat at a vestibule door, and gave him a keen glance ...
— Carmen's Messenger • Harold Bindloss
... continually succeeded another, according to the worth and excellence of their fruit. The circumgyration began at a considerable distance from the tree in the midst, and the intervening space was radiant with a beam of light, which caused the trees in the circle to shine with a graduated splendor that was continued from the first to the last. The first trees were the most excellent of all, abounding with the choicest fruits, and were called paradisiacal trees, being such as are never seen in any country ...
— The Delights of Wisdom Pertaining to Conjugial Love • Emanuel Swedenborg
... of the Holy Grail.] When all the work was finished, the temple was solemnly consecrated, and as the priests chanted the psalms a sweet perfume filled the air, and the holy vessel was seen to glide down on a beam of light. While it hovered just above the altar the wondering assembly heard the choir of the angels singing the praises of the Most High. The Holy Grail, which had thus come down upon earth, was faithfully guarded by ...
— Legends of the Middle Ages - Narrated with Special Reference to Literature and Art • H.A. Guerber
... the North Mountain his little pine-log shanty projected from its single pane of glass a long, thin beam of light, and looked not altogether unlike a black beetle fastened to the hillside with a bright new pin. Within it sat Mr. Beeson himself, before a roaring fire, staring into its hot heart as if he had never before ...
— Can Such Things Be? • Ambrose Bierce
... electric waves with a length of about 6 millimetres or so. And, by working with Electric radiations having very short wave-lengths, he succeeded in demonstrating that the electric waves are polarised by the crystal Nemalite (which he himself discovered) in the very same way as a beam of light is polarised by the crystal Tourmaline. He then showed that a large number of substances, which are opaque to Light (e.g. pitch, coal-tar etc.) are transparent to Electric Waves. He next determined ...
— Sir Jagadis Chunder Bose - His Life and Speeches • Sir Jagadis Chunder Bose
... house, had felt a sudden weakness, and had taken to his chair to recover himself. As was evident from the normal way in which his fingers held his hat, and his hand rested on the chair-arm, death had come as gently as a beam of light. With his stick lying on the table beside him, and his hat on his knee, he was like one who rested a moment before renewing a journey. There could not have been a pang in his passing. He had gone as most men wish to go—in the midst of the business of life, doing the ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... of a world hostile to His followers and to Him. He proceeds, in the words which immediately follow our text, to paint that hostility as aggravated even to the pitch of religious murder. But here He lets a beam of light in upon the darkness. These forlorn Twelve, listening to Him, might well have said, 'Thou art about to leave us; how can we alone face this world in arms, with which Thou dost terrify us?' And here He lets them see that they will not be ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: St. John Chaps. XV to XXI • Alexander Maclaren
... preferably a celestial one, and focused for parallel rays. The surface, b, to be tested is now placed so that the reflected image of the same object, whatever it may be, can be observed by the same telescope. It is evident that if the surface be a true plane, its action upon the beam of light that comes from the object will be simply to change its direction, but not disturb or change it any other way, hence the reflected image of the object should be seen by the telescope, a, without in any way changing the original focus. If, however, the supposed plane surface ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 484, April 11, 1885 • Various
... a beam of light, a power Which dawned through the rent soul; and words it gave, Gestures and looks, such as in whirlwinds bore Which might not ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., February, 1863, No. LXIV. • Various
... the shade, the lovers now plan to elope that very night, but Hans Sachs overhears their conversation, and when they are about to leave their hiding-place and depart, he flings open his shutter so that a broad beam of light streams across the old street. It makes such a brilliant illumination that it is impossible for any one to pass unseen. This ruse, which proves such a hindrance to the lovers, is equally distasteful to Beckmesser, who has come down the ...
— Stories of the Wagner Opera • H. A. Guerber
... tell you why," he proceeded, with unwonted perturbation. "Because little motes and particles of dust, thrown into agitation by the convective currents of the air, are made visible by the strong beam of light thrown into the room through the crevice of the shutter. That's just the way with us, dear TOBY; a is the hatred of Government by the Opposition, the strong desire to take our places; b is the convective currents of air which agitate ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 98, May 24, 1890 • Various
... is another of the wonders of which Meteorology takes cognizance. The celebrated Malus, in 1808, while looking at the light of the setting sun shining upon the windows of the Luxembourg, was led to the discovery that a beam of light which was reflected at a certain angle from transparent and opaque bodies, or by transmission through several plates of uncrystallized bodies, or of bodies crystallized and possessing the property of double refraction, changed its character, so as to have sides, to revolve around poles peculiar to ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 6, No. 33, July, 1860 • Various
... relation to personal covenanting; and, without the least intimation of the design made to him, printed them in a little pamphlet of 61 pages 12mo, under this title, A clear, attractive, warming beam of light, from Christ, the Sun of light, leading unto ...
