"Flat" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... crossed Lake St. Louis, and began the ascent of the upper St. Lawrence, In one of the three companies of regulars which formed a part of the force was a young subaltern, the Baron la Hontan, who has left a lively account of the expedition. Some of the men were in flat boats, and some were in birch canoes. Of the latter was La Hontan, whose craft was paddled by three Canadians. Several times they shouldered it through the forest to escape the turmoil of the rapids. The flat boats could not be so handled, and were dragged or pushed up in the shallow ...
— Count Frontenac and New France under Louis XIV • Francis Parkman
... The pretty clusters of the wild yam, seen climbing over the hazelbrush in the rich winter woods, have two ways of navigating in the wind; either the three-sided, papery capsule floats as a whole, or it splits through the winged angles and then the flat seeds with their membranaceous wings have a chance to flutter a foot or two away where haply they may find a square inch of unoccupied soil. The desmodium, the bidens, the agrimony and the cocklebur, which stick to your clothes even as late as February, are only using you ...
— Some Winter Days in Iowa • Frederick John Lazell
... even at Woollett. The only thing was that if she showed him she wished to like him—as the motives behind might conceivably prompt—it would possibly have been more thrilling for him that she should have shown as more vividly alien. Ah she was neither Turk nor Pole!—which would be indeed flat once more for Mrs. Newsome and Mrs. Pocock. A lady and two gentlemen had meanwhile, however, approached their bench, and this accident stayed for ...
— The Ambassadors • Henry James
... their hair into tresses, and use artificial plaits, ornamented with pearls, buttons, &c. Like the man, the woman is small, with coarse black hair, face of a yellow colour, small and sunken eyes, a flat nose, broad cheek-bones, slender legs, and small feet and hands. She competes with the man in dirt. Nordenskiold places the Samoyeds in the lowest rank of all the Polar races. The women have perfectly equal rights with ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, • Richard Hakluyt
... wire, the German guardsmen screamed madly for help and guidance. Some, like trapped rabbits, scurried up and down the outer barrier, searching in vain for openings. The British troops meantime had the greatest opportunity for open field rifle shooting since the battle of the Marne. Lying flat upon the ground, they poured bullets into the panic-stricken, gray-coated Germans until each man had ...
— America's War for Humanity • Thomas Herbert Russell
... last quick glance at Astro who gave him a reassuring nod, Tom dropped to his knees and crawled out from behind their hidden position. Dropping flat on his stomach, he inched forward toward the administration building. All around him ray guns and blasters were firing with regularity as the columns of Marines advanced from all sides of the canyon toward the center, mopping ...
— The Revolt on Venus • Carey Rockwell
... probably turned out a blessing in disguise, because there was no glacis down which the enemy's infantry could fire, and the numerous bluffs, ridges, and broken ground afford good cover to troops once they have passed the forty or fifty yards of flat, sandy beach. ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 3, June, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... shows evidence of bleeding, she should restrict her activities and rest in bed in an effort to prevent possible loss of the baby. If a miscarriage does occur, keep the patient flat with the foot of the bed elevated from 12 to 18 inches to retard vaginal bleeding. Keep her warm and quiet, and give ...
— Emergency Childbirth - A Reference Guide for Students of the Medical Self-help - Training Course, Lesson No. 11 • U. S. Department of Defense
... till I explain myself further. I will take the case of a miniature house to make the matter pleasanter to you; one fifteen feet long, fifteen feet wide, and with a flat roof, the most economical plan as regards space. Fifteen feet are five yards, and as the multiplication table tells us that five times five make twenty-five, our roof will in this case be twenty-five square yards (i. e. 225 square feet) in superficial extent, or area; it ...
— The History of a Mouthful of Bread - And its effect on the organization of men and animals • Jean Mace
... table by one side or team. At the command "Up Jenkins," given by the captain of the other side, chosen beforehand, all the players on the side having the coin must lift their hands above the table; and at the command "Down Jenkins," also given by the captain, all the hands must be brought down flat on the table. The greater the bang with which this is done, the less chance of detecting the sound of the metal striking the table. The captain then orders the players to raise their hands one by one, his object being to leave the coin in the last hand. ...
— What Shall We Do Now?: Five Hundred Games and Pastimes • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... speech a little thick. He wears a small wig tied behind in a bag, a plain stock, without cravat, a very tight jerkin of plain cloth, with sleeves as narrow as our waistcoat sleeves, a narrow belt above his jerkin, with a sword of extraordinary length and thickness, and almost perfectly flat-soled shoes—a very strange style of dress for a prince ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 12 • Editor-In-Chief Rossiter Johnson
... till I sank—but that's not the same thing. I struck out for another of these little islands, and it was from that one that I first saw your riding-light. Something to swim for. I went on easily, and on the way I came upon a flat rock a foot or two above water. In the daytime, I dare say, you might make it out with a glass from your poop. I scrambled up on it and rested myself for a bit. Then I made another start. That last spell must have ...
— 'Twixt Land & Sea • Joseph Conrad
... Come and look!" he cried, and dragged her to a point whence they could see the young Emir, lying flat on his back, his straw hat covering his face, for the sun was strong. "It is himself," Iskender whispered, dashing on into the house; while his mother made wild reverence in the Frank's direction, quite oblivious of the fact that the object of her bows and servile gestures ...
— The Valley of the Kings • Marmaduke Pickthall
... individuality out of the clothes directly they got them on their backs. In some cases the original design was quite swamped. No matter what the character that Mrs. Kean was assuming, she always used to wear her hair drawn flat over her forehead and twisted tight round her ears in a kind of circular sweep—such as the old writing-masters used to make when they attempted an extra grand flourish. And then the amount of petticoats she wore! Even as Hermione ...
— The Story of My Life - Recollections and Reflections • Ellen Terry
... to Gertrude and May Stonehenge, hanging stones,—the wonder of Salisbury Plain, where stand the ruins of the Druid temple—three circles of upright moss-grown stones with flat slabs across their tops, in which it is supposed the sun was worshiped with human sacrifices. Many burial mounds are scattered about. A broad driveway, a mile in extent, surrounds the temple, where possibly great processions came to witness the gorgeous displays. In early Britain the Druid priests ...