— Biographia Scoticana (Scots Worthies) • John Howie
... stayed in feverish agony until a pale beam of light appeared on the floor below the curtain. This timorous paleness of the distant dawn suddenly brought him peace. He felt the light gliding into the room, when it was still impossible to distinguish it from darkness. Then his fever would die down, his ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland
... when he was safely down he could turn on his light, unafraid. From the cellar, without a window, with no means of egress save that by which he had entered it, there was no danger that a stray beam of light would betray his presence to the lawful dwellers in this cottage, should they chance to return while he was there. And what he saw in the light when he switched it on was ample reward for his daring in braving the dangers ...
— The Belgians to the Front • Colonel James Fiske
... he continued, "that the communication was through the medium of a sphere. Moreover, keep in mind that physics accepts the path of a beam of light as its definition of a straight line. Yet, the path is a curve; if extended sufficiently it would be a circle, the section of ...
— As Long As You Wish • John O'Keefe
... question that the destroyer was on an errand of discovery. A white beam of light shot out from her decks, and began to feel along the sea. And then when they thought it had missed them, it dropped on the boat and held. A second later it missed them and began a search. Presently it lit the little boat, and it did something more—it revealed ...
— The Angel of Terror • Edgar Wallace
... many who did not themselves understand the meaning of the whole movement, but saw that its adherents grew ever more numerous, and that in other respects they were just as well off. Where he himself could not see he was like a lens that collects the half-darkness and gives it out again as a beam of light. ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... fact that each of the heavenly bodies contains a number of different elements; so that in the light it sends us the hues arising from distinct substances are blended into one beam. The first thing to be done is to get some way of splitting up a beam of light, so as to discover the components of which it is made. You might have a skein of silks of different hues tangled together, and this would be like the sunbeam as we receive it in its unsorted condition. How shall we untangle the light from the ...
— Young Folks' Library, Volume XI (of 20) - Wonders of Earth, Sea and Sky • Various
... respect to government are changing fast in all countries. The revolutions of America and France have thrown a beam of light over the world, which reaches into men. Ignorance is of a peculiar nature; once dispelled, it is impossible to re-establish it. It is not originally a thing of itself, but is only the absence of knowledge; and though man may be kept ignorant, ...
— The World's Greatest Books—Volume 14—Philosophy and Economics • Various
... beam of light on the top of that mountain it looked like a small neutron-source machine. But it wasn't. It was an ...
— Dead World • Jack Douglas
... Central New York, a latitude in which the Aurora Borealis is seldom seen with so much splendor. I remember another similar one seen from the city of New York in November, 1882. On this last occasion some observers saw a great upright beam of light which majestically moved across the heavens, stalking like an apparition in the midst of the auroral pageant, of whose general movements it seemed to be independent, maintaining always its upright posture, and following a magnetic parallel from east to west. This mysterious beam was seen ...
— Curiosities of the Sky • Garrett Serviss
... a horse-block on the opposite side of the roadway, seemed to be watching his movements. Their presence flurried him; but much to his relief his next glance at the houses showed him that the door of the farther one was unlatched. It stood slightly ajar, permitting a beam of light to escape ...
— Count Hannibal - A Romance of the Court of France • Stanley J. Weyman
... If the beam of light falls upon a sheet of paper, or upon a photograph, instead of upon a smooth polished surface, no definite reflected ray will be seen, but a glare will be produced by the scattering of the beam of light. The surface of the paper or photograph ...
— General Science • Bertha M. Clark
... is it she that there appears, like a beam of light on the heath? bright as the moon in autumn, as the sun in a summer-storm, comest thou, O maid, over rocks, over mountains to me? She speaks: but how weak her voice! like the breeze in the reeds ...
— Literary Tours in The Highlands and Islands of Scotland • Daniel Turner Holmes
... green light came from the other. But where the two streams met, an intense, violet glare built up. The center of action was not at the focus, and slowly this was lined up, till a sharp, violet beam of light reached out across the open yard to the target ...
— The Ultimate Weapon • John Wood Campbell
... light gleaming in the doorway as I approached it; but the intruder must have been warned, for just as I got up to the lantern in front of the servants' tent, it disappeared, and the torch which usually burns outside our tent had not been lighted at all; but a beam of light fell on the road, and a man's figure slipped across in a black robe sprinkled with gold ornaments which I saw glitter as the pale light of the lantern fell upon them—just as a slimy, black newt glides through a pool. I have good eyes as you know, and I will give one ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... had cleared by now, bathing the ruined hamlet with a silvery sheen, although the place which sheltered them remained in darkness. But through a rift in the broken wall stole one narrow beam of light, and he moved slightly to let this fall upon her face—then just in time caught himself, else he would have given a cry ...
— Where the Souls of Men are Calling • Credo Harris
... village was not broken. The lodges stretched away in dusky rows and then were lost in darkness. This promised well, and their eyes came back to Pine Tree, who was still sleeping. Then Dick became conscious of a beam of light, or rather two beams. These beams shot straight from the open eyes of Pine Tree, who was not asleep at all. The next instant Pine Tree opened his mouth, uttered a yell that was amazingly loud and piercing, and leaped ...
— The Last of the Chiefs - A Story of the Great Sioux War • Joseph Altsheler
... was seized with childish fear. He would not hear of the windows being opened wide. 'By-and-by,' he muttered, 'later on.' He was fearful, he dreaded the first beam of light that would flash upon his eyes. Evening came on, and still he had been unable to make up his mind to look upon the sun. He remained thus all day long, his face turned towards the curtains, watching ...
— Abbe Mouret's Transgression - La Faute De L'abbe Mouret • Emile Zola
... came to the door below—a foot-fall light as a roe's. There was a hurried tapping upon the panel, as if with the impatient tips of fingers whose owner thought not whether a knocker were there or no. Without a pause, and possibly guided by the stray beam of light on the landing, the newcomer ascended the staircase as the first had done. Grace was sufficiently visible, and the lady, for a lady it was, ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... delights the beholder; and among the great features of Mathematics the certainty of its demonstrations is what preeminently (tends to) elevate the mind of the investigator. Perspective, therefore, must be preferred to all the discourses and systems of human learning. In this branch [of science] the beam of light is explained on those methods of demonstration which form the glory not so much of Mathematics as of Physics and are graced with the flowers of both [Footnote: 5. Such of Leonardo's notes on Optics or on Perspective as bear exclusively on ...
— The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci, Complete • Leonardo Da Vinci
... the grass surrounded by a darkness which not the slightest beam of light penetrated—There was no sound for the deep night had laid to sleep the insects, the only creatures that lived on the lone spot where no tree or shrub could afford shelter to aught else—There was a wondrous silence in the air that calmed my senses yet which enlivened my soul, ...
— Mathilda • Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
... make others happy, and that I might be able to sing the whole of the Song of the Mountain." As she said this the old man raised his head slowly from his staff, and when she finished, lo! he was changed into a great beam of light that cast its rays all about the cellar. Effie flew up stairs with her broom, and ran to the cottage door. The sea was sparkling with light, and the sun ...
— Seven Little People and their Friends • Horace Elisha Scudder
... the Austrians,' a young officer exclaims, as from the crest a beam of light breaks forth, flaring with great intensity on the Italian positions lower down. Immediately an Italian light endeavors to shine directly in the path of the Austrian light and blind its rays. Another Austrian light darts forth from across the valley. Promptly an Italian searchlight gives ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume V (of 8) • Francis J. (Francis Joseph) Reynolds, Allen L. (Allen Leon)
... DOUBLE REFRACTION. In Lesson II. we learned what is meant by refraction of light. While glass and a small number of precious stones (diamond, garnet, and spinel) bend light as was illustrated in Fig. 1, practically all the other stones cause a beam of light on entering them to separate, and the path of the light in the stone becomes double, as ...
— A Text-Book of Precious Stones for Jewelers and the Gem-Loving Public • Frank Bertram Wade
... himself out for a few moments, then rose to his feet again. On and on went he till the little birds flew to their nests, and the brightness died out of the sky, and a darkness fell over the earth. On and on, and on, till at last he saw a beam of light streaming from a house and hastened ...
— The Orange Fairy Book • Various
... cried she; and no sooner were the words out than she fled, like a beam of light chased by ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, XXII • various
... golden bar of light. Phyl, as she stood for a moment on the threshold, saw motes dancing in the bar of light; the air was close and almost stuffy owing to the windows being shut. A rocking-horse, much, much the worse for wear stood in one corner, he was piebald and the beam of light just failed to touch his brush-like tail. A Noah's Ark of the good old pattern stood on the lid of a great chest under one of the windows, and in the centre of the room a heavy table of plain oak nicked by knives and stained with ink ...