— The Harris-Ingram Experiment • Charles E. Bolton
... Neapolitan bombardiers, gunners, and sailors, attached to each boat, who were shipped by permission of their Government. This step I found necessary, as every vessel in the squadron was considerably short of complement. The gun boats are constructed for the defence of harbours; they are flat bottomed and heavy, and do not sail or row even tolerably well. They were never intended to go to sea, and, I find, cannot be navigated with safety, unless assisted by tow ropes from larger and better sailing vessels, nor even then, in very bad weather; ...
— The Medallic History of the United States of America 1776-1876 • J. F. Loubat
... the tumblers—that is, two tumblers, one with a stand, the other with a flat bottom, and a tea-cup with a spoon in it. The tea-cup was put opposite Father John's chair, and the reverend father himself proceeded to pour a tolerable modicum of spirits out of the stone jar into a good-sized milk jug, and placed ...
— The Macdermots of Ballycloran • Anthony Trollope
... thought the "Old Man of the Notch" His face seemed changing wholly— His lips seemed thick; his nose seemed flat; His misty hair looked woolly; And Coos teamsters, shrieking, fled From the metamorphosed figure. "Look there!" they said, "the Old Stone Head ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... Omumborombonga tree. Out of it came, in the beginning, the first man and woman. Oxen stepped forth from it too, but baboons, as Caliban says of the stars, "came otherwise," and sheep and goats sprang from a flat rock. Black people are so coloured, according to the Ovaherero, because when the first parents emerged from the tree and slew an ox, the ancestress of the blacks appropriated the black liver of the victim. The Ovakuru Meyuru or "OLD ONES in heaven," once let the skies down ...
— Myth, Ritual, and Religion, Vol. 1 • Andrew Lang
... politic to offend the powerful and treacherous ally by a flat refusal, said that the king's friendship was more precious than the India trade. At the same time he warned the French Government that, if they ruined the Dutch East India Company, "neither France nor any other nation would ever put ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... root, and then stood peering through the opening of the cell. He was a very short, thick man, with a dark face, which was gashed with three cuts upon either side. His small eyes were sunk deep in his head, showing like black holes in the heavy, flat, hairless face. His legs were short and very bandy, so that he waddled uncouthly ...
— The Last Galley Impressions and Tales - Impressions and Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... converted into a dry and portable manure, although, I understand, this manufacture is not now prosecuted. The dead animal after being skinned is cut up and boiled in large cauldrons until the flesh is separated from the bones. The latter are removed, and the flesh dried upon a flat stove. The flesh as sold ...
— Elements of Agricultural Chemistry • Thomas Anderson
... that she hath done to me.' 'Assuredly,' rejoined Zeppa, 'I will do it; and to boot, I will give thee a precious and fine jewel as none other thou hast.' So saying, he embraced her; then, laying her flat on the chest, there to his heart's content, he solaced himself with her, ...
— The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio • Giovanni Boccaccio
... Between the Black Sea, the Bosphorus, and the River Barbyses, which is deep in summer, and runs fifteen miles through a flat meadow. Its communication with Europe and Constantinople is by the stone bridge of the Blachernoe, which in successive ages was restored by Justinian and Basil, (Gyllius de Bosphoro Thracio, l. ii. c. 3. Ducange O. P. Christiana, l. v. ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 5 • Edward Gibbon
... and temples, in the midst of groves. The mysterious silence of an ancient wood diffuses even a shade of horror over minds that are yet superior to superstitious credulity. Their temple was seldom any other than a wide circle of rocks perpendicularly raised. An artificial pile of large flat stone usually composed the altar; and the whole religious mountain was usually enclosed by a low mound, to prevent the intrusion of the profane. "There was something in the Druidical species of heathenism," exclaims Mr. Whitaker, in a style truly ...
— Thaumaturgia • An Oxonian
... that she caught back her breath and let it out again in low exclamations of delight. She was now on the other side of the hill and, though she did not know it, she was on the site of an ancient camp. The hill was flat-topped; there were still signs of the ramparts, but it was not on these she gazed. Far below her was the river, flowing sluggishly in a deep ravine, formed on her right hand and as far as she could see by high grey cliffs. These for the most part were bare and sheer, but they ...
— THE MISSES MALLETT • E. H. YOUNG
... and wrinkled brow—eyebrows that met, squinting eyes, a flat broad nose, and a great gash of a mouth from which two huge tusks stuck out. His skin was hairy, his arms enormous, his legs like sword blades, and his feet as flat as ducks'. In short, he was the most hideous and laughable object ...
— The Grey Fairy Book • Various
... month of May I made her posies; I heard her often say That she loved roses. Cowslips and gillyflowers And the white lily I brought to deck the bowers For my sweet Philly. But she did all disdain, And threw them back again; Therefore 'tis flat and ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... prevails; on the flats a thin layer of decomposed vegetable matter overlays a white sand, bearing 'Melaleuca' and 'Pandanus', with a heavy undergrowth of a plant much resembling tall heath. Nearly every flat has its stream of clear water; the elegant "pitcher" plant grows abundantly on the margins. The timber is poor and stunted, chiefly bloodwood and 'grevillea'; and the grass ...
— The Overland Expedition of The Messrs. Jardine • Frank Jardine and Alexander Jardine
... learn that frog to jump. And you bet you he did learn him, too. He'd give him a little punch behind, and the next minute you'd see that frog whirling in the air like a doughnut—see him turn one summerset, or may be a couple, if he got a good start, and come down flat-footed and all right, like a cat. He got him up so in the matter of catching flies, and kept him in practice so constant, that he'd nail a fly every time as far as he could see him. Smiley said all a frog wanted was education, and he ...
— Humorous Masterpieces from American Literature • Various
... report, and a pistol ball whizzed by Turk's ear. He was unarmed, but he did not stop. Throwing himself forward, he stretched out his arms to grasp the crouching priest, hoping to prevent the firing of another shot. But he had not reckoned on the cleverness of the man at bay. The priest dropped flat to the ground and Turk plunged over his body, wildly clutching for the prostrate man as he went. With the cunning of a fox, the priest, on realizing that he could not avoid a personal conflict, had looked about for means to end the ...
— Castle Craneycrow • George Barr McCutcheon
... their nest. Every day he came and dug at the foot of the tree. Every day, just before he went away, he looked up at them and said, "I hope you'll sleep well to-night. You'd better enjoy your home while you have it, for the tree will be flat ...
— The Tale of Grunty Pig - Slumber-Town Tales • Arthur Scott Bailey
... Rose said, hesitatingly. "Aunt Sylvia gave me the things. I don't believe she will care. And there are two more flat gold rings, anyway. She will not notice, only perhaps ...
— The Shoulders of Atlas - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... The flat country on the north, extending between the Alps and the Apennines as far down as the Abruzzi, does not belong geographically, nor until a very late period even historically, to the southern land of mountain and hill, the Italy ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... than if they had come fresh from the shop. There was a chest of drawers; a rocking chair, a leather armchair, and a straight wooden chair; a mirror with frame of faded gilt; a good-sized wooden table; and, best of all, a much scarred, flat-topped desk. Ted had never owned a desk in all his life. Often he had dreamed of sitting behind one when he grew to be a man. But to have it now—here! To have it for his own! How it ...
— Ted and the Telephone • Sara Ware Bassett
... Hampstead to my flat, and packed the necessary wearing apparel, taking care to include my fly-book and my favourite split-cane trout rod in my kit. I should only be in Scotland for a couple of days, but I knew that I should be fishing with Myra at least one of them, and no borrowed rod is a patch on one's own tried ...
— The Mystery of the Green Ray • William Le Queux
... and opened his Evening Hate. There was the distant boom of a shell. Before we could realise what the sound was, and say "Hallo! they've begun," the missile had exploded among the stores on the beach. That was my baptism of fire. Without the least hesitation I copied Major Hardy and Monty, and went flat on my face behind some brushwood. Only Doe, too proud to take cover, remained standing, and then blushed self-consciously lest he had appeared to ...
— Tell England - A Study in a Generation • Ernest Raymond
... his most pleasant memories, beneath the simplest words that Odette had ever spoken to him in those old days, words which he had believed as though they were the words of a Gospel, beneath her daily actions which she had recounted to him, beneath the most ordinary places, her dressmaker's flat, the Avenue du Bois, the Hippodrome, he could feel (dissembled there, by virtue of that temporal superfluity which, after the most detailed account of how a day has been spent, always leaves something over, that may serve as a hiding place ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... "Now, you flat-faced coyote, yo're going to get the beating of yore life, an' I'm going to give it to you!" Hopalong cried, warily advancing upon the man whom he held to be responsible for the miseries of the past twenty-four hours. "You didn't give me a square deal, but I'm man enough to give ...
— Bar-20 Days • Clarence E. Mulford
... and children. Several men that could swim got over to our side, where the soldiers not heated with fight gave them quarter, and took them up, and I cannot but do this justice to the German officers in the fort: they had five small flat boats, and they gave leave to the soldiers to go off in them, and get what booty they could, but charged them not to kill anybody, ...
— Memoirs of a Cavalier • Daniel Defoe
... quite hot, or we have faultless servants, recommended from one colonist to another: these capital creatures sometimes become so thoroughly translated into American that I have known them shift around from flat to flat in colonized households of the second and third stories without ever touching French soil for the best part of a lifetime. At our receptions, dancing-teas and so on we pass our time in not giving offence. Federals and Confederates, rich cotton-spinners from Rhode Island and farmers from thousand-acre ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 29. August, 1873. • Various
... of the war. Who recruits him recruits horse and foot: he fetches parks of artillery, the best that engineer ever knew. If the time becomes slothful and heavy, he knows how to arouse it: he can make every word he speaks draw blood. Whatever stagnates in the flat of custom or obedience or legislation, he never stagnates. Obedience does not master him, he masters it. High up out of reach, he stands turning a concentrated light; he turns the pivot with his finger; he ...
— Poems By Walt Whitman • Walt Whitman
... difference between spirit and matter, which thing caused even the former to muddle about "God," and express disgust at "Materialism," and declare that there is "an insoluble problem," which is all in flat contradiction to pure Evolution, which does not meddle with ...
— Memoirs • Charles Godfrey Leland
... notice and fight as infantry—he lay on the extreme right between the river and the railroad. In a moment he saw his opportunity, and rode furiously to Hood's headquarters. He found the General sitting on a flat rock, a smouldering fire by his side, half way down the valley, at the Winstead House, intently watching ...
— The Bishop of Cottontown - A Story of the Southern Cotton Mills • John Trotwood Moore
... bank was a huge umbrella. Jimmy was sure it was the biggest one in the world. And under the umbrella sat the strange man. In one hand he grasped a queerly shaped board, and a number of sticks; and in the other he held one of the sticks, with which he kept dabbing at a big, flat thing that stood ...
— The Tale of Jimmy Rabbit - Sleepy-TimeTales • Arthur Scott Bailey
... paid a deposit on an empty flat in the tenement-house in which the bomb-maker had his headquarters, and had received a key to the apartment from the janitor. After considerable difficulty, owing to the narrowness of the air-shaft, Kennedy managed to ...
— The Dream Doctor • Arthur B. Reeve
... the Me in the majority of mankind comes to this world in a cracked pipkin, and it oozes out entirely as soon as it liquifies in youth. The pipkin, therefore, goes through life empty and cracked, ever sounding flat and false. While in others the Me is enclosed in a sealed straw-covered flask and can only be awakened by either evaporation or decapitation, in other words, by a spiritual revolution. And in the very few among mortals, it emerges out of the iron calyx ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani
... and kept in place by small amber-coloured combs, Gertrude's hair, though fragile, sustained the effect of her almost Scandinavian fairness. Next she changed her cotton blouse for an immaculate muslin one. As she drew down the blouse and smoothed it under the clipping belt, she showed a body flat in the back, sharp-breasted, curbed in the waist; the body of a thoroughly competent, serviceable person. Her face now almost suggested prettiness, as she turned and turned its little tilted profile ...