— The Ghost Girl • H. De Vere Stacpoole
... of rotation of its plane produced upon a polarized beam of light by passage through a magnetic field. (See ...
— The Standard Electrical Dictionary - A Popular Dictionary of Words and Terms Used in the Practice - of Electrical Engineering • T. O'Conor Slone
... orders, but to take a look in upon Hagan before settling down for the journey. He switched off his lights, climbed upon the bed, and carefully unscrewed the little knob which was like the one shown to him by Dawson. A beam of light stabbed the darkness of his berth, and putting his eye with some difficulty to the hole—one's nose gets so confoundedly in the way—he saw Hagan comfortably arranging himself for the night. The spy had no suspicion of his watchers on both sides, for, after ...
— The Lost Naval Papers • Bennet Copplestone
... before them in their course The relics of the archer force, Like wave with crest of sparkling foam, Right onward did Clan-Alpine come. Above the tide, each broadsword bright Was brandishing like beam of light, Each targe was dark below; And with the ocean's mighty swing, When heaving to the tempest's wing, They hurled them on the foe. I heard the lance's shivering crash, As when the whirlwind rends the ash; I heard the broadsword's deadly clang, ...
— The Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... just through this breach that hope steals like a beam of light, and gradually finds its way down to the depths below. For the last fifty years it has been rising, and its rays, which first illuminated the upper class in their splendid apartments in the first story, and next the middle class in their entresol and on the ground floor. ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 2 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 1 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... of a rolling ship," Kennedy continued, alternately covering and uncovering the mirror, "the beam of light which this mirror reflects always goes back, unerring, to its source. It would do so from an aeroplane, so high in the air that it could not be located. The returning beam is invisible to anyone not immediately in the path of the ray, and the ray always ...
— The War Terror • Arthur B. Reeve
... had gone away Bessie had not. On the contrary, she was always about him, surrounding him with that tender care a woman, however involuntarily, cannot prevent herself from lavishing on the man she loves. Her beauty moved about the place like a beam of light about a garden, for she was indeed a lovely woman, and as pure and good as she was lovely. Nor could John long remain in ignorance of her liking for himself. He was not a vain man—very much the reverse, indeed—but neither was he a fool. And it must be said that, though Bessie never overstepped ...
— Jess • H. Rider Haggard
... extent or shallowness of Paracelsus' claim is a matter of quite secondary interest. We are concerned with the poet's presentment of the man—of that strange soul whom he conceived of as having anticipated so far, and as having focussed all the vagrant speculations of the day into one startling beam of light, now lambently pure, ...
— Life of Robert Browning • William Sharp
... the beam of light, searching for some telltale discoloration in wiring, or a gleaming icy patch which would indicate a fuel leak. "Might be ...
— Tight Squeeze • Dean Charles Ing
... was a man tall and slender and closely-knit, with a rich vein of sentiment, like all good soldiers. He was perhaps fifty-two or three years of age. His eyebrows slanted down and his moustache slanted up. His eyes were level and keen in their beam of light, and they puckered into genial lines when he smiled. His nose was bent in just at the bridge, where a bullet once ploughed past. This mishap had turned up the end of a large and formerly straight feature. It was good to have him back again after his fortnight away. The evening ...
— Young Hilda at the Wars • Arthur Gleason
... the year 1843, a remarkable beam of light shot suddenly out from the evening twilight, trailing itself along the surface of the heavens, beneath the belt stars of Orion. That glimmering beam was the tail of a comet just whisked into our northern skies, as the ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 450 - Volume 18, New Series, August 14, 1852 • Various
... darkened so much as it would that June night, he laid him down and slept in all trust of safekeeping. He awoke at the end of dawn and washed him in the brook, and then clad him and sat down to abide sunrise. Then even as the sun arose it smote a beam of light from some bright thing overtopping the crown of the hillside before him, and Osberne knew that there was come his friend Steelhead, in such guise as he had first beheld him there: which was in sooth the very thing ...
— The Sundering Flood • William Morris
... instant, however, he was on his feet again. A beam of light had swept across the saloon skylight, coming from below, the beam of a portable electric torch. It might have been the signal for the first piercing scream of Liane Delorme. A pistol shot with a vicious accent cut short the scream. ...
— Alias The Lone Wolf • Louis Joseph Vance
... to the door, threw it open and cast the beam of light on to the staircase. Softly he began to descend. Before the study door he paused. There was no sound. He threw open the door, directing the torch-ray into ...