— The Creators - A Comedy • May Sinclair
... fast and tight." His hand closed, and his eyes shot a swift, lurid gleam from under their half-lowered lids. "I've got him as in a vice; I've only to turn the screw and—I squeeze him as flat and dry as a lemon." She drew a long breath of ...
— At Love's Cost • Charles Garvice
... over again ever so many times, and after a little he found that he went farther, quite a little farther, than when he began. Then one night he made a discovery. He found that by spreading his arms and legs out just as far as possible and making himself as flat as he could, he could go almost twice as far as he had been able to go before, and he landed a great deal easier. It was like sliding down on the air. It was great fun, and pretty soon he was spending all his spare ...
— Mother West Wind "How" Stories • Thornton W. Burgess
... guttersnipe behind him hue and cry, Lenehan said, and you'll kick. O, my rib risible! Taking off his flat spaugs and the walk. Small nines. ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... historically, an area of conflict because of flat terrain and the lack of natural barriers ...
— The 2003 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... the size of those of Yama-mai, Pernyi, or Mylitta, are rather flat and concave on one side, of an amber-yellow color and transparent, like those of sphingidae. When the larvae have absorbed the yellow liquid in the egg, and are fully developed; they can be seen ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 344, August 5, 1882 • Various
... been swung from humdrum existence to the exciting, disagreeable life of war and then back to their former life. The former task cannot be taken up or is carried on with great effort; the zest of things has disappeared, and what was so longed for while in the service seems flat and stale, especially if it is now realized that there are far more interesting fields of effort. In a lesser degree, the romances that girls feed on unfit them for sober realities, and the expectation of marriage built up by romantic novel and theater do far ...
— The Foundations of Personality • Abraham Myerson
... presence. His quick eyes, long trained to notice the smallest detail, quickly took in every feature of the richly appointed room, noting even the fantastic carving of the chair on which the emperor sat, and one of the rings he wore, a flat green emerald with a mystic letter carved upon it making the jewel, so he judged, a sort of talisman. He smiled in spite of himself as he remembered his own humble charm, the lucky stone. Perhaps the pebble's usefulness was ...
— The New Land - Stories of Jews Who Had a Part in the Making of Our Country • Elma Ehrlich Levinger
... fallen flat. With the exception of one man who had invented a new feeding-bottle, and thought he was going to advertise it for nothing, the outside public did not respond, and over the editorial department ...
— Novel Notes • Jerome K. Jerome
... your home? You haven't grown tired of being a village girl?" she said, as she and Sylvie sat down on a great flat projecting rock in the shaded walk beside the railroad track. They had just missed one car; there would not be another ...
— The Other Girls • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... readers, just so strange did it appear at one time to the multitude that the earth was round. (It is 500 years since the earth was proven to be round, yet there is a large colony of Christians near Chicago officially maintaining that the earth is as flat and four-cornered as the Bible states.) Neither Christianity nor any religious creed has proved an ...
— The Necessity of Atheism • Dr. D.M. Brooks
... and appeared to point to the spot. I put the gold in my pocket, and started to return to my cabin. I had spent one night at the Donner tents. On my return I became lost. When it was nearly dark, in crossing a little flat, the snow suddenly gave way under my feet, and I sank down almost to my armpits. By means of the crust on top of the snow, I kept myself suspended by throwing out my arms. A stream of water flowed underneath ...
— History of the Donner Party • C.F. McGlashan
... after his first hunting trip to Kentucky, Boone began to colonize it and that in flat defiance of the British government. He thumbed his nose too at a menacing proclamation of North ...
— Blue Ridge Country • Jean Thomas
... it than about anything else," remarked the girl, smiling a broad, flat smile that showed beautiful white teeth. She looked curiously ...
— The Guests Of Hercules • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... saw the Alabama again in sight of land, and after anchoring for a night off Flat Point, and sending a boat ashore, in the vain hope of finding in the Malay villages a supply of some sort of fresh provision, she again lifted her anchor and ...
— The Cruise of the Alabama and the Sumter • Raphael Semmes
... sort were passing from the west with droves of horses, mares, jennets, foals and asses, with their owners going after them in flat or railed carts, or ...
— In Wicklow and West Kerry • John M. Synge
... scowled at the scattered pieces of mirror until Bakunjala arrived with the drink. An hour later he emerged in his immaculate undress uniform and sat on the north verandah, drank vermouth and smoked cigars, staring out across the flat swamp where the pewter of the lake was flecked with silver and blood of the sinking sun. From beyond the fort came the yaps of the drill-sergeant busy in the cool of the afternoon. At the bark of the relieving guard, zu Pfeiffer rose and walked around the house to watch, with ...
— Witch-Doctors • Charles Beadle
... reason in the latter case, is better than even that in the former; because we not only observe, that men always seek society, but can also explain the principles, on which this universal propensity is founded. For is it more certain, that two flat pieces of marble will unite together, than that two young savages of different sexes will copulate? Do the children arise from this copulation more uniformly, than does the parents care for their safety and preservation? And after they have arrived at ...
— A Treatise of Human Nature • David Hume
... indulged him with the wished-for vision. He dreamed that under a certain part of the foundation of his mill there was concealed a monstrous pan of gold and diamonds, buried deep in the ground, and covered with a large flat stone. He rose up, thanked the stars that were at last pleased to take pity on his sufferings, and concealed his good luck from every person, as is usual in money dreams, in order to have the vision repeated the two succeeding nights, by which ...
— MacMillan's Reading Books - Book V • Anonymous
... inspector, "was playing round the gravestones, and jumpin' over 'em to keep warm. It was while they were jumpin' and shovin' each other about over the graves that they noticed that the top stone of a great flat old grave was loose, and, of course, they started to make it looser by see-sawing it, until one fat boy jumped it a bit too 'eavy, and it tilted and let ...
— A Queen's Error • Henry Curties
... by the Neckar-side, to which many people resort for coffee, according to the fashion which is almost national in Germany. There is nothing particularly attractive in the situation of this mill; it is on the Mannheim (the flat and unromantic) side of Heidelberg. The river turns the mill-wheel with a plenteous gushing sound; the out-buildings and the dwelling-house of the miller form a well-kept dusty quadrangle. Again, further from the river, ...
— The Grey Woman and other Tales • Mrs. (Elizabeth) Gaskell
... extending his line, and (on the Russian side) as to luring the enemy into the depths of Russia, are evidently of that kind, and only by much straining can historians attribute such conceptions to Napoleon and his marshals, or such plans to the Russian commanders. All the facts are in flat contradiction to such conjectures. During the whole period of the war not only was there no wish on the Russian side to draw the French into the heart of the country, but from their first entry into Russia ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... the old man were black with soot and reeking with the odour of sour charcoal smoke. But never had I seen father so happy and full of fun. Neither of them could stand upright in the hut, and the only furniture in the place were two bunks made of spruce twigs and a couple of flat stones on which they had built a fire; yet they were perfectly contented. They sat down, side by side, on one of the bunks, and opened the basket. 'I don't know whether you can have any of this,' said Strong Ingmar to father, 'for it's my Christmas dinner, ...
— Jerusalem • Selma Lagerlof
... in the Tao yi chi lio (1349) that "T'u t'a (the eastern stupa) is to be found in the flat land of Pa-tan (Fattan, Negapatam?) and that it is surrounded with stones. There is stupa of earth and brick many feet high; it bears the following Chinese inscription: 'The work was finished in the eighth moon of the third year hien chw'en (1267).' ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... was truth or fancy. After searching the hill for over an hour, I found a stone, or rather stumbled against it; I threw it aside, so that others might not stumble over it as I had, when to my astonishment I found it to be a large flat one, beneath which I found a collection of bags and boxes, which upon opening I found filled with gold and silver coin, and in each box a small paper,—one of which I hold in my hand; all are alike, and written ...
— Town and Country, or, Life at Home and Abroad • John S. Adams
... God that bruises, but He uses our feet to do it. It is God from whom the power comes, but the power works through us, and we are neither merely the field, nor merely the prize, of the conflict between these two, but we ourselves have to put all our pith into the task of keeping down the flat, speckled head that has the poison gland in it. 'The God of peace'—blessed be His Name—'shall bruise Satan under your feet,' but it will need the tension of your muscles, and the downward force of your heel, if the wriggling reptile is ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren
... child I lived in a small sea-coast town, with wide, flat sands. The only beautiful thing in the place—a town of no distinction—were the sunsets over this vast, level expanse. I remember them at intervals, as one recalls things seen passing in a train through a solitary landscape. I seem to see myself, a ...
— Women of the Country • Gertrude Bone
... around me a distinct and disastrous weakening of the impulse. They don't fall in love as frankly, as honestly, as irretrievably as they used to do. They shilly-shally, they pick and choose, they discuss, they criticise. They say themselves these futile foolish things about the club, and the flat, and the cost of living. They believe in Malthus. Fancy a young man who believes in Malthus! They seem in no hurry at all to get married. But thirty or forty years ago, young men used to rush by ...
— Post-Prandial Philosophy • Grant Allen
... Virtuous Woman. The strength of her modern descendant lies abroad: she is strong and admirable, she does splendid work, but there is always a tinge of excitement to help one through outside work. Things done among father and mother, brothers and sisters, are either very peaceful or very flat, according as your feelings are either wholesome or unwholesome—there is none of the pleasurable excitement, generally more or less feverish, of working with friends we love and admire; it is the difference between milk and wine. I do not think wine wrong, but I think it is much better ...
— Stray Thoughts for Girls • Lucy H. M. Soulsby
... held forward, its long horns lying flat upon the back. The shot was very long, and the beast very large to bring down with so small a bullet. I aimed right forward—clear of it, indeed—high too, in a line with its backbone, ...
— Marie - An Episode in The Life of the late Allan Quatermain • H. Rider Haggard
... The "Tomtoolan"[2] is not a large body of water—one hundred and fifty feet long, seventy-five feet wide—but it is a delight to me and has been grossly traduced by ignorant or envious outsiders. The day after the "Katy-Did" was christened (a flat-bottomed boat, painted prettily with blue and gold) I invited a lady to try it with me. Flags were fluttering from stem and stern. We took a gayly colored horn to toot as we went, and two dippers to bail, if necessary. It was not exactly ...
— Adopting An Abandoned Farm • Kate Sanborn
... there ensued much marvelling. Mr. Gray cordially congratulated himself, with wonder and pleasure, to think that actually his mad boy should have chosen so reasonably. Captain Gray, home on leave, observed that Old Everett wasn't such a flat as he seemed, by Jove! to select the daughter of an ancient house, and a wealthy house, like the Beauchamps of Hollingsley. The alliance was in every way honorable and advantageous. The family was one of the most influential ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 5, No. 28, February, 1860 • Various
... steer clear of. And when the feller you've been engaged to is shown up as a sneak and your own dad as a crook—well, you can't blame a green hand for holdin' prejudice against the town that raised 'em. She'll get over it; but just now I cal'late some little flat, or, better still, a little home out where the back yards ain't made of concrete, would be a first-class port for us to make for. Don't know of such a place at a ...
— Cap'n Warren's Wards • Joseph C. Lincoln
... cataclysm which will constitute, with the present means of destruction, war waged between the five great Powers, by ten millions of soldiers?... In this war explosives so powerful will be employed that every grouping of troops on the flat country or even under the protection of fortifications will become almost impossible and that, therefore, the preparations of this character made in expectation of the war will ...