— The Golden Scorpion • Sax Rohmer
... plumage of crimson and gold glowed in the last rays of the setting sun. His head was drooping, and his eye lustreless. The joy of life was gone. Slowly the Sun sank towards the horizon, a red eye fixed upon the Phoenix steadily. Suddenly across the gray waste of sand dotted a beam of light, intensely bright. A single ray from that watchful Eye seemed to flame as it reached the palm tree and pierced to the very heart of the Phoenix. A thrill ran through his body. He drew himself together, and his eye gleamed with ...
— The Curious Book of Birds • Abbie Farwell Brown
... days the camp is talkin' over who does this crime, when Texas Thompson begins to shed a beam of light. This last was onlooked for, an' tharfore all the ...
— Wolfville • Alfred Henry Lewis
... electricity, or magnetism, and light in all manner of ways, and at last he was rewarded with a result. And a most out-of-the-way result it seemed. First, you have to get a most powerful magnet and very strongly excite it; then you have to pierce its two poles with holes, in order that a beam of light may travel from one to the other along the lines of force; then, as ordinary light is no good, you must get a beam of plane polarized light, and send it between the poles. But still no result is obtained until, finally, you interpose ...
— Scientific American Supplement No. 275 • Various
... A heavy, copper-coloured beam of light came in at the west window, gilding the outlines of the children's heads with red gold, and falling on the wall opposite in a rich, ruddy illumination. Ursula, however, was scarcely conscious of it. She was busy, the end of the day was here, the work went on as a peaceful tide that ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence
... that surface. What, then, will happen to the light within the stone, which falls still more obliquely? It cannot be refracted out, and, as a fact, it is entirely reflected within the stone. Imagine, then, how much greater is the brilliancy of the beam of light, c, e, d, which is completely reflected, than that of the intermediate portion of the reflected light, a, b, c, which has lost a large part of its rays by refraction. The difference is easily seen by looking at a glass of water held above the head; the brilliant silvery appearance ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 1082, September 26, 1896 • Various
... brakes roused me. We were slowing up in obedience to a signal from a canvas-covered, half-demolished shelter filled with men in blue uniforms; we were coming to a standstill. Blenheim leaned out, and for a moment I saw his face in the beam of light from the sentry's lantern. It looked thin and set. He was giving ...
— The Firefly Of France • Marion Polk Angellotti
... the universe. Even the soul or life-principle in living creatures was simply a structure of the finest and roundest (and therefore most nimble) atoms, with which he compared the extremely attenuated dust particles visible in their never-ending {79} dance in a beam of light passed into a darkened room. This structure of exceeding tenuity and nimbleness was the source of the motion characteristic of living creatures, and provided that elastic counteracting force to ...
— A Short History of Greek Philosophy • John Marshall
... is the ladder—begin at the bottom step, with faith in Jesus Christ. That will bring God's direct action into your spirit, through His Holy Spirit, and that one gift will break up into an endless multiplicity of blessings, just as a beam of light spilt upon the surface of the ocean breaks into diamonds in every wave, and that 'joy and peace' will kindle in your hearts a hope fed by the great words of the Lord: 'Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you,' 'My joy shall remain in you, and your joy shall be full,' 'He that ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren
... uncertain what to do. Should he run downstairs and across the street? Then, as he hesitated, he saw a pale beam of light over in the front left-hand corner of the shop. Through the glasses he could see the yellow circle of a flashlight splotched upon dim shelves of books. He saw Weintraub pull a volume out of the case, and the light vanished. ...
— The Haunted Bookshop • Christopher Morley
... fellows I knew. Here we are trees, men, pillars, the dark earth, the sad black paths, shut in in this enormous box. It is true, there are long strips of window and slots of space, so that the front is striped, and an occasional beam of light fingers the leaves of an enclosed tree and the sickly round lemons. But it ...
— Twilight in Italy • D.H. Lawrence
... with his monks the Prior anon, With Crosses and with Gonfanon Went to that hole forthright, Thro' which Knight Owain went below, There, as of burning fire the glow, They saw a gleam of light; And right amidst that beam of light He came up, Owain, God's own knight, By this knew every man That he in Paradise had been, And Purgatory's pains had seen, ...