— Face to Face with Kaiserism • James W. Gerard
... religion, which prevailed in Arabia up to the rise of Mahometanism, in the seventh century of Christianity, viz. the Sabean religion, or worship of the heavenly host—sun, moon, and stars, the most natural of all modes of idolatry, and especially to a nomadic people in flat and pathless deserts, without a single way-mark or guidance for their wanderings, except what they drew from the silent heavens above them. It is certain, therefore, that, long before their emigration into Palestine, ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v2 • Thomas de Quincey
... what beauty is, the to kalon? He will answer you that it is his toad wife with two great round eyes issuing from her little head, a wide, flat mouth, a yellow belly, a brown back. Interrogate a Guinea negro, for him beauty is a black oily skin, deep-set eyes, a flat nose. Interrogate the devil; he will tell you that beauty is a pair of horns, four claws and a tail. Consult, lastly, the philosophers, they will answer you with gibberish: ...
— Voltaire's Philosophical Dictionary • Voltaire
... over for the night. Even while the performers in the big tent had been going through with their acts, men had taken away the animal cages and loaded them on the flat railroad cars. Then the animal tent was taken down and packed into wagons ...
— Joe Strong on the Trapeze - or The Daring Feats of a Young Circus Performer • Vance Barnum
... paint his portrait. He used to ride with us nearly every morning. Almost without thinking I said I should be pleased. Don Rafael was shocked at my want of formality, but bowed to me in silence, very much as a monk bows, from the waist. If he had only crossed his hands flat on his chest it would have been perfect. Then, I don't know why, something moved me to make him a deep curtsy as he backed out of the room, leaving me suddenly impressed, not only with him but with myself too. I had my door ...
— The Arrow of Gold - a story between two notes • Joseph Conrad
... themselves and reaping the inevitable result. It is only at the beginning that one is so unwise. One giant Austrian had spread himself across the top of a roof near which I passed, with two sandbags to protect his head, and looked in his blue-black sailors clothes like an enormous fly squashed flat up there by the anger of the gods. Now leaning this way, now that, he flashed off a Mannlicher there towards the Italian Legation, where only one hundred hours ago no one ever dreamed that Chinese desperadoes would have made our normal life ...
— Indiscreet Letters From Peking • B. L. Putman Weale
... in a wonderful manner. Each train is made up of a certain number of box cars, flat cars and passenger cars. Into a passenger car of the compartment kind the officers and staff are jammed, eight in a compartment. On the flat cars the waggons, guns and vehicles are run and lashed, and into the box cars the men and horses are crowded. On each box car there ...
— The Red Watch - With the First Canadian Division in Flanders • J. A. Currie
... the nightingale sings in a low bush, but never from a tree; and, in the second place, there never was a nightingale seen or heard on the banks of the Dee, or on the banks of any other river in Scotland. Creative rural imagery is always comparatively flat." ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel , Volume I. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... was down flat, crawling slowly over the mossy ground, looking back to see if I was watching him, and pausing at last close to a gnarled old tree, which he tried to keep between him and ...
— Mass' George - A Boy's Adventures in the Old Savannah • George Manville Fenn
... was entirely land-locked, buried in woods, the trees coming right down to high-water mark, the shores mostly flat, and the hill-tops standing round at a distance in a sort of amphitheatre, one here, one there. Two little rivers, or rather, two swamps, emptied out into this pond, as you might call it; and the foliage round that part of the shore had a kind of poisonous ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 6 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... folks call it Yeddo. To the young, "Tokyo" has a pleasant, modern sound, and comes glibly. But whether young or old, those whose home it is know that the great flat city, troubled with green hills, cleft by a shining river, and veined in living canals, is the central spot of ...
— The Dragon Painter • Mary McNeil Fenollosa
... march over a very flat country, intersected with dykes, and only broken by the ubiquitous poplar trees; and one had ample time to think, and sometimes doze, as we marched along on our twenty-five mile trek. At the midday halt, a little diversion enlivened the proceedings in the shape of pulling ...
— With The Immortal Seventh Division • E. J. Kennedy and the Lord Bishop of Winchester
... to track the boat upstream through rapids. An American flag floated from the prow, and behind the flag the universal types of progress everywhere—goods for trade and a swivel-gun. Horses were led alongshore for hunting, and two pirogues—sharp at prow, broad at stern, like a flat-iron or a turtle—glided to the fore ...
— Pathfinders of the West • A. C. Laut
... regulation paragraph took care of this exact situation, and disposed of it neatly. For an instant, he thought of taking the volume in to the leader's office. Then, he remembered the threatening note in the authoritative voice and the flat, deadly thoughts ...
— Final Weapon • Everett B. Cole
... want to lend you. Alice, open the washstand drawer, please—no, the middle one—in that flat green box. Thank you. Your hat, sir villain," she went on, snapping open an opera hat and handing it to Betty with ...
— Betty Wales Freshman • Edith K. Dunton
... But if he is to read with any profit, or indeed with any real enjoyment, some preliminary study is almost indispensable. Take, for instance, the historical standpoint. Some of Dante's grandest apostrophes fall flat to one who has not grasped the mediaeval theory of the Roman Empire, as set forth in Mr. Bryce's well-known book or elsewhere. Much of his imagery, especially in the first Cantica, seems fantastic and arbitrary to one who is not familiar with Virgil's ...
— Dante: His Times and His Work • Arthur John Butler
... high, and the cat had jumped before Fly realised that it meant to use her legs as a ladder to the top. Indignation on Andy's account now gave place to wild rage at personal injury. The cat's claws were in her leg. She kicked it off, then, quick as thought, seized a big flat stone off the top of the wall, and dropped it on the cat's neck. The yellow head bowed, and without a sound the body rolled over on the grass. Fly saw that she had killed it. Her heart jumped for joy. She could hardly believe she had really done this wonderful thing. Andy's ...
— The Weans at Rowallan • Kathleen Fitzpatrick
... that, when you say you want to lead your own life, it is always a "bad" life you want to lead. They seem to think that a girl leading her own life is a girl entertaining men friends, until goodness knows what hour of the night, alone in her bachelor flat, they picture a man leading his own life as a man whose memoirs would send shudders down a really nice woman's spine. They never realise that there is happiness in personal freedom and liberty—happiness which is happy merely in the independent feeling of self-respect which this freedom ...
— Over the Fireside with Silent Friends • Richard King
... it absurdly said that room decoration should be by flat patterns—by dead colours—by conventional monotonies, and I know not what. Now, just be assured of this—nobody ever yet used conventional art to decorate with, when he could do anything better, and knew that what he did would be safe. Nay, a great painter ...
— The Two Paths • John Ruskin
... with a malignant anger. He suddenly started forward, and with a sidelong blow struck his father with the flat of his sword. A red ridge of bruised flesh instantly rose upon the old man's cheek and ear. He caught the arm of the chair by which he stood, staggering back as though he had received ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... on the piazza with his aunt and uncle, followed the latter into the study and, taking the broad leather chair, faced Markham across the flat desk with candid, friendly eyes. Levi sat, as he always did when in that room, in his revolving chair; the leather ...
— A Son of the Hills • Harriet T. Comstock
... no heart to go to his work that day. Neither could he go anywhere in the direction by which she would be likely to pass. He went in an opposite one, to a dreary, strange, flat scene, where boughs dripped, and coughs and consumption lurked, and where he had never ...
— Jude the Obscure • Thomas Hardy
... left the coach and started to climb the steps to the great door, we found the landlord and his retinue waiting to receive us. Frances was in the lead, and when we reached the broad, flat stone in front of the door, the head porter stepped before her, bowed, ...
— The Touchstone of Fortune • Charles Major
... represented. It was plain he really feared I was hurt, and the sense of his solicitude suddenly made all the difference to me. My cheap review fluttered off into space, and the best things I had said in it became flat enough beside the brilliancy of his being there. I can see him there still, on my rug, in the firelight and his spotted jacket, his fine, clear face all bright with the desire to be tender to my youth. I don't know what he had at first ...
— Embarrassments • Henry James
... allotted to it by the command of Osiris, and there it began its new existence. The large vignette to the CXth Chapter shows us exactly what manner of place the abode of the blessed was. The country was flat and the fields were intersected by canals of running water in which there were "no fish and no worms" (i.e., water snakes). In one part of it were several small islands, and on one of them Osiris was supposed to dwell with his saints. It was called the "Island of Truth," ...
— The Book of the Dead • E. A. Wallis Budge
... Earth cried, 'Where art thou?' And then the shadow of thy coming fell On Saxon Alfred's olive-cinctured brow: And many a warrior-peopled citadel. Like rocks which fire lifts out of the flat deep, 125 Arose in sacred Italy, Frowning o'er the tempestuous sea Of kings, and priests, and slaves, in tower-crowned majesty; That multitudinous anarchy did sweep And burst around their walls, like idle foam, 130 Whilst from the human spirit's deepest ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... though, there was only one vessel likely to come, and that was the flat-bottomed punt belonging to Dave, who worked the duck-decoy far out in the fen. The people on the sea-bank had a boat; but they were five miles away at least, and would not venture on such ...
— Dick o' the Fens - A Tale of the Great East Swamp • George Manville Fenn
... top could manage, and the second was to kindle the match, and then mount with all speed. Now it chanced while they were both still below, one of them thought the match too long; tried to break it shorter, took a couple of stones, a flat and a sharp, to cut it shorter; did cut it of the due length, but, horrible to relate, kindled it at the same time, and both were still below! Both shouted vehemently to the coadjutor at the windlass, both sprang at the basket; the ...
— The Life of John Sterling • Thomas Carlyle
... do not matter now, these nights of flight and pain... We were in an open place near those great temples at Paestum, at last, on a blank stony place dotted with spiky bushes, empty and desolate and so flat that a grove of eucalyptus far away showed to the feet of its stems. How I can see it! My lady was sitting down under a bush resting a little, for she was very weak and weary, and I was standing up watching to see if I could tell the distance of the ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... door, around the boulder that backed the place, and was afraid of my lantern. I went down on my hands and knees to feel for a track and found one, down a gully that ran in under a blind rock. I crawled down it, all but flat, as I burrowed like a rabbit, with my back scraping against the living rock between me and the sky, and my head turned to the place where I knew the lean-to stood. I was under it with no warning whatever; in a natural, man-high cellar I could ...
— The La Chance Mine Mystery • Susan Carleton Jones
... help you out there," put in the soldier. "I saw those two fellows heading that way, down in that depression, and they certainly carried some sort of flat, square boxes under ...
— The Moving Picture Boys on the War Front - Or, The Hunt for the Stolen Army Films • Victor Appleton
... large quantities of sand on flat lee-shores, there are many cases where it continually encroaches on those same shores and washes them away. At all points of the shallow North Sea where the agitation of the waves extends to the bottom, banks are forming and rolling eastwards. Hence the sea-sand tends to accumulate upon the coast ...
— The Earth as Modified by Human Action • George P. Marsh
... speaking a different language, kept possession of the north-eastern portion of the valley of the Po. Ligurian tribes maintained their footing in the western mountains, dwelling as far south as Pisa and Arezzo, and separating the Celt-land proper from Etruria. The Celts dwelt only in the intermediate flat country, the Insubres and Cenomani to the north of the Po, the Boii to the south, and—not to mention smaller tribes —the Senones on the coast of the Adriatic, from Ariminum to Ancona, in the so-called "country of the Gauls" (-ager Gallicus-). But even there Etruscan settlements must have ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... on board the raft. The voices of the pilgrims were no longer heard. They still prayed, but their prayer was but a murmur, which could not reach as far as either bank. The fugitives lay flat on the platform, so that the raft was scarcely above the level of the water. The old boatman crouched down forward among his men, solely occupied in keeping off the ice blocks, a maneuver ...
— Michael Strogoff - or, The Courier of the Czar • Jules Verne
... his fists. Bad mistake, that. Paul was skinny, not much muscle, read books all the time it looked like a cinch. But Paul had five years on him that he hadn't counted on. Important five years. Paul connected with just one—enough to lay Dan flat on his back with a concussion and a broken jaw, and that, ...