— From Ritual to Romance • Jessie L. Weston
... a stately old house—for two hundred years the Dellivers and the Balbians had been stately families—a house always rather dim, its shadows aglimmer with richness, and here and there a beam of light illuminating some flawless, precious object. It was a house of silent servants, of faces imprinted with a gracious weariness, of beautifully modulated low voices, of noble reticence. Yet all the while the place quivered from secret ...
— Sacrifice • Stephen French Whitman
... the officer, sharply, and the body disappeared as if it had been snatched away, as shifting the lantern he flashed its beam of light here and there against the faces of the crowd. The effect was amazing! The men, blinded, confused, almost terrified, made a tumultuous rush for the door, pushing, crowding, and tumbling over one another as they fled, like the hosts of Night before the shafts ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Vol. II: In the Midst of Life: Tales of Soldiers and Civilians • Ambrose Bierce
... center of which, in a small air-chamber, is a tiny mirror. Mounted on the back of the mirror are very small magnets. The mirror is suspended by a fiber of the finest silk. Thus the weakest of currents coming in over the wire serve to deflect the mirror, and a beam of light being directed upon the mirror and reflected by it upon a screen, the slightest movement of the mirror is made visible. If the mirror swings too far its action is deadened by compressing the air in the chamber. The instrument ...
— Masters of Space - Morse, Thompson, Bell, Marconi, Carty • Walter Kellogg Towers
... decided, much too narrow a beam of light for the searchlight, but just at that moment I got a flash from out in space, and worked the light back on ...
— The Trouble with Telstar • John Berryman
... menacing Parliament, Sandys and his party—the Liberals of the day—turned the sessions of the Company into a parliament where momentous questions of state and colonial policy were freely debated. The liberal spirit of Sandys cast a beam of light, too, across the Atlantic. When Governor Yeardley stepped ashore at Jamestown in mid-April, he brought with him, as the first fruits of the new regime, no less a boon than the grant ...
— Pioneers of the Old South - A Chronicle of English Colonial Beginnings, Volume 5 In - The Chronicles Of America Series • Mary Johnston
... the dead, without the slightest disturbance, dreamed a strange dream. It seemed to him that he stood spent and weary in a twilight place—a waste place at the foot of a high hill. At the top of the hill She sat upon a sort of throne, golden in a beam of light from heaven—serene, very beautiful, the end and crown of his weary labors. His feet were set to the ascent of the height whereon she waited, but he was withheld. From the shadows at the hill's foot a ...
— Jason • Justus Miles Forman
... axis, it is clear that if the observer is situated in, or nearly in, the plane of the planet's equator, one edge of its disk will be approaching his eye while the opposite edge is retreating, and the lines in the spectrum of a beam of light from the advancing edge will be shifted toward the blue, while those in the spectrum of the light coming from the retreating edge will be shifted toward the red. And, by carefully noting the amount of the shifting, the velocity of the planet's rotation can be computed. This is what ...
— Other Worlds - Their Nature, Possibilities and Habitability in the Light of the Latest Discoveries • Garrett P. Serviss
... before it was broken. Sometimes people say that beautiful polished things are like mirrors, but this sword is like a flame. It burns and twinkles as he holds it and turns it in his hand. I can scarcely see of what shape it is, for now it shines like a straight beam of light, now, as he twists it, there is a flash in a half circle, like a scymitar, and again the point alone gleams out and flashes, as if it would find its own way to the heart of a foe, with no hand to guide it. He swings the sword ...
— The Wagner Story Book • Henry Frost
... was scarcely reassuring. Not that superstition lent its terrors to the lonely scene, but that through the blank panes of the window, alternately appearing and disappearing from view as the shutter pointed out by Uncle David blew to and fro in the wind, I saw, or was persuaded that I saw, a beam of light which argued an unknown presence within walls which had so lately been declared unfit ...
— The Filigree Ball • Anna Katharine Green
... beam of light fell o'er him, Like a glory round the shriven, And he climb'd the lofty ladder As it were the path to heaven.{J} Then came a flash from out the cloud, And a stunning thunder roll, And no man dared to look ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 347, September, 1844 • Various
... eclipses, and also in the speed with which they pass along. Though, as already stated, little is known of their origin yet they may be conceived to be due to irregularities in the atmospheric refraction of the slender beam of light coming from the waning or the waxing crescent of the Sun, for be it understood they may be visible after totality as well as before it. It is to be remarked that ...
— The Story of Eclipses • George Chambers
... heralded by a beam of light and the squawk of a horn, came a crash as the Ford Car hit the tar barrel end on. Its front axle went back ten inches and the rear wheels rose upward. Two shadowy forms, that were groundlings at another time, took wings and flew ...
— Men of Affairs • Roland Pertwee
... and the airy melody of his numbers. In this way I believe he wrought up his verses to that transparent clearness of expression which causes the thought to be seen through them without any interposing dimness, so that the thought and the phrase seem one, and the thought enters the mind like a beam of light. I suppose that Halleck's time being taken up by the tasks of his vocation, he naturally lost by degrees the habit of composing in this manner, and that he found it so necessary to the perfection of what he wrote that he adopted no ...
— Stories of Authors, British and American • Edwin Watts Chubb
... on a wild day of cloud, A wanderer, chilled and worn, perchance beholds Move toward him through the landscape soaked in gloom A golden beam of light; creating lakes, And verdant pasture, farms, and villages; And touching spires atop to flickering flame; Disclosing herds of sober feeding kine; And brightening on its way the woods to song; As he, that wanderer, brightens when ...
— My Beautiful Lady. Nelly Dale • Thomas Woolner
... It was a beam of light that seemed at once to describe the glorious change which her soul had now already experienced; and, at the same time, to shed the promised consolations of hope over the minds of ...
— The Annals of the Poor • Legh Richmond
... at the expense of his dinner, had rescued a book from the butter-tub and taken it off to his garret, and that night the Goblin, overcome by curiosity, peeped through the keyhole, and lo! the garret was full of light. Forth and up from the book shot a beam of light, which grew into the trunk of a mighty tree, and threw out branches over the bowed head of the student; and every leaf was fresh, and every flower a face, and every fruit a star, and music sang in the branches. Well, there shall be even ...
— From a Cornish Window - A New Edition • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... internal; a passion could be isolated, and could be either traced through its varying moods or seized in its moment of culmination; the casuistry of the brain could be studied apart,—it might have its say uninterrupted, or it might be suddenly encountered and dissipated by some spearlike beam of light from the heart or soul; the traditions of a great literary form were not here a cause of embarrassment; they need not, as in work for the theatre, be laboriously observed or injuriously violated; the poet might assert his independence ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden
... Against a background of jagged rock teeth was the bubble of the E-Stat housing—more than three-quarters of it being in the hollowed out sections below the surface of the miniature world which supported it, as Dane knew. But a beam of light shown from the dome to center on the grounded Queen. They had not caught ...
— Plague Ship • Andre Norton
... boat and the motionless men in it with grave and sorrowful intensity, disturbed now and then by irrational outbreaks of mad gesticulation. A little bird with sapphire breast balanced a slender twig across a slanting beam of light, and flashed in it to and fro like a gem dropped from the sky. His minute round eye stared at the strange and tranquil creatures in the boat. After a while he sent out a thin twitter that sounded impertinent and funny in the solemn ...
— An Outcast of the Islands • Joseph Conrad
... beam of light flashed from the cabins across the way. Legrand gave vent to a hiss of warning and moved off. I could see his shadow for a moment, and then it was swallowed in the blackness. He was waiting and watching outside the cabin. ...
— Hurricane Island • H. B. Marriott Watson
... made certain signs to Yva, who in obedience to them approached the porthole or search-light to which she did something that I could not distinguish. The effect was to make the beam of light much stronger and sharper, also to shift it on to the point or foot of the spinning mountain and, by an aiming of the lens from time to time, to keep ...
— When the World Shook - Being an Account of the Great Adventure of Bastin, Bickley and Arbuthnot • H. Rider Haggard
... pointing to a distant projecting cliff or peak. "On yon summit I have fixed four mirrors similar to these. When the sun can no longer be reflected from this pair, the first of the distant mirrors takes it up and shoots a beam of light over here. When the sun passes from that, the second mirror is arranged to catch and transmit it, and so on to the fourth. After that I bid good-bye to the sun, ...
— Blown to Bits - or, The Lonely Man of Rakata • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... mistaking that awful, motionless, crumpled posture. The Inspector knew in this single instant of view that murder had been done here. Even as the beam of light from the Tower shifted and vanished from the room, he leaped to the switch by the door, and turned on the lights of the chandelier. In the next moment, he had reached the door of the passage across the room, and his whistle sounded shrill. His voice bellowed ...
— Within the Law - From the Play of Bayard Veiller • Marvin Dana
... from the searchlight of a battleship that was patrolling the coast, attended by a couple of cruisers and four torpedo-boats. One of these last came flying towards the yacht down the white path of the beam of light, and Tremayne, seeing that he would have to give an account of himself, stopped his engines and waited for the torpedo-boat to ...