— Martyr • Alan Edward Nourse
... denomination, sixpence will do it; and then you may have your surplice and candlesticks to your heart's content, without denying the gospel, or running into the horrible abominations of the Scarlet Woman." And he sat upright in his chair, with his hands flat on his extended knees, watching with a self-satisfied air the effect of his ...
— Loss and Gain - The Story of a Convert • John Henry Newman
... people will be crowded like sardines, where my puffs will be mashed as flat as buckwheat cakes, and my train will go home with various gentlemen, clinging in scraps to their boot-heels! Were you ever at the seashore? If you have ever chanced to walk into a settlement of ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... peasantry of the middle ages around the rock-built castle of their feudal lord. From the wooden ramparts of St. Louis,—for so he named his fort,— high and inaccessible as an eagle's nest, a strange scene lay before his eye. The broad flat valley of the Illinois was spread beneath him like a map, bounded in the distance by its low wall of woody hills. The river wound at his feet in devious channels among islands bordered with lofty trees; then, far on the left, flowed calmly westward through the vast meadows, till its glimmering ...
— France and England in North America, a Series of Historical Narratives, Part Third • Francis Parkman
... beaten-bark headband, called "a-pong'-ot," and the headband of cloth are worn by short-haired men, while the long-haired man invariably wears the hat. The suk'-lang varies in shape from the fez-like ti-no-od' of Bontoc and Samoki, through various hemispherical forms, to the low, flat hats developing eastward and perfected in the last mountains west of the Rio Grande de Cagayan. Barlig makes and wears a carved wooden hat, either hemispherical or slightly oval. It goes ...
— The Bontoc Igorot • Albert Ernest Jenks
... the Commander-in-Chief, "is a dead flat, covered at short intervals with a low, but in some places thick jhow jungle, and dotted with sandy hillocks. The enemy screened their infantry and cavalry behind this jungle, and such undulations as the ground afforded; and, whilst our twelve battalions formed ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 367, May 1846 • Various
... Rammekens, not far from Flushing, at the mouth of the Scheld, to superintend the great movement. So large a fleet as was there assembled had never before been seen or heard of in Christendom. Of war-ships, transports, and flat-bottomed barges there were at least thirteen hundred. Many eye-witnesses, who counted however with their imaginations, declared that there were in all at least three thousand vessels, and the statement has been reproduced by grave and trustworthy chroniclers. As the number of troops to be ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... us, and conducted us up a flight of steps on the side of a mud bank to the four rooms forming the hotel. These were two sleeping apartments, a salon, and a salle a manger, the walls of which consisted of flat pieces of wood, their own width apart, something like Venetian shutters, with unglazed windows and ...
— A Voyage in the 'Sunbeam' • Annie Allnut Brassey
... of the Pampas in northern half, flat to rolling plateau of Patagonia in south, rugged ...
— The 1995 CIA World Factbook • United States Central Intelligence Agency
... take about 20 minutes. Rice cooked this way will have all the grains separate. For the tomatoes proceed as follows: 1 lb. of tomatoes and a little butter, pepper and salt. Wash the tomatoes and place them in a flat tin with a few spoonfuls of water; dust them with pepper and salt, and place little bits of butter on each tomato. Bake them from 15 to 20 minutes, according to the size of the tomatoes and the heat of the oven. Place the rice ...
— The Allinson Vegetarian Cookery Book • Thomas R. Allinson
... from the effects of her exposure in the forest, she lighted unexpectedly on the little flat parcel which her mother had charged her to keep. It was carefully sewn up in linen, and the sewing cost Maude some trouble to penetrate. She reached the core at last. It was something thin and flat, with curious black and red patterns all over it. This would have ...
— The White Rose of Langley - A Story of the Olden Time • Emily Sarah Holt
... followers he cautiously proceeded. At length, from a hill summit, he looked down on a broad plain on which he saw the first of the famous seven cities. To his excited fancy it was greater than the city of Mexico, the houses of stone in many stories and with flat roofs. This was all he could tell from his distant view, in which the mountain hazes seem to have greatly magnified his power ...
— Historical Tales - The Romance of Reality - Volume III • Charles Morris
... their inheritance, and there will I besiege them, and take them by the throat, and carry them prisoners to Valencia to my daughters, and there make them do penance for the crime which they have committed, and feed them with the food which they deserve. If I do not perform this, call me a flat traitor. When the King heard this he rose up and said, that it might be seen how he was offended in this thing. Certes, Cid Ruydiez Campeador, I asked your daughters of you for the Infantes of Carrion, because, as they well know, they besought me to do so, I never having thought thereof. ...
— Chronicle Of The Cid • Various
... Lying flat upon his face, diagonally across the roadway, was the form of a man in the blue-and-red uniform of the Belgian army. Maurie backed the ambulance a yard or so as Maud sprang out and knelt ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces in the Red Cross • Edith Van Dyne
... of Timbuctoo; it is seven or eight miles in circumference and surrounded by a wall; he remembers but four gates, but there may be more; he thinks the number of guards at each gate is about 50; it is in that part of the town most distant from the Nile. The houses are dark coloured and flat roofed. He thinks Cairo is about one-third larger than Housa; the streets are much wider than those of Timbuctoo; the houses are covered with a kind of clay of different colours but never white. They have no chalk or ...
— An Account of Timbuctoo and Housa Territories in the Interior of Africa • Abd Salam Shabeeny
... stay." A dawning sense of his stability was even beginning to make itself felt in Fifth Avenue. It was said that he had bought a house in Seventy-second Street, then that he meant to build near the Park; one or two people (always "taken by a friend") had been to his flat in the Pactolus, to see his Chinese porcelains and Persian rugs; now and then he had a few important men to dine at a Fifth Avenue restaurant; his name began to appear in philanthropic reports and on municipal committees (there were even rumours ...
— The Custom of the Country • Edith Wharton |