— The Angel of the Revolution - A Tale of the Coming Terror • George Griffith
... Prescott, being further from the rim, signed to the French lieutenant to precede him. De Verne had just gained the hole when—-Click! Not far away something was shot up into the air; then it broke, throwing down a beam of light. Other clicks could be heard, until the land within two hundred feet of the crater became at least half as bright as daylight ...
— Uncle Sam's Boys with Pershing's Troops - Dick Prescott at Grips with the Boche • H. Irving Hancock
... possible if light took a curved path instead of a straight one. A better proof, however, may be obtained by making a small hole in the window-shutter, and allowing the sunlight to pass into the darkened room. The beam of light which passes into the room will then be seen to take a straight course, its presence being revealed by the particles of dust that float about ...
— Aether and Gravitation • William George Hooper
... the more time to come to some decision, since I rang and rang in vain. The hall, indeed, was in darkness; but when I peeped through the letter-box I could see a faint beam of light from the back room. That was the room in which Maguire kept his trophies and set his trap. All was quiet in the house: could they have haled the intruder to Vine Street in the short twenty minutes which it had taken me to dress and to drive to the spot? That was an awful thought; but even as I ...
— A Thief in the Night • E. W. Hornung
... for them to remember us by!" cried Mr. Durban, as he sent more of the paralyzing electric currents into the red imps. Their yell of rage had now turned to shouts of terror, for the gleaming beam of light frightened them more than did the airship, or the bullets of the white men. The red pygmies fled ...
— Tom Swift and his Electric Rifle • Victor Appleton
... called out. And then a figure appeared miraculously in the alcove, where one candle still burned, shedding a ghostly beam of light from ...
— The Bad Man • Charles Hanson Towne
... lieutenant. "Hand the light, Cyril." He played the beam of light full on the intruder; a man in a bowler hat, with a black overcoat buttoned to his throat, a pale, dazed, blinking face. The hat was tilted at a slightly jaunty angle over the left eye, the man was ...
— Aaron's Rod • D. H. Lawrence
... had now been moved inside the hangar itself, to stand guard over the only three doors in the cavernous structure. They were armed with powerful heat blasters. These rifles were different from the paralo-ray guns they had used previously. A beam of light from the ray guns would only paralyze a human being, while the blaster destroyed anything it touched, burning it to ...
— Sabotage in Space • Carey Rockwell
... assists the eye chiefly in two ways: first, by enlarging the visual angle under which a distant object is seen, and thus magnifying that object; and secondly, by collecting and conveying to the eye a larger beam of light than would enter the naked organ, and thus rendering objects distinct and visible which would otherwise be indistinct and invisible. Its essential parts are the object-glass, which collects the beams of light ...
— Noah Webster - American Men of Letters • Horace E. Scudder
... kitchen, with its bright fire, its deep shadows and its white clothes hung along the line; Tony's drooping figure, bent over the hearth in an old blue guernsey: the contrasting redness of his face, and the beam of light from a cracked lamp-shade falling across his wet, memory-stuck blue eyes.... The kitchen seemed full of the presence of the long-dead woman whom Tony was still grieving for in some underpart of his mind. "Iss, her was a nice woman," he said, "a gude wife to me; a gude ...
— A Poor Man's House • Stephen Sydney Reynolds
... unexplained emotions. "This is like what I mean," continued Draxy, "by the Gospel of Mystery, the good tidings of the things we cannot understand. This gospel is everywhere. Not the wisest man that has ever lived can fully understand the smallest created thing: a drop of water, a grain of dust, a beam of light, can baffle his utmost research. So with our own lives, with our own hearts; every day brings a mystery—sin and grief and death: all these are mysteries; gospels of mystery, good tidings of mystery; yes, good tidings! These are ...
— Saxe Holm's Stories • Helen Hunt Jackson
... the admiral, dryly. "Very simple indeed. But, admitting this strong beam of light that, as you say, could set fire to that sealer, and be invisible in sunshine, how about the beam that is invisible by night? That is what I ...
— The Wreck of the Titan - or, Futility • Morgan Robertson
... dispatch from London arrived on May 5 which delayed my starting for Vladivostok. If the object at which it aimed could have been secured it would have been a beam of light upon a very sombre subject. I had a lengthy conference with General Knox upon my tour to the Urals and the facts gathered as to the mineral and productive resources of the districts through which I had passed. The London dispatch also occupied our attention, and as the Supreme Governor ...
— With the "Die-Hards" in Siberia • John Ward |
